The Journey is Under Way!

Wow, I can't believe it is June already and I haven't posted anything on my blog at all in 2015 yet! Well, it sure has been a hell of a ride so far.....I finally was able to save up enough to move away from the town where I lived and was very unhappy there, to a city across the province where I feel happy, uplifted and very much freer than I was in that other place. I enrolled and made it through school for my 2nd year of my apprenticeship, and finished with the top mark in the class while being the only girl. I am currently waiting for the job I was supposed to be on, to start. Apparently it will start next month, so I can either wait or try to find work with another company. We shall see. I'm not sure how I feel about that so for now I am going to wait and see.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is the progress I've made towards my health journey. I feel I am really doing it this time! I can't always juicefast and I know it is not healthy to use it as a fix for binge eating, it was never intended for that purpose and that doesn't help a person to really move beyond the destructive habits in the first place. But anyway I decided May 1st that I wanted to do a juice and smoothie "fast" but I couldn't do it so I decided to cut out all sugar and junk food. I did that and am now on day 47 of doing that. For the month of June so far I've also been totally vegan and feel so much better eating vegan. (except for honey, which I buy from a local beekeeper). I have been experimenting this month with how much % of raw I can do in my diet, and have learned a few things to that end, but the experimentation continues as I continue to find the path that will work for me. I wanted to share a few photos:




Fruit salad

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juice made from local produce

 

 

 

 

 

Hummus I made without oil and without salt

 

 

 

 

Beet murder scene lol...my old paring knife finally broke

 

 

 

 

I was cutting a beet with my old knife and it broke right when I was cutting the beet. I have had this knife since way back when I first moved out of home when I was 17. At first I thought, "Oh no!Now what am I going to use to cut my veggies?" as this was the only small knife I had. I went to the hardware store and found a beautiful new, very sharp veggie knife made of German stainless steel. I happily bought it thinking how amazing it will be to have such a great knife to cut my veggies with now. I won't have to use the old, cheapie one anymore, although I am very grateful for the many years of daily service it provided for me! I thought it was pretty cool to be able to make room in my life for something better. I thought it was symbolic of my own journey of getting rid of the old habits and patterns to make way for much newer, better, healthier and happier habits. Plus, I love new, shiny things! Lol. But seriously, I think that beet really showed me something, and I was finally open to getting that message. So the journey continues....

 

 

 

 

What can we learn from pain?

Part of my eating disorder has always been about avoiding pain, avoiding the illusion of pain, or the fear of it (same thing). I have learned a few things from my own personal experience. These things are true for me, but may not be true for someone else because we each have our own individual path, but I wanted to write a little post about this.

Pain, on a physical level, tells us what part of our body may be injured, strained or damaged in some way. It tells us this so that we can rest that part of our body, or maybe do an epsom salt bath to help sore muscles for example.  This is the most basic purpose of physical pain. Of course physical pain can also be a manifestation of mental or emotional pain, and in this case it will show up in the weakest body part.

Emotional and mental pain can teach us, in the same way, what part of our spirit is hurting, and this is usually because we are not honouring it in one way or another. It can be a tool to show us that we are not honouring our true self, and then we can take this knowledge and put it towards our greater good, by then taking steps to honour ourselves. For a person with a background of eating disorders or depression, this is probably something we have never done before and that we need to learn. So how do we do that? By trial and error, experimenting until we find that which resonates within us. (The trick, of course, is to not get discouraged and give up, to always remember that we are worth it, and that in the end, learning this will be worth it many times over the struggle it took to get there.)

Pain can show us our deepest desires, our darkest fears, our worst enemies and the best as well as the worst sides of ourselves. It can show us our path in life, or give us a hint that what we are doing is not in accordance with our true selves.  I believe that this is valuable information given to us, if we are open to it, and we can use it to help us move forward, to heal and recover from anything, in this case an eating disorder. The key is to always see pain for what it is. It is here to help us, and we don't have to fear it or run away from it.  So in the light of this insight, I always try to remember to be grateful for the pain that I feel, because it is given to me to help me honour my spirit. If I can keep this attitude of gratitude, I can honour my pain and learn from it rather than trying to hide from it and destroying myself in the process.

I feel so sad...

I'm feeling so sad today, I saw on Facebook that a friend, Christina Newman, whom I have followed on Youtube and facebook for years died today following a long, hard battle with triple negative breast cancer. She had the most amazing videos and I felt as though I really knew her because she'd done and been through so many of the same things as I have. Her old videos about her eating disorder and raw foods kept me inspired for many a day...then she got cancer and she posted videos every week to document her story and it just broke my heart to see how much she suffered and she was so brave and strong and kept fighting like you wouldn't believe. She deserved to live and now she's really gone. I just couldn't help crying today and feeling so sad,  thinking back on her life, that could have been me, and really it could be anybody, and if I could learn anything from her it would be to never take anything for granted, and take care of your health while you can. Cleanse your liver and your arteries while you can and learn to love yourself first and foremost because you just never know what could happen. Make the right choices right now, one day at a time, because you can't see into the future and you never will know what could have happened if you hadn't. I am just getting this really strong message right now along with bawling my eyes out, and I feel like such a mess.

Anyway, I have been feeling a really strong message lately to do a juice cleanse, and I decided I want to aim for a 10 day reboot. This time I am doing a combination of my own juices and some of Joe Cross's type juices, and Jason Vale's. I was really getting this message strongly last week during my meditations. I decided to start this weekend and it is now Sunday and today was my first day. It is also day 20 of the 30 day raw challenge I was trying to do! Lol so that means this would be a nice way to finish that off, by juicing for 10 days.

