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."

november 30: emotional poise

so this one's for ashley! in my last post, i guess i came across as being unhappy with my life. i'm NOT. i've got an amazing life. what i was doing in my last post was looking, very clearly, at what it takes to throw me into an emotional tailspin significant enough to drive me to self-medication, and marvelling at just how little it actually requires.

what i was thinking about a lot last week, when i wrote that, was a sense of "what's wrong with me that a little emotional upheaval will send me to cooked food?" as in, why doesn't "everybody else" get thrown off as well. but hey - look at "everybody else!" in our culture - WOW! a little emotional turmoil, and everybody's hitting "happy hour!" woo-hoo! a chance to drink away our immediate experience of the day behind and the day ahead. and most people do this rather regularly. most people are also eating really poorly, taking pharmeceuticals and recreationals, and loading themselves up with artificial activities in a vain effort to take themselves out of themselves, to get to a place where they cannot feel a thing. in our culture, drug use is ubiquitous, and i don't mean just narcotics. all of these things, all of these behaviors, are drugs that numb us out to our emotional state.

so how did i get there? what happened? with the striking clarity of hindsight, here's what happened: i had a burrito. it didn't kill me. a few weeks later, i had an ethiopian meal. it didn't kill me either, although the salt and the oil and the grain made me feel really awful. those 3 main ingredients set up a deficiency, especially the salt. deficiency becomes craving, craving becomes addiction. a coupld weeks later, i had my dental work done. i was scared about the procedure, and especially about taking the valium that was required. my emotional poise was shattered, and i sought to soothe myself with cooked food. i made lots of excuses, but in the end, that was what it was. the cooked food didn't kill me, and it reinforced the deficiency that was set up previously.

in MY body, a physical deficiency translates very quickly to an emotional deficiency. whereas before i was very happy going to dinner anywhere and having a salad, suddenly, i felt sorry for myself. i didn't want a salad! i wanted to eat whatever i wanted like "everybody else!" this emotional deficiency is part of my makeup. it's not very far below the surface of my emotional life. when i keep my body healthy and fed with raw food, my emotional body is healthy and does not seek ANY food for its survival. when i feed my body cooked food, the emotional breakdown happens very quickly, with very predictable results. it's not "real" emotion. i may say this badly. real emotion - love and happiness and anger and all those good things - have really nothing to do with the emotional deficiency that leads to emotional eating, just like real nutritional needs have nothing to do with seeking out cooked and deficient and degraded foods. it's a coping behavior, not a survival behavior or even an instinctive behavior. just a coping mechanism.

because i had set up "permission" to have cooked food at thanksgiving, and that holiday was rapidly approaching, it seemed senseless to withdraw that permission before the holiday! this was the rationalization of my deficient emotional mind and my deficient physical body. "why stop now?" eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die! i think that only the recovering addict can truly understand that thought process that dances between the options of abstinence and indulgence. it's a war that wages - the repulsion about the desire, and the longing and regret of denying it. "i'll hate myself if i do this thing i hate, and yet i can't stand not doing it!" that's where i was. for weeks. full of longing to get back to my clean life, and also full of this terrible, horrible desire to feed my senses and "be normal."

what i know now, on the other side of thanksgiving, is just how much this particular holiday was weighing on me. i didn't realize it until it was done. i was putting HUGE emphasis on what would happen when i met my boyfriend's mom. i was feeling so very sorry for myself, regarding myself in the harsh and judgmental light i was certain that she would be using, and wanting to pass cleanly under her radar, unnoticed except to gain her unswerving approval. i wanted that so badly that i was willing to eat my way to her approval, even when she was nowhere around. i ate for her approval for 4 weeks or more. i ate to give MYSELF the approval i was certain she would not. and i suffered terribly for it.

i think only the addict really knows what this means. what it means to hide from view to indulge in behaviors that you personally dislike, in order to gain approval of people who can't see you, and if they could, wouldn't care. it's the most bizarre feeling in the world.

and what i did, over the course of the past 4 weeks, was to really "turn on" a lot of the dormant switches of my addictions. they had been blissfully quiet, and i turned them on. opened the floodgates. i think that i was actually on the brink of an amazing breakthrough right before this all happened - i've always been good at self-sabotage - and now i've got a lot of ground to regain. i'm not worried, i know i can. and i've learned A LOT in the process. mostly, i've learned that eating 80-10-10 does NOT make me immune to my addictions. if anything,it makes me more sensitive to them. and i've also learned that despite their curiosity and questioning, 99% of the people out there in the world really don't give a happy damn about what anybody else eats. really. so now i know that i can face any and all holidays with a clear head and a clear heart, and a plate full of the beautiful fresh raw food i like best. i can face all boyfriends' mothers! (she was lovely, by the way) and i can face my own lack of emotional poise with a little more backbone now. i've seen how well my old coping mechanisms work (not at all!), so now i can see how pointless it is to thwart myself. it doesn't work, and the only person who is affected is me.

i have already decided to have a very merry, very raw christmas. i've decided that other people's holidays are no reason to mess with my own body. i think a gorgeous salad and a big plate of some fantastic fruit would be the perfect way to join in on the feast. and what everyone else eats becomes no concern of mine. to go back to the steak dinner: i wanted them to take my food into consideration, so i considered their food to be my business! it's not! neither way! i feed myself, and i have no issue with how anyone else feeds themselves. this is HUGE. this is the only way my relationship is going to survive. i realize now that the only way for it to survive is for me to be raw. not because he wants it that way, but because it's the only way for me to be truly happy. and if i had to go through what i did over the past 4 weeks in order to gain this truth, then i am ECSTATIC to have done it. nothing could be better than this.

so that's enough for today. i hope ashley understands where i'm coming from now!

november 23: addictive elements

1. salt. evil fucking rocks that get buried in our food. hate them.

everyone bitches and moans about their "sweet tooth" as if the sweet tooth was bad or wrong or evil. and in my experience - this particular experience i'm enduring now of being off the wagon and feeling lost and lonely - it's not the sweet that is my undoing. sweet is EASY. sweet is happy and wonderful. my sweet tooth is my best friend. my sweet tooth says "EAT BANANAS!!!' and makes me so happy. it's that fucking SALT TOOTH. the craving for salty/savory. that is truly our cultural problem. that's my problem.

the salt tooth interferes with the sweet tooth and demands satiation. it makes sweet seem weak and faulty and uninteresting. it's got this insatiable demand for flavors that are dirty and too complex to be healing or beneficial. god, oh my god, how i detest salty food.

and yet how i am drawn to eat it right now.

i hate it. it's just

AWFUL.

and what it all comes down to:

2. emotional turmoil. that's the 2nd biggest addictive element.

i hit an emo speedbump, and because i didn't learn emotional poise at my mother's knee, but rather i learned how to be rather frantic and histrionic and cranky and i learned also how to shut those feelings down down down with food - and alcohol and drugs. and it doesn't take a big bump at all to trigger a food response. or any addictive response. just ask the smoker how much it takes to make them hurry out for a smoke break. not much. so - the combination of my job being very overwhelming-but-exciting plus very chaotic, plus my guy not coming to see me this weekend, and then him having enough plans to keep him from calling me for our usual bedtime chat 2 nights in a row, plus bunny missing out on my "breakfast with bunny" interview this morning, plus my own anger and frustration at myself for my "failures..." all of these things together - not to mention the economy, bills, my house a mess, being lonely, having loads of work to do, all that good stuff - conspire to knock me off my wagon. from there, all it takes is the most minor of triggers - let's say the bananas aren't ripe and someone offers to take me to lunch, and BOOM. that's all it takes.

and that's where i am.

i'm just looking at it right now. just looking. and looking with SUCH GREAT LONGING at the place where i used to be. oh how i miss it. i want NOTHING more than to get back to it. NOW.

and i will. my heart is so there. big fucking sigh.

november 22: thanks

so, pixylisa wants to know if i want to go down that thanksgiving rabbit hole. the answer:

HELL NO!!! i really really don't want to. so why even contemplate it? why even attempt it?

