FINDING BALANCE & GOING WITH THE FLOW!

Today is day 6 of my new "Transition To Greatness" plan. I am feeling and doing great!

I'm doing the juices Dorothy makes for me (The Angels Juicing Club at Arnold's Way) all throughout the day.

For breakfast or when I get hungier and juicing doesn't quite 'do it', I have a smoothie, or a green smoothie, or whips on occasion. Then, for lunch, later, i've been settling into no fat/no salt vegan stuff like lentils and brown rice and steamed veggies at home. Or at work, I'll have a lowfat low salt raw lunch like raw bread with raw burger and sliced tomato on top, or a big salad with raw burger on top with 1/4 of an avo (blended with water, lemon, garlic, ginger, and nutritional yeast) for dressing.

For dinner, I have been "going with the flow" which has worked out to be quite amazing!

I'll talk more about it below.

So, for the holidays and for dinners really the whole week, I have been having very small servings of regular food with a total happy fearless attitude.

They say attitude is everything. And it's true. It is.

I feel like a normal person and it's pretty amazing!

Yes, it's radically different than the approach I thought I needed to stop binge eating and lose weight, but i'm so freaking happy to be here!

I've been following my "greatness" plan throughout the day, and since I gave myself the freedom and choice to go off of it (and get right back on), i've been doing that!

You know what? It's not scary, threatening, or hard, and I'm finding it is working wonderfully!

I got on the scale this morning and I am exuberantly under 350 lbs again! I woke up Cliff to tell him! I must have lost at least 10-15 lbs, maybe even 20, with effortless effort. Man, i'm so HAPPY!

- Fat and salt free raw and cooked VEGAN MOST of the day following my plan (best for me and my prone-to-swelling legs and for my reflux)....

- Small amounts of regular food (a delight for my binge eating disorder and my obesity...because I get to enjoy food in a very controlled/organized manner with NO DEPRIVATION...and no DIETING!).

I'm tres excited. Can I really make this work? Can I overcome my binge eating...and lose weight...and have good health?

When i started the juicing, I thought i would just juice, actually, i wanted to juice for 10 months and lose all of my weight. I couldn't make it a whole day! So, I remained flexible and it morphed into a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE! Now i'm so happy to be finding a balance which has for so long felt unachievable. Maybe flooding myself with the juicing nutrients and the new mental attitude is doing something where i am able to have cooked and it not veer out of control (yet).

I'll see how it goes. If this works, i'll keep this regiment up, for good!

Obviously, i won't be getting the benefits of a fully raw or even vegan diet.

But if I choose to, perhaps my dinners will morph into veganland? Or even morph into gourmet raw? It's the most wonderful freedom....to have the freedom to do as I choose!

If i stop binge eating (so far 6 days binge free) and lose weight, all of the endless searching will have been all be worth it.

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I did some writing about Christmas Day.

On Christmas day, I'd had 6 of my juices that i picked up from Dorothy, and then I ate a late lunch back home, very hungry!, a smoothie and ff and salt free vegan stuff (sweet potato, steamed vegetables, brown rice).

Lemme tell ya, when you are hungry, anything tastes good, even if it has no butter or salt on it!

Christmas dinner at our friends house was a miraculous experience.

I choose to go "with the flow" and eat from what was being served (instead of stick to my greatness plan,) and it turns out, not sticking to my plan is a part of the plan, so I NEVER feel GUILTY!!!

Over these last 5 days, i go off for dinner, I get back on breakfast and lunch, I go off for dinner, i get back on breakfast and lunch. I've fallen into a workable pattern. This is quite unlike anything i've ever done. It's not a diet with rigidity and failure. NO. The greatness plan is an ideal plan of eating I set up for myself, but i gave myself an out. Because life is not ideal, and today, I want to be free enough to just enjoy this crazy un-ideal life!!!!! Turkey and mashed potatoes and coconut cream pie may not be ideal....but they sure are GOOD!! Today I allow myself because I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired with binge eating. I eat this all when I binge and since I am through with binge eating, I am blissfully going to ENJOY BINGEFOOD now!

What was amazing was, I felt like a normal person with no compulsion for food! I was not hungry nor tempted for horsdeuvres (cheese and crackers), but i had some fruit that was set out. I ate a good lunch on purpose, so i wouldn't be starved, but there was more to it than that.

Not being tempted by horsdeuvres felt like a new experience, especially since i'm eating cooked, which I used to think was addictive. (I have come to the conclusion based on my experience, that cooked food is NOT addictive. It is HOW I approach it, with what energy and emotion i bring to it.) I am sure, also, that being satiated from juices, smoothies, and healthy vegan foods is also tampering my naturally obsessed-with-food state. As is my new attitude.

For dinner, surrounded by Cliff and dear friends and so much delicious traditional holiday food, I happily anticipated being one of the group and enjoying what was lovingly prepared, wow!

