My life has become a whirlwind of teaching, friends, school, travel, and reflection. I can truly say that being grounded and abstinent around food makes all the chaos (good chaos) much easier to keep up with.
This weekend I spent time in New York just visiting with my grandma, taking yoga classes at Jivamukti, and chilling out. I really enjoyed the time I spent on my bus rides to and from the city because I rarely have a block of time to myself to just relax, read, listen to music, and daydream.
While I was in New York, I thought a lot about how there's no way I'm going to stop what I'm doing after Day 100. I can honestly say that abstaining from sugar and other trigger foods has radically changed my life. I am so much happier now, and my former mantra, "Everything in my life is perfect and wonderful except for my relationship with food, which fucking sucks and makes the rest of the good stuff not as good as it could be if I could just get it together with eating and love myself...." is gone. Truly incredible.
I also spent a lot of time reflecting on the evolution of my eating habits over the last 50 days. Where I feel myself moving towards is a really healthy and whole place, where I eat for nourishment and don't bother putting things in my body that don't really have a purpose. I know this is not for everyone. I know so many people who can eat a piece of chocolate just because it's tasty and pleasant, and if you are one of those people, enjoy!
But I am not one of those people. In New York, I went to brunch with my grandma and after eating got a little vegan pastry to go...it had no sugar and no animal products, so I figured, "why not?" But after I ate it, I didn't feel very happy about it. It didn't make me feel good, and I realized I was eating it to prove that I could eat something not super healthy and be "normal" like everyone else. So there's the voice again, the one that feels not good enough or not normal or not the same.
But I see it for what it is now, and I'm becoming much more interested in just doing what feels right for me. I took the pastry experience and got something out of it, and I did my best not to beat myself up for it. There will always be experiences like this as long as I am alive. It's part of being human, and I would be misguided to believe that I'm someday going to become perfectly balanced and make the right choice every single time. I'm not.
I'm starting to like all the mistakes, the learning, the growth, the ebb and flow. It's all good.
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