1) the menu has already been set. this was done while i was thinking that i could handle it, while i was thinking i could live with 3 days a year eating cooked: thanksgiving, christmas and my birthday. i still think that maybe i can handle that. what happened in the meantime was a huge stretch of that position.

2) i'll be dining with folks who have no idea about a raw food diet.

3) if the choice is some cooked food versus a bunch of high-fat gourmet raw, which i would have to prepare, i would rather have the cooked food.

4) the big whammy: on friday, i will be having thanksgiving dinner with doug's family, meeting them for the very first time. i'm sure they are lovely people, as he is a lovely person. however... his mother is a conservative, southern baptist, texas woman. not only that, she is also a SAD dietician. she writes SAD textbooks, for the love of all!!! she is also the head dietician for texas WIC. this is sure to be a very highly SAD thanksgiving. what's more, i'm the first woman doug is introducing to his mother since his divorce 2 1/2 years ago. she knows i'm vegan, she doesn't know about the RAW bit. so... for the sake of politics and sweetness and light, i'm going to eat cooked food. i'll be bringing my own - recognizable stuff, beans and cornbread and baked sweet potatoes - but i'm not going to use this particular forum to explain my raw food lifestyle. i'll be glad if i can avoid too much discussion about my vegan lifestyle. or about my politics. or about my lack of religion. or about yoga. or about the fact that yes, i'm having sex with her son out of wedlock. really, i think the only thing i'm missing for her to disapprove of is that doug and i are boringly mono-racial. (at the big steak dinner party last weekend, we were actually the ONLY mono-racial couple there. i made up for it by being the vegan bitch.)

ugh, life is complicated from this side of the table. back in the day, before i had any mindfulness about what i put in my mouth, i too had the impression that those who did were complicated and high-maintenance and rather unpleasant. now i know better. now i know the incredible mental and emotional gymnastics required to live in integrity that goes against the grain. it's not easy to make the choice between being pleasantly social and feeding yourself properly. it's downright damn difficult. my biggest worry about this week is that when i'm at odds with myself, as i will be, i can be a little unpleasant. i hope that doesn't happen.

november 21: addendum

i want to thank the well-meaning commenters who keep admonishing me to "take it easy" and "not be so hard on myself" and all that. i really appreciate the sentiment, and i also want to reassure you. i've been on this raw food path for almost 6 years. i've been up and down, on and off, and i've tried and struggled with just about every variation on a raw food diet there is. i was a cousens/wolfe disciple. when i discovered 811, i knew to my bones that this was the path for me, forever! and i still know that. falling off the 811 wagon is NOT my first fall off, but it was the most calculated, and by far the most regretted. there is a big difference, to me, between being "hard on myself," which involves a great deal of self-punishment and unrealistic expectation of fixing things right away, and being fully awake and aware and clear on just how painful the fall off the wagon IS. this sucks. it really does. it's painful. and it was hubris that made me think that even though every time i'd tried cooked food in my raw food lifestyle over the past 6 years, it has always led to misery and regret, i thought this time i could handle it. the blindness of sobriety. and the insanity of expecting different results from identical actions. the truth is that cooked food is poison, and eating it puts me in a position of needing to recover from food poisoning. and i'm going to have some more of that poison in a few days, at thanksgiving, and have to recover again.

when the drinker quits drinking, they wake up to their hangover and swear that they are never going to do that again. well, i'm a raw foodist with a cooked food hangover. i know, for a fact, that i will have this hangover again in my lifetime. i'm not going to blind myself. but it's also so important to remember and work from this place - i'm not in denial, i'm not in punishment, i'm in deep, tough, hard-core self-love. somehow, i have to learn. so i am learning now. that's what this is about. and that's what the blog is about. it's not so much about "inspiring" people, although i hope to do so again sometime. it's about getting honest, getting real, and getting sober. and you can't take that too easy.

november 21: recovery

dr doug says "the solution to pollution is dilution." and i'm feeling pretty polluted. i can't even begin to express how awful this is. i was feeling so good. hubris. i really did think i was invincible with this whole cooked food thing. i really thought it would never even appeal to me again. instead, i've been entertaining cravings and indulging in them. god, it's been awful.

so, today i am taking it easy. i'm at home. i'm in bed. i feel vaguely sick or hungover or similar. i'm drinking a banana-tangerine juice smoothie. i'm going to have lots of water. i'm re-reading the 80-10-10 book. taking a day of rest and recovery. i hope i will feel better soon, and will step out of the grasp of the addiction.

and, honestly, i think the primary addictive ingredient is salt. salt in gourmet raw, salt in cooked food. it's in everything. when you eat 811, it's in nothing. and man, just a taste is all it takes. every cell in my body is bloated and painful.

boyfriend was supposed to come visit me this weekend, but got a last minute photo shoot. it's just as well. i need a few days to rest and recover and take care of myself before the thanksgiving chaos ensues.

november 20: integrity

i'm out of it. i'm so far out of my integrity... and i feel horribly sick as a result. i know the truth. i can see it. and i can feel the suffering that is caused by removing oneself from the proximity of truth.

this all started with one burrito. on september 25th. that's where it came from. i survived that burrito, which then led to more and more experimentation. in alcohol recovery, you are taught that it's the first drink that gets you drunk. in cooked food recovery, its the first meal. the first bite. the first wink and nod.

i can't soften my control. when i do, this is what happens. i must, somehow, climb back up onto my path. i feel as out of control, miserable, ashamed, and just really sick, as i have ever felt. i must get back on, and i must know and remember that this cooked food addiction is not one i can control, it is not one i can wink and nod at, it is not something i can dabble in. it is heroin, it is junk, and there is nothing i can do to control it except to stay away from it. i know this. i have known it. i thought that maybe i had mastered it, that i had somehow developed physiological mastery. i have nothing of the sort. if anything, i have less mastery now, having fewer defenses. these words, this agony, has to be my motivator for whenever, in future, i am tempted to stray. to remember how it got away from me in october and november of 2008, how it snowballed and escalated in the middle of the greatest triumph i'd ever had, how my hubris laid me low.

my name is rebecca and i am a cooked food addict. cooked food has a power over me which requires a much greater power than i am to overcome. i surrender myself. there is no choice but to start over again. again. i will succeed.

november 18: my point, and i do have one...

is that it's not as easy as it used to be. god, how easy it was to be 811 with the mangos and the watermelons!!! oh!

or is that just an excuse??? so many excuses, so many stories, all of them lies. right now, i'm enjoying the lie about the mangos and the watermelons. i'm enjoying the lie about wanting the social aspect. i'm enjoying the lie about the holidays.

the TRUTH is that my body wants nothing more to do with cooked food. EVER. i'm just going stream of consciousness here, because that's what a blog is for. i've been writing about control and this dinner party and all this bullshit, and what it comes down to is that my body fucking hates eating cooked food. it's my fucking EGO that wants to sit at a dinner party and laugh and enjoy myself without feeling like a freak. i'm not a freak. but because i judge myself harshly, i assume others will as well, and so i then turn and judge them. it's pretty fucking simple, honestly. my body absolutely adores eating 811, and i've been playing pretend that somehow i need to eat cooked food - because the bananas aren't ripe, or because i want to have dinner with my boyfriend...

my boyfriend doesn't give one happy goddamn about what i eat. he could NOT CARE LESS. he's paying attention - he admitted to that last night - he's paying attention to what i'm doing, and who knows, in 10 years, or more, or less, he might actually start to explore what i'm doing on his own, but honestly, he has NO JUDGMENT, NO CRITICISM, and ABSOLUTELY NO CONCERN about what i eat. all he cares about is that my ass looks good in a pair of jeans. or, more to the point, that my ass looks good OUT of a pair of jeans. and if eating an all-fruit diet is what's going to keep it that way, then more power to me. so i'm LYING TO MYSELF if i say i'm doing it to enjoy his company. that's ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.

