Starting Again on the 80-10-10

Again and again and again - how many times do I get to start this up? Does it matter? If it's not the falling-downs that matter, but the getting-ups, then I guess I'm doing OK.

So I am starting again. I think this is the 5th time I'm starting again since my initial first amazing jaunt on the 80-10-10 train. What I have learned:

it does not require perfect timing to change your diet.
it does not require perfect finances to change your diet.

it DOES require enough time and enough finances to be able to look at yourself and make careful decisions. And for me, it requires enough Self-Love.

That sentence just came out of nowhere and now is DEMANDING to be written about. Eating 811 is the most self-loving thing I have ever done in the whole course of my life. It took me out of a deep despair and into the best period of time I've ever had - a time when I was at ease in my body and in my bones, at ease in my spirit, happy. And I did this by essentially demanding that the rest of my life just BACK OFF for a little while. I stopped working so hard. I spent a lot of time on Raw Fu. I spent a LOT of time outside, in the hot Texas sunshine. I met a wonderful man who also liked to not work so hard, and to spend a lot of time outside. For the 100 days that I spent being essentially 100% 811, my life was damn near perfect.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have maintained that rhythm. I would have changed my job then, had I known how. Instead, I changed the rhythm. I changed my tempo. I started working harder, started giving less time to myself. For some reason, I thought that my diet would be enough to make all that possible. I shut myself down. I stopped treating myself with love and laughter, and I put myself back to work.

It was all for such a great cause. It really was. I'm proud of the work I did. I hope it stands for a long time. And I am not proud of what I did to myself as a result. I stopped eating 811, I barely ate raw. Yeah, this is my "story," this is the set of excuses I have for doing what I did. Yeah, it all comes down to "story," but there is such a big difference between being in your story and relishing it and using your story as an excuse to continue, and using your story as a learning device. What I have learned through all of this is to love myself. And loving myself, to me, means leaving a huge amount of space around me to take care of myself.

I'm not made to "work." To get up and go to a job and push-push-push. I can do it, but it kills my spirit. I am made to Work. To follow my spirit where it leads and to pray that I will be taken care of as a result. And to take care of myself first.

Which leads me back to the 80-10-10 train. Suddenly, I am free again. I have my time back to me. It's taken 10 days or so to work through the emotional upheavals of all that's been going on inside me (my boyfriend today observed "you've got a really strong inner dialog!" he-he-he. ya think so?) to get to the point where I can sit and stop and just enjoy and not need to numb out with cooked food. It's not easy, but it's getting closer.