december 17: feasting and fasting

i made a strange decision this past weekend, and it's been on my back for the past few days. like a monkey.

i haven't had any real appetite to speak of, no real hunger. i'm not hungry. and the foods i'm supposed to eat, the food i truly want to eat, i have no desire to eat. but instead of just going with that and choosing not to eat, i ate the only things that had any superficial appeal - cooked food. and superficial appeal is all it has to me. when i start to let myself eat cooked, something happens in my brain, and i just go on overload. it doesn't matter if i truly want it or not, or if i have any real hunger; i just eat it and keep eating it, waiting for it to feel like food, which it doesn't.

so i decided last night that now is the appropriate time to fast. i'm going to do a 3-day master cleanse (we call it "cactus cleanse" here, because we use agave nectar) and just chill out on the whole eating thing. i need to do it, because my cravings for cooked food are getting out of control, and i'm making decisions that are dangerously close to choosing things i REALLY don't want, true junk food. so far i've been ok at sticking with things that other people would consider good food, but i know better.

december 14: prosperity and gratitude

so i shared some of my other-than-excellent financial news the other day, and shared that i am tracking my every penny and being really really careful with my money and (supposed to be) eating only bananas, right? well, this weekend i kinda screwed up with the food, but i'll get to that later. here's the amazing thing...

i started tracking my money and paid off all the bills i could, which left me with right around $90 in my bank account to last me for 14 days. a few days later, a friend paid me for a book i gave her (i didn't ask for money, just gave her the book. she asked how much, and i said, "that's up to you. i want you to have it, and i don't need anything for it."), which covered the amount of money i had already spent on gasoline. then i got a refund, which covered the amount of money i had spent on bananas. then i got home this evening, and in the mail there was a $40 gift card from whole foods!!! i couldn't beleive it! so i tallied it all up, and i have about $90, between my cash, bank account and this gift card. can you beleive it??? somehow, i've managed to live almost normally for almost 10 days and haven't managed to decrease my net worth! that's incredible. i'm feeling very prosperous and very grateful. i wish i knew who sent me that gift card! whoever you are: THANK YOU!!!!!

(food wise i was very bad and ate dinner and brunch with my boyfriend. bad, cooked food bad. tasty, but bad.)

december 9: reflexes

yesterday i had my first-ever reflexology session. one of my students, richard ritz, has a practice (www.austinreflexology.com), and gave me a session in trade. i didn't really know what to expect, but i have to say that it was very very cool. he found a huge wad of congestion, tightness, compaction, i don't know what the reflexologists call it, on the "small intestine reflex" on my left foot. he found another smaller one on the right foot. but man! he worked that left foot like crazy, and it HURT! i could feel the little knots of whatever it was that he was working on as his thumb moved over them and as they broke apart, and when i was done, i felt almost like i had a stone bruise in the sole of my foot, without the bruising part. i also felt really wiped out tired afterwards. he asked, as he was working on it, if i had any "chronic gas problems". well, ummm, yeah. only all the time, right? so i didn't feel anything major change right away, not until later, when i could feel more gurgling going on than i'm used to. i went home and fell asleep early, and then woke up this morning at 5.30 ready to GO. had quite the bowel movement, which was absolutely full of gas and mucus - it's always a stunner to see that stuff in the bowl. i'm still very gurgly and gassy, but i'm rather convinced. i think i actually feel more convinced by reflexology to clean out the system than i am by colon hydrotherapy. more about strengthening the tissues by removing congestion than by introducing an additional element. my body has certainly responded. and besides, colonics only get the colon, right? i was really surprised that i had really no pain along the colon reflexes, only in the small intestine. i haven't heard anybody talk about small intestine health in a long time. everyone's so focused on the colon. so - i'm impressed. i'm impressed and i'm going to do it again just as soon as i need to, and to continue to do it until it's healed.

december 7: love

this post won't be so much about food. as dr doug says, there is so much more to health than just the food you eat. it's an important part, but it's just a part, no more no less.

so tonight... love. ahhhhh. i'm going out on a limb here. scary territory. oh, i can talk about how much i love eating 811, or how much i love yoga, my yoga studio, my yoga students, my friends, my family, austin, the outdoors, all that stuff. but this is where i'm publicly venturing out there to tell you all how much i love my boyfriend. isn't that AMAZING!??? it really is. it's been a very, very very long time since i could say that, or think it, or really even feel it. and we've been dating now for almost 4 months, and we haven't exchanged the "L" word (he doesn't read my blog!), or even publicly used the "boyfriend/girlfriend" terms in front of each other. we are creeping up on this nice and slow. it's wonderful. and tonight, we just had the best conversation we've ever had. we just spent 2 full hours on the phone together, a total first. we laughed more than we ever have - we don't usually crack each other up, but tonight we did. and he just had the most intense day, so we also got really serious and very intimate on an emotional level, which was really powerful. the whole thing was just amazing.

i will tell you something really funny about food. while we were talking, he walked to 7-11 to get some ice cream. later, he had some fritos. there's a raw fu meetup in dallas this weekend, and i asked him if he wanted to come along. not so much, mostly because there won't be any other men there. and i said something like, "in general, men are so much less pro-active than women about taking care of their health." then, we got back into this thing he has in which he gently accuses me of thinking that everybody needs to eat the way i do, because i think my diet is so far superior to everyone else's. now, i DON'T think everyone needs to eat the way i do, because we're all different, but i did concede that i think it would be better for everyone to start to incorporate more of the way i eat into their diets - everyone needs more fresh fruits and veg in their lives, right? he actually said, "yeah, i know i sure could..." and i said, "WHAT??? you mean that your ice cream and fritos for dinner was less healthy than my tomatoes and celery??? oh my god! the nerve i've got to think that tomatoes and celery for dinner is healthier than ice cream and fritos. man, i really am just way up on my high horse, ain't i?" it's the first time he's actually conceded to me that he needs to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, and that there are aspects of his diet that are less healthy than mine. and he did with a smile and while we were laughing. this is HUGE. i'm so proud of him.