so this whole cooked food crap is coming from a place of lies. and it came from offering myself permission. first i started with permission to eat cooked food at the holidays - thanksgiving, christmas and my birthday. then i started obsessing about what i was going to have on my birthday, what i was going to have for christmas and thanksgiving. then i decided to have a cooked meal to celebrate 90 days raw. then i decided to have a cooked meal every month. then i decided to have a cooked meal to celebrate a weekend getaway. then i decided to have a cooked meal each week. then it degraded, completely, to this shitty, horrible, lost weekend of ridiculousness. little by little, it has gotten worse and worse, and it all came from smiling at it. i'm a fucking junkie. junkies crave junk, and will do anything to get it. i was on the verge of a fucking BREAKTHROUGH!!! and i scrapped it for garbage.

hell, i'm even thinking about scuttling my relationship - "it's my diet or me!" how's that for absolutely fucked up??? ridiculous. too totally ridiculous. the Saboteur.

so - what's to do now? not a fucking clue. i don't want to make anymore declarations of what i'm going to do. i'm waging war within myself, and all i want to find is grace. there is nothing in the world less attractive than a person out of integrity. and that's where i am right now. i look so ugly to myself. it's appalling. i'm having a hard time with that girl in the mirror. so, i guess the only thing to do is to stay in integrity.

i'll keep me posted.

november 17: disappointment

i was at a steak dinner party last night. i got cranky. i got pissy. i was feeling super-sorry for myself. i didn't want to sit around and watch people eat steak and drink wine. and when i met 2 of doug's friends, they asked if i was having steak, and i said, rather loudly, "hell no! that's disgusting!" to which they laughed and said, "and that's why we love it!"

so talking to doug just now, i said, "i hope i wasn't too rude or bitchy," and he brought up that incident. so now i feel rather ashamed and disappointed in myself for not being more open, and gracious.

i so don't know what to do now. it is, truly, disgusting for me to be at a party of people eating meat, and people eating meat don't understand that. doug thinks i'm judging them. i'm not. but it is disgusting. and obviously it's rude of me to express myself in this manner. and this coming week i'm going to have 2 meals, back to back, in which i'm going to be, again, the only vegan in the room.

so how do i handle this? this is going to be a major issue in my relationship if i don't get a handle on it, and that right soon. we joke about bacon all the time, but i know that doug doesn't realize how big an issue it is for me. i don't want him to feel judged. and, at the same time, i want to feel respected. i want... i don't know. i'm having a really hard time putting this all into words. but i've got to come to peace with it.

eating cooked makes it harder. it deadens my sensitivity. it makes me feel more entitled and it makes me want more flavors and to be more normal. i know that if i had been eating 100% clean all weekend, it wouldn't've bothered me that there was a dinner party. i would have eaten bananas.

so how do i love myself enough to eat clean, and love everyone else enough to not care, to really, truly, not care what they are eating?

this is so super-tough...

november 11: poo-poo

i got my hair cut today. it looks great. and, after almost 3 months of no-poo, she shampoo'ed the living HELL out of my hair! at first, she was massaging my scalp with 2 different kinds of aveda oils, which felt good and smelled good and i was happy about that. and then, we hit the sink, and she had to get those heavy oils out and so she shampooed my hair like 3 times, and then conditioned it and then put something else in it, and then after she cut it, put some mousse in it and hit the blow dryer. it looks great, and i love lisa - she understands how to cut this big crazy mess o' hair - but man. my hair now feels like plastic. it feels totally stripped, nekkid, slippery, weird. and it doesn't smell right either. last night i washed my hair with a wonderful concoction of lemon juice, honey, jasmine oil and dr. bronner's. that was lovely. now it smells like... product. it's all aveda product, but it's product just the same. i hope this doesn't start me over from square one with my no-poo regime.

on the food thing today - i went to central market and actually found food i wanted to eat! i found a big beautiful seeded watermelon from mexico, and dates, persimmons, and bananas. i'm happy. i had watermelon for dinner and it was wonderful, so i'm going back tomorrow for more.

and interestingly enough - as soon as i ate that watermelon, it was like putting a massive purgative down my system. i haven't been pooing as much as i've wanted to lately, and man! one meal of watermelon, and all hell breaks loose! kapow! i think this is a good thing.

eleven-eleven

eleven is one of my numbers. i love 11/11. nothing to do with veterans day.

so, blog silence for a few days. i fell off the wagon, hard, this weekend, but i'm back on it again. it was a last gasp after the whole dental thing. one week of transgressions. not bad. i've been through worse. and i was mostly-good while having a few cooked things here and there. i know that high-raw is not the lifestyle for me, i can only do that upon occasion and it needs to be for a pretty damn good reason. i feel better without it. i feel better without the temptations. i've been trying to live 100% raw for a really long time, and yes, it's a struggle to be 100% 100% of the time, but i am getting better at it. 811 helps enormously. more than anything else.

why? so many reasons. the big one, i think, is that on 811 you're getting enough calories from a "real food source." no empty calories, plenty of calories, and there's that total satisfaction it provides. and then there's the fact that it just simplifies everything down. is it a fresh, ripe, whole, raw fruit or vegetable? no? then it's not on my plan. pretty simple. takes all the guesswork out. and when you take out the guesswork, you also take out the trigger foods, and when you take out the trigger foods, you eliminate and alleviate almost all of the temptations. and that's a nice place to be. i'm looking forward to getting fully back there.

the plan right now is to banana-feast for a few days until the Peas on Earth challenge starts on saturday. to kind of wipe the slate clean and start over again. i need to accept that it's going to be bananas for awhile. i miss my mangos and watermelon, and i just need to get over that. it's neither here nor there. it's banana season now, and that's a good thing.

november 6: beans

i want beans. i honed down my "vegetarian burrito" craving - after the other night, i don't want the white flour tortilla, or the pico de gallo, or even the guacamole anymore. i suppose this is progress. but the black beans and rice - that i want! or, even more so, i want the vegan refried beans and corn tortillas at mr natural up the street. i'm having black bean soup and cornbread for thanksgiving dinner, and hummus and pita bread for christmas dinner, but right now i'm wanting this beans-and-grains combo-abombo daily. i want it now. it's 7.30 in the morning, and it sounds good to me.

there's something in me that doesn't want to be raw anymore. it wants to be an "anything as long as its vegan" cooked food vegan. what is this little part, and why is it here now? i've played with it before - i've given it what it wants. it's never pretty. i know that experimenting with it now would be like getting off the train and the wrong station - it would move me no closer to my goals, and it would keep me stuck while waiting for the next train to arrive.

what's more, i've given myself a very clear challenge to stay 100% raw, 100% 811, 100% no overts until thanksgiving day. obviously, eating beans and tortillas would kinda go against that! why is this plaguing me now? i've been so good for so long! why now? it's very frustrating, and i'm not really enjoying the experience of it.

some would say, "just eat it. your body wants it." but i can feel that my body doesn't want it. my body wants... to go live under a mango tree!

i listened to a dr doug interview last night, in hopes that it would inspire this craving out of me. it was inspirational, for sure, but ugh! still here. one thing that i liked that he said was "you haven't earned the right, with your cooked food body, to just 'go natural' overnight!!!" he spoke in favor of dental care, and bathing, which was good, specifically in the dental care aspect. and what i took from that as well is that we have to keep processing our raw food. we have to keep blending it, until our bodies have earned the right to chew and digest on our own. that's what i have to keep doing, and keep moving forward, stay on this train. not get derailed.

november 4: celebrations

the poll results are coming in. fireworks are being set off. i love living in a liberal town. of course, i'm home, tucked in to bed, not partying on one of the most historically significant nights in our country's history. is it really true? have we actually elected a black man to be president? pretty cool, my friends. pretty cool.

yes, i did say the other night that politics make me want to puke. that's my story and i'm still sticking to it. but even so, the thought that enough people can come together and either get color-blind, or rally around color-consciousness, in order to make this happen, is really pretty damn cool. i'm pleased. i'm really pleased. i'm sure the aftermath is going to be hellacious, but at least so far, we're not looking at anything like the 2000 results, or the 2004 results - the 2 "stolen" elections. now we just have to keep the man alive and see how well he can do the job.

