Good Grief, Gluten

Hello blog friends! I hope you all are doing well today. I am feeling pretty good though I have some things from my heart that need to be expressed.  I was reading a post at Eating Bender last night and it made me realize that I am not completely honoring my heart on my blog or in my general life these days. Despite all of the emotions roaming around inside of me, I am feeling generally happy and upbeat but for the sake of that,  have been holding back letting out the things that aren’t that great. What her post made me realize is that I have to stay authentic. I can’t be the kind of blogger that I am not. I am a deeply emotional person and while I enjoy writing fun and upbeat posts, all of life isn’t fun and upbeat. I know that I won’t be winning any popularity contests with this approach but if I can’t be me here, then I don’t need to be here at all? Ya know?  So fair warning, this post is just an expression of what is going on inside my head and my heart without a butterflies and rainbows delivery. Now, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, of course, so this whole post isn’t doom and gloom.

I have mentioned a couple of times now that I have been struggling with some emotional eating. Well, I knew that if I didn’t get to the bottom of it that it would begin to spiral out of control. So, I set out on a mission to really find out what was going on. I woke up yesterday morning and decided to forgo the gym and practice yoga instead. I did the 25 minute detox flow II from yoga download. I set my intention to uncover my emotional eating and I began the practice. I struggled. I was falling over, I was wimping out of poses, I even thought about giving up all together. Who was I that a 25 minute yoga session was kicking my butt so hard? It wasn’t even my physical body that was struggling, it was my mind that was struggling. It was my heart. I made it through to savasana and as I rested, a thought bubbled up. I was running a tad short on time but I knew that I needed to lay there in this final resting pose and meditate. I needed to listen to my clearing emotional blocks cd and if I did, I knew that whatever I was struggling with would bubble to the surface.

And it did. As I was driving to work, I admitted in my heart what I had been pushing out for these past weeks going gluten free. I am in mourning of my past life with food. I miss that I can’t hop in the car with my husband and go just anywhere for dinner. I miss that we can not longer up and decide to take a road trip on the weekend. I feel sad that my birthday weekend that is coming up soon is tainted by food and that I would just rather stay home than enjoy Charlottesville or DC in the fall. I feel sad that we have a fun weekend ahead and I am so worried about what I will eat.

All of these feelings feel very familiar to me. They remind me of the time in my life that I let dieting control my every move. They remind me of a time that food was my enemy and my emotions were a nightmare. A time where honoring my health and my heart just weren’t options. I’ve come a long way since then and I have done a lot of emotional work, both in and out of therapy, to recover my relationship with food and my true, deep, sensitive nature.

Only this time, this isn’t really the same kind of choice as dieting. This is a choice to honor my health and my well-being. Some might argue that dieting was the same but for me, it wasn’t. Dieting was a way of punishing myself and was my only coping skill besides binging. Instead of living and feeling my emotions, I was binging or dieting. This is a whole other world for me. I know the consequences if I don’t abide by the “rules”. I know the pain and suffering that it will cause. I don’t want to go back to my grumpy, unhappy self.  I love how being gluten free makes me feel. I love the rosy glow I have in my cheeks again.

But I am still sad. The reality is that this is a choice that I have to make everyday for the rest of my life. To make matters worse, eating too many grains and beans seem to cause the inflammation that causes all of my health problems. So, I am trying to find the right balance and I seem to end up over doing it every time. I’m struggling because eating too much meat makes me feel sluggish but beans trigger inflammation. Sometimes, I just don’t know what to eat. There are no books or blogs that are going to teach me the right way to eat for me. Only I can figure that out and the hard part is the suffering that happens when I make mistakes like eating at the Whole Foods hot bar or eating grains and beans in the same day.

But, here is the real deal folks, feeling sad is ok and it is a part of life. No, I surely don’t want to feel sad forever but the alternative isn’t pretty. In honoring my sadness and frustration, I am honoring my health. Because health doesn’t come by stuffing my feelings down with food. Health comes from honoring all of my bodies signals, not just the ones that relate to hunger and fullness. By eating a gluten free diet, I have learned that I do have a happy and cheerful person inside that can accomplish anything she sets her mind to. But I can’t do that by hiding behind food. It is so much better for me to just express it and move on. And that is what this post is, it is my way of saying, get over it girl. Feel what you have to feel and then figure out how to make it less sad and frustrating.

That is just what I am doing. I am reading everything I can, learning so much from other bloggers and really listening to my body. I know that eventually, this lifestyle will feel completely normal and my fears about traveling and eating out will melt away. In the meantime, I have to take some of this pressure I have placed on myself off. One of the issues I have been struggling with is honoring my body when it comes to exercise. Everyday, I have to plan, and plan, and re-plan all because of the expectations I have set for myself with the gym. I spend my evenings packing bags, planning meals and making the next day easier. I’ve been spending the entire weekend cooking and planning outfits. But what about right now? What about living in the moment and feeling free? I have been leaving my house around 5:15 or 5:30 in the morning and not getting home until 6 or 7 at night. And then when I get home, the cycle starts all over and by the time I am done, it is bed time. I can’t live like that anymore. I just can’t.

Now, I know that I still have to do my meal planning and shopping and all that jazz but what I don’t have to do is schedule my life around going to the gym. I just don’t want to live that way and I don’t have to. I have decided to forgo my morning gym routine, at least for now and focus on my yoga practice. Having a daily yoga practice has been my goal from the first moment I set foot on my mat. By focusing on this goal, I can take so many pressures off of myself. Sure, I will still have to get up at the crack of dawn but there will be no bag packing necessary. I can do yoga in my underwear and then go about my day in the moment rather than in advance planning mode. I think my body will thank me.

On another note, I have been doing the food journal things for quite a few posts now and have decided that it just isn’t me anymore. At least not for now. Right now, I need to go back down to bare bone basics and figure out what makes my body sing. One of my gluten free buddies has advised that I stick to a few basic foods and learn from there instead of introducing lots of new foods at once. I will never be able to figure out what my triggers are if I am eating a number of things that have trigger potential at once. For instance, I don’t know if my symptoms the past couple of days are a result of the Whole Foods hot bar or the increase in grains and beans. I don’t know because I did all of it at once.

As a result, my food plan is going to be very simple and basic. I will be eating a lot of the same foods and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And as a food blogger, I don’t think that makes for interesting fodder. I’d rather post about my fun kitchen adventures, reviews and recipes. I think the food journal thing is better suited for a once in a while thing rather than an everyday occurrence. I am going to keep up the grocery series because it is still very important to me to eat real, whole foods and do so on a budget.

I hope that you all understand that this is a challenging time for me and that in order to be happy, I have to honor myself and stop with the crazy expectations. I just have to be me. Now that I am off gluten, I am finally getting my personality back and I love this person just as she is. I want to honor her by honoring my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

Namaste, my friends.

More on This Topic?

• Un-Stuck
• A Time and A Place
• The Box of Limiting Beliefs
• Dallas, Here I Come
• Questions