Reclined for the day

What a rollercoaster.

On the job front, my stress about the uncertainty of the whole situation got the best of me. I decided to forgo the opportunity at the chiropractic clinic in favor of something that I could be sure of and comfortable with. This meant calling all parties and telling them of my decision during a particularly panic-attacked day. I actually called off work that day due to panic, something I haven't done in at least a year. More on that later. With the home care position, I don't have to worry about not getting enough patients to have a full day. If someone doesn't show, I still get paid. (Thank god for being salaried.) I will have a max of six patients a day compared to the 20 I have now. I'll be able to retreat to my car and listen to my Pandora and run errands during the day. I'll get to be out in the word and not under the roof of an office building for eternity. I won't be paid six figures, but I'll be paid 10k+ more than I'm making now, and doing less work to get it.

The only issue currently is that all I want to do is put in my two weeks' notice at my current position, but I can't until I get the official offer letter. I spoke with the Director over a week ago, but upon following up, was told that they're working on putting it together and that they were sorry for the delay. In any case, I know the offer already, and maybe it just does take time.

On the health front, I recently took a step back and realized that my health was suffering. I don't use the term suffering lightly. I truly was panic-ridden, void of any energy to do much else besides sleep and work, and was without any appetite. My skin has looked progressively worse, I'd gotten MUCH fatter (near my highest weight ever, in fact), and so my self esteem plummeted. I resorted to wearing and buying all of my baggiest and/or stretchiest clothes. I truly believe, now that I've reached out to a few people, that the 30 Bananas a Day website has some fundamental flaws. Clearly the diet wasn't working for me. In fact, it was making me ill. When I posted a discussion on the website's forum, the responses were both helpful and truly horrific. Some people wrote that they related to me. A number of others told me I was doing it wrong and had nothing supportive to say. I was doing everything "right," but had such severe symptoms from it that I could barely function, yet I needed to try harder. In the end, my cry-for-help thread was shut down because it went against the cultish guidelines of the community.

One comment from a non-moderator really stuck out in my head. They asked if I had any hunger, and if I didn't, that fasting might be necessary. I researched fasting to the extreme, and realized that whatever the reason for my symptoms, my body needed to heal with the energy normally spent on digestion. The day I started my fast, and even into the second, I felt amazing. This was what I needed, to feel that fog and fatigue lift away from me. I've been fasting for technically almost four days, but longer if you count the days that I didn't eat anything all day but had a small watermelon or a couple apples in the early morning or evening.

I've never fasted before and am still a little wary, but I plan on breaking it as soon as my body tells me to, or if I start to feel unwell. I have to do what feels right, and this feels right at the moment. When I do break the fast, the high-carb raw vegan cult mentality will be thrown out the window, and I plan on using my intuition and the signals my body sends to come up with a diet that works for me. I feel foolish for not realizing this before, but much more confident now that I can be healthy and in tune with my body when this is all over.

Tired day.

I've mentioned here and there about adding cooked food back into my diet. I think a large part of why I made that choice was because I was just getting fed up with being tired and depressed and literally not willing to eat all the fruit required to healthily stay raw. The alternative? Joint pain, abdominal discomfort, eye infection, histamine reactions, constipation, acne. This is the myriad of symptoms just from adding things like Fresh salsa (with salt, onion, peppers), yams, canned beans, and grains like rice and wheat. In truth I just want this to be easy, because I have so many other things I want to focus on in my life.

I've learned a couple things throughout this process.

1) Vary your fruits. I'm still not convinced that I'm completely unable to eat bananas, but I know that a diet that was based upon a potentially poor-quality fruit did me no favors.

2) Do your homework. In theory I have all the tools at my disposal to succeed on this diet. I know I need fruit, greens, sunshine, sleep, and exercise. I also know I am not getting these things. Writing that list out actually even brought it into a clearer light. If I do nothing else tonight, I am getting some greens in.

3) Do not let others' negative attitudes affect you. This is one I also haven't mastered. My mother is negative to the core. She's sweet, but she does not make me feel good about what I'm doing. Every time I try to tell her something I've realized on this diet, she finds a way to politely argue. Aside from fatigue (and weight gain from upping my calories to try to combat the fatigue), I had no issues on this diet. All of a sudden, I feel like my health is struggling under the impact of cooked food. I actually just wrote this to my mom:

Hi mom, was on my laptop and thought I'd write you a message. I am not feeling good about something and I just want to get it written down.

