I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions so I didn’t make any again this year, but I have just been inspired to make a late resolution after all, thanks to an adorable young lady who makes raw food sound positively palatable. Plus, via her vlog on Freshtopia.net, Tanja shows you how to make this stuff. And it really does look do-able. She should be on Food Network, nose ring and all. I tried the apple chowder and was sold. I lovelovelove apples.

Don’t worry, I’m not turning into a raw foodist, but it really is time to get control of the diet. I didn’t go hog wild for the holidays like I usually do, but things got a little out of hand toward the end there. And now I’m stuck with my old sugar habit again, scarfing down candy bars just to avoid another week of sugar withdrawal hell. It’s pathetic. I feel awful anyway thanks to all my food sensitivities so I might as well bite the bullet, if you’ll pardon the pun, and go cold turkey — mixed metaphors be damned. At least I know I’ll feel a lot better in about a week. I’m tired of feeling like shit.

So then, be it resolved:

1. No more refined sugar. Here comes another headache — but only for a week.
2. No more gluten. Does this mean I can’t finish off the bread and crackers in the cupboard first? ‘Fraid so. The payoff in feeling better will only take a day or two. I know this from experience.
3. At least two servings of healthily prepared vegetables every day. I know it’s supposed to be five, including fruit. Baby steps.
4. At least one serving of raw food per day [besides apples, my fave snack.]
5. At least thirty minutes aerobic exercise [either on the rebounder or walking] daily, plus a bit of yoga and weight training. I’ve been working up to this so it won’t be much of a leap.
6. Oh yes, and keep a cleaner, more organized home. I’ll have the energy to do it if I just keep the preceding resolutions. Plus it will make keeping those resolutions much easier. Ah, the circle of life!

So I finally took the dreaded Walk that my nutritionist and all of my friends have been nagging me to take. I am so. out. of. shape. Oy, it was embarrassing–the huffing and puffing, the sweating, the red face. By the time I got home, you would have thought I’d just run a marathon. How far did I walk?

Eight blocks. Seven too many, apparently.

Note to self: stop overdoing things. You’ll just burn out and give up again. Go slow. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

Day Five

At least half of the battle, when you stop stuffing your face with carbs, sugar–and in my case, gluten–is figuring out what to do with all the time that suddenly looms before you. People who don’t have this problem will not understand, but it feels like waking up from a lovely dream to realize that you have to go to work now. Yes, that’s exactly it–plus a distinct sensation of alarm, like: “Wait a minute. I wasn’t expecting this. Hunger, yes. Withdrawal pains, sure. But not–gah!–Waking Up.”

My normal inclination is to do more of what I’ve been doing–sit here at my desk and obsessively surf the web for some mysterious “answer” to my problems, crochet, watch TV, and make a stab at writing more blog entries–but that’s a recipe for failure, I just know it.

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.

Yep. Gotta change more than just my eating habits. Why is that so scary? Because it’s the unknown, I guess. I know what it feels like to be sedated by food: comfortable. Except for the awful aches and pains of simultaneously being obese, not moving and getting old.

But even that pain is familiar territory for me. What is on the other side of losing the weight and getting active? I’ve lost the pounds before–several times–but I never really committed to the completely new lifestyle that maintaining my ideal weight would require. That’s the unknown that scares me.

And now this new thought that never occurred to me: I have to wake up now. I have to be alert instead of groggy. Which means I’m becoming aware of all the time that stretches before me each day, and I have to do something productive with it or I will inevitably fall back into old, anesthetizing habits. This is what the experts mean when they tell you to Feel the Feelings. These are the feelings that come up–and I’m feeling ‘em, all right. Boy, am I feeling them.

Like a kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep at night, I can hear myself whine, “But I don’t want to wake up!”

Pledge #2: No second [or third, or fourth] helpings!

All the laundry was still drying on the rack and I needed to drive R&E to a movie, so I had to put on an old pair of non-stretch slacks that I quit wearing two years ago because they were getting too tight and uncomfortable. I know I’ve been gaining weight, but I figured I could get away with not zipping them under my big, baggy jacket.

Guess what? They fit perfectly–better than before!

I hereby pledge to eat an apple or other fruit whenever I crave sweets.

That is all.

It’s all crap. I feel like crap and I look like crap. Yesterday after Christmas dinner, I farted FOUR freaking times in front of the in-laws [Robby's girlfriend's parents, might as well call 'em in-laws, they will be soon enough.] We all made a joke of it but I was very embarrassed, of course, because the cause of my flatulence was obvious:

I. Can’t. Stop. Eating.

I didn’t even try to hide the eating yesterday. Or on Thanksgiving, when the in-laws were also here. Emily’s parents don’t have an ounce of fat on them, not because it’s fashionable to be thin but because they are too poor to overeat. I won’t go into details because they have a right to their privacy, but my compulsion is even more obscene in contrast to them.

