Day 73. 13nov11 Day 73. Wow, I can barely believe I am here. Thank goodness I did not consider my few slips as evidence of failure and revert to counting from one.
I'm also grateful for having this span of time - I have needed it to work through things. For instance - and this seems to be such a huge issue for me - whether or not I will be able to incorporate cooked vegan food into my diet. Eating cooked food has been my downfall, my failure, my 'falling off the wagon'. I have proved over and over to myself that eating cooked food turns my urine acidic. An all-raw diet keeps my urine alkaline.
Eating a cooked meal once a week would not turn my pee acidic, but would I be able to only eat one cooked vegan meal a week? Would this be like suggesting that I, a recovering alcoholic (7 years sober), accompany that meal with my favourite booze? Of course, I would not consider trying the alcohol - would not take that chance - terrifies me even to contemplate it
Is it that I have simply not accepted that a meal of, say, organic brown rice topped with gently sauteed vegetables would be as deadly to me as a goblet of Grand Marnier over shaved ice? That is it, of course, I am not accepting that cooked vegan food is bad for me. Well, I mean, I absolutely realize that food transformed by heat is not welcomed by my body - that the white leucocytes increase with even a mouthful of cooked food - indicating that the cooked food is perceived by my body as foreign and toxic, causing my immune system to leap into defense mode
Yeah, yeah, I am convinced of that, but still! my body - oh, it seems every cell in my body and in my brain - loves and craves (oh, wrong word!) that food. It really satisfies me on so very many levels. Of course, it is the associated comfort and joys of like-minded people, of not participating in the suffering of animals, but it is also a perhaps inexplicable satisfaction, a deep love, of this food. It seems I am never quite convinced that it is bad. My brain, my capacity to reason, tells me that cooked food is bad - Cooked food is poison (the mantra underlying the book, Nature's First Law, remember?).
I have had the above argument tormenting me for many years. While on this juice and smoothie feasting (although it is a kind of fasting, removing me away from my normal habits and suspending me in a rather contemplative state for a while), I am realizing, no, more accepting (tough word for me), that eating the odd cooked vegan meal might not be optimally healthy, but it would not have to be considered a failure for me.
In addiction I see with myself that there is this line, this trick of the mind, in which when I have 'fallen', that at some very deep level I say to myself, Well, Pat, you have fallen, you have failed. The feeling of failure is a sense of finality - it's a fait accompli - the deed is done and is irredeemable. From there, I plunge into a 'bender'.
This feasting - fast - has shown me that although I have 'fallen', the situation has not been irredeemable - I have simply - oh, so simply! - picked myself up and continued on. Here I am on Day 73. It is definitely not failure. I have accomplished. There is weight loss, there are changes, shifts. I am definitely somewhere different. I have travelled some road I have not been before.
I have really needed this amount of time. A week or ten days is simply not enough - hoo! I have been on so many of those, careening out of the feast or fast - water, juice, raw foods, whatever - feeling, well, that period of abstinence, that diet, is over, now I EAT! And in short time I have been back where I was before I dieted.
I am realizing now, that what I am doing is something I need to do for life - and I think I accept this. I hope that one of the learnings I am going to take from this journey is that this will be the way I eat, that I will have the odd - once a week, no more - vegan meal - enjoy it fully - and return to this way of eating. If I am wrong, if I cannot eat one meal without falling into bender, then I will have to start over again. I hope that I will be able maintain the ground I have gained.
Years ago I finally quit smoking - for over eight years - and started up again. It took several more years before I was able to quit again. Whenever I was tempted to have one cigarette, I thought to myself, Pat, if you start up smoking again, you are going to have to go through the grueling business of quitting again; let us maintain the ground we have won with such struggle.
I also understand that perhaps if I was thinking differently, that I might (or might have) come away with no desire for cooked food. That would be the best, wouldn't it? Am I not allowing myself to be willing to reach that state? Or am I fighting myself about something in which I should be allowing myself leeway? Should I be fighting myself?
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