In eating disorder terms...I struggled for the past 3 days. I felt like I had to cram in as much food as possible for some reason and I just had a really hard time and I overate on all 3 days. Just felt like as soon as I made 1 concession to it, all hell broke loose and I had to stuff myself. I am feeling a lot of blocked emotions and am really in need of some mental clarity and juicing will be so amazing for me. Ugh, I feel such a mess about everything. :(

update

Well, I need to post an update, much as I don't feel like it. I feel like a failure right now, in fact. I am not even counting days for anything because whenever I start something I just never follow through on it. I don't even want to show up right now, I wish I could crawl under a rock and hide for awhile, but I can't do that and I need to at least be honest. I did not do well foodwise for the past 3 days. I had horrible feelings of emptiness and they lead to cravings and I ate junk food and I feel horrible. There. Thank god that's over, it feels better to come clean.
Tomorrow is a new day and I intend to seize it and move onward. Sigh. Not feeling very well right now but I know it will pass and I can be feeling great again if I take good care of my body. Sad about this but thankful that tomorrow is a new day and each day we get a free pass to start over, which is an amazing thing and i will make the most of it. Will post again tomorrow and it will be a better day.

Day 8

It's Day 8 of what is now my own personal 30 Day Respecting my Body Challenge. I juiced today, 2 big green juices, and am going to have a veggie and rice bowl for dinner.

I am really working on letting go of attachments and judgements about myself around food. I really have been not respecting or loving myself and it's become an ingrained habit of so many years of having eating disorders that I didn't even realize what I was doing. I always thought the holy grail of eating would be the 100% raw vegan way, but not realizing that it is really love that is the true healer, and putting love for yourself first is a challenge.
I am also finding it scary to surrender all beliefs about food but I know that once I do this I will find peace with my food. That is my goal, to be truly healthy and happy and to have peace with my food. I can't express how exhausting it is to be constantly fighting a battle about whether or not it is ok to eat a certain food, and if not must I punish myself, it just gets so stressful and to set that aside would free up an incredible amount of energy I think!
I had a wonderful run this morning and a decent gym workout as well, and now my body is craving more exercise, so tomorrow there will be more of it. Yay!

Day 7...New Goal!!!

Well, this was supposed to be posted last night (Saturday) but I was really tired and went to bed lol.
But anyway an update is due.

I have struggled this past week. Still feeling the effects of the binge crap food I ate previously which I knew would take a good 6 or more days to clear, but then work was really busy and I didn't eat when I really felt hungry during the day. So then when I got home I was horribly, ravenously hungry. Itried to eat my salads as planned and for awhile I succeeded. Then Wednesday I worked a 12 hour day (which I am very grateful for as I needed the work) and when I got home I felt I had suppressed my hunger so much that I didn't feel satisfied with anything and honestly didn't know what to eat. I ended up eating a whole sack of avocados (5 small ones) which did not feel good in my stomach and I slept poorly. Then same thing Thursday I ended up eating nuts which really really didn't feel good and I felt really sad also and then Friday I ate rice cakes and hummus which of course are not raw, so I am officially out of the challenge.
But I am really grateful because I realized something. All the times I have tried to be all raw, the same thing happens. I end up feeling miserable and deprived and it all feels forced and like I am not living in my right mind, or doing this diet for the right reasons. I believe it's because I haven't been loving myself enough or respecting my body and listening to it. So I realized it's time to set  myself a new goal: To love and respect my body's needs. I am going to change this challenge to a 30 day Respecting my Body Challenge. Which means I am going to remind myself every day to listen to my body and hopefully over the course of the next 21 days I can become better at nourishing myself in a loving way. That is what this is all about. I realize my body just craves love, and I believe love is the best healer. I am going to eat what my body asks for and that way I can learn to become true to myself and I will most likely be high raw vegan as I know that is what my body loves best.
So the rest of this challenge is now going to be about releasing myself from judgements and from putting pressures on myself. My poor body has suffered enough abuse from eating disorders and really doesn't need me adding to it. and if I eat all raw but in a forced way with my body not being happy, I will never be slim and healthy and lean because I am not respecting my body, and my own judgements will get in the way and keep me trapped and may even cause me to binge on junk. After 31 years I know myself enough to realize what I need to do. I just have to trust myself enough to do it.
Today is day 8 and I will make another post later on tonight.
I finally feel pretty good now after a low energy day yesterday, my body was struggling to digest the nuts still, I could feel it and I gave myself two enemas and they helped immeasurably, and I finally felt well last night and went for a beautiful little run, and it was such a lovely warm evening for October.
I went for a run this morning and will go to the gym in a little while as well. I'm so grateful to be feeling so much better! Will decide what to eat and post on that later too. It'll be high raw vegan for sure :)

Day 2 of 30 Day Raw Challenge

Well, I made it through day 2 of my 30 days raw. I didn't feel that great today, withdrawing bigtime from junk and processed stuff of course, but that's what I was expecting and was prepared for it. I know I won't feel wonderful for probably a good week. And then mentally I wasn't feeling very good either, kept feeling a sad, heavy, negative energy. I think it's from sadness and sense of loss that I've spent so many days feeling ill and at the mercy of the eating disorder; it is a kind of mental hangover I think. So strange.
But anyway, I did another enema too, and it helped, but I still feel like crap. I know I will feel better soon, though!
Onwards and upwards :)