Previous post on weight & health: No change
Working with an NRT practitioner since 2016 has taught me that there are endless ways our health can be messed up.
We develop physical problems and/or inherit them from our parents, grandparents and ancestral line.
We develop emotional problems and/or inherit them from our parents, grandparents and ancestral line.
We develop mental problems and/or inherit them from our parents, grandparents and ancestral line.
We develop spiritual problems and/or inherit them from our parents, grandparents and ancestral line.
Spiritual? Makes me want to just give up right now. I don’t even believe in spirituality, but getting spiritual treatment actually made concrete changes in my life, so I reluctantly guess this is true. My NRT practitioner treats the first three, and we’ve been plowing through layers and layers and f*&^-ing layers of my and my ancestors’ crap for three and a half years now.
In April, she told me my spleen (and spleen energy) was ailing and we needed to give it a lot of support. Among other steps, she recommended I avoid cow’s milk, wheat and sugar (except for fruit).
This is yet another variation of the diet I was put on by various doctors when I was in my 20s, 30s and 40s. Apparently my body just does NOT do well with those things. So here we go again: no sugar, wheat or dairy!
But I’ve also been working hard with Kerry Ito of Reclaim Your Joy and we’ve been focusing on my deep emotional reasons for using sweets as a coping mechanism. She has also wanted me to experiment with staying off the sugar, so I committed yet again. As of April 24th, I’ve greatly reduced the amount of sugar, wheat and dairy I eat.
Kerry and I have uncovered and released a lot of my self-destructive beliefs and fears in the past several months and — after I’ve spent 25 years working on my sugar dependence using various therapies — Kerry and I are making serious headway. I can tell because this has been the easiest it’s ever been to give up sugar.
This has been the easiest it’s ever been to give up sugar!
I remind myself that the healers that are currently in my life aren’t miracle workers. I’ve been working on my s@%# since 1994 and if it’s paying off now it’s because of all my work, not because Kerry is magical.
I also have to admit that the first week or so was very hard. I hated the first week or so. But after that, the past three weeks of this drastically changed way of eating has been easier than I expected. I eat animal protein, vegetables, fruit (fresh and dried), nuts and seeds. Instead of bread, I make rice or potatoes. Instead of cow’s milk, rice milk. If I need extra sweetness, I have dark chocolate, coconut chips or granola. It’s going shockingly well. I’ve done this diet so many times, but this is the first time I haven’t felt deprived and resentful the whole time. Eating this way feels…good…whoa…
Friends even tell me I even look a bit smaller! Of course, my weight loss is deadly slow. At 52 years old, 5 foot 2 inches tall, 203 pounds (92 kg or 14.5 stone) and six years since I got fat, the weight doesn’t move quickly. I’m down maybe two pounds. Yeah, two pounds in four weeks, even though I’ve cut out the huge amounts of carbs and sweets I was eating all day long. My fatness doesn’t reduce even with less food and better nutrition!
But stunningly I’m losing my taste for layer cakes piled high with buttercream frosting. I’m not drawn to racks of candy bars. When I do treat myself to coffee with sugar, I don’t need much sugar at all. My sugar cravings have been almost nil. Shocking.
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But the depression came back last weekend and I’ve spent the week feeling angry, weepy, low energy and have been doing a lot of zombie-like staring into space with a blank mind. Or with an active mind, but it’s the zombie-like staring and not feeling like moving that has been the biggest sign that I’m in depression. God damn.
HOWEVER — AND HERE’S THE BIG NEWS, EVERYONE — in my depression, I didn’t feel like turning to sweets! I even wandered around Whole Foods, determined to treat myself to anything in the bakery because I felt like crap and I deserved a treat. But none of the cupcakes or layer cakes looked good. I could imagine how the frosting would oil across my tongue and slip greasily down my throat, leaving me in no better a mood. I could imagine the sugary cake tasting sweet, but leaving me hungry again in a short while. It wouldn’t even fill me up. It wasn’t what I wanted.
I finally sat down with an oatmeal raisin cookie and a cup of peach yogurt, and after I ate them I went, “Well, that didn’t change anything.” Sweets just don’t give me the lift they used to. This change has been happening gradually over the past year and I’ve grieved the end of my emotional crutch. But I think the change is reaching completion and now it doesn’t make me sad.
OTHER BIG NEWS: now that my emotional relationship with food is diminished (gone?), my appetite has been down this week. In my depression, I’ve eaten LESS. On Tuesday I practically skipped lunch and went hours without eating because I was crying, zombie-ing and my body was too wound up to eat. I also couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to eat. Another plate of eggs and potatoes? No. An apple with peanut butter? No. A little dark chocolate with a banana? No. No food sounded like a good idea. It was astounding.
When I told my NRT practitioner this was the first depression ever that I didn’t eat snack cakes or buy cookies, plus I actually ate less, she said that’s what depression is supposed to do. That’s the normal response: people have less appetite and don’t eat as much.
“So that’s what people mean when they say they lose weight when they’re depressed!” I said. “I never understood that because I’d always eat and eat. I’d say how the fuck does anyone lose weight in depression? It seemed impossible!”
So apparently, I’m finally doing depression the right way. I now have the typical physiological response to depression: loss of appetite and eating less. This must be how generations and generations of people experienced depression until the American food industry got us chemically hooked on junk food. Now we self-medicate with snacks because chemically-altered food acts so much to our brains like a serotonin boost. Damn our American greed.
Anyway, I wonder what will happen next. Maybe some damn weight loss?
What happened next.