back to what's really important: i vote with my dollars, i vote with my lifestyle, and this blog is supposed to be about my lifestyle, so here we go. tonight i finished up the last of the almonds i bought the other night. here's what i'm finding: when i get home, first thing, i have this massive salty-savory craving. if i eat to satisfy that craving, #1, it doesn't get satisfied, and #2, as soon as i've eaten enough of that to make me feel a little ill, all i want is some fruit. which is, of course, lousy food combining to eat fruit after fat. so i have to simply conquer the craving and not give in to it when i get home at night. i think it's habit more than anything. back in the summer, all i wanted for dinner was watermelon, and now that it's dark, i think i want "something else..." i had all that crap the other night, and it all sucked. i know i don't really want any of the things i think i want. it's just a bad habit i've let myself get into.

my first brushing

so i just brushed my "new" teeth for the first time! what a thrilling experience. my teeth have been cold-sensitive for so long... to rinse my mouth after brushing, i always have to hold the water in my mouth for a few seconds to warm it up. i started to do that tonight, and then thought - "hey, let's give this a swirl and see what happens!" wouldn't ya know! no cold sensitivity!!! HURRAH!!!

more small miracles to come, i'm sure. thank god the mercury is gone.

november 3: post-filling update

well, it wasn't as horrible as i had feared. it's almost 7pm, and i've been awake now for about 2 hours. slept for about 5. i'm still groggy, and not the most comfortable i've ever been - my cycle started yesterday, so i've got cramps to go along with the mild digestive upset, headache and muscle pain in my shoulders and jaw, and sensitive teeth. my teeth are sensitive in a weird way. not so much to cold anymore, as just feeling kind of bruised. they feel a little numb, due to this new resin compound that i'm not used to. i have wonderful dentists who treated me like a queen, but even still, it's a physically traumatic procedure. i'm wiped out.

november 2: on second thought...

i spent a lot of money on food tonight. a lot. and it was all disgusting to me.

i bought the pad thai at whole foods, which has been tasty the other 2 times i've had it. tonight, it was broccoli and cabbage with very wet zucchini noodles and no flavor. i also got the crackling cauliflower, which tasted wonderful when i sampled it. once i got it home, however, it had this horrible bitterness that i couldn't get around.

and so i went and i bought the overwhelming temptation that i've had this whole time - for a black bean and guacamole burrito. i couldn't go to my usual place, so i went to a local favorite. and it was just beyond disgusting. i couldn't even eat half of it, though i tried. again, the horrible bitterness that i identified there as being raw jalepeno. in the other dishes, it was onion. they all had raw onion in them. disgusting.

so i've eaten all this food in order to try and weigh me down, make tomorrow a little less painful. and all i feel is disgusting. i had to drink some orange juice to get the taste of REAL FOOD back in my mouth.

so now i feel really disgusting. and i have to get up very early in the morning. tomorrow's going to be a fun, fun day!

november 2: temperance

as in - to temper something, to make it mellower.

i have to take valium tomorrow morning. i'm pretty nervous about this. i don't want to do it. so i decided to eat fat tonight. i went to whole foods and got their pad thai and some "crackling cauliflower," which is raw curry cauliflower, and a packet of dehydrated almonds with yeast and bragg's and crap. i did this absolutely on purpose. i did it to thicken my blood and make me less clean and sweet and vulnerable to the valium. i did it to temper the valium.

and i feel disgusting. i thought, too late, about eating some cooked food instead. i think that might have been better. you know, a vegetarian burrito, beans and rice and guacamole. i think that would have been far easier on my system, while still clogging it up nicely. i may still do it. i just don't want to walk in there just all fruity and throw some narcotics down my throat and have a really horrible reaction! that would basically suck. i feel like if i'm going to do cooked meds, i should have cooked food to temper it out. maybe that doesn't make sense - extra work for my digestive system, extra work for my immune system. these drugs are designed to be used by sick people, not by well people. i'm very well, thank you very much. so that's where i am now.

november 1: tolerance

that's the word of the day. tolerance. yes, eating a raw food diet makes me a happier, healthier, calmer, more joyous person with an overall positive outlook on life. but it doesn't change my total interface with the world, and there is still so much out there that tickles my nerves and makes me feel upset, frustrated, angry, and intolerant.

i'm so sick of politics i could just puke. politics has got to be the most lifeless, soul-sucking force known to mankind. it has NO life-force. when people start to talk about it, i feel ill. everyone is convinced that if the other side wins, the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. i'm so frustrated by my choices, i'm almost tempted not to vote. it's like i'm being forced to choose between burger king and mcdonalds. i don't want to choose between burger king and mcdonalds. i think they're both poisonous. i want to go sit under a mango tree and have my lunch there. will either burger king or mcdonalds give me that choice? no. so why should i have to choose between them? my candidate was ousted from the "system" a long time ago, for being too smart, too outspoken, and too on-target. i don't really want to vote for any of these other guys. before anyone gets frantic on me, i'm sure i will vote. big sigh. but honestly, i don't think it matters. the evil electoral college - in which i have no say - is making the decision anyway. i vote with my dollars. i don't eat at fast food joints.

i had a long day at work today. i adore my work, i have the best job in the world, and it's also hard work, physically. it can wear you down and burn you out, so its important to revitalize. so after my long day - teaching 2 classes and a private lesson - i went for a walk in the park around the lake. gorgeous 80 degree day, perfect calm breeze, lots of people out and about. as i'm turning around to head home, i notice these boys down on the lake in kayaks. they're goofing around, being 20-year-olds (no offense to my lovely 20-something friends. you know how your peers can be.), and i hear one of them say, "hey - go get the swan!" something made me turn around to see these 4 boys in kayaks surround this gorgeous, majestic swan, basically trapping him under a tree near the bank, and one of them raise his oar and bat it at the swan's head! he looked like he was either going to splash it, or make it flinch, or maybe even hit it. the poor bird was cornered, it's neck was arched, and it was looking around frantically. so me, i stop in my tracks and holler "HEY!!!!!! DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE!!! LEAVE THAT BIRD ALONE! you little SHIT!" the kid looked up at me, a bit surprised, but he did stop. i turned around and stomped off, my bliss totally interrupted.

last night i had a dream that my guy left me. that he left the country due to the election results. that he had to, had to flee the country, and did so without any forwarding information, without saying goodbye, and he was able to take his phone number out of my phone, so his name wasn't even in there anymore. completely eradicated out of my life. i was in a panic, sobbing, trying to make it make sense. that was my dream last night. it's been 2 weeks since we've seen each other, and it will be another 2 weeks until we see each other again. we've only been dating since august 15. that's a long time to be apart. luckily, we have plans already for thanksgiving and christmas, and he's moving from dallas to austin in january - i don't think either of us has any intention of letting this relationship end; we're both old enough to know a good thing when we find it. but i've been so grumpy lately, just having so much intense crap going on - he called me about 5 minutes after the incident with the swan - and he's been working crazy overtime putting his house on the market. we've had an intense few weeks, and we didn't talk yesterday. hence my stressed out dream. i've gone 8 years without a boyfriend. one month away from him is just too close to my old life for comfort. i like having him in my life.

last week i had to take 2 teachers off the schedule. that was a painful and stressful decision, one that took many, many months of conversation between myself and wayne. these 2 teachers were both our most troublesome teachers, and the time had come to make the decision - i've got new teachers coming in from training hungry to teach, i've got fantastic experienced teachers moving to town, and i've got incredible teachers already on staff - how do i justify keeping on 2 teachers who don't show me commitment, dedication and respect? they're both good teachers, but not good enough to warrant the kind of behavior and disrespect i've been getting from them. and even though i told them both that they are off the schedule for now, that they can both get back on it later when they have more time and energy to commit to our studio, and i even offered one of them a special project that i'm working on and asked her to help me with it, all i'm getting from that one is sneering and attitude, and the other one blasted wayne out for not "firing" her himself, and put all of her problems back onto him, as though it were his fault for all of her financial troubles, his fault for all of her decisions. ugh. the decision to let them go wasn't easy, but man, the way they're both reacting makes me know it was the right choice to make! my offer to bring them back on when/if they're ready is officially rescinded. i have no need for that kind of bitterness and disrespect in my life.

