Good morning, world. :)
I have been out of town for a few days visiting my son. It was wonderful to get to put my arms around him and squeeze his neck. I had had reason to be worried about him. He has been through a lot recently. I am so thankful for my Christian friend who suggested I come to town to see her so that I could see him. ;) She put me up and fed me. She encouraged me in my walk with God and as a mom and a wife. And she and I got to spend time together while my son was at work. I am thankful that he has a new job. I am thankful that he has a lead on another possible new job that would pay better, be more secure and give him benefits. I am thankful that my youngest and I took that trip together and had such a large amount of mommy/daughter talk time in the car. I'm thankful that she had a lot of fun with a friend of hers while we were in Indiana. I am thankful that my husband got a lot of helpful stuff done at home for us while I was away! I could go on and on.
I highly recommend that everyone should find an outlet such as a journal, a blog, a facebook gratitude group... something where you express your gratitude and/or count your blessings and do so regularly! I have been in a facebook group that is for this purpose. And I just realized that I had dropped off the radar there and should return. It really does make a huge difference to your state of mind. Everyday, even when you are feeling down make yourself think of three things that you are thankful for. Everyday pray your thanks to God. Everyday, write it out with a pen or pencil or type it into a site. Have any of you ever read The Ultimate Gift? It is a fast and easy read but so uplifting. And it will encourage you to try this idea!
I am also thankful that I have a lot to do! I need to get up from the computer and start our raw nuts soaking. I need to start some oxtail stew in my crockpot and set it out on the deck. I need to pick up the house a bit as I should do every morning. I need to pack some food. I need to get my girls in the car and take them with me to the chiropractors office so that I can take them to the zoo afterwards where we will meet up with Christians and pass some time. Thank-you, God!
Monday, June 24, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Food from God and Unrefined Salt
Hello again, world. :)
Since I had not intended to start a blog about fasting and because it can sometimes be difficult to do other things while fasting, I took a few days off of my brand new blog. I'll just tell you quickly: It had a its ups and downs as fasts do and did not last long at all after my saying I wasn't sure how long I would go. But just from those days that I did fast I learned that all that extra weight I was carrying from my bad restaurant experience in Tennessee was 100% inflammation weight. Can you believe that? Nevertheless I am thankful for the gift God gave us through fasting. I am thankful that weight dropped off that quickly. I am thankful for learning something I needed to know about my health. And now that I am faced with that particular bit of knowledge I am thankful that I have a plan forming in my head to go back to the GAPS diet and finish getting all the healing I can out of it.
As for my purpose with this blog to explore various topics that might be a help to others. I want to encourage every reader to consider replacing the regular table salt that most of us always have had in nearly every food we've eaten. My talents do not lie in the direction of being a good technical writer so I am leery of trying to give you any scientific language or details. However, since I learned enough about it to decide to try switching over I have only become confirmed in a belief that it really makes a difference to my own health. I still require my armour thyroid medication, but my experiences have definitely led me to agree with the hypothesis that the refined and iodized salts that are so prolific throughout the modern western diet are very bad for the endocrine system. And as luck would have it, they are not your only option!
The most basic level of nutritional philosophy to back this idea up and one you will learn I rely on fairly often nowadays, is that the white salt in the little cardboard canister is not salt as it is found in God's creation, it is a product that results when man takes God's salt and tinkers with it to change it into something 'new and improved'. While we can be thankful that God has given us such wonders through the power of our own thinking and the twin abilities to learn about this physical world and learn to manipulate it, the fact remains that we often make mistakes and that some of the things we think we have learned turn out to be wrong. So while I am not anti-progress or anti-science, I am becoming increasingly aware that the fields of food and nutrition are areas where it would appear many mistakes have been made and implemented on a grand scale, harming generations of people.
There are so many people currently struggling with diseases that at some point in the past were considered rare or even unheard of that experts across many disciplines are asking the question, "why?" I don't think the answer is simple for any of them. I think that there can be many contributing factors and I submit to you that the issue of eating salt that has been stripped of all of the naturally occurring minerals that we otherwise would be consuming with it is one of the far reaching factors that could be a piece of the puzzle in many different scenarios of poor health.
