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.
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