and then larry posted a very interesting thread on raw fu, full of lots of thought provoking stuff. larry has been eating a fully cooked version of 80-10-10, low-fat vegan, and reporting back what he's been doing with it. fair enough. the rest of us are trying to eat raw, but whatever. i love larry. and it is very interesting to get his perspective. so one of the questions he posted is "why would eating miso make your stomach hurt? the japanese eat it to soothe your stomach? there's something wrong when you can't eat miso soup without it causing a reaction." fair enough. and only fair to point out that i also ate that miso soup with red pepper paste and peanut sauce, so it wasn't just the miso soup that made my stomach hurt, but i had had the other sauces without the miso and didn't have the same reaction. so my response to that was that - you know, we can be sensitized to anything with enough exposure. i used to be able to eat meat and cheese and bread and wine and all kinds of abominable combinations, all at the same meal, and thought my body could handle it all really well. over the years of cleaning my system out, man, it can't handle anything anymore. is it the fault of my system, or the fault of the toxins? it's like, now that my house is cleaner, i notice when something is out of place. is that a problem? or am i just tempted to keep it clean instead?

so the connecting thread through all of these thoughts is TOLERANCE. what is my tolerance level? am i just very very sensitive now and so therefore just cannot tolerate ANY bullshit anymore? have i become an incredibly sensitive bullshit-and-toxin sensor? our bodies, our minds, our psyches, can become callous and desensitized and we can create tolerances that will protect us against anything, until we allow too much, and then the tolerances overflow and we get sick - mentally, emotionally, physically sick. i feel like i have no ability to tolerate the bullshit, the cruelty, the animosity, the toxicity, and the isolation, anymore. my whole being cries out for balance - between work and play, light and dark, activity and rest, alone and together. i want to find real tolerance - not callous indifference masquerading as tolerance. how could i walk by those boys tormenting that bird? yet so many others did. the "tolerant" way is to say, "let boys be boys," or "it's not my place..." but i felt a total sense of something else. i could not tolerate those boys doing that, exhibiting cruelty against another living being, be it man, woman, child, dog, cat or bird (or any one of our planet's creatures), not even for one second. my body cannot tolerate even the slightest insult to its integrity without responding by making me feel ill.

tolerance, like compassion, is an active force. it is not passive, sitting around, allowing for evils to be perpetrated. nor does it allow itself to be used against the Self. i can't sit passively by, nor can i allow myself to be coerced into anything i don't beleive in. i will not tolerate manipulation. i will not develop tolerances that allow me not to feel. i don't ever want to get used to bad things again.

a long blog. an intense week. at least my house is kinda clean.

october 31: happy halloween!

this is gonna be a long one. i've got a lot to say today!!!

first of all - halloween is so weird to me. dress your kids up in costumes and have them go round the neighborhood begging for poison? from the outsiders perspective, it sure is weird. no kids, no candy.

so today marked a very important milestone in my RawFu Challenge!!! today was the first day in my entire challenge, over 100 days so far, that i actually ate my entire 2 full bunches of greens!!!! i'm so proud of me! victoria boutenko would be so proud of me!!! i made a deeee-lish smoothie this morning with banana, tangerine juice, and spinach. a WHOLE bunch of spinach! the whole thing! and i drank it all! it was fabulous. and then on my way home, i was listening to my hunger, and my body was very clearly demanding a whole head of romaine lettuce. so that's what i had for dinner. i dressed it with lemon juice and bragg's (ok, the bragg's is so very not on the list, and it was actually very disappointing. i'm ready to let it go for good. the lettuce was better without it.) and i ate the whole thing in one sitting, ravenous, as though i hadn't eaten all day. like it was the best thing ever. it was really good!!

i ate really good today, overall. my big smoothie - 7 cups of it! - 1 coconut water, another 1/2 gallon of tangerine juice, several dates, a few pieces of fruit from a bouquet, and then my great big head of lettuce just now. i think that's a smashing day on 811!

this morning when i woke up, i so very much wanted to write a love letter out there to all the people who are finding mainstream raw food eating to be letting them down after they've gone through their big transition from a fully SAD diet. that's what would always happen with me. mainstream raw never worked well enough in the long run. i needed 811. and it's amazing what just a couple of days of eating 100% 811 have done for me! my energy is better, i look better, my outlook is better, i feel better - all in just 2 days. my weight is back down, and all i want is fruit. granted, i'm tired now. it's been a really long and very intense week.

so my new flip camera and my old mac laptop have decided they hate each other, so i'm not sure what i'm going to do about vlogging now. i love doing it, despite my fascination with how asymmetrical my face is. why has no one ever told me? it's so freakish! so no vlog for now. just me and my thoughts like this.

9.30 at night, on a friday, and i am just desperate to go to sleep! i may take 15 minutes of shut-eye just to ease my nerves, and then get up and be more productive.

october 30: yesterday's video

blogger doesn't accept content from youtube! raw fu, a ning network, uploads them a billion times faster if they are from youtube! so what has to be done? double work, in order to put them here on the blog. but i'm doing it, because part of the goal is to be thorough. (that's "THUH-RAH," as we say in texas.)

october 29: end of day catch up

today was almost perfect, in terms of eating. right up until the end, when i was annoyed, and cranky, and my mangos weren't ripe, nor my bananas, nor anything else, and i had just the wee tiniest bit of tahini dressing left in the fridge. so i ate it. and now tomorrow it will be gone, if i come home annoyed after my day tomorrow.

and if i'm annoyed, i'll just have to deal with it, right? nothing more i can do.

and i was able to get some pretty important things checked off on my list of things to do today. the list is getting shorter. more manageable, to a degree. it needs to be getting longer, because i need to be writing up my project list. but first, i'm trying to just manage the one big project i have to hand.

and right now, i am TIRED. i'm uploading a video - PROGRESS! and will have that to show later, so now i need to multi-task and take care of eradicating the evidence of my day from my home. the temptation to just fall asleep is huge, but i'm not gonna do it. i'm going to stay awake until i've acheived my daily goals.

will let you know tomorrow!

naming the recommitment

so this month of october has been an experiment in being high raw,"high 811." and, well, it's pretty much sucked ass. i don't like it, as much as i "enjoy" it. so, starting tomorrow, 10/29/08, i'm committing to 30 days no overts, 100% raw, 100% 811. it starts tomorrow. no matter what. i've got my blog, my vlog and my support group to keep it real, and i'm going to make it happen. the next 30 days are going to be HELLACIOUS anyway, so why not give myself all the fuel and power and energy and top of the world dynamism i can get? i'm taking it all the way. no more fucking around, pardon my french.

ooh la la!

october 28: small victories lead to great success

i'm so happy to report that not only are the dishes done now, but i have kept the dishes done for 24 hours!!! this is pretty significant in my world. and not only that, but i just finished putting the laundry away. to me, this is really big, really important. when i started putting it up, i let myself think that i needed new clothes, because i didn't seem to have enough of this or that. by the time it was all packed into my full closet, i could see that i have plenty. perhaps it's not as fresh and fashionable as i would ideally like, but i don't need anything. i'm fully stocked. ok, i could use a few pairs of warm socks. other than that, i think i'm good. i can't justify spending any money on clothes at the moment. what i have is plenty good enough. and it's nice to have it all put away.

so little by little, i'm tackling the big projects at home. i'm still very behind at work. this has got to change. maybe now that the home front is improving, i won't feel that pull between going to work or staying at home. i just have to keep on plugging away at it.

i owe bunny berry credit for my title this morning. she said that the other day when celebrating dropping 2 pant sizes (yay bunny!), and i'm saying it now that my laundry is put away and my dishes are done. time now to take a shower and get dressed, put on some makeup, gather up some food, and head off to work. alas, at work i have to teach and practice all together in a blur, so i won't be productive there today at all, but perhaps tomorrow. definitely tomorrow.

i got the dishes done!!!

this might not seem like a big deal to anybody, but it's a HUGE one to me. the dishes have been the cloud of gloom hanging over me for weeks, like i can never get to them, never get caught up, and never get on to anything else. i've avoided them like the plague, just in overwhelm, and now the dishes are done, and i feel so much better about my life in general. it's amazing how little it truly takes.