I woke up hung over this morning, like it was New Year’s morning instead of the day after Christmas, and I didn’t have a drop of alcohol. It’s been building up to this for weeks now, every morning worse than the last.I am in pain from morning to night, even though I know from experience exactly what is causing my pain: sugar and gluten.

I know I have to stop, but you don’t know how many false starts I have made in the past year. It’s very discouraging. I’ve gone through withdrawal from sugar–a week-long exercise in migrainous agony–at least three times, all the way through the pain to the other side where I was feeling good and hopeful again, only to slide back to–well, this.

And please, let’s not even talk about the weight gain. Last week, I watched “The 650-pound Woman” on the Discovery Channel and cried to think of how much she must have suffered if I feel like this at a bit over a third of her weight. After gastric surgery and horrible complications, she had lost over 200 pounds by the end of the show–nice how they package it all up with a happy ending in an hour. I’ve been tempted to have that surgery in the past, but after reading that some post-gastric surgery patients still can’t stop overeating, and now after seeing this poor woman’s suffering–there is no way in hell I would do it. Ever.

You can argue all you like about willpower, but what we’re talking about is addiction, no different from alcoholism. Let’s face it, alcohol is just fermented sugar. In fact, I can recall actually feeling slightly drunk and then passing out on the couch after more than one ice cream binge. And yes, we’re back in that territory again.

Well duh, I’m hypoglycemic! How could I forget?

Okay, let’s just agree that I can’t afford to wait any longer. Yesterday, I really wondered if I might have a heart attack or a stroke, I was feeling so bad–and yet, I kept eating. My mother and grandmother–both obese–had strokes. My mother was only a couple of years older than I am when she had her first stroke. My sister had to have triple bypass heart surgery, thanks to diabetes, and pretty much everyone in the family–except me for some reason–had diabetes. Maybe I already have it and don’t know. I get it checked every year or two; it’s that time again.

So yes, I have to do something. Not sure what or how yet, but it’s a start.

I’ve never understood people who don’t have, um, issues with food. Like the doctor who told me last summer to stop eating gluten, dairy and eggs. Or his nurse, who blithely ordered me to eat only steamed vegetables and rice. Did they have any idea who they were talking to?

Obviously not.

I am, as Overeaters Anonymous wants me to tell you, a compulsive overeater. Oh, but it’s so much more complicated than that. When Dr. Moss and his spunky nurse Theo gave me my marching orders, they were trying to pin down food allergies that were causing, let’s say gastrointestinal distress, for six months at that point. Now it’s been a year.

Let’s get Step One out of the way right now: I truly am powerless over food, and my life has been incredibly unmanageable.

There is a theory that food allergy and addiction are intimately related. Based on my miserable experience, I believe it. I was helpless in the face of all forms of bread, anything with sugar in it, and especially–oh, most especially–Dairy Queen chocolate dip cones. Helpless is exactly how I felt.

I made myself feel better when I was upset, or rewarded myself for doing anything the slightest bit strenuous [like driving to the Jiffy Lube for an oil change] by stopping at the nearest DQ. Please note the slogan on their front page:

CRAVE SATISFIED!
DQ is your place for great tasting meals for lunch or dinner and tempting cool treats to satisfy your crave anytime!

You think the corporate honchos don’t know a thing or two about food addiction? Please.

By January, the Volvo was on automatic pilot. Every time I drove to, through or anywhere near El Cajon, California, Brigitte [named after another big blonde Scandinavian] headed straight down Second Avenue to the Dairy Queen. I couldn’t stop her from pulling into the drivethrough lane, or my hands from opening my wallet, or my voice from saying, “Small dipped cone, please” to the squawk box. [Ordering a small cone made it more virtuous somehow, although DQ long ago eliminated the truly small cone in favor of the medium one. DQ=EVIL. ]

So, on this sunny January day, as Brigitte pulled into the left-turn lane at Jamacha and East Main, I saw to my simultaneous horror and relief that the only Dairy Queen for twenty miles had gone out of business. There is a God after all.

It was exactly like the moment some eighteen years earlier when I lit up a More Menthol, wondering how I was going to quit smoking now that I was finally pregnant again, and felt nausea. “Oh, morning sickness!” I said to myself, and put it out. That was my last cigarette. This moment was like that. The El Cajon DQ had gone out of business in spite of my sincere attempts to keep it afloat, so that was it. No more chocolate dipped cones. Thank God.