If you want to make this change in your life, please know that it can be done. You can do it a step at a time.Start by buying yourself some salt that has color to it. Always let the color rule be your guide in choosing salts for purchase. It can be grey, pink, black or other colors. Just do not buy white salt even if it says that it is sea salt. You want to see the color of the other minerals in it with your own eyes. Remond's real salt bought in bulk is often the cheapest option for doing this, but it is not the only option. I've participated in bulk orders through a food coop that ordered from UNFI (and other warehouses before UNFI bought them out), through a local health food store that gives a case discount on bulk special orders and also through a farmer who I buy eggs and other farm goods from. She runs a food coop that orders through various other companies and we went in with her and several others when she ordered from:
http://www.saltworks.us/?mkwid=smhpSM0EV&pcrid=7341707762&gclid=CNXvuqnI7bcCFY9FMgodAFsAVg
Look and see what is available to you in your area or through mail order! :)
Next start looking at the salt content on the labels of packaged food, not for quantity of sodium but for the wording in the ingredient list. Some do use sea salt now and while you may eventually move away from packaged foods you can also just start being aware of the salt and buying more products that use sea salt or "unrefined salt" instead of those that just say the word, 'salt' on the label.
Lastly, as soon as your new salt arrives at your house, remove the old cardboard canister from its place in your kitchen. Put it in with your children's science experiment kit or with your cleaning supplies and tell your family that is where it belongs. They will adjust after you tell them not to eat it anymore and they will be at least a little healthier for it. God bless you all! :)
Since I had not intended to start a blog about fasting and because it can sometimes be difficult to do other things while fasting, I took a few days off of my brand new blog. I'll just tell you quickly: It had a its ups and downs as fasts do and did not last long at all after my saying I wasn't sure how long I would go. But just from those days that I did fast I learned that all that extra weight I was carrying from my bad restaurant experience in Tennessee was 100% inflammation weight. Can you believe that? Nevertheless I am thankful for the gift God gave us through fasting. I am thankful that weight dropped off that quickly. I am thankful for learning something I needed to know about my health. And now that I am faced with that particular bit of knowledge I am thankful that I have a plan forming in my head to go back to the GAPS diet and finish getting all the healing I can out of it.
As for my purpose with this blog to explore various topics that might be a help to others. I want to encourage every reader to consider replacing the regular table salt that most of us always have had in nearly every food we've eaten. My talents do not lie in the direction of being a good technical writer so I am leery of trying to give you any scientific language or details. However, since I learned enough about it to decide to try switching over I have only become confirmed in a belief that it really makes a difference to my own health. I still require my armour thyroid medication, but my experiences have definitely led me to agree with the hypothesis that the refined and iodized salts that are so prolific throughout the modern western diet are very bad for the endocrine system. And as luck would have it, they are not your only option!
The most basic level of nutritional philosophy to back this idea up and one you will learn I rely on fairly often nowadays, is that the white salt in the little cardboard canister is not salt as it is found in God's creation, it is a product that results when man takes God's salt and tinkers with it to change it into something 'new and improved'. While we can be thankful that God has given us such wonders through the power of our own thinking and the twin abilities to learn about this physical world and learn to manipulate it, the fact remains that we often make mistakes and that some of the things we think we have learned turn out to be wrong. So while I am not anti-progress or anti-science, I am becoming increasingly aware that the fields of food and nutrition are areas where it would appear many mistakes have been made and implemented on a grand scale, harming generations of people.
There are so many people currently struggling with diseases that at some point in the past were considered rare or even unheard of that experts across many disciplines are asking the question, "why?" I don't think the answer is simple for any of them. I think that there can be many contributing factors and I submit to you that the issue of eating salt that has been stripped of all of the naturally occurring minerals that we otherwise would be consuming with it is one of the far reaching factors that could be a piece of the puzzle in many different scenarios of poor health.
If you want to make this change in your life, please know that it can be done. You can do it a step at a time.Start by buying yourself some salt that has color to it. Always let the color rule be your guide in choosing salts for purchase. It can be grey, pink, black or other colors. Just do not buy white salt even if it says that it is sea salt. You want to see the color of the other minerals in it with your own eyes. Remond's real salt bought in bulk is often the cheapest option for doing this, but it is not the only option. I've participated in bulk orders through a food coop that ordered from UNFI (and other warehouses before UNFI bought them out), through a local health food store that gives a case discount on bulk special orders and also through a farmer who I buy eggs and other farm goods from. She runs a food coop that orders through various other companies and we went in with her and several others when she ordered from:
http://www.saltworks.us/?mkwid=smhpSM0EV&pcrid=7341707762&gclid=CNXvuqnI7bcCFY9FMgodAFsAVg
Look and see what is available to you in your area or through mail order! :)
Next start looking at the salt content on the labels of packaged food, not for quantity of sodium but for the wording in the ingredient list. Some do use sea salt now and while you may eventually move away from packaged foods you can also just start being aware of the salt and buying more products that use sea salt or "unrefined salt" instead of those that just say the word, 'salt' on the label.