october 27: monday morning

starting my day out with the conviction and commitment to go on as a i begin, to begin as i intend to go on. i've got too much to do, again, and yet i'm feeling strong and connected to my intentions and plan on feeling amazing at the end of the day when i've been outrageously productive. that's what this monday means to me!! it matters not that i "overslept" according to the clock, when i woke up when my body was ready. i'm on my way to a fantastic day. i'm psyching myself up here! it's gonna be a great one!!! woo-hoo!!!

no room for whiners.

october 26: woe is me. what am i doing?

if i don't eat enough during the day, if i don't have my fresh fruit, if i don't make time in my schedule, then i am SCREWED by dinner time. that's all there is to it. if i haven't had my optimal calories by dinner time, and i'm hungry when i get in the car, then i'm going to be pigging out on fats, and lately, on salty fats.

i hate it.

i want to get back on track. i want to get back on clean, fresh, easy mono-meals and lots of fruit during the day. i'm sick of not doing it straight up 80-10-10. honestly, i hate it.

i don't even want to fess up to my dinner. but here goes. i had a cabbage salad from whole foods. oil and cashews. with cucumbers, shredded, and half an avocado. and tahini dressing. in nori sheets.

but wait. that's not all.

i also got olives stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes. this is not good. these are trigger foods.

what has happened to my "eat 3 bananas and chase the cravings away" routine??? i NEED THAT!!!!!!! I MISS IT!!!!! ugh.

someone, please help me! help me obi-raw, you're my only hope! i've gotten the taste of salty-fatty back in my body and it's disgusting and addictive. i hate it.

october 26: weird, weird, weird dreams

i had a really productive day yesterday. actually started my list, which is essential to my success, and i skipped the ballet in order to do laundry - i had so much that i wasn't able to finish it and i'm starting my final load this morning.

fell asleep on wayne's couch, and had this bizarre dream that i was married to david wolfe. and that he was a porn star. and that he started having an affair with one of my friends. and killed another one of my friends. and that he killed his father. and was trying to take over the world with a combination of sex and superfoods. it was a really long dream, one of those you can't get out of even when you turn over or wake up and start over. it just kept going!

i had bizarre dreams yesterday too, though not as bizarre. both nights before i had bragg's and tahini dressing on a cabbage salad in nori handrolls. was it the bragg's? the tahini? the nori? the cabbage? the combination? i'm going to do an all-fresh, all-raw, no overts day today and see how i dream tonight. hurrah!

October 25: Finding my voice again

apologies to everyone who has read my blog up to september 10 and then i fell off the blogoshpere! i also haven't been journalling, which is lifeblood to me. i haven't done a vlog, because i haven't gotten around to having decent hair and makeup lately. in other words - busy, busy busy, and then i'm just tired and want to vanish in a book and fall asleep.

so here i am, 9am saturday morning, i just woke up, which is unusual for me to sleep this late, but it's been a hectic week. and now i have to make the decision of what to do next. my day off, and all i can feel is the pressure of all the different things that need me. my house needs me - it's a wreck and needs a deep clean. my food needs me - i've got 2 perfect mangos waiting to be slurped. the sunshine of the morning needs me - i haven't taken a walk in a really long time. my job needs me - i've got a massive project that i haven't been able to get around to all week, despite logging wicked hours. my yoga needs me - when do i take class today? my car needs me - it needs to be cleaned, AND i need to run errands. what's more, i have a reflexology appointment at 12.30, which is great, but once i'm out of the house, my productivity is kinda ruined. tonight there's a party at my front-door neighbors', but i have to work in the morning so i;m house sitting for wayne who has run away for the weekend, and i also have tickets to the ballet, given to me by teresa and very upper-echelon, parking, good seats, etc. all very cool. and yet words cannot describe the piles of laundry or the mounds of dishes, or the vastness of the amount of design work i have to do, or the desperation i feel about wallowing in the gorgeousness of the october day and having a lazy saturday all to myself.

and so, in this mode, i turn back to my blog, essentially turning back to my favorite tool of writing in a journal to make sense of my options. when there's too much to do, meditate. do nothing. do nothing until the urge arises to do the right thing.

as the weather and my life have changed, 80-10-10 has become more challenging than it was in the summer. i've had a few weeks where i did not have the ripe fruit i needed to get me through the day without cravings, and i allowed myself, in frustration, to give in to some cravings - first for gourmet raw, and then for cooked sauces/salad dressings. i'm paying the price. in the summer, my un-air conditioned little house would ripen fruit in a heartbeat; it was easy to always have a ready supply of bananas, mangos, and the watermelon was divine. gradually, the watermelon became less and less divine - mealy and stringy - and losing that staple was a tough blow. now that its cool (i won't insult anybody's intelligence by calling austin october "cold," tho we austinites like to call it that!), watermelon has no appeal anymore, and i'm searching for the right replacement. all i want are mangos, and i had a mango orgy with those enormous keitt mangos from mexico - huge! the size of my head! can't wait till they're back in season, next september/october. but they took a long time to ripen, so while they were out, i kind of stopped eating fruit all day. i decided i was sick of bananas, which was a big mistake. i have to eat bananas even if it seems like the stupidest thing in the world to do. bananas are my easiest staple. i tried eating apples, but not enough sugar or calories, too much fiber, too much gas, too much chewing. i can really only eat apples as a snack, with dates, to make a caramel apple or applesauce. i have discovered i adore persimmons, but like mangos, they take forever to ripen, and they seem to be in cahoots with each other, only to ripen one at a time, so i get one persimmon a day.

long story long - i've been struggling to coordinate my soft, sweet, ripe, juicy fruits to be ripe in such a way that i have a constant supply of food. and as a result, i have allowed myself to give in to cravings. and as a result of that, i don't like the way i look, i don't like the way i feel, i've put on about 4 pounds of bloat from salt and oil, and i don't have that glow i had back in the summer when i satrted this lifestyle, and i miss that. i'm trying to climb back up on the wagon, and it's been very difficult. it's easy to stay on the wagon - eating this food is easy and it works, it makes you feel amazing, but now i'm learning the lesson of seasonal transition. it's hard right now. even bananas don't ripen very quickly when the house is cooler than 78. i think i learned my lesson and this week i shopped for next week. i have a table full of mangos and persimmons, and a great big papaya - a great go-to fruit, usually already ripe and ready, and one that i just have to get into my repetoire. papaya could save my life for awhile. in a couple of days, i'll go buy more mangos and persimmons and bananas, and just keep the rotation going.

the sauce, though. i'm back on the sauce. salad dressing and sauces. they seem so innocuous. and it's only a little bit, just a little flavoring, just a little fat. and then i'm pouring gallons of it on my plate. i've got to get off the sauce. i've got to resign myself to a squeeze of lemon when i have a salad. it's the only "cooked" or "raw gourmet" that's calling me with a voice loud enough that i can hear. and with a voice i can't resist. even though a lot of sauces have sugar, and sub-par oils, and way, way way too much salt - my goodness, those are my addictions, and they've presented themselves to me as a tasty topping for my otherwise 100% raw meal. and i fell for it. i've been babboozled. damn it. and the results speak for themselves: gained bloat, lower energy, and i've got zits on my face in a couple of spots. so there you go.

time to re-read the book and get re-inspired and get off the sauce and back on 100% 80-10-10. i'd like to do no overt fats; i tried at the beginning of october, but the lack of ripe fruit combined with having weekends with my guy (oh yeah, that's still going really strong! he's awesome. for a carnivore! lol.), in which we go out more, so i'm tempted by salad dressings more, because no place has fruit for dinner. it's also interesting to move from never being exposed to cooked crap to being exposed - it's still tempting. out of sight, out of mind, but when you see it, there's a combined nostalgia and longing and aversion which is the hallmark of the addictive response. you know it's crap, but you remember the good times you had together... cooked food is SO my ex-boyfriend! we went into a "normal" grocery store the other day, a tom thumb in dallas, to get his food, and just walking through the door made me want crazy crap, like fritos and poptarts and little debbie snack cakes. the produce is under this ghastly sickly dull light, and it all looks like it's will to live has been sucked out of it, and the rest of the store is bright florescent hideousness. it's AWFUL. no wonder people struggle to eat healthy, when you see what the options are of places to buy food. the truly healthy food just doesn't stand a chance.

