august 18: a damn good question

i got an email this morning from a friend of mine. she's totally awesome and very very cool. she's trying to kick it into raw, joined raw fu, and is struggling. so here's what she wrote:

I'm really enjoying living vicariously through your blog. I,myself,
am having a little difficulty staying raw. I have not gone back into
the land of meat but cheese & fats have been my undoing. So after
eating, drinking & smoking everything I could get my hands on this
weekend, where do I start? I keep making deals with myself like
"Well as soon as I get ___________________________________________
I'll be start". Etc. What motivates you? I get discouraged easily
(my clothes are actually TIGHTER!). My battle is clearly mental. My
body doesn't want crap but my mind does. What's a girl to do? :-)

god, what an amazing question. WHAT MOTIVATES YOU? i posted this as a discussion thread on raw fu, and i'm putting it here as well, so anyone catching this post, please feel free to leave a comment that i can pass along to my friend. where do you start? what motivates you? what IS a girl to do?

i guess the only place TO start is at the beginning. i don't mean that to sound flip. my own beginning. way back in the day. i was introduced to raw food by one of my yoga students. she was brimful of energy and crazy as a loon. she loaned me david wolfe's "sunfood diet success system" and took me to see him in greensboro, and that was it for me. i was sold. but why? what motivated me to even start?

it was just the ring of truth. i knew that i had found the missing element of truth that all of my dieting and health seeking had missed out on over the years.

but i fell off the wagon so many times. i struggled so much. as i've written here, i've struggled with peer pressure and wanting to be "date-able" and i've really battled my addictions. what has motivated me to climb back up on that wagon, time after time, and what's motivating me to stay there this time?

lousy as this is going to sound, i don't know. i don't have a good answer for this amazing question. i feel like i'm almost BEYOND motivation. i'm in the realm of choicelessness, where motivation is just a pale spectre in the distance. but that's not fair to say. this is a tough one!!!

ok. 6 weeks ago, i was at the end of my rope with myself. i was feeling fat and disgusting and ridiculous. i was watching tv all day, eating tons of junk food (and i do mean junk! potato chips, corn chips, sun chips, bread, olives, coffee, peanut butter, cereal, burritos, etc.), i had only enough motivation to get me to go to work, teach my classes, and go back to the house, let the dogs out and watch more tv. on the one hand, it was "fun," it felt like summer vacation when i was a kid. on the other hand, i'm not a kid anymore, and living that way was SO FAR OUT of my integrity with who i am now - the last thing i want is for my schedule to be governed by television shows!!! but it was. so how did i pull myself up? i got really sick of myself. i have to work in front of a mirror, wearing pretty much minimal clothing. i couldn't stand the sight of myself. i felt like a junkie, going in to the gas station store to buy potato chips for the drive home, and then another big bag or 2 from the corner grocery once i got home. that's not what i beleive in, that's not my value system. i had to kick myself in the ass. i had to get back to my roots.

so i sent out an email to all my friends, telling them that i was re-committing myself to raw food, and asking them to do whatever they needed to do in order to support me in my commitment. the next day, i found raw fu, and the day after that, i started this blog. 10 days later, i found 80-10-10. what motivated me was the shining burning flame of self-love flickering dimly through the dense fog of self-hatred and addiction. what has kept me motivated is the accountability and the support and real love that i've felt from the raw fu community and the open window of self-expression i've gotten in the blog. and what's taken me beyond the need of motivation is this amazing 811 way of eating, which is doing everything for me that i need it to do.

and, i'm lucky. i'm not married, i don't have kids, i don't have a cadre of friends who also drink and eat merry and who are going to either goad and tease me to my face, or gossip behind my back. my friend DOES. i may not have "support," but i don't have counter-support. she's pulling her own boat against a very strong current. and she's got the guts and the cojones and the good, strong Aquarian individuality to do it - she's just got to learn to strengthen all those muscles.

it took me 3 years of not drinking before i could go hang out in a bar. i quit drinking while all my friends were still drinking. i quit smoking while all my friends were still smoking. i quit cooked food while all my friends were eating cooked food. i started yoga with no friends to speak of and none of my non-yoga friends have EVER taken any of my classes. i've been boyfriendless pretty much the whole time. all of my falling off the wagon was my own damn doing, and all my getting back on was my own doing too. each time i have given up an addiction, i've lost and changed my entire social structure. for the better, to be sure! but that's more than what most people are ready for. i've been painfully lonely. i've fallen off the wagon, believing the illusion and the lie that eating "normal" could make me "normal." instead, it made me fatter, lonelier and more miserable, because i wasn't with ME! if i'm not with me, i'm over there trying to be like them, and they aren't with me, then no one is. i have to be with me. i have to stay true to myself. i have to stay true within myself. the reward for that is that i'm not lonely anymore. i like myself. i even love myself. i've found my true love, my life's companion, and that's me! the personality that is my soul's partner for this lifetime. that's what motivates me. that's what keeps me going. the joy of being in love with myself.

when i love myself this much, there is no option for putting poisons in, on, or around my body. when i love myself this much, it doesn't MATTER what anybody else is doing! this new guy i met, he ate ham and eggs for brunch yesterday, and while he told me he doesn't do that in his normal life (party party weekend!), i didn't care. his life. what he and everyone else choose to do doesn't affect me. my body, my life, my choices. took me a long time to get here. but damn, it's a great place to be!