You’re Not Welcome Anymore

For the most part today I ate a very healthy, high raw, veggie-rich diet. That is until  about 8pm. After my yoga class I caved in and headed to the dollar store to load up on non-vegan, definitely not raw, and far from healthy sugar-laden, hydrogenated oil loaded, million ingredient fake “food”…otherwise known as candy. As someone who is recovering from an eating disorder, far too often I still turn to food for comfort when I’m stressed, lonely, bored, angry, or otherwise. Yeah, this is hard. It’s really hard. But I’m trying to accept that it is something that I will have to deal with and work through. Most importantly, I’m trying to release the toxic thoughts that boil up in me before and after bingeing. Negativity wreaks havoc on the body…both mentally AND physically. It’s not worth further straining my health by beating myself up about my slips and falls. That is precisely the position I presently find myself: desperately struggling not to hate my guts and loathe my existence in the wake of a binge. 

I’m really trying to eat healthier and to take better care of my body. I’m not so much determined to lose weight as I am striving to gain health. That’s my goal. I want to feel my best so I can have the energy, the stamina, the clarity, and the enthusiasm to accomplish what I want to do and to love life! More and more, it is appearing to me that raw foodism will really help me achieve and maintain these goals. But more about that later (in a future post).

That’s why I’m writing this post; I’m officially going to break up with this kind of junk that masquerades as some kind of sweet drug, promising to give us bliss but leaving us feeling lousy, fat, and worse than we were before. Hardly had I finished stuffing the bars down my throat when the sugar rush started and my head started to hurt. Clearly, this wasn’t making my body happy. And I only have one body. And I do want to be alive for my life—not in a moaning, groaning sugar coma. So, I want to feed it good, wholesome, nutrient rich foods—real food—that make it hum and tick with precision and happiness.

That is why I feel the need to make the following declaration: Candy, refined sugar and the lot, WE ARE DONE! I know you’re going come around again sometime in the not-so-distant future. You’ll pull out all the old stunts trying to prove that you have what I need and all that. I can’t promise that I won’t fall for you then, but I can tell you this: YOU’RE NOT WELCOME ANYMORE. Junk food doesn’t make my body happy. It makes me feel like dirt! That’s why I want to try to eat more wholesome nourishing food. And when the little demons come to call, hopefully I’ll have a nice raw dessert or some other better-for-me tantalizing treat to wave in their stubby faces. Yes, food can be good and good for you. I’m trying to eat things that are just that. That's why I took the remaining candy and I ground it under my foot and threw it in the trash. I'm proud of myself. I stopped the binge and didn't eat 'til the end. I can gain control over food and my life...with God's help and through his grace only, of course.

The really painful thing about writing all of this is that I know I’ll fall from time to time. I still am under the painful grip of a disease and I am as weak and vulnerable to cravings as anyone I know…probably even more so. But I want to do better, and I want to make a conscious effort to do better—to explore raw vegan food and give myself nourishing and delicious options that feed my body and my spirit. Isn’t that what whole food is all about? We all know the saying “you are what you eat.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to live with my whole person. :)