Lastly, as soon as your new salt arrives at your house, remove the old cardboard canister from its place in your kitchen. Put it in with your children's science experiment kit or with your cleaning supplies and tell your family that is where it belongs. They will adjust after you tell them not to eat it anymore and they will be at least a little healthier for it. God bless you all! :)
Monday, June 10, 2013
Fasting Update
Hello, world. :)
I am feeling fairly weak and useless physically at the moment. Nevertheless, I am happy and well satisfied with my decisions. I suppose the the EFT has been useful. After weeks of trying to start fasting and stopping after a few hours each time I have finally gotten going. I skipped breakfast the first day and then had healthy light snacks throughout the rest of the day. I had an almond and a small taste of an artisan feta at the farmers market that first morning and about an ounce and half of that same sheep's milk feta around 4 in the afternoon of the same day. So Friday and Saturday were not true fasting, but they were my start. Yesterday and so far today I am fasting. I haven't even done the EFT yet today but if I start really being tempted to quit I will go do it. In case anyone is wondering, I did take the Lord's supper on Sunday, which maybe some people would consider cheating on a fast. But I intend to take it again next Sunday even if I am somehow still managing to stay on my fast.
One nice development has been that when I was super hungry yesterday in the late afternoon, which of course happens when starting a fast, my husband encouraged me to continue on and be on a fast. He said, I'd feel better about myself which really shows that he understands this situation and that will make doing this easier. When I did my 5 day fast earlier in the year he was really scared that it would be a bad thing and it made it an additional worry. I felt that maybe I should quit if he was against it. Now I suppose I don't have to worry about that.
Sometimes people drive when fasting and other people don't. You really have to wait and watch and see how it is effecting you. I slept in the morning far later than I usually do. I woke up with a start at 9:12, apparently having realized in my sleep that I have a chiropractic appointment. So I got up as quickly as I could in my bleary eyed state and threw my clothes on and made it to the chiropractor by 9:31, just one minute late. By the time I got home I felt weak enough that I knew I won't be driving anywhere else for the next couple of hours. Hopefully I'll be better later in the day.
With my three to four hours of extra sleep, I hope I am giving my body all that it needs to detox and do whatever other hard work it does while fasting! So I certainly intend to stick with this through tomorrow morning at least. I know many people start out with strict goals as to how many days they intend to go. I find that I do much better emotionally if I just start with the hope of going for a long time and the determination to be flexible and stop when I stop without any self-recrimination no matter whether is longer or shorter. I know from long time fasters that if you just keep going, eventually you get to a state of "true hunger" after a prolonged period of no hunger at all. My thought is to try to get to the no hunger stage and stick with it till I have a reason to quit whether that be "true hunger" or some pragmatic reason associated with the circumstances in my life. Although I know it would be the maximum health benefit to go till I experience the feeling of "true hunger", I imagine that I will quit before that for practical reasons.
When you fast you have to be ready to do less. Additionally, when you fast, you have to plan on how many days you will need to spend "refeeding". You cannot fast for more than a day and then just suddenly start eating normally. Your body will have a very bad reaction to that first meal and no telling how long till it recovers and you can eat normally. Some people recommend that refeeding equal the number of days that you fasted. But long time fasters tend to recommend that if you have fasted for more than 3 or 4 days you will still not need more than 3-4 days for the refeeding process. At least one has said the same thing, except 5 days instead of 3-4. I have decided that it must be a very individual thing and that it will probably be easy enough to figure out for each person once they have fasted for more than 4 days because the fasting makes you so very aware of your body's cues.
