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[Recent ACD-friendly dinner: Gena's Raw Cream of Zucchini Soup].
It’s now been approximately five months since I began this round of the ACD, and, over this time, I’ve slowly been coming to the realization that, well, it’s not likely to end any time soon.
As I may have mentioned before, the last time I pursued this regimen, it took two years to eradicate the yeastie beasties. Why so long, when for most people, six months is more than adequate? I’m just lucky, I guess. (Either that, or those childhood PB and chocolate milk breakfasts, teenaged May West and coffee-with-Coffee Mate breakfasts, 20s-era birthday cake and oatmeal cookie breakfasts, and 30s-decade Weight Watchers mousse and Diet Pepsi breakfasts really weren’t that healthy, after all. Seriously, I couldn’t have done worse had I walked into a pesticide factory and started downing beakers of random chemicals). When it comes to eating foods that nourish and strengthen my body, it seems I still hadn’t quite learned my lesson.
While I was able, eventually, to reintroduce gluten and sweeteners to my diet last time (and my naturopath assues me that will happen again, even this time), I fear that eventually, as with any addict reintroduced to a source of the addiction, I began to abuse the privilege. When I last went off the diet, rather than enjoy an abundance of fresh-fruit based desserts or an occasional (ie, less often than 5 times a day) sweet indulgence, I went the whole tofu and chowed down on a daily injection of chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate (in fact, I even considered changing the name of this blog to reflect that fact). And while I still dearly love desserts, even healthy ones (heck, I just wrote a whole cookbook devoted to them!), like any addict, I really have no self control when it comes to my trigger foods.
[What I should have eaten more often: fresh and fruity sorbet. . . and even easy to make!]
I mean, have you ever heard of an alcoholic who can stop at just one drink? I think Denis Leary’s character, Tommy Gavin, a firefighter who can’t seem to avoid getting sauced, is a prime example of the principle:
Week One: “I’m handling it. It’s just one drink.”
Week Two: “I’m handling it. I’m only having one a night.”
Week Three: “I’m handling it. I only drink when I feel like it, but so what if that’s all day? I can stop any time.”
Week Four: “Muh habble it. Dwnn tuh meh naw drkkeng drurving!” (Please do not adjust your set. Comprehensible dialogue will return once he sleeps off the inevitable hangover).
And so, dear readers, I’ve finally decided to just accept my own shorcomings as well as my current situation (after all, self acceptance is the first part of healing, right?). I’m determined to embrace the ACD, limitations and all. If I have to stay on it for a year, so be it. If I have to stay on it for life, well–I won’t be happy, but I can live with it (and I wasn’t living too well without it, come to think of it). It’s not as if I’m malnourished, or even that I dislike the foods I’m consuming; and I’d never share a recipe on the blog that I didn’t think was appealing to anyone’s taste buds, special diet or not. It’s just that I miss baking. I really, really miss baking. And I miss eating what I bake.
Still, given the choice, I’d rather continue to see my health improve (about 85% there at the moment) and continue to see my weight decrease, than eat chocolate every day. Besides, I’m learning to think of the ACD as just another culinary challenge: it’s time to begin creating delicious gluten-free, maybe even grain-free, stevia-sweetened desserts for a while. Let the kitchen games resume!
As I mused about the situation, I was reminded of two experts whom I admire and respect, albeit from two completely divergent fields.
The first is Geneen Roth, acclaimed author of When Food is Love and a regular columnist in Good Housekeeping magazine. When the HH and I relaxed up north this past weekend, I brought a slew of magazines to peruse by the pool, and came across Roth’s latest column, entitled, “Reality Bites.” She wrote about how she’d recently been diagnosed with allergies to both milk and chocolate–two of her very favorite foods.
At first, Roth rebelled against the diagnosis, thinking, “I refuse to give up the foods I love.” Eventually, she came round to the reality of the situation, stating, “It’s hard enough to have. . . allergies. But when you can’t stop thinking about how much you hate the fact that you have to spend your time doing what you need to do, you double the difficulty.” Well, I reasoned, I have quite enough difficulties in all the other areas of my life at the moment, thank you very much; I’d hate to convert eating into yet anohter hardship as well.