Since then, I have kicked sugar [and don't let anyone tell you sugar withdrawal isn't hell], gluten, dairy, and meat/fish/chicken for good measure. I’m a gluten-free vegan [such an attractive term] and I’m glad. Energy levels are slowly rising, pain levels slowly dropping, and my mental clarity is returning [or so my friends tell me.] Holy crap.

Oh, wait. About that: not much improvement in the gastrointestinal distress thing. In fact, not much change at all. Which indicates that I haven’t eliminated all my food allergens. Which means I need to go on an even more restrictive elimination diet and see what, uh, comes out. We’re talking steamed vegetables and rice, people. And a food diary.

Crap.

Woke up this morning with a migraine again–not sure if it’s something in the air or withdrawal from caffeine. I quit Coke [again] a few days ago. Sugar too, but I cheated and had some orange sherbet yesterday.

It’s probably withdrawal. I hope it is, because I got up and did the shower/change sheets thing in the middle of the night but it didn’t help. That should have taken care of any lingering fragrance from recent outings to the store. I took some Excedrin Migraine a few minutes ago; two tablets contain the equivalent caffeine of a cup of coffee. If the headache goes away soon, we’ll know it’s withdrawal.

Feeling nauseous–wonder how to make ginger tea? Boil water, pour over ginger, duh.

–Found some peppermint tea, that should work though I’m curious to know how ginger would taste. Think I’ll experiment, since I have some ginger in the freezer–brb.

Verdict: Drink ginger tea more. Much more.

Headache’s fading = very good. [Update: it came back, then it faded, then back again--I think we're talking caffeine/sugar withdrawal here, not fragrance/chems.]

This makes me think about my growing interest in natural cooking. Maybe, instead of writing a book about MCS activists–which is a bit overwhelming to me at the moment–I should write about healing foods [like that hasn't been done before! Note to self: Well, definitely read those books and learn all you can. That's the important thing. Write about the process and blog it. That would be good. Try recipes and report on their health effects. Start w/Jeanne's garlic recipe.]

Yes. I’ll write about my relationship with food. It’s a stormy one, that’s for sure. Love, hate and fear. Why? Because I’m addicted to it. How did this happen? I don’t know. I just remember being unable to think about anything else at family gatherings: the heaping bowl of hot mashed potatoes; the elegant gravy boat; the “hot dishes” aka casseroles: potatoes au gratin and green beans with mushroom soup and French’s crispy onion rings; the tuna macaroni salad; the fruit salad [oh, the fruit salad! Grapes, sliced bananas, canned mandarin oranges, cut-up marshmallows and real whipped cream--can heaven be any better?]; and of course, the turkey or ham, depending on the holiday.

The meat wasn’t important to me; it was the trimmings. As a child, I wanted nothing to do with: white meat, gravy, stuffing, squash or that awful candied yam dish with marshmallows baked brown on top. I’ve since changed my mind about all but the squash and the yams. [Are yams and sweet potatoes the same, or different? That has always confused me, not being a southerner. I think they're different, perhaps related but different. Anyway, someone once showed me the delights of baked sweet potatoes with butter and forever erased my prejudice against them. I still reserve judgement on yams, however.]

Then there was the pie: apple and pumpkin, both homemade from scratch and delicious. In our family, the adults ate their hot apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese, a taste I acquired post-adolescence. We children preferred ice cream melting into a puddle of cinnamon, sugar and apples. When mine was gone, I might have licked my plate if no one had been looking. Now I do, in the privacy of my apartment.

Pumpkin pie, of course, required a large dollop of homemade whipped cream; no canned whip for us [although I have a sneaking memory of a can of Reddi-Whip sitting in Grandma's fridge along with her half & half. Maybe she slid some into her coffee for a pre-Starbucks treat.]

With the buffet table groaning under such a feast, I never understood how my cousins and uncles could focus on play and conversation in the living room while the aunts in the kitchen baked the crescent rolls [oh, to die for!] and brought out the butter and coffee. Why did no one but me seem compelled to race to the head of the line when dinner was finally announced? Why did I [then and still] force myself to wait until two or three others got in line before I casually stood up and pretended that I didn’t want to push them out of the way and load up my plate?

Well, that’s a food addict for you. And that’s how it started, somewhere around age eight or nine. I was a skinny kid in spite of my addiction, until puberty and its pressures persuaded me to bulk up for self-protection.

But that’s another entry.