Most of the information available on the internet about refeeding is from vegans, juicers and raw foodist, groups that tend to be open to things such as fasting. But fasting is a universal. It is not the exclusive domain of those who hold any specific food or health philosophies. And if you search hard enough you can find modern people who are advocates of raw milk and/or high fat diets who also have experience with fasting. I am considering doing my refeeding with fat and protein this time around rather than with raw fruit. I'm also considering doing a bit of a prolonged refeeding. I will at least stretch it out more than three days where my body will remain in ketosis for the first three days of refeeding... like a broth fast to follow the water fast.
What I know for sure is that I have some time to formulate that plan. I am fasting today. So I am going to go now and enjoy the benefits to prayer and meditation that come with the fasting state! Have a blessed day, friends! :)
I am feeling fairly weak and useless physically at the moment. Nevertheless, I am happy and well satisfied with my decisions. I suppose the the EFT has been useful. After weeks of trying to start fasting and stopping after a few hours each time I have finally gotten going. I skipped breakfast the first day and then had healthy light snacks throughout the rest of the day. I had an almond and a small taste of an artisan feta at the farmers market that first morning and about an ounce and half of that same sheep's milk feta around 4 in the afternoon of the same day. So Friday and Saturday were not true fasting, but they were my start. Yesterday and so far today I am fasting. I haven't even done the EFT yet today but if I start really being tempted to quit I will go do it. In case anyone is wondering, I did take the Lord's supper on Sunday, which maybe some people would consider cheating on a fast. But I intend to take it again next Sunday even if I am somehow still managing to stay on my fast.
One nice development has been that when I was super hungry yesterday in the late afternoon, which of course happens when starting a fast, my husband encouraged me to continue on and be on a fast. He said, I'd feel better about myself which really shows that he understands this situation and that will make doing this easier. When I did my 5 day fast earlier in the year he was really scared that it would be a bad thing and it made it an additional worry. I felt that maybe I should quit if he was against it. Now I suppose I don't have to worry about that.
Sometimes people drive when fasting and other people don't. You really have to wait and watch and see how it is effecting you. I slept in the morning far later than I usually do. I woke up with a start at 9:12, apparently having realized in my sleep that I have a chiropractic appointment. So I got up as quickly as I could in my bleary eyed state and threw my clothes on and made it to the chiropractor by 9:31, just one minute late. By the time I got home I felt weak enough that I knew I won't be driving anywhere else for the next couple of hours. Hopefully I'll be better later in the day.
With my three to four hours of extra sleep, I hope I am giving my body all that it needs to detox and do whatever other hard work it does while fasting! So I certainly intend to stick with this through tomorrow morning at least. I know many people start out with strict goals as to how many days they intend to go. I find that I do much better emotionally if I just start with the hope of going for a long time and the determination to be flexible and stop when I stop without any self-recrimination no matter whether is longer or shorter. I know from long time fasters that if you just keep going, eventually you get to a state of "true hunger" after a prolonged period of no hunger at all. My thought is to try to get to the no hunger stage and stick with it till I have a reason to quit whether that be "true hunger" or some pragmatic reason associated with the circumstances in my life. Although I know it would be the maximum health benefit to go till I experience the feeling of "true hunger", I imagine that I will quit before that for practical reasons.
When you fast you have to be ready to do less. Additionally, when you fast, you have to plan on how many days you will need to spend "refeeding". You cannot fast for more than a day and then just suddenly start eating normally. Your body will have a very bad reaction to that first meal and no telling how long till it recovers and you can eat normally. Some people recommend that refeeding equal the number of days that you fasted. But long time fasters tend to recommend that if you have fasted for more than 3 or 4 days you will still not need more than 3-4 days for the refeeding process. At least one has said the same thing, except 5 days instead of 3-4. I have decided that it must be a very individual thing and that it will probably be easy enough to figure out for each person once they have fasted for more than 4 days because the fasting makes you so very aware of your body's cues.
Most of the information available on the internet about refeeding is from vegans, juicers and raw foodist, groups that tend to be open to things such as fasting. But fasting is a universal. It is not the exclusive domain of those who hold any specific food or health philosophies. And if you search hard enough you can find modern people who are advocates of raw milk and/or high fat diets who also have experience with fasting. I am considering doing my refeeding with fat and protein this time around rather than with raw fruit. I'm also considering doing a bit of a prolonged refeeding. I will at least stretch it out more than three days where my body will remain in ketosis for the first three days of refeeding... like a broth fast to follow the water fast.