The second expert I thought about was Jon Kabat Zinn, who penned Wherever You Go, There You Are and Full Catastrophe Living. To Zinn, a champion of, and pioneer in, stress reduction and mindfulness meditation, living in the moment and appreciating the here and now is paramount to a happy life. Again, I couldn’t help but think, “Look at all the other wonderful things in my life right now–a secure job in these crazy economic times; a (rather appealing) roof over my head; a loving HH; long-term, close friendships; and two of the most adorable canine kids I’ve ever encountered (okay, I may be a tad biased on the canine thing).
["What do you mean, 'a tad biased,' Mum? We're crushed."]
The point is, I decided it’s time to focus on the positives in my life rather than the deficiencies. I may even resume the practise of keeping a gratitude journal (in which you enumerate at least 5 good things that occurred each day, every day. Over time, believe it or not, your mood is elevated just by focusing on such things.). It’s much more productive, and healthy, to maintain a focus on what’s good in life instead of the list of foods I have to give up for a while.
Roth said it beautifully when she wrote, “Giving up certain foods doesn’t mean giving up what you want to feel when you eat them. Staying away from sweets doesn’t mean that you need to deprive yourself of sweetness or comfort or joy.”
And so, I will continue to forge ahead with the blog in this new direction and hope all of you who’ve been reading for a while will stick with me, even though my recipes will be geared toward more gluten-free and low sweetener recipes for a time. And to all the new readers who’ve found my blog by searching for anti-candida recipes or allergen free foods, welcome! The gluten and natural sweeteners will return eventually.
But for now, I hope you’ll all join me on this often challenging, necessarily innovative, and naturally sweetened healing path.
“Mum, don’t worry about not eating sweeteners–we do it all the time, and our food still tastes great! Then again, we eat poo.”
Am I a glutton for punishment? (or maybe just a glutton). No, I’m not talking about Holidailies. What I’m referring to is a topic so highly polemical that I am probably setting myself up for all manner of excoriation by discussing it. But this issue has been weighing on my mind, and the rest of me. May as well just spit it out: I may BE fat, but I really don’t think it’s okay to be fat. Let me explain.
I am an avid reader of Kate Harding’s blog about fat acceptance. I love the quality of the writing and its bang-on tone, with just the right mix of snark and smart. I almost always laugh when I read it, and I definitely always come away with something interesting to think about. I may not consistently agree with what’s being propounded over there, but that’s perfectly okay with me. I believe we can all agree to disagree. . . and isn’t that what acceptance of any kind is all about?
I am also fully aware there’s a powerful movement toward fat acceptance out there. And on so many counts, I am right behind it. I come from a long line of women–mother, aunt, older and younger sisters, cousins (and let’s not forget me!)–who have all struggled with a lifetime of overweight and have all been technically obese at one time or another. Did their girth make me love any of them less? Respect them less? Value them less? No, of course not.
Do I concur that society foists an unrealistic and virtually impossible standard upon young women today, primarily through the media but trickling down through essentially every other aspect of our lives? Why, yes; yes I do. And we’ve become so accustomed to these edited, nipped and tucked, revamped versions of women’s faces and bodies, as well as the unrealistic expectations from (mostly) men, that we begin to forget that the perfection we seek is not really “normal.” I believe we’re wrong to judge someone because of her looks, or tease her, or reject her, or fire her, or not hire her in the first place, or insult her, or devalue her, simply because of excess avoirdupois. At the same time, does that make it okay to be fat? Sorry, I don’t think so.
To paraphrase Cher (or Sophie Tucker, depending on how far back you want to go): I’ve been slim, and I’ve been fat. Slim is better.
Now, I do not mean this in a subjective, what-I’ve-been-brainwashed-by-the-media-to-believe sense. I mean this in an entirely objective, what is actually better for my body, sense. (Which, by the way, still may not coincide with what my mind finds preferable).
I’ll put it this way: when I was slim, yes, I thought I looked better, and well, yes, men objectified me more. I enjoyed being able to wear mini skirts and fishnet stockings without irony. But that’s not why it was better. It was better because my body moved more easily and fluidly, my aches and pains went away, I could climb stairs without panting, I didn’t have heart burn as a constant companion, my back didn’t go “out” on me every fortnight, I woke up feeling light and capable most mornings, and, in addition, I liked the way I looked. But even if I’d been unable to look in a mirror that entire time, I actually felt better.
