An end and a beginning

Ok. I packed up the scale and hid it in the recesses of a closet. I stopped counting calories and stepped away from the mirror. And I'm no longer calling myself raw.

New eating mantra: Don't eat crap.

What started out as a healthy lifestyle change turned into an obsession with food. I did my research before we started, read quite a few books. If I had them with me, I would pull out some reference quotes, but one claim that kept coming up was effortless weight loss and management. Now, I'm not overweight and I'm lucky enough to have never been overweight, but I've got a woman's body with hips and thighs and a belly and breasts when I so enviously lust after the figure of the small boned and the androgynous, tiny and curveless. I can be so self-deprecating, saying things like, "If I'm wearing the small, what the hell are people who are actually small wearing?" So all this talk about losing weight appealed to me (and my slightly self-destructive side).

But I didn't lose weight without watching calories, and when I did start to watch calories, I was grumpy and hungry, a general pain in Madeline's ass, all for about 3 pounds over a couple months. And the cravings. I was in a constant daydream about pizza, burgers, fries, falafel,... vegan or not, I wanted it all. There were good days and good raw meals, but when I gave 80/10/10 a go, that kind of broke me.

Throughout this, though, working out has been a solace. I feel strong when I'm hiking, cleansed after a run. I finally made it to the community yoga class this week, and it kind of kicked my butt and I was so sore the next day, but in a good way. I'm excited to increase my mileage each week, and I'm excited to increase my endurance. I'm going to keep working out, keep moving everyday, in the pursuit of strength. I'm going to stop comparing myself to others and find my own strength.

So I've abandoned my raw journey and going back to being vegan, albeit a vegan who eats a lot of fruit and vegetables (imagine that!). No junk, no preservatives, no artificial flavors, just real, whole foods. Don't eat crap.

The story could end there, but that's actually where things got interesting. If you've read the blog of a length of time, you may recall that I. Love. Bread. Specifically, a good french loaf, but anything soft and starchy will do. So the first thing we added back into our diets were whole-grain sprouted tortillas and then bagels.

My body freaked the fuck out.

I was crampy and constipated. That lovely complexion I had cultivated during my raw days was marred by deep and painful cystic pimples on my chin and a weird, spotty rash that spread across my chest and upper back. The rash thing happened to me once before a couple years back and lasted for almost six months, during which I reconfigured my entire wardrobe around very high necklines. I was miserable and wondered if I'd ruined my ability to eat cooked food forever. But it occurred to me that I had incidentally been gluten-free for the past few months, and maybe that was the problem. I'm unable to verify this with a doctor, as I don't currently have health insurance, and you have to ingest gluten for a couple months for a blood test to be viable, but I substituted my bread products for gluten free varieties about a week ago, and my skin has almost completely cleared. So who knew? All these years and all the money I've spent on unsuccessful acne treatments, maybe all along I've had an undiagnosed gluten-intolerance. I'm still kind of pouty at my lack of french bread and eating out as a gluten-free vegan seems next to impossible, but I've had surprisingly few cravings since adding more cooked foods to my diet. So far so good.

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep blogging. I don't want to talk about food anymore, because I'm tired of thinking about it. Maybe I'll use it as an all-purpose blog, document my knitting as I had intended a while back. I'm not sure yet.

-Eloise