What I know for sure is that I have some time to formulate that plan. I am fasting today. So I am going to go now and enjoy the benefits to prayer and meditation that come with the fasting state! Have a blessed day, friends! :)
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Emotional Freedom Technique
Good Morning, world. I am feeling pretty good this morning. I have quite a history of ups and downs. Sometimes I've been through years of almost all down in my health. However after years of working towards natural and holistic health I am finally beginning to make enough headway to feel the difference and have a measure of confidence in my choices rather than worry that I am taking a step forward and then three backwards over and over. This is a crucial point for me to recognize, to force myself to recognize. It is so easy to be in the habit of seeing all the negative and just being used to it. Now I know that I am improving and that I must be thankful for that. It is funny to try to explain, but it is actually a skill I am relearning to become a positive person. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that it is an entire skill set. I think of myself as being on a journey and I often express my thoughts as a part of that metaphor. On this journey there have been missteps and side trips. Now that I have confidence when I look at the path behind me to say for sure what some of the missteps were and where the path was straight and relatively smooth. I can see that the skills I have been learning are many and I know that there will be more to learn in the future.
Before I tell you about what I am working on learning right now, I want to share some background on my cravings. I was a person who was hungry all the time from as far back as I can remember up until just a couple of years ago. I was often like a monster roaming the kitchen and pantry areas trying to find "something" to satisfy me. And almost nothing ever did. I have learned a lot about cravings. You know that idea that your body is craving something because it needs it? Don't trust that. It may be true in a way, but your body can be fooled and can fool you. Your body may have come to associate some horrifically unhealthy food with the energy for some process even though that food is the worst possible way to enable that physiological process to happen. If you are having cravings with any frequency then there is probably some stuff going wrong within you where your general diet is not correctly filling your needs for some reason. And your cravings are more likely to lead you astray than to help you.
A few years ago, I went gluten free. That helped me some with the hungry-all-the time problem as well as caused me to lose about 20 pounds without even trying. It was a enough help that I really took notice. A couple of years later, I watched the movie, Fat Sick & Nearly Dead and then did a 15 day juice fast. I lost nearly 15 pounds doing that and it also helped with the cravings although they were still not eliminated. Last winter I did 6 months of the GAPS diet and I only experienced cravings once, which was when I was getting sick and just didn't know it yet. (It was really obvious about 12 hours later.) And lastly in February, I took a short break from GAPS, not to cheat on it but to do a water fast... or in other words a fast in the oldest sense of the word. This not only eliminated my cravings completely but also almost all hunger, an effect that lasted for more than two months after the fast. I believe I would still be benefiting from those positive results had I remained as careful in my eating as I had originally intended to. But there was one person in the world who could convince me, not only to go out to eat, but to go to the restaurant that he chose. I tried to explain, but he didn't hear me and then I gave in. For the salad course I was able to have a plain salad with plain oil and vinegar brought in tiny cruets. After that I just ate what they had which didn't sound like safe options to me at all but was what was available for the meal. I'm sure all the locals in Pigeon Forge and all the tourists love the Old Mill but I have no reason to believe that their food is even a second cousin to the "food as God created it" diet that I am able to do well on. In the next two weeks after that fateful meal I craved and craved and craved every sort of junk food on the planet. I felt as though I wanted to open my mouth wide and just inhale all the fast food in the state in one go. It was insane and provided me with a stark contrast between the state of health I had just before I went to that restaurant and the intense yuckiness of cravings for unhealthy food. It is a miserable state to be in. I'd had it all my life up till I was in my forties and I had no idea what an all consuming misery it was. Also, although I controlled myself and avoided giving in to most of the cravings, I gained 10 pounds in the two weeks after that restaurant meal and 5 more in the month since. So I have been trying to psych myself up to do another fast. Plain old water fasting is my top choice since it is actually easy to do once you get started; it's free; and it helped my prayer life and had the largest overall benefits. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get started, especially this time, starting from a state of cravings and hunger. My will power has been failing me.
