Be Gentle With You

Dairy was fine. I figured it would be. No changes to my sleeping patterns or swelling of my fingers, so WHEW!

I went back to pure Whole 30 for two days, and today….

I ate a pita chip with my kabobs and salad at a Mediterranean restaurant. Okay, I ate a serving of pita chips which had lots of lovely salt and seasonings on them. And so begins the Grain Week experiment. No gluten or any grains of any sort for 37 days should mean my system is clear of gluten, so we’ll see if I have any adverse effects to it. So far, so good. My stomach doesn’t hurt or anything.

But, again, my issues aren’t so much intestinal inflammation/irritation as they are muscle/joint inflammation, so I think it could take several days for it to build up in my system and affect my arthritis.

Here’s what 48 and I are learning right now: We are a little afraid of food. I actually mean to use the word “little”. It’s not as though I’m not eating. It’s just that since it’s not easy to just grab any old thing, I find I hesitate to eat. Hesitate, not avoid. Also, I spent a week eating dairy, and now I’ve taken it back out (mostly – you’ll notice I forgot to tell them “no feta” on my salad today, and I ate a bit of it, but I pushed most of it to the side). But, my brain is not convinced of that, yet, I guess. I really enjoyed the Greek yogurt popsicles I was eating last week, and yesterday when I was eating Pure Whole 30, I nearly reached for one a couple of times.

So, I guess the way I was feeling on day 30 had some merit to it. I can do gluttony, and I can do Whole 30, but somewhere in between, when some things are allowed and some aren’t, I’m not steady. I feel vulnerable, like I’m going to fail…WHICH IS AWFUL!…because this is just about me. It’s not a test. There is no prize (besides better health). I am not competing with anyone. I’m actually doing pretty darn great! And STILL I’m such a terrible critic of myself. It’s like I’m my own coach for this sport, but instead of running alongside shouting words of encouragement, I stand there shaking my head slightly with a look of pity saying, “You probably can’t do this.”

That makes me so mad. You know why?!

Because I had the best childhood one could ask for. I have deeply moral, highly educated, incredibly creative, sacrificially loving, ridiculously funny parents who treated my brothers and me with oceans of respect. They told me they were proud of me. We are not a family who kisses each other goodbye or says, “I love you,” every time we hang up the phone, but all five of us know that we are loved with the kind of love that makes us feel safe and sure. My parents are partners. I really had the best model for marriage and family that I could ask for. No alcoholism. No abuse. My mother made dinner, and we ate together. Not one time did anyone tell me that I shouldn’t eat dessert because it would make me fat. No one was maniacal about exercise or diet, so that I would carry a bunch of emotional baggage into my adulthood about food.

So, if food is hard for me, if I am a scowling self-coach EVEN WHEN I’M DOING REALLY WELL, then how hard must this be for others!?!

If you are reading this tonight with tears in your eyes because it is so hard, and you are a terrible self-coach, and your childhood was maybe difficult, and you have some heavy baggage around food, then please let me tell you something.

So, this is the first time I have ever uploaded a video into a blog post, and it is enormous, I can’t figure out how to make the video take up less space — or move it around like I can do for pictures.  So, I’m sorry if my face is enormous and you feel like you are being yelled at by a big head!