so that's where i've been. i'll be here more. i'll keep posting. it helps me a lot to be accountable. it helps me to talk and write. keep checking in. i'm back.

september 10: can you beleive it???

have i really been off-blog for almost 2 weeks??? i have. it's been a wild ride round here lately. what's been going on?

wellllll........

remember a few weeks ago when i mentioned going to a party and meeting a nice, new man? it seems like that nice, new man might be something not unlike what some people have been known to call a "boyfriend," although i'm clearly very hesitant to give him that appellation quite yet. we haven't quite gone there yet. just spent 3 weekends together. isn't that enough? i really, really like him. he's just a normal, average, everyday EXTRAORDINARY man, which is exactly what i wanted. is he too normal for me? sometimes i worry. he's an omnivore, he goes to restaurants and out to bars. i don't mind. i want to go out too, i just want to eat what i eat and not drink. is that ok? he's crazy about me - does that mean he's crazy? it's such a new situation. it's pretty amazing. i'm enjoying it thoroughly.

in the meantime, i just found out tonight that i'm going to be an AUNTIE! my brother and his wife are having a BABY!!! isn't that incredible? the first grandbaby in my family. it's so cool.

ah, life!

i'm still eating 811, although i think my fat percentages are up. i'm not stressing over it. not right now. too much upheaval. i'm still 100% raw, and that's what matters most to me at the moment. the only part of my "new protocol" that i was able to maintain over the past 2 weeks has been the oil pulling, which has been very successful and i'm happy with that. i'm noticing a lot less sensitivity in my mouth. still not perfect, but better. i'm doing my best to stick with fruit during the day, and then if i go out, have a salad, and if i stay in, i have my tahini. i'm ready to give it up, but i'm not ready NOW, if you know what i mean. other than that, i'm feeling great, doing great, and according to my friends and students, looking great! it's pretty fun.

august 29: cleaning house

i've been off-blog for a few days. lots of raw fu stuff going on, and just finding it hard to find the time, finding it hard to have much to say here after being on the forums for hours over on raw fu. what else is there to say?

first, to catch up - i DID have my colonic, and i'm feeling much better about it. i'm very glad i did it. the blockage in my sigmoid colon is gone and while i'm still having some residual gas, that is also improving and i'm feeling much better. i've altered my protocol slightly in terms of what i'm eating and some of my dental care, so i'm going to blog about that today.

the colon hydrotherapist of course told me to cut back on the sweet fruits and to include more "heat" in my diet and lifestyle, as i'm "damp." ugh. whatever. TCM to me is so full of flaws. i'm in a hot room for 5 hours a day and i get sun exposure to my belly every day and i never spend any time in AC below 80 degrees. that's enough heat for one lifestyle, i think. she also wants me to eat more proteins and more fats to "counteract" candida. not that she noticed any candida during my treatment. i don't think i have a problem with candida anymore. and, i beleive dr. doug, that candida is caused by excess fat, not sugar. what she did say was that she was seeing a lot of undigested food. that, i'll buy. while i've been chewing my greens very well, i tend to inhale my fruit. so i'm back to smoothies. primarily watermelon for now. mono-fruit smoothies all day. that's protocol change #1.

i'm still wadging, but i've moved it now to the end of the day instead of early or whenever i'm in the car. my goal is to wadge 2 whole romaine hearts each day. i like romaine for wadging better than baby spinach. protocol change #2.

i'm having my tahini. i did an exhaustive nutridiary consult and my calories are remaining in the 6% range from fat, and that's including my tablespoon of tahini each day. as long as i feel like my body wants it, i'm going to have it. and i know the difference between a body desire and an addiction. the body desire is very clear and knows exactly when to stop, the addiction keeps going long after the body is satisfied. the addiction is never satisfied. one thing that the therapist suggested that resonated in my body was to add some spirulina just to get some extra amino acids to help support my liver. i let that suggestion move through my body and i found that it really resonated, so i've been doing that the past nights - adding 1/2 tsp to my 1 tbsp of tahini, with a dash of cayenne pepper (for heat). that's protocol change #3.

i've started oil pulling in the mornings as part of my dental protocol. i've read good things about it, and my teeth and gums need extra support which they aren't getting from just sweet fruit. of course, minor miniscule amounts of the oil are being absorbed while i'm oil pulling, and i'm ok with that. most of it gets spit out. that's protocol change #4.

so far, i'm noticing good benefits from all of these changes. my teeth are responding well to the oil pulling. my gums are responding very well. my plan is to continue doing it until i'm finished with all of my fillings, and then hopefully my mouth will be healthy enough to carry on with water and flossing. my mouth is also responding well to the wadging, and oddly enough, to the smoothie! i swish it around and it feels really good. my digestion has become much less gassy - still a little, but nowhere near as much. overall, i'm happy with this protocol, and i don't need anyone to tell me that the spirulina and the oil pulling aren't in alignment with 811. i know that. it's called a TRANSITION. and to me, it feels very beneficial. when it is time to change it, i'll know.

august 26: catching up

a smidge of good news (well, it's all good, but i really dig this particular bit!) today is the 2nd day in a row that i've just woken up a little after 6am on my own, no alarm. this has been such a goal of mine, to be able to wake up early. last night, i crashed out at 10pm, so that's another 8 hour sleeping gig, but it got me up at 6, so i'm happy!!

what i'm not so terribly happy about is this terrible gas pain i'm feeling. i feel like i have a blockage in my descending colon. it's old, old stuff, and the blockage that i can feel has been in this spot for about a week or maybe longer, i can just feel it now. i feel like nothing can get past it unless it is squeezed past, and it's creating a back up and lots of gas. i have gas pains in my left leg - when i wake up, that's actually what's waking me up, not the pleasantest, and i'm not eliminating the way i want to be. i keep hoping it's going to take care of itself, and now i think i'm going to have to go for a colonic. not that i mind, i enjoy them, but i was hoping i could do it on my own! i think its just too big. it needs to be broken up. i'm going to call brenda first thing this morning.

i'm working on my teeth now. that's the next frontier. i have a laundry list of tooth problems, and while i've had some success in improving them on 811, i confess that those improvements have been short-lived. they haven't gotten worse on 811, just not better, and i want better. i've started eating greens again, with a technique called "wadging," in which you chew and chew and chew a mouthful of greens and swallow the liquid but not the fiber. so far i've been wadging baby spinach, which doesn't leave a whole lot of fiber to spit out, so i've been swallowing that, but i think that's the best way to eat tougher greens like kale. it's similar to making a green smoothie, just blending it in the mouth. you're supposed to chew your green smoothie to mix up the saliva and start the digestion in the mouth, which i never do, but wadging! i'm chewing each mouthful around 300 times. the benefits of this is getting the chlorophyll of the greens in the mouth, very healing, keeping it there! and the fiber in the greens cleans the teeth without scrubbing and massages the gums, and the chewing itself strengthens the gums and tooth roots. in the 2 days i've been doing it, i've seen immediate improvements in my mouth - gums not bleeding, less sensitive, teeth less sensitive. my mouth this morning is a little cottony, but it doesn't have that stagnant feeling. i feel almost kissable! i've made an appointment - 2 of em - for september to get my teeth cleaned and prepped for having my mercury amalgam fillings out. because my teeth and gums are SOOOOO sensitive, i've been really dreading the procedure. plus, my dentists are clients of mine, so i don't want to go in there a mess! i want to go in there with a strong, healthy mouth. can a month of wadging bring about a miracle? that's my hope. i care less about their professional opinion than i do about being able to tolerate the procedure. and i also want to get to a point where they aren't going to be tempted to suggest a DIFFERENT procedure beforehand, because that's what happened to me last time. i went in for a cleaning and consult to get my fillings out, and ended up getting a periodontal scaling that i don't think helped anything. so this time, i want to be able to confidently say, "i know my gums aren't perfect, but they're getting better. take the fillings out, let me do what i'm doing, and once all the fillings are out and i've had 6 months to heal, if the gums are still bad, then we'll fix them." i think taking the fillings out is going to make all the difference in the world. i think it's going to improve my eyesight. i'm going to wadge with cilantro as my chelation protocol. now i just have to figure out how i'm going to pay for all this. i don't want it to take 3 years! either the payment or the filling removal.

