Friday, July 18, 2008

July 18: I am feeling awwwww-full!

My body is just not digesting. That much I know. And I think that’s why I’m “so fat.” The past 5 years of yo-yo eating – on raw foods, on junk foods, on raw foods, on junk foods – over and over again, has really taxed my system and made it very sensitive and irritable. Easily irritated. And holding on to what it’s got. My whole system feels like it’s been under poor management and doesn’t know what to do. It doesn’t trust me, and why should it? I treat it great, I treat it like garbage, I treat it great, I treat it like garbage. Would you trust me? I wouldn’t. I haven’t been able to trust myself. I still don’t, which is why I’m blogging and in an online support group! I know EVERYTHING about raw food, because I’m an obnoxious know-it-all (just call me Hermione!). everything except how to keep myself on it.

So that’s the goal. Just to keep myself on it. And hopefully, keeping myself on it will allow my body to start to trust me and to start to do its work more efficiently. Right now, I’m not just burping garlic (oh, no more, please no more!), I’m just always gassy in general. I know instinctively that is because I have low HCL (hydrochloric acid) levels in my stomach. That is why I can’t tolerate the wheatgrass juice. Taking the green smoothies should help with that. But right now, what comes out the bottom looks an awful lot like what goes in the top – green smoothie in, green smoothie out! LOL! It’s going to take a lot of patience to sit with this and allow it to fix itself.

My transit times seem to be either too fast or too slow. That wheatgrass juice has spent very little time inside. just typing the word makes me want to barf, but I’m so not a puker. I feel like my yo-yo cycles have actually been a form of bulimia, going from binges to cleanses and back again, and like a bulimic, I don’t appear particularly thin or disordered. That’s another reason why it’s really important to me to just stick with a nice, moderate, fresh, 100% raw program for this 100 day challenge and beyond. There’s the addiction to the junk food, and there’s the addiction to the eating disorder.

Ok – so when I say “moderate,” you say “WHAT?” how can any raw food program be moderate??? All depends on your perspective. To me, 100% raw is the baseline, honestly. Anything below that is in the sub levels and not acceptable. But 100% raw could include raw dairy, it could include raw animal flesh, it could be a strong nut-and-seed plan, it could have a lot of dehydrated foods. That’s one point on the raw food triangle to me. At the other extreme are the people who only eat seasonal, local, what they grow themselves, wild food, gathered food, no preparation. A 3rd extreme is the superfood route, in which very little fresh local food is eaten, but lots and lots of exotic and highly potent superfoods, like maca and cacao and spirulina and goji berries and many, many more, so it’s almost like a diet composed exclusively of supplements. My center point, my moderate point, is what I’m doing – 99% fresh produce, as much organic and local as possible, and as seasonal as possible (easy to do in july! Today I felt like tomatoes at whole foods, last time was all stone fruit, the time before that was watermelon. Love summer food). The only prepared, “superfoods” I’m doing are my yerba mate, my raw agave, and the MSM and crystal salt I put in my water. I love cacao and maca and all those yummy powdered foods, and I do well on them, but I want to stay fresh. I think that’s more important. I’ll have cacao again when it’s cold or as a tasty treat to celebrate minor victories in my challenge. And I’ve talked a lot already about my nut and seed plan. So you see, in relation to the other extremes of raw food, my plan really is moderate. I think it takes the best of each – for me. (there are so many other “extreme” interpretations, someone could even interpret my plan as extreme, given my low nuts and seeds – there’s a low-glycemic extreme, there’s the fruitarian extreme, there’s the grassarian extreme, the breatharians, the d.u.m. extreme – that’s dead.uncooked.meat – all kinds of variations. I’ve got mine. Find your own.)

A problem that I’ve found (going back to the boy issue) is that when I’ve met raw food men, they tend to be at one of the extreme points on the triangle, and either through their insecurities, or mine, or the volatile combination of both, I’ve felt like they needed to exert control over my moderate perspective. I’ve loved playing the hard-core game, but you know – to each their own. And just because someone else is RAW doesn’t mean they’re compatible.

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