June 13, 2004

I don’t remember how old I was when I did my first “diet”. 6th grade, maybe? That sounds about right. I remember it, though. I counted calories. This was the early 70’s and that was pretty much what was available to someone who wanted to lose weight. I remember starting with 1500 calories, then moving to 1200 and eventually dropping down to 700 per day. I didn’t do this for a long time, just long enough to shed the prepubescent pounds that were starting to creep on. That was the beginning of my life and I have followed that same pattern ever since.

My pattern has been one of eating whatever I wanted until I had become “fat” in my own mind. I don’t know how many times I have actually been truly fat in my life. My own mind is warped in that sense. I think that if I over a size 14/16, I start to get nervous. When I was a lot younger, the scale defined it, but once I got through college and firmly passed the 155-pound mark, the scale said less than the size of the clothes.

Since college, when I took lots and lots of “uppers” to keep me going and keep me thin, I have been truly thin a few times. Most of the time I fluctuate between a size 12 (thin for me) and a size 16 (what I consider to be heavy for me). The times that I have been truly thin have be very extreme times of my life. The time that I was the thinnest, I also had a nervous breakdown – a true breakdown – just a few months after reaching my “goal”. I remained thin that following year, and only started to become closer to my true size after I started to feel mentally and emotionally better. It’s odd. I pulled out some pictures from that “thin” period. I look amazing. I know that I am blessed with good looks, good skin, good teeth, etc., and that being that thin, I looked like a model. You know what, though? I don’t see that in those pictures. I can look at myself and remember so clearly how miserable I was. I was so unhappy, so deep down sad, that, to me, THAT is what shows most in those photos. I look wistfully at my body at that time, and wish that that could come without the sadness that was there, but I think that I have also come to understand that the two go hand in hand.

I have a tendency to be able to stick to any “diet” for about 8-12 months. Most of the time it is about 10 months. After that, I just want my life back. I want to be able to go to a nice restaurant and eat what I want. Actually, I just want to be able to eat what I want to eat.

I am afraid that I am seeing that I am reaching that place with the BTD. In February of 2003, I read an article online that horrified me regarding the animal production industries – in this case the fact that an egg laying farm in San Diego had decided to “dispose” of their “spent” laying hens by throwing them, alive, into a wood chipper. Here is that article:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20030411-9999_1mi11chip.html

This sparked in me a big jump into the world of vegetarianism and Veganism. I became a Vegan, and I researched extensively into the inhumanities of how we treat the non-humans of this world. I liked the ideals of Veganism. I was obsessed with eating no animal products at all. I felt emotionally good. I got fat and felt physically awful.

8 months later I was exposed to ER4YT. This was October of last year. Eating that way made me feel SO much better, and helped me to lose the weight that I gained while being a Vegan. However, I have not become perceptively smaller than my “usual”. Actually, since I have added T-Tapping, I have dropped ½ a size. Will it help me to get smaller, I don’t know. I do know that I have reached my limits of obsessing about food.

There is no doubt that I have felt better during the time of complete starch elimination, BUT I can’t do it anymore. It's very difficult for me to do that. I'm tired of all of the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning. It's not that I want to eat fast food all of the time, I just want to feel a little more relaxed in my life. I’m tired of the obsession with food. I’m just tired of it. I feel like I have been food obsessing my entire life.

So, that’s where I am. Do you still want a blogger who is, most likely, not going to be more than 80% complaint? I still believe in the BTD principles. I still intend on avoiding wheat, corn, potatoes and the others BUT I will be eating a sandwich, some fries and a shake here and there. I don’t intend to do it every day. I intend, on a day in, day out basis, to make as many choices, based on ER4YT, as is convenient for me. I am going to continue to T-Tapp. I’ll be happy to keep posting on how it goes for me, but I am not going to be as compliant as many of the other bloggers are. Or maybe I will be. I’m not sure at this point. I’m going to just allow myself to be more relaxed about my food, and I’ll see where that goes. Got any opinions? Let me know….

On the food end, I have been pretty compliant, but I did have a patty melt last night. It is the first wheat since the weekend before the spider bite. It was rye bread, actually, and maybe I’m not as reactive to rye (although it was at a restaurant, so you don’t really know how much rye is in there), because I had no ill effects. The sandwich also had Swiss on it, but dairy, in general, doesn’t bother me nearly as much as other avoids.

I got up and had one of my scrambled eggs in sushi nori. I just LOVE that. I made my daughter spelt pancakes and had a couple myself. I have some maple syrup from Williams-Sonoma that has cinnamon in it. I put that on the pancakes and realized that it was a perfectly acceptable substitute for a cinnamon roll. Of course, the spelt made me sleepy. As much as I am willing to add starches back in, I AM acutely aware of the fact that wheat relatives make me sleepy - the safest starch for me is rice. The spelt pancakes were well worth it, but would NOT be on a morning where I needed to actually get things done. The blueberries and Rainer cherries are finally getting good again, and I LOVE both of them. I can just eat them all day long. Junky deserts can’t hold a candle to a good Rainer cherry, in my book.

OK – off to nap. It has been a CRAZY weekend for me, including having to have my daughter at a swim meet by 6:45 AM yesterday AND her dance recital last night. I just want to vegetate today as much as possible.