in the meantime, all is well. the reintroduction of greens is helping my mouth, but not my gut, so i'm going to give my gut a helping hand. i've decided, also, not to fight the tahini - you can't fight the tahini! it's such a calcium-rich food, i'm going to use it on a daily basis in addition to the wadging to help increase the bone density in my jaw and hopefully reset this wiggly tooth. i'm brushing with a rotation of plain water, H2O2, and IPSAB tooth powder. i also have some "tooth soap" that i might try to use again. i've tried so many different products on my teeth. sigh. i hope the wadging works. i hope getting the fillings out works.

it's not such a big topic out there in the raw world. we talk more about colons than mouths. we talk about eating, but it's almost like the mouth is treated as the pleasure center, it's just there, and then we're fascinated by what goes on in the murky depths that we can't see. so i'm on a campaign to talk about the mouth. my mouth needs help! (it needs kisses too! perhaps more of those are on the way???)

august 24: no poo update

i just spent the weekend at the beach, of course, i got in the pool, of course, and spent a lot of time outside, of course. on no poo, my hair is soft and shiny and feels really good, and looks really wild, which is how i like it best. i was just sitting here playing with it, and i noticed: it doesn't have that "hair" smell. it smells good.

it's been really nice not to shampoo my hair. it's not oily at all. the first couple of weeks, it got oily, but not any more. it's just really nice. i'm sold!

august 24: i'm back!

i lost battery power on the computer while at the beach, and i have a very finicky plug, which only likes to work at home, when the stereo cord is lovingly holding it in place. my laptop is getting old, and planned obsolescence is calling for its imminent demise. so i spent a whole lotta time vlogging. it was lots of fun. i don't have the embed code to post the vids here, and i've given the camera back to Wayne. until i have a new computer with a webcam, i think videos may be few and far between, since i'm relying on Wayne to upload them for me! he's patient and loving, AND, that may be asking too much.

and my internet at home was being infuriatingly slow last night, so i gave up. and tonight, i came to the coffee house. it's gloriously perfect weather right now - breezy, cool enough for jeans, warm enough for sleeveless, so i'm thankful to not be stuck inside my house. i may do this more often.

tonight i had a little brush with The Real World. i have a friend and client who i am now working with on some nutritional coaching. i'm so used to being in my raw fu bubble, and my yoga bubble, and my own self-bubble bubble, i forget how most of the real world lives and eats and functions. my friend, i must say, is doing really, really well for doing a SAD lifestyle, and i commend her for her efforts. but it baffles and staggers me how different my lifestyle is now, and how easy it is for me, and how impossibly hard and disciplined it must seem to her! i'm not trying to convert her to 811rv, trust me. i want to help her reach her goals, not mine. the only thing i'm doing to approximate that is i'm asking her, as i'm going to ask all of my clients, to simply do as much fruit as they want, and only fruit, before noon. after that, then we can start to talk about other things. what struck me is how health conscious my friend is. she is eating cereal, fruit and yogurt for breakfast, and is very concerned with calcium, electrolytes, iron, and is convinced that she needs grains. when i asked her to give up her cereal and yogurt, her first concern was "where will i get my grains?" so i suggested brown rice for dinner. too much work. you know what that says to me? she doesn't feel a physical need for grains. if she did, she would have said, "oh, absolutely!" convenience is a major issue for her. i wish she could see how simple my life is. how totally convenient.

and it makes me really sad, SAD does. it's not working for her. she's got osteopenea, acid reflux, and a huge lower pot belly. she's smart, savvy, and relatively open minded, but also been fed a huge amount of rhetoric. when she was worried about her grains, i said, "if there was such a thing as a grain deficiency, i'd be incredibly sick right now!"

getting beyond the convenience is going to be the trick. her husband works for burger king corporate. and he doesn't dance. i could never marry such a man.

my nice new friend has been calling, though he hasn't been PURSUING. damn. i want to be pursued. like crazy. but we've had some nice long conversations, and he's just my type. only nicer, i think. am i his type? or am i too weird, too boring? i'll go ahead and say it - i hope i'm his type. i hope he likes me.

other than that, life continues to be great. i'm so happy. i don't need him to like me, that would just be a nice perk.

august 22: il pleut

here i am in beautiful corpus christi texas, and my friends, it is RAINING!!! it's so beautiful, so perfect! it's raining and thundering and just wild and wonderful. i'm in my hotel and watching the rain and enjoying the pants off myself!! it's great. there's always a lull between storms, and then it picks back up again. but i might just get out there in a few minutes anyway just to enjoy the rain! it's been such a hot, dry summer, hot and dry since may, that i am really tickled by it raining on my mini-break vacation trip to the beach. i honestly can't think of a more perfect way to spend the day.

do i sound facetious? i hope not! i'm absolutely serious. i'm so happy right now. it's like, nothing can make me not happy.

i've had such a nice day. the drive down was awesome. i took the backroads, and for most of the trip, i was pretty much alone, so i could drive as fast or as slow as i wanted to. the skies were beautiful, we had one rainstorm, i stopped at a picnic area and took a video and saw some longhorn steers - that was very cool. i crack myself up listening to the video, because i talk to this 1000+ pound huge beast as if it were a kitten, "hi mr longhorn, aren't you a handsome beasty!" etc. super-dork! it was just really mellow, a great trip. i've had coconuts and bananas and mangos, as planned (although, the last one i had is giving me a little irritation around my mouth. hmmm)

it's just great to be here! i'm really happy right now.

august 21: vlogging begins!

i borrowed a camera and started vlogging! that was last night's entertainment. tonight's i didn't like so much, i look as tired as i feel! and tomorrow morning i'm up bright and early to head down to corpus christi to spend a couple of days at the beach! that's exciting. i'm going to do a separate vlog to post on the blog as opposed to what i'll post on raw fu, just for those random few people who have the joy of watching both! vlogging is fun.

tonight, i'm really tired and still have all those last-minute pre-trip things to do, so i'm not going to write much. but i'll catch you tomorrow from the hotel, on the BEACH!!! yippee!!

august 19: raw fu like crazy person

wow - our 2nd mini-challenge is over tomorrow! wow! 20 days! 39 days for me. i'm proud of myself.

i have spent the whole evening geeking out on raw fu. like crazy person! so much to say, lots of comments to make and share. geek night.

and then i get here and blammo. nada. i got the nicest comment though today from one of the raw fu-ers who actually is reading this blog and thanked me for writing so much! lol! i'm such a big mouth, and someone is actually happy about it! thank you missvanilla! that means so much to me. it means a lot that someone is reading, it means a lot that any of this can be helpful to someone else.

there was a headline in The Onion the other day "Local Idiot Posts Opinion on Internet." a lot of times, that's how i feel, too! i don't have a sexy blog full of pictures and video - have no cameras - and i've spent no time trying to figure out how to make blogger look good. so this is just what it is. me posting my experiences.

part of 811 is teaching yourself how to eat a lot of fruit. and i do mean A LOT. i'm getting better at it. dr. doug says that cooked food eaters' stomachs are constricted and small, only really able to hold a very small amount of food, because cooked food is so concentrated and low in water. it's their bowels and livers that are bloated and enormous, not the stomachs. i'm not sure how this works with "stomach stapling," making the stomach even smaller, but god, what a horrible idea. so in order to eat your calories from fruit, which is full of water, you have to gently stretch the stomach in order to accomodate. wacky, right? but you know, it's working. i'm eating a lot more in one sitting than i ever would have dreamed possible, and i'm pretty comfortable afterwards. my energy, great. it's all good.

and oh, now i feel that lovely sinking feeling that is my body telling me that i have about 7.25 minutes before it's going to crash on the bed! i love how clear my body is with its messages.

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!