SURRENDER

Hi Folks,

Just catching up after a busy, busy week.

This blog post below was written on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, and I didn't get a chance to post it, the week just got away from me I was so busy, so i'm posting it now, with this little preamble, just to catch you up on what's been going on.

So i wrote this on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I worked on Thursday and Friday of last week non-stop at Arnold's Way, and on Saturday, I was a vendor at a raw festival and sold green smoothies, raw cheezes, raw breads, raw desserts and cookies at the Wellness Expo at Waterloo Gardens in Exton, PA www.livingdynamically.com. Sunday, Cliff and I spent most of the day driving in the beautiful weather (since he broke his foot last week), and landed at the Italian market in S. Philly for cheap conventional berries and bananas for our smoothies. We do conventional when the budget gets tight...

Though my week was filled with so many good wonderful raw inspired things like working at Arnold's Way and working the Raw Expo and selling green smoothies, and seeing wonderful locals stars of the raw food world there, like Brad of Brad's Raw Chips www.bradsrawchips.com and Cheryll Chavarria of Raw Can Roll Cafe in Pottstown, PA, www.RawCanRollCafe.com, I've been progressively unraveling.

I had been doing well with exercise and following my food combining, and i'd lost weight. My clothes were roomy and i was feeling so much better.

But, things began to unravel and reading this blog entry that i wrote last week explains effectively what happened. Everything all at once - I stopped surrendering, I'd been in fear about giving up foods I love, my knee was bothering me and either I needed a rest from exercise or a rest from food that was causing me inflammation and pain, and i'd eaten something so salty that my body was so bloated - i was in self hatred, beating myself up for poor choices.

Being a morbidly obese raw chef, unable or unwilling to give up the food that is killing her, is not a happy place to be. I'm forever locked into this debate with myself - is it the food? or is it my spiritual state? I keep trying to make cooked food work, i keep trying to turn to God, but i keep falling. I'm human. Devastatingly human.

Maybe it really IS the food, tripping me up constantly? I met a raw healer at Arnold's Way Friday night, Jahn, who lives closeby in Villanova, PA, and he confided in me that he's concerned about me and has witnessed my weight gain and energy shift through this whole year. He wholeheartedly believes that cooked food brings on negative emotions and that if i got off of cooked food again, i'd be much better off. He actually said, 'It would be MUCH MUCH better for you to eat raw gourmet than to be eating fish and quinoa. You will see a tremendous shift in your energy if you do that." He invited me to call him anytime and I am going to.

And at the Raw Expo, a few people who recognized me from Lisa Montgomery's book, "Raw Inspiration, Living Dynamically with Raw Food," and read my story of 175 lb weight loss, were concerned for me and counseled and encouraged me to get back on raw food, to get on a program. "You know what you have to do" two of them said.

I guess i must be in denial. "You know what you have to do." Well, people who are mentally ill when it comes to food KNOW what they have to do, they just don't have the power within themselves to do it.

How many times do i fall into the same hole...until i finally realize i need to walk down a different street?

I know that the Williamson book has been invaluable to my journey. I feel God is leading me back home, to raw, but I'm so scared.

I don't know. One day at a time. So far today all i've had is a raw fruit smoothie. At least we do that consistently every morning and have been so for months now.

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And, all in all, my fitness level has improved since I started exercising again.

I'm going to keep focusing on the positive points of this week hopefully and not give into the doom and gloom.

Here's last week....
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WEDNESDAY, March 16, 2011 - FOOD/ACTIVITY
Br: raspberry, chocolate, banana, date shake

EX: 30 mins walk with Cliff outside

Ln: strawberry, banana, chocolate, carob, agave shake

Dn: Dinner out with my parents on their anniversary. Muscles marinara, tossed salad, cooked carrots, grilled salmon.

Binge: leftover salmon, yogurt.
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TUESDAY, March 15, 2011 - FOOD/ACTIVITY

Br: Blueberry, banana, chocolate, date shake

Ln: Protein: Raw sprouted chickpea/pecan Hummus on a bed of romaine

Binge: *Handful Frenchfries, *2 oz. of raw cheese, *Plate of leftover salmon, leftover potatoes and veggies, 2 Tbsp of butter

LATER: *Small Pizza with extra cheese
*Fried fish platter - lots of french fries, 2 fried scallops, 1 peice of fried fish, 2 fried shrimp
*1 bottle of coke
*1 slice of chocolate cake

Dn: leftover lentil beans, quinoa, lima beans, asparagus

_ _ _ _

WRITTEN WED, MARCH 15

Yesterday I woke up and my legs were blown up from the salty bean stew the day before. It was almost a feeling of doom. My knees were also bothering me from the exercise. I was emotionally upset about those two things. I had my raw smoothie breakfast and all was restored to wellness. I was in a great mood. I worked on a fabulous poem I entered into a raw poetry contest on http://www.therawseed.com/. I hope i win! I was full of creative energy and the last thing from my mind was binge eating.

As the morning wore on and I was seated longer and longer at the computer, I was more and more upset about the bloated legs. They felt like michelin man legs.

When Cliff said he wanted oven french fries for lunch, it was almost like my heart dropped. More salt. I was torn. I've eaten oven fries with him on days when i was a success and had my food under control. But today felt like I'd better steer clear of the salt.

I put the fries in for him, and made myself a raw lunch.