I am well aware that it’s possible to be overweight and still be healthy (as I mentioned, I do read Kate’s blog). But I have to tell you, most of the overweight women I know, unlike Harding herself, do not eat nutritionally sound foods, exercise regularly or do yoga backflips. When I gain an unsightly amount of weight, it’s not because I’ve acquired too much muscle from my workouts or ate too many brussels sprouts. No; when I’m overweight, I am keenly aware of my excess heaviness, in my legs, my stomach, my back; in the way I lumber across the parking lot in winter, the way I have to maneurver out of a cozy chair, the way my thighs rub uncomfortably together in summer; in how my waist oozes out over the tops of my pants (and woe betide, sometimes even my elastic waist pants); and by way of so many other lovely indices. It’s just not a fun way to live.
But what’s worse, for many of us, fat can bring with it devastatingly bad health consequences.
Oh, my. I can almost feel the portentous clouds as they gather, the skies about to slice open with a jagged bolt as it makes a beeline for my very heart. But let me reiterate: I am NOT suggesting that fat people in any way are deserving of the derision to which they are so often subjected, that overweight people are not “okay” as human beings, or that they ever deserve to be the target of constant ridicule (as I was, mercilessly, when I was a teenager). No; that’s not what I’m talking about at all. But I think we need to clarify just exactly what it is we’re accepting when we recommend fat “acceptance.”
Years ago, my therapist tried repeatedly to get me to “accept” that I was fat. And I just didn’t get it; I could never bring myself to say it was okay. “But I don’t WANT to be fat, so how can I accept it?” I’d whine, then go home and eat a pound of chocolate brownies.
These days, I finally recognize that I misinterpreted what she meant by “accept.” Accepting one’s excess bulk doesn’t necessitate also enjoying it, or embracing it as good, or liking it. In other words, I can accept the FACT that I am fat, choose not to berate myself about it, yet simultaneously wish that I were slimmer, and even make a concsious effort to achieve that goal.
After many years of struggling with my weight, these days I acknowledge the current reality that I am overweight; it’s who I am (right now), and I don’t want to put my entire life on hold until I do, or do not, lose the pounds. I’ve lived that fantasy in the past: just lose 20 pounds, and I’ll get a boyfriend; lose the weight, and I’ll have a book published; drop a couple dozen kilos and I’ll travel; and so on, and so on. In the past, when I finally did lose a whack of weight in my early 20′s, I was bitterly disappointed to find that life did not suddenly become perfect, and even when I DID find a boyfriend, I still had the same emotional problems I’d always had before meeting him, despite my svelte body.
Like anything else, if you wait to achieve an imagined goal before beginning to really live your life, you’ll be putting life on hold for something that might never happen. Not a good strategy, especially if you aren’t convinced that there is something else after this life. So I believe in doing what I can, now, to the fullest extent possible.
However, if you are carrying extra poundage and kidding yourself that it’s okay, that’s another story entirely. I can’t help but think of my mother, for instance, and her older sister, both obese, and both Type II diabetics. My mother never accepted her weight, and struggled her entire adult life against it. She was filled with self-loathing, was an emotional eater, and continued to regularly eat foods that didn’t have her body’s best interests at heart. My aunt, on the other hand, also ate unhealthy foods, but never suffered psychologically as my mom did, as she had an equally hefty dose of self confidence and self esteem to carry her through life. Did my aunt live a happier life without all that angst? Yes, she certainly did. Did she even live several years longer than my mother? Yes, again. Did they both ultimately die of complications of a chronic, degenerative disease that caused a protracted, achingly slow and gut-wrenchingly sad demise in the intensive care unit as their devastated families looked on, helpless? You betcha. And quite simply, that’s not okay.
My dad, on the other hand, has never been overweight, exercises regularly, and at 87 is in great shape. He has always walked for about an hour a day, engaged in fairly strong physical exercise, and, long before it was fashionable, ate a low-fat, whole foods diet. He is one of the only men in his “Golden Agers” club who can still trip the light fantastic with his (second) wife, and he maintains an incredibly positive outlook on life. And here’s another irony: even with my excess pounds, my last visit to the doctor’s office for an annual physical proved the theory that fat doesn’t equal “unhealthy.” My cholesterol levels, triglicerides, blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar levels, and all the other test results were stellar (thank God). I am relieved to know that I’m not killing myself the way my mother did, at least not now. But still, at this weight and size, I just don’t feel my best.
