Raw Confessions
ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2006
It seems forever that every Friday I have been telling myself, “OK, this is the weekend that I’m going to catch up on sleep, finally clean up the colossal disaster that is my desk at the One Lucky Duck office, deal with ridiculously important and long-neglected paperwork, finish outlining those business plans, complete the budgets to go with them; I will go to the gym, run those errands only I can run for myself, call my parents, finish painting my bathroom, return all the e-mails I’ve been ignoring, stop to smell the (organic) coffee… I will also conquer the world, and… yes, for sure before this weekend is over I’m finally going to spit out a long overdue blog.”
The reality is that my desk still exists under a sea of chaos, my errands undone, parents neglected, budgets not completed, world not yet conquered (though I’m getting there), e-mails piling up like mad, and I’ve not seen the gym in months. However, here I am writing a blog post. I decided the only way I could do it would be to do it in a way that helps me too… sorry, I’m being selfish. I get so many e-mails telling me that my book has been a life-changing inspiration, which is a seriously humbling honor, and here I am feeling like I’ve fallen off the very happy wagon around which my life now happily revolves. How does that happen? Now I’m the one who needs help (not easy to admit).
It seems I’m not really taking care of myself as I bury my head in sand dunes of work. And the silly part is that so much of what I do essentially revolves around taking care of others, with my time and often with my advice, which I’m in effect dispensing but now not following. As a result, I’m feeling quite… crappy. Just last summer I was twenty pounds (yes, twenty!) lighter than I am today. I do admit… everyone at the time was telling me I was way too skinny—and as gratifying as I most often found those comments (in the most dysfunctional female sort of way, lapping up everyone’s concern as well as the envy of other equally vain and dysfunctional females), I did realize that I was in fact too thin (yes, it’s possible).
Here’s the thing… Nicole Richie, the Olsen twins… sexy? Not really. Scarlett Johanssen? YES!! And if you adjust for height, their weight difference is significant, which is something people like me need to keep reminding themselves. Yet why do I still feel the need shed pounds so that people will start calling me skinny again?
Despite the happy medium I know exists, somewhere over this past winter and early summer I managed to ride the fat train way past the Happy Medium stop. So now I find myself in that zone where, even though I hide it reasonably well, I just don’t like the extra luggage I’m toting around. I could probably write pages and pages about all of this, particularly about all the emotional reasons why these things happen (why do we sometimes so deliberately sabotage ourselves?). The point is, that even while consuming (almost entirely) all raw foods, I’ve managed to find my way back to a place where I’m once again stressing about what I eat, even when it’s mostly raw, organic and good for me. ARGH!! What I really want is to be strong. I’d like to be able to feel like I can kick anyone’s ass. Run a marathon. Swim the English Channel. Leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Eating organic food, raw food, fresh food—all of it makes you feel so much better in your skin. However, I’ve felt really good for so long that my standards have shifted to where these days I just feel, as David Jubb would say, less than excellent.
As I practically live at Pure Food and Wine, I’m in an entirely food-oriented environment all day every day. We have the most delicious all-raw ice cream (in flavors like almond butter cup, chocolate brownie and more) sitting in pints in the freezer case. I hear them calling my name, I swear. These pints have voices that carry. So I guess it’s not so shocking I could pack on an extra layer of insulation. Though there has to be more, since at times I’ve eaten a pint of chocolate ice cream for breakfast day after day, and been lean like a string bean. What else? Too many business dinners out at lovely (not raw) restaurants where I am compelled (by culinary curiosity, of course) to try different foods. And more? Since everything at Pure Food and Wine is made fresh each morning, whatever is left at the end of dinner service ends up as the Midnight Hungry Staff Buffet… so with stress and maybe a few too many sake-tinis, I often find my way to the trough with the rest of the staff to nosh, like a deprived little piglet, even though I’m not truly hungry at all. At least not in my stomach, which is exactly the issue: I’m much less hungry on raw foods, but that’s not the point when there seem to be other things going on in my head that make the distraction of eating appealing. Figuring out what those are would be helpful. Another problem is exercise and I know this. I seem to tire myself out with work so that I feel too tired to exercise. There always seems to be something urgent needing attention, so while I might plan to work out for an hour before getting in the shower in the morning, it just doesn’t happen because I find myself racing to my office or the restaurant (where, did I mention, we have tons of yummy yum yum food everywhere?!).
The upside of all this is that I feel like at least it’s a learning process, and maybe my baring all this in writing could be helpful to someone else too. Here I am looking for something good about feeling like a stuffed kielbasa. I don’t know what is going on exactly… personal crisis? Pressure? Looking for love in the refrigerator? Contrary to what (I think) Juliano was once quoted as saying, we can’t all eat ALL the raw food we want, sit on a couch and “get ripped”. I’m proof. And before someone yells at me for calling myself “fat”, I am fully aware that I’m not FAT by most standards. I just don’t feel good right now. Not good, not strong, not hot, not sexy. At least not too much of the time. At least not like I did after I first went raw and for the next couple of years. And that’s how I want to feel again.
SO, tomorrow (or today, as I’m writing this at 4:30am, don’t ask!!) I’m going to start a ‘cleanse’ of sorts. Nothing dramatic or scary in the least, so if you’re hoping for more personal tales of a very graphic nature as those I previously shared, (which mortified my father when he read them), I’m not expecting to have any this time. But who knows what will happen, that’s the fun part. So once this is posted, that’s it, I’m committed. Hopefully when I come out of the delirium that has set in from still being awake now at the buttcrack of dawn, I will not regret having sent this along to Dhru and now being on the hook to document my progress, or lack thereof. But as I often like to do, I’ll just dive into the deep end with no life raft and hope for the best.
Stay tuned… I’ll do my best to write about what’s working, what’s not, what I’m eating, what I’m not and when I’m cheating (if I do). And hopefully I’ll figure out a way to get myself inspired all over again. We’ll see.