One of the things I am currently working on learning is called emotional freedom therapy or EFT. This sounded crazy to me when I first heard about it, but you know how it is. Those who are desperate enough will try new things. My therapist, Linda, first told me about this technique a year ago, if I remember right. She walked me through the steps in her office. We did them a couple of times. I agreed to use it and see what happened. I took her printed out sheet of information to remind me of all the steps. I went home and went about my life while the information sat on the end table by the sofa gathering dust. Yes, I know. I should have had a place for it. Now you know that things just sit around unattended and uncared for in my house. As happens with things we are not paying attention to, it got moved around the living room and dining room a bit, for no particular reason most of the times it moved, and it was eventually lost, destroyed or thrown out. Once or twice since then Linda has asked me if I have been using the technique at home and I can't even remember how I answered her although to be sure, it was something I thought was non-committal or may have even been a distraction. More recently she asked me again. I told her that every single time I had done it I had to get the sheet and look at it without admitting just how few times that was. I don't usually hedge with her. And I do usually comply with homework. So then I admitted that I don't even remember how to do it at all. She did not give me a new handout. She confronted me on the fact that most of the people who can't remember how to do it have body image issues. Well, I don't mind admitting that I do. No surprise there. In fact, I already knew how much my emotional and mental state interferes with my memory as well. Then she walked me through it several times and gave me some rather embarrassing homework, which I have done twice now in the two days since I saw her. Don't you just love those things that make you feel like you are blushing even if there is no one around to see you? After that happens to me, I feel even sillier about the fact that I'm embarrassed and that it doesn't make sense to be embarrassed when no one even saw you.
In any case, I have been using EFT in order to help myself get started on a fast. The technique as it has been taught to me is a behavior modification method. It is a way to help myself do better on some goal I have been working on, or to work on a new goal. When you do the EFT you tap yourself over and over on various parts of your body as you say a positive statement. The trick is the statement has to be believable, not just to your mom or whoever your biggest cheerleader is but to you. You have to be able to believe in the statement. So I am using EFT to try to get going on a fast, which is a difficult thing to start. Linda reminded me to be believable and we modified my positive statement from "I can overcome my cravings" to "I will try...". Yesterday, I essentially skipped breakfast and had water instead. Today I am starting over with water to see how far I get. If anyone is out there, do an internet search and learn how the EFT works. Anything you can do for yourself for free...right? Give it a try with me Maybe we will all become better people together!
And have a great day, friends.
Before I tell you about what I am working on learning right now, I want to share some background on my cravings. I was a person who was hungry all the time from as far back as I can remember up until just a couple of years ago. I was often like a monster roaming the kitchen and pantry areas trying to find "something" to satisfy me. And almost nothing ever did. I have learned a lot about cravings. You know that idea that your body is craving something because it needs it? Don't trust that. It may be true in a way, but your body can be fooled and can fool you. Your body may have come to associate some horrifically unhealthy food with the energy for some process even though that food is the worst possible way to enable that physiological process to happen. If you are having cravings with any frequency then there is probably some stuff going wrong within you where your general diet is not correctly filling your needs for some reason. And your cravings are more likely to lead you astray than to help you.
A few years ago, I went gluten free. That helped me some with the hungry-all-the time problem as well as caused me to lose about 20 pounds without even trying. It was a enough help that I really took notice. A couple of years later, I watched the movie, Fat Sick & Nearly Dead and then did a 15 day juice fast. I lost nearly 15 pounds doing that and it also helped with the cravings although they were still not eliminated. Last winter I did 6 months of the GAPS diet and I only experienced cravings once, which was when I was getting sick and just didn't know it yet. (It was really obvious about 12 hours later.) And lastly in February, I took a short break from GAPS, not to cheat on it but to do a water fast... or in other words a fast in the oldest sense of the word. This not only eliminated my cravings completely but also almost all hunger, an effect that lasted for more than two months after the fast. I believe I would still be benefiting from those positive results had I remained as careful in my eating as I had originally intended to. But there was one person in the world who could convince me, not only to go out to eat, but to go to the restaurant that he chose. I tried to explain, but he didn't hear me and then I gave in. For the salad course I was able to have a plain salad with plain oil and vinegar brought in tiny cruets. After that I just ate what they had which didn't sound like safe options to me at all but was what was available for the meal. I'm sure all the locals in Pigeon Forge and all the tourists love the Old Mill but I have no reason to believe that their food is even a second cousin to the "food as God created it" diet that I am able to do well on. In the next two weeks after that fateful meal I craved and craved and craved every sort of junk food on the planet. I felt as though I wanted to open my mouth wide and just inhale all the fast food in the state in one go. It was insane and provided me with a stark contrast between the state of health I had just before I went to that restaurant and the intense yuckiness of cravings for unhealthy food. It is a miserable state to be in. I'd had it all my life up till I was in my forties and I had no idea what an all consuming misery it was. Also, although I controlled myself and avoided giving in to most of the cravings, I gained 10 pounds in the two weeks after that restaurant meal and 5 more in the month since. So I have been trying to psych myself up to do another fast. Plain old water fasting is my top choice since it is actually easy to do once you get started; it's free; and it helped my prayer life and had the largest overall benefits. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get started, especially this time, starting from a state of cravings and hunger. My will power has been failing me.