I realize this is an age old debate. And really, if you honestly feel okay with yourself just as you are, whether that’s with a BMI of 25 or 35, slim or chubby, overweight or not, who am I to suggest otherwise? I applaud you. In fact, I’m entirely envious. I just know that for me, looking good is bound up with feeling good. When I feel good, it extends to both physical and emotional realms. So aiming for a slimmer, healthier physique, even if I acknowledge it’s not the one I’ve got right now–well, that’s something I can accept.
Yesterday, when I finally made it back to the workout club after my recent hiatus (Nice to see you again, Elderly Gentleman Who Always Wears Black Knee Socks! Good day, Sixty-Something Woman with the Spiky Hair! How ya doin’, Teenaged Girl with the Chirpy Giggle!), I was astonished to find that I had actually lost more weight. (Oh, and also that an earlier blog entry appeared in the Best of Holidailies! Awesome!!).
I got to thinking about what, this particular time round, has made the difference that’s allowed me to lose weight. Did I suddenly acquire some new form of willpower?
Well, “willpower” isn’t exactly the right word, I think. Because what I’m experiencing just doesn’t seem to take that much effort on my part. Oh, and wait a sec, I did eat the majority of a 150 gram white chocolate bar the other day–so I’m not consciously depriving myself, either. In fact, I seem to be able to basically eat whatever I want, whenever I want—even if it involves ingesting copious amounts of chocolate—without the same repercussions as when I last did more or less the same thing, about a year ago (when I capped off my weight gain with yet another 10 pounds, pushing me past my previous all-time record).
Something struck me as odd about this latest turn of events. Decades ago–before there was even a term to describe it–I used to suffer from debilitating anxiety attacks. Lacking confidence, living alone in a strange city without any close friends or family, I began to find myself at 3:00 AM fretting about the sudden pains in my chest or the alarming pace of my racing heartbeat. After hours of internal battles and too scared to sleep, I’d finally wear myself out and fall into an exhausted slumber for a couple of hours before daybreak.
After fielding endless frantic queries about the myriad symptoms of heart attacks and several other fatal illnesses over the course of a year, one day The Nurse finally said to me, “Look, I just don’t get it. Instead of staying up all night stressing about whether or not you’re having a heart attack, why don’t you just go to the emergency room as soon as it starts? You’ll get examined, they’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong with you, and then you can go back home and go to sleep.” And of course she was right; the few times I did go, the doctor’s reassurance caused the the symptoms to subside, and I was able to relax and go home to bed.
It had never before occurred to me to just “give in to it.” I’d always felt that I was required to somehow vanquish the fear, that if I succumbed and went to the emerg, it would mean that I was intrinsically weak willed and would, therefore, never overcome those panic attacks.
Well, after about 3 or 4 weeks of acknowledging those symptoms and having them deemed harmless, those panic attacks naturally began to diminish. To this day, I don’t really know why; it was something about giving up the fight, acknowledging them as the current reality–however negative–instead of trying, for the entire course of an excruciating night of pain and hyperventilating, to deny their existence. They just went away.
As I’ve mentioned before, the last time I lost a fair amount of weight (also rather effortlessly) was about 4 years ago, as a student at my much beloved nutrition school. About a year after that, the weight began to sneak back up. Since then, I’ve been struggling to lose it again, failing miserably time after time. Except now, since October. Why?
Perhaps the same principle applies to binge eating as to those anxiety attacks. Accepting the bingeing as reality (which is NOT the same as condoning it or embracing it as a welcome practise) without trying to deny, suppress, erase or judge it–may just be the ticket to eradicating it. At that point, the binges may just decide to go away of their own accord.
I don’t know whether this is the case in my situation, but I am most thankful for the current trend. It may simply be that trying too hard to prevent a particular activity–protesting too much–may, ironically, exaggerate the activity even more. I’d love to know how others feel about this one.
(“Well, Mum, we think it’s a great strategy. We just eat whatever we want, too, though we never do get quite as much food as we’d like.”
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