About Me

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I am mundane and magical, Silly and serious. I am an underachiever who suspects that someday in the eternities I may yet blossom and even fruit. I am a collector of spirits and essences, a studier of mood and nuance.I have many many faults and yet I've always been loved. I am a good friend, but I will let you go if you so desire. I believe in Somewhen. I laugh easily and cannot often cry, which I know is a Flaw. Like You, I am a work in progess.

Monday, January 21, 2013

I feel happy almost to the verge of tears. And grateful. And surprised. The sun today is luminous and crisp and I feel connected to the glow. This juice fast may be the BEST thing I have ever done for myself. I have been overweight my whole life. And I used to fight that with all kinds of diets and strange things. I did Schick shock aversion.I hate electrical shock! It didn't work. I tried being injected with the urine of pregnant women. (no idea what that was actually supposed to do, but EW!!) Both of those examples were long long ago. But all kinds of crazy diets and some I thought were sane but weren't, the worst was a dr supervised 500 calorie a day fast. It involved shots, blood tests, appetite suppressants and the dr wanted to put me on Paxil but I wouldn't do that. I lost 87 pounds. And it was something I had to thad ink about every moment of every day. It was hellish. But I adapted. Then came the day when the result of a blood test told the dr i had to start eating more food. Well, I did. There was no strict regime here, some recommendations. But what happened was that I reverted to old bad habits. I hadn't actually earned anything, except how to impose my will over my body in a strict and very temporary circumstance. I gained more weight back than I lost and worse, that diet had terrible effects on my digestion. That was the beginning of the barfing. And I had no energy. And I decided that I was never going to "diet" again.
With my body being large it is hard to do certain ordinary things. And while I am used to the judgement that goes with physical nonconformity to our culture's ideal of what people should look like it still wears and limits me. My own self disappointment is also very limiting. I injured my right knee and it hasn't healed and the compensation was affecting my left knee. My soul might want to dance or simply wish I could clean the floorboards but in fact i was getting less and less mobile. It was a bad prognosis.
Also, learning about the way food is being manipulated today made me angry and feel helpless. GMO's and the refusal to label them. Corporations deliberately creating addictive foods and labeling them falsely for a profit.  CAFOs. It feels like a net closing in and I truly think  this is something our society needs to address soon. I cannot tell you how evil I feel Monsanto is. The FDA? I do not think it has the good of the people in mind at all.
When I stumbled upon Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead on Netflix and felt like that so much I decided to watch it I was immediately attracted to the ideas. I also could tell Joe Cross was adept at marketing s a strang o I was wary. But closely observing him and the other people depicted in the film gave me the first hope I had had in years, food-wise  Obviously I was no expert on eating well and I figured i would just be increasingly unhealthy till I died. Young. Like many in my family. My dad died of a heart attack at 59. My brother died of alcoholism  at 40. His oldest son followed him at 28. There is a history of depression, suicide and substance abuse in my family. Could I somehow change the path I was on? I wanted to try juicing, but the juicers were expensive and so was all the food! I couldn't afford to try.
It took me a couple of years to buy the juicer and decide that the cost of the food would be worth it if somehow, this worked for me. I decided to do a 60 day juice fast because that is what felt necessary to me. I couldn't afford the medical testing it would be good to have to go along with this so i was just going to have to monitor my own feelings and judge on the basis of those. Bruce was pretty worried for me. It sounded extreme to him and he was worried about effects on my health. But...could anything really be worse than how i was going? I think not.
Still I was expecting a miserable 60 days. I was afraid I wouldn't even be able to do this fast because eating salad made me throw up. So, it looked a bit iffy. And i can't say I have ever been a big fruit or vegetable eater. If I did eat them, they were almost always jazzed up. I am also a wimp. If I didn't see real benefits to this I knew i wouldn't last. It could be for as simple a reason as not being able to combat the food cravings. I had decided long ago I don't want to spend all my time thinking about a diet. That's no life. So, I was a balance of cautious optimism and aware of my bad history in this realm. But I embarked.
My first surprise was that the juices did not taste as bad as I anticipated. Over these few days I have become a little more skilled at making them too and I find to my very great surprise that i am actually liking them! I even like them at the temperature they come out of the blender. Fresh juice is good! I have had very few food cravings on this way of eating. That also just flabbergasts me. I knew within days that my body appreciated this nutrition. I've only lost 15 pounds (as of my first comparative weigh in) but i FEEL so much better. Centered and glowing. The fact that i have not vomited once since doing this would make a strong case for continuation. So would the fact that my knees feel better. And, while I am having frequent bouts of gratitude and so thinking of this change in THAT way i am not spending all my time thinking about food. I can hardly believe this! It's also very cool to be trying so many new foods and in such combinations and being surprised at how they taste. Learning their effects upon the body and upon my particular body is also -fun!
I would say this is a success! Wish I would have found it sooner!

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