One of the things I am currently working on learning is called emotional freedom therapy or EFT. This sounded crazy to me when I first heard about it, but you know how it is. Those who are desperate enough will try new things. My therapist, Linda, first told me about this technique a year ago, if I remember right. She walked me through the steps in her office. We did them a couple of times. I agreed to use it and see what happened. I took her printed out sheet of information to remind me of all the steps. I went home and went about my life while the information sat on the end table by the sofa gathering dust. Yes, I know. I should have had a place for it. Now you know that things just sit around unattended and uncared for in my house. As happens with things we are not paying attention to, it got moved around the living room and dining room a bit, for no particular reason most of the times it moved, and it was eventually lost, destroyed or thrown out. Once or twice since then Linda has asked me if I have been using the technique at home and I can't even remember how I answered her although to be sure, it was something I thought was non-committal or may have even been a distraction. More recently she asked me again. I told her that every single time I had done it I had to get the sheet and look at it without admitting just how few times that was. I don't usually hedge with her. And I do usually comply with homework. So then I admitted that I don't even remember how to do it at all. She did not give me a new handout. She confronted me on the fact that most of the people who can't remember how to do it have body image issues. Well, I don't mind admitting that I do. No surprise there. In fact, I already knew how much my emotional and mental state interferes with my memory as well. Then she walked me through it several times and gave me some rather embarrassing homework, which I have done twice now in the two days since I saw her. Don't you just love those things that make you feel like you are blushing even if there is no one around to see you? After that happens to me, I feel even sillier about the fact that I'm embarrassed and that it doesn't make sense to be embarrassed when no one even saw you.
In any case, I have been using EFT in order to help myself get started on a fast. The technique as it has been taught to me is a behavior modification method. It is a way to help myself do better on some goal I have been working on, or to work on a new goal. When you do the EFT you tap yourself over and over on various parts of your body as you say a positive statement. The trick is the statement has to be believable, not just to your mom or whoever your biggest cheerleader is but to you. You have to be able to believe in the statement. So I am using EFT to try to get going on a fast, which is a difficult thing to start. Linda reminded me to be believable and we modified my positive statement from "I can overcome my cravings" to "I will try...". Yesterday, I essentially skipped breakfast and had water instead. Today I am starting over with water to see how far I get. If anyone is out there, do an internet search and learn how the EFT works. Anything you can do for yourself for free...right? Give it a try with me Maybe we will all become better people together!
And have a great day, friends.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
God has blessed me and helped me through rough times and he has done so in spite of my faults and failings. Because of God's grace, I would like to offer encouragement to others who are struggling. In order to be truly encouraging I believe I need to be honest and thus I must tell you that if my first statement gave the impression that I have come out on the other side, so to speak, of the dark times that is not what was intended by it. What I have learned so far is that it is a journey and that the journey can be endured or even enjoyed sometimes. I can be thankful for God's help at times when I recognize it. And I can recognize that his help is there in ways that I don't recognize and give thanks for that as well. So while times are hard and life is a trial as I believe it is, at least for some, we can still find comfort, joy and help for all our needs.
If you carry many burdens associated with the circumstances you face in life, then this is the place for you. If you suffer from depression or anxiety, I hope that you can come here and be helped along in your journey.
While I am making opening comments I should address the issue of the ever present comments section you see across the blogosphere. I am so new to blogging that I have no idea what I have gotten myself into technically speaking or even in the realm of what services and features are offered or not offered by my host service. But I assume that I will be somewhat in control of comments and will be able to offer them or not offer them, block people or delete offensive posts. I am considering a few different options. I am not in this to offer yet another outlet to the world at large to express themselves in any way that they have a whim to do at any given time. And I am not in this to give vent to people's negative thoughts although, yes, I know, we all have them. I may disable commenting altogether. But if I can figure out how I will most likely keep comments open so that they can be used for people to post about their small triumphs in life, such as when the person struggling with temper keeps their cool or when the person struggling with self-doubt makes clear and decisive decisions.