So different from all of the other holiday dinners where I was either pigging out and hating myself and then i'd binge later.....or when i would bring salad and fruit and nutspread and nutpies, stuffing myself on that, overeating, feeling deprived, and eating this way because i was "unable to control myself" on regular food.

Tonight was totally different!

My head was ABSOLUTELY FREE of eating disorder talk ("i want that but i can't have that," "if i eat that, i'll eat the whole thing," "i hate myself," "butter is evil," "i'm going to get cancer if i eat that," "i'm a fat pig," "i want to eat that whole bowl of mashed potatoes," "i can't wait to eat that turkey when no one is looking," "i'll binge when i get home," etc...).

I felt like a normal person just enjoying food. What an experience! The experience of my lifetime! What i've been WAITING for!!!! My eating disorder: the negative, fearful, critical, PERFECTIONISTIC voice that was living in me for 40+ years has gone bye bye.

Just to enjoy food....to simply enjoy food....like Nigella Lawson does...like Lidia Bastianich does... I watch these cooking shows and watch them take bites of this forbidden fattening addictive cancer causing delicious amazing food, and i say, "How do they DO that and not weigh 800 lbs? I WANT THAT!"

When the food came around, i took a small spoon of anything that appealed to me and a good serving of salad and ate slowly and paying attention and monitored my thoughts/feelings/attitude for anything fearful/negative/remorseful/regretful. I would allow NONE of that. I just kept focusing on just being HAPPY, purposefully, imposing HAPPINESS on myself, returning to HAPPINESS if it momentarily departed, and eating/doing what i ENJOYED. Did i enjoy talking to this person? Continue. Did i enjoy eating this? Continue. Happiness and Enjoyment were all that mattered.

Wow. This is IT. This is bliss.

After i finished my plate, i waited for a few mins and just checked in. I was a little nervous because i still felt hungry and I didn't know if the insatiable hole in me that wanted to swallow up everything on the table was alive or not. After a few minutes, i had some more salad and another bite or two of whatever regular food appealed to me right then...

And then it happened... It was as if the heavens parted...

...I felt the magical signal that said i'd had enough wash over me! I'd had enough! They talk about satiety and eating until your body signals you you've had enough, but in binge mode, there is NEVER enough. To have experienced "enough" (which was not even very much) eating former binge foods...was quite miraculous.

What a revelation. This is why and how normal people stop eating when they've had enough, and lose their interest in food!

Normal people don't obsess on food, don't obsess or think about what they've just eaten, ruminating and ruminating, feeling guiltier and guilter. They just enjoy! Until they've had ENOUGH!

THE NEW SKILL TO FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE EATEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU'VE EATEN IT....IS HUGE! KAREN TAUGHT ME THIS. IT'S SOMETHING ECKHART TOLLE TAUGHT HER. IT'S CALLED RELEASING ATTACHMENT TO THINGS, IDEAS, DESIRES. WE JUST RELEASE. "EAT. ENJOY. FORGET."

I willed myself to enjoy the conversation and get out of my head. I wiped all memory and thoughts of what i'd eaten out of my mind.

I obsess on food no longer.

Conversation was delightful, and by the time dessert came, wow, was I happy, because I was hungry for a little! A few bites was enough of Theresa's amazing homemade coffee cake with a cup of tea, just how i like it (on occassion) with milk and sugar, what a treat. The coconut cream pie was not that coconutty and so it wasn't hard to stop eating it after one bite.

Today i eat what i enjoy and what gives me pleasure, and don't waste my calories on hating myself with what i don't enjoy. There is no more hatred, no more regret, no more guilt. So those mental states don't attract me to food I don't like or enjoy so I can beat myself up with it. THANK YOU GOD.

I enjoyed socializing and gifts afterwards and left HAPPY - no obsessing or binge eating on leftovers afterwards. I guess I don't need to get my HAPPY from food anymore. I get HAPPY from ME. Food is for HUNGRY.

Food binges START from thinking and obsessing on food. Since that is not tolerated (only HAPPY is), I never get to the point of being compelled to binge. There is a lot of THOUGHT about food FIRST before you binge.

Binge eating is a mental disorder brought about by strong emotions. Strong emotions are meant to be felt. We are meant to let them flow through us. We are not meant to eat in a state of upset. We have learned to think about food or eat food instead of feel our feelings.

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Here's some other writing I did.

I'm looking better in the face, not radically, but enough that i would notice. With radical raw, all bananas or something, or with just juicing, change in weight would be much more radical. But i'm OKAY with moderate. MODERATE I can keep up for the rest of my LIFE!!!! I remind myself often that with Dr. Graham, I lost 40 lbs in one month eating only bananas, but I gained them back in a week. I am through with crash dieting.

This feels like the most incredible freedom and discipline all in one. Balance, finally. And it feels great.

xoxo michelle joy