Updates!

Thank you to everyone who's checked in with me since my last post. Your care and concern remind me that I am loved by so many amazing people.

Since then, I've started going to a weekly OA meeting. It feels like there's so much information, so I'm just taking it one day at a time. As many of you know, the 12 steps are based upon surrendering to god/universe/spirit/higher power, and although I've always been a spiritual person, I feel this relationship with something greater than myself beginning to deepen.

The other day I made something called a "god box." This was actually a suggestion from another book on spirituality and manifestation that I'm reading, but it blends with what I'm learning in OA. I took an old box that I've had lying around for a while, and decided that I would begin a practice of writing down on little slips of paper things that I want to let go of having control over (or thinking that I have control over), and instead allow the universe to handle. For example: I don't really want to be in charge of healing from food. I'd really like it if the spirit above could just do that for me.

It feels freeing to realize that I don't have to do everything myself and that I am protected by the universe. The picture to the right is of my god box, and I always leave it open a crack so that the divine forces can get in and see what I've written.

Switching gears a little, I wanted to share an easy recipe that I made to bring to a potluck baby shower (Hi, Deb!) today. I made a quinoa taboule, and it's really healthy and delicious. First I cooked about one and a quarter cups of quinoa, and then I let it cool. Later on I added about two tablespoons of olive oil, lemon juice from one lemon, diced tomatoes, scallions, and pine nuts. Voila!

Addiction is a Nine Letter Word

Every day since the 100 Days have been up, I've had the following thought: "Well, now my commitment is over so I'm allowed to eat whatever I want. No one is watching me anymore, or rooting for me, so maybe I'll just go back to eating all the foods I used to eat."

Each day this week it's been harder and harder for me to resist sugar and today I finally caved. And this taught/confirmed two things for me: 1. that I am a food addict, and 2. that I must really care about what others think because without the external support or the feeling that I'm accountable to others in my food choices, I don't make healthy choices. Oh hi, more work on self-love. Will I ever be done with you??

I ate coconut macaroons. It was very reminiscent of the ice cream incident back in December. They were delicious and I felt like shit eating them. I also could not stop eating them. I felt compulsive, I felt gross, I felt out of control, and I felt like I was relapsing. I felt like an alcoholic having a glass of wine. It's probably time to really commit to OA.

So...I guess now that the 100 Days are up, I have to commit to abstaining from sugar because I'm an addict and because I want my life to be happy, not because anyone is cheering me on or because I come up with an arbitrary number of days to try this abstinence thing on for size. I already did those things, so now's the real deal. I guess this is where the real work starts....

WHOA.

100 Day Follow-Up

Hey Friends,

I've been feeling like now that my 100 Days are up, I can technically eat or drink whatever I want, although I haven't really been interested in changing my diet. I did feel like a rebel badass ordering a diet coke last night, which obviously tells you just how tame I am. Nice girls for the win.

It was so sweet and delicious. But since I'm pretty sure diet coke is cancer in a bottle, this will not be a regular thing.

There is something I want to clarify from my last blog post. I wrote that I feel healed and like I've broken away from my emotional eating binges and cycles, and that is true. What I want to make clear, though, is that although my behavior has changed, a lot of my thoughts are still the same. The difference is that I don't act on them anymore. So it's not that I all of a sudden love my body one hundred percent of the time or feel confident and healthy at every moment. Actually, this past weekend, my "you should go on a diet" voice was ever present and I had to work really hard not to listen to it. I let it be there, I acknowledged it's presence, and then I did nothing. And that is the real change that these 100 days have given me. The thoughts are still there, I just don't give in to them.

I don't want to be one of those people who swears that BOOM! YOU CAN BE DONE WITH ALL THIS FOOD/BODY DRAMA FOR GOOD! because that is not what my experience has been. This truly is a process of recovery, and I'm still very much in it.

Next topic: I'm still going back and forth about eating frozen yogurt. And last night as I drifted off to sleep I was dreaming of cheese. Literally.

I have a few fears and hesitations about going from vegan to vegetarian. The main one is that if I do start eating some dairy, I can no longer say I'm a vegan and then people might serve me cheesy things that I don't really want to eat. The control freak in me would die.

The other concern is that I may get sick. After no animal products in my body for over three months, I'm a little scared of what a milk product would do to my stomach.

I'm sure I'll figure these things out along the way...just wanted to share where I'm at with my readers.