So today's encouragement is just a simple reminder. Remember when you smile it has power. Remember that if you can make yourself smile even when you don't feel like it, you are likely to make yourself feel better in spite of yourself. Remember that when you take that tiny moment to smile at a stranger you may lighten their load and help them more than you can know. And stress has such a tremendous physical effect on all of us that even if the only awareness you have about it is feeling momentarily better, it may make a significant difference in your health for the next couple of days or a month or even longer. Stress truly does effect our physical bodies in many many ways. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
If you carry many burdens associated with the circumstances you face in life, then this is the place for you. If you suffer from depression or anxiety, I hope that you can come here and be helped along in your journey.
While I am making opening comments I should address the issue of the ever present comments section you see across the blogosphere. I am so new to blogging that I have no idea what I have gotten myself into technically speaking or even in the realm of what services and features are offered or not offered by my host service. But I assume that I will be somewhat in control of comments and will be able to offer them or not offer them, block people or delete offensive posts. I am considering a few different options. I am not in this to offer yet another outlet to the world at large to express themselves in any way that they have a whim to do at any given time. And I am not in this to give vent to people's negative thoughts although, yes, I know, we all have them. I may disable commenting altogether. But if I can figure out how I will most likely keep comments open so that they can be used for people to post about their small triumphs in life, such as when the person struggling with temper keeps their cool or when the person struggling with self-doubt makes clear and decisive decisions.
So today's encouragement is just a simple reminder. Remember when you smile it has power. Remember that if you can make yourself smile even when you don't feel like it, you are likely to make yourself feel better in spite of yourself. Remember that when you take that tiny moment to smile at a stranger you may lighten their load and help them more than you can know. And stress has such a tremendous physical effect on all of us that even if the only awareness you have about it is feeling momentarily better, it may make a significant difference in your health for the next couple of days or a month or even longer. Stress truly does effect our physical bodies in many many ways. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139:14
King James Version (KJV)
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
Why fearfully? And why should the psalmist have wanted to praise God for that aspect of his own creation? I confess I am opening up a question that I cannot answer for you. I can speculate, but I probably can't do the topic justice. And I think that is OK. Maybe that is a question that can provide you with some personal prayer and meditation time. In my mind, today, I think it can very much apply to all the intricate systems and interconnections between systems within our bodies that can prove to be so delicate. Some of you are struggling with constant bad health. Some of you have terrible frightening diagnoses. Some of you have ongoing problems with a myriad of symptoms that you can never seem to get past, even though you can also never get a diagnoses or any grip on what to do about them. Believe me when I tell you that your state of mind has a large impact. It won't be the whole answer but it will make a difference. You can smile at a person today and never know that you just saved them the difference between coming down with a cold by tomorrow morning or not. You may make the difference between them making it to a very important appointment on time or not until after it is too late, all because of the tremendous difference that their state of mind has on their entire person from attention span and memory to energy levels and immune response. So when you hear someone say, "smile, it will make you feel better", don't dismiss it as a cliche! Smile at them and say, "thank-you for the reminder."
Have a great day, friends. ;)
Why fearfully? And why should the psalmist have wanted to praise God for that aspect of his own creation? I confess I am opening up a question that I cannot answer for you. I can speculate, but I probably can't do the topic justice. And I think that is OK. Maybe that is a question that can provide you with some personal prayer and meditation time. In my mind, today, I think it can very much apply to all the intricate systems and interconnections between systems within our bodies that can prove to be so delicate. Some of you are struggling with constant bad health. Some of you have terrible frightening diagnoses. Some of you have ongoing problems with a myriad of symptoms that you can never seem to get past, even though you can also never get a diagnoses or any grip on what to do about them. Believe me when I tell you that your state of mind has a large impact. It won't be the whole answer but it will make a difference. You can smile at a person today and never know that you just saved them the difference between coming down with a cold by tomorrow morning or not. You may make the difference between them making it to a very important appointment on time or not until after it is too late, all because of the tremendous difference that their state of mind has on their entire person from attention span and memory to energy levels and immune response. So when you hear someone say, "smile, it will make you feel better", don't dismiss it as a cliche! Smile at them and say, "thank-you for the reminder."
Have a great day, friends. ;)
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