It wasn't a salt free lunch since I'd used the raw hummus I'd made the other day from sprouted garbanzo i did myself, so it felt self-defeating as i neared the end of the meal. Even though it was a raw choice, it wouldn't alleviate the bloated legs I was unhappily experiencing.

The fries were done and I tasted a few. Delicious! Salty.... But delicious.

I'd just finished my protein salad, so now i was going against food combining by mixing carb and protein.

I felt like a bloated failure and the wheels of my disorder, the wheels of fear began to turn.

I didn't ask God to rescue me. I'd forgotten about God.

In fact, i'd eaten my salad in front of the TV again, and had no feeling of connection to a Higher Power. I was "white knuckling" it, which means doing well for a time, but just hanging on a thread, getting by on my own power, nothing supernatural to guide me out of making wrong choices.

When Cliff wasn't looking or in the room, I started grabbing. Raw cheese. Then i warmed up leftovers. I was already over the edge.

I was in pain from being bloated. I was in fear (I'm no good. I didn't food combine.) I was in rebellion. (I didn't feel like exercising). I was bored. (I had the TV on instead of doing what I had planned. I was supposed to be doing the dishes and finish the cleaning downstairs.)

In other words, it was a set up for disaster.

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After Cliff left for work, i was on my own. I'd debated what i would do for a GOOD, LONG time. Would i continue the binge? Would i go to the gym for the 6 o'clock aquarobics class I promised myself i'd do? Impulsively, i called the corner restaurant I order binge food from. The sick thing I do was set in motion.

Pizza, fries, fried fish.

I cried afterwards.

I also was rebelling against the next assignment in the "Course in Weight Loss," in that I promised myself I'd work on Chapter two of the Williamson book, where I'd write a letter to my fat self and tell her I hate her and then write her a love letter. I felt rebellious and didn't want to take the effort. I already knew I hated her, especially today. I could feel the fat rolls on my back earlier when I noticed my legs were swollen. Bloat does such a number on me, psychologically.

I was hating myself.

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Williamson says that only when we LOVE ourselves, love our bloated legs and hanging fat rolls will that binge-girl in us evaporate. LOVE is the only answer.

I was still hating on me. I wasn't happy. And I didn't ask Anyone greater than me, or even who loved me, to help.

I realized I hadn't prayed before my meals for a day or two, so this had been building. The disconnection had disconnected before today.

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Cliff found the pizza box in the trash out back. Very unlike him, he usually yells, he came up behind me while i was laying on the couch and caressed my head and face, and confronted me, "Honey, did you eat pizza?"

I cried and confessed to the whole thing. I told him how I'd been feeling. i talked to him about the book and about my need to connect to God for the power to overcome this.

I talked to him about how my knees never hurt me when I was raw. I talked to him about how I was scared I didn't know what my trigger foods were. Was i supposed to be going raw? Was i supposed to just keep trying with the food combining? I felt like I was getting nowhere keeping cooked food in my life. I just can't "get it together."

We talked about the food combining and how positively it's been affecting him. He mentioned how his ankles stopped hurting the moment he got off of gluten, coffee and cheese, and how pleased he was with food combining.

I talked about my challenges with food combining, about how I can easily binge on fish, and that, unless i'm crazy, everytime i eat fish, and when i took those two bites of turkey, my back immediately hurts. Call me crazy, but I don't think i'm imagining it.

When i first when to OHI, I was crippled with back pain. In 4 days, the pain dissappeared and I could stand up straight finally and walk.

Something in me tells me it's the lactic acid build up from protein that gives me these backpains i feel again today. And unless I'm nuts, it happens when i eat flesh protein.

I realized that the Weightloss CD talking all about figuring out what your trigger foods are had really been working on me. I was frightened of this. Frightened my trigger foods were all of the things I liked like beans and cheese and fish and potatoes and rice, etc...

I'd made peace with them ALL as trigger foods when i gave EVERYTHING up 4 years ago by surrendering myself to OHI's raw food program and continued to stay a raw foodist for 3.5 years.

I had surrendered.

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So here i am trying to make something work with food combining and maintaining a diet of cooked food. Am I not having success because the food is cooked and it constantly triggers me...or because i am in rebellion to God constantly??

_ _ _

Surrender scares me.

But, i need to do it.

I surrender, Lord. Lead me.

_ _ _ _

So, today, when it came time for lunch, I felt led to make it a fruit lunch. Fruit scares me. "I'm gonna go bald. I'm gonna have to go low fat. I'm gonna have to give up all cooked foods."

But, i let go. I let go of the fear and i just enjoyed the shake.

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Last night, we were looking for a picture in our pics online.

I looked through all of my "thin" pics (me at 250 lbs, thin for me), me looking beautiful in the face, me so proud of myself, smiling, happily showing off my body.

I half hated those pictures, remiding me of how good i looked. And i half hated myself now for what i've become, just for a taste of food.

"You'll NEVER look like that again," i hopelessly told myself. "Unless you go raw again and give up salt and fat most of the time and keep exercising."

In all of the pics where I loved the way i looked, I was salt free and low fat. It's my curse, but my face doesn't look like me unless i'm salt free.

I'm so ANGRY at this. I'm angry at it.

But for today, i surrender. I ask God for his guidance. I ask him to lead me where I need to be.

xoxo michelle joy