i love him.

december 6: cycles

i started my cycle on the 4th, 2 days ago. it's very painful. i've got cramps all over, my joints hurt, all kinds of crap. add to that being on my 7th day off cooked food - my body is in major detox mode, and still - STILL! - releasing mucus through my sinuses. all in all, i feel like crap again. i had about 2 days of feeling really great, and then boom-shaka-laka, back in bed. i tried to do yoga yesterday (i normally don't practice while on my cycle), and it was miserable. i had no strength, and had terrible gas and intestinal cramps to go along with all the other fun stuff. forget about front-side compression; i had to sit out a lot of the work.

this is what eating poorly does to me. it wrecks me. and i might not feel it same day, but it sure does come around later. learning to read the signs of what makes me feel better and worse is so important to my overall health and well-being. part of "catching up" right now is getting my body caught back up to the point where i'm no longer seriously detoxing and am just simply healing.

ooof. i don't feel like even so much as taking a walk. i also REALLY don't feel like taking another day in bed. hopefully this will soon pass and i'll be up and about. lord knows i have enough to do today.

december 5: catching up

my pre-new year's resolution is to CATCH UP. what that means, to me, is to catch up on my finances, to catch up on my housekeeping, to catch up on my job tasks, to catch up on my yoga practice, to catch up on my friends, and to catch up on my personal goals.

i feel like, maybe, i've finally got a handle on what my diet is supposed to be. it feels pretty simple now. just eat raw fruit and veg. nothing else. for any reason. no permission given to eat anything else. no need to, it just makes me sick. so - while i'm not resting on any laurels - i have none, not after this last fiasco - i feel like i no longer have to put tremendous energy and effort into focusing on what i eat. fruit and veg, keep it simple, don't screw around. i feel like i'm "caught up" on my food. taking that burden off my back is liberating. now i can really move forward. once i've caught up on all that other stuff, that is. now it's the other stuff that's holding me back, not the food.

so i'm working on catching up on my finances. i got a little moleskin ledger book, and i am meticulously tracking my money in and money out. i've done this many times before, and it is brilliant. it works so well, because it just keeps it all front and center. it shows you the truth, and somehow, just knowing the truth makes it all easier to manage. so i got paid last night, and this morning i sat down with my computer, my ledger book, my checkbook, and my debit card (i have no credit card), and i went through my stack of bills, one by one. paid rent, utilities, the IRS (i have a tax debt), and my dental plan. my car insurance is on an auto-pay, and that went through last night. i paid my "pay by mail" toll road usage. and i tallied it up. aghast. last night at midnight, i got a very nice salary payment, and by 9am this morning, i had $92.25 to get me through the next 2 weeks.

see, here's the real problem: my landlady lives in belize, and she has an accountant who handles all of her money for her. this accountant gets our rent checks usually about a week after we send it, and then she rarely deposits them in the bank until at least another 2 weeks have passed. so i pay my rent at the beginning of the month, but the money is still in my account at the end of the month. my november rent hasn't been deposited yet! so that has gotten me into the habit of "floating" my rent, counting on it not going through any time soon, so i can nibble here and there at whatever is in the account. and it usually works. but it's not a healthy habit, and i'm ALWAYS stressed out over "what if it went through today???" i dread coming home and seeing an envelope on my mailbox, delivering the dreaded "letter from san antonio" which tells me that my bank has had to cover an overdraft. i had a brief spell in early september in which i went 3 weeks overdrawn. that was horrible, and terribly expensive. so i'm still working to catch up from that, and the only way to do it, right now, is to suck it up and only have $92.25 in the bank, as far as i am concerned. the bank might think i have more, but i know better.

there is some good news in all of this. my next paycheck will not be as heavily abused by bills. my family is not exchanging christmas gifts this year. i'm going home for christmas, and can enjoy my family's groceries for a week. it is feasible that i can actually "catch up" before i get paid again on january 4.

but in the meantime... that's a lotta bananas, folks. a lot. that's what an 811rv does when the money gets tight. you eat bananas - cheap food at 45 cents a pound. i don't know what this is going to do to my trip to dallas on the 12th - so many reasons to go - i need to go to ikea, there's a raw fu party, and of course i need to see my bf! time to make some plans. time to catch up.

december 2: energy

huzzah! i finally have my energy back!!! ok, not 100% quite yet, i've still got mucus and sinus stuff lingering, but i have my 811 buzz back! i have that feeling of "can't stop smiling, can't stop being happy" that i haven't had for weeks and weeks. amazing that i would give up this feeling for something as insignificant as food. because this is the greatest feeling in the world.

of course, as i write this about my energy, it DROPS and now it's time for bed. but not in a bad way. it's after 11, it's after my bedtime, and sleep sounds really delicious right now.

december 1: urges

today is my second "sick day." i was in bed all day yesterday, and today i've already taught one class before coming home to rest. i'm re-reading "the way of the peaceful warrior," excellent book. a book that really makes me wish i had a Teacher. i know i get to be my own, along with all the other teachers that appear in my life every day.

anyway, as pertains to where i've been lately, this excellent quote:

"OLD URGES CONTINUE TO ARISE, BUT URGES DO NOT MATTER; ONLY ACTIONS DO. A WARRIOR IS AS A WARRIOR DOES."