Remembering What I Really Want

So I went on my work-trip to Los Angeles and I carried raw food with me in the form of dried black botija olives and goji berries (intending to eat salads to supplement).

And then I ate cooked food, the first that was offered to me. My client’s husband offered Korean food and I caved. I gave myself the best excuse – when I’m home, I’ll be all raw. But when I’m traveling, I can treat myself. I mean, I don’t travel that often.

Then some kind of gorge monster took over. It was okay to eat cooked food and it was okay to have dessert too. Why not? As soon as I get home, I’ll be all raw again, so I should make my travel time count.

But then when I got home, I realized that my birthday was coming up soon, and friends and family would want to treat me to my favorite foods, so what was the point of being all raw yet? I should start after my birthday, the 22nd of this month. Then I could go all raw with no distractions.

Addiction is a bitch that will swoop on any excuse to feed itself. That’s what I told myself. Instead of telling myself “no.” Instead of telling others what I needed for my health, “please don’t feed the animals, or even offer treats.”

I totally lost sight of the fact that my swollen leg and foot don’t differentiate between San Diego and Los Angeles, they just respond to toxicity. I wasn’t getting over on anyone but myself, to my own detriment. And I knew it before the first bite. I knew the first bite would mean the shameful subsequent bites. And the month of time before I found the resolve to say “enough” again.

That first bite was on Wednesday. I stayed in Los Angeles until Saturday morning. And continued eating cooked, intending to do so until after my birthday.

Then, while I was looking through my photo albums for a particular photo and found the one of me taken more than 10 years ago when I was working on the last leg of my weight loss journey. It made me ask myself why I got off of the high-raw path, why I slipped back into my old bad habits…

This is what I want. To feel clean, to move freely, to feel like I’m normal when I walk out in public. To feel like if someone is looking at me, it’s not in condemnation. This is what I need to remember when I think french fries taste so good or chocolate chip cookies…

I wasn’t going to write a post about my backsliding, of my sorry creation of new rules that made it “okay” for my eat poorly while I was away from home. Or my decision to eat however my addiction pleased. I was going to let my silence speak for itself.

But the real truth is that this battle is for my life, my vitality, my prosperity and my ability to be actively involved/engaged in my future grandchildren’s lives. It for my ability to someday feel good enough about myself to want to share my life with a man.

And it’s a battle that I know so many others share. So I had to write about it. For those who needed this message, I pray that God blesses you with something from this that will help you on your journey.