I feel like whenever I talk to you about my diet, you [politely] argue with it. Since I added cooked food back, I know you appreciated that I could be like a "normal person." Truth is, as soon as I added cooked food on, a lot of things happened: my face broke out with acne again when it'd finally started to clear up, I started having constipation and digestive discomfort, my spine started giving me problems when I had not even a micro amount of pain when raw, my skin got dry again, and my eye got infected. After eating potatoes, I would have trouble breathing and my eyes would get dry. After eating salsa, I would sneeze and my eyes would water and my nose would run. After eating beans, I would have a lot of gas. None of these problems were there before, not even at all. Going raw has made me "not normal" in your eyes, but going back to cooked is clearly worse for my body.

I am totally alone in this vegan thing, and don't even get me started on raw. I have the internet and that's all. I research this and know more about it than I know about what's going on in our country, but I have no friends to talk to about it. I feel even more alone when I talk to you about it and you instantly give me an argument about why I'm clearly mistaken about whatever I happened to say about it, good or bad. If I tell you something it's to try to feel less alone and just discuss it with someone else, but you tend to make me feel bad about it, and wrong. Either I won't tell you anything about what's going on with me, or you start to support me. I would rather the latter because again it's just me doing this; I don't have anyone around me to help. 

Ok, that's all. Talk to you soon. 

Lori


I have blogging to thank for allowing me to realize the affect she has on me. I do feel totally alone doing the raw food thing. Feeling alone is always a factor in the depressions that I sink into, and I really can't stand to hear another comment from her putting my beliefs down. I never force my views on her or make her feel bad for not eating raw. I do my own thing and occasionally want to talk about it.

Today I have eaten 100% raw until about an hour ago when I got a coffee with soymilk from the Starbucks in Barnes & Noble. I was so tired today and just have to have some faith that it was because I've been eating pasta and polenta and ketchup and tortillas, with so much less emphasis on raw fruit and greens.  Yesterday I had pasta for multiple meals. Yes it tasted good, yes I would love to be "normal," if it meant feeling great, but if that's normal, I don't want to be it. I'm trying to save my body from whatever it is that it would turn into if I continue to abuse it. Coffee will have to be the final frontier.

Finally I have a blog that I think is going to stick. I do just want to be happy! That's it!

Baby let's just go with it

I know when things feel right. 

Starting up my raw food bakery, though was right up my alley, wasn't right. I didn't have the money to pay for all the legal stuff and find a commercial kitchen space to rent. I didn't have the time away from my full time job to dedicate what was necessary to actually make it work. If I decided to quit my full time job as a PT, I certainly would not be able to make enough to pay for my credit cards, student loans, rent, and all the other real world elements that are working against me. When I do things like that, they have to be done perfect, I can't half-ass them, and I can't concentrate fully on them when I've got other things going on. Maybe I'll come back to Little Bites, but maybe not. 

This new job thing just sprang up out of nowhere. I've been unhappy with my current job for so long, but I haven't done anything about it. I let myself sink into a fairly depressed state, which overcomes my life in waves. In June, I requested a few days off in July. Thinking more and more about how much this job is not where I'm supposed to be, I requested a whole week off one week after that. I figured, I've got to set something up so, again, I can concentrate 100% on changing up the situation. Scheduling interviews during my work week is so conflicting in my mind. I cannot focus. It just so happened that leading up to and during that week off, I was so unbelievably fatigued, so much so that I had to stay in bed; there was no other option unless I forced myself to stumble about like a zombie. This was the banana fiasco as recently discussed, the mango fiasco only narrowly preceding. If I ever run into a date fiasco, I will have major, major problems. Anyhow, either the poor quality bananas or the possibly too-much-potassium situation was in full effect and I could barely function. Knowing that on my week off and that I had to get my hair cut now or never, I went to get my hair cut. I was nearly falling asleep in the chair, but not unconscious enough to bitch about my job! The very next day, I got a call from the hair salon owner's husband, who is the owner of the chiropractic practice I also mentioned recently. One thing leading to another, it looks as though I will truly be taking on the endeavor of starting up a practice within his clinic. Head therapist! 

This is the opportunity that I'm just going with because it feels right. When there's too much of a risk or I feel too out of my comfort zone, I just won't do it. With this, I'm just effortlessly taking the steps to get it done. I am putting in my two weeks' notice next week. When I'm not sure of something, the opinions of others weigh so heavily on my mind. Now, if I don't get an excited reaction from whomever I'm telling about my plans, I just let it bounce off me. Uncharacteristic, I think, but why question it? 

I used to say that it's not a question of if I win the lottery -- it's when. I'm spontaneous at odd times, and utterly conservative in my actions at others. Regardless, I follow my gut. In this case I think it might be life-changing. (happy-face!)