Back on the wagon

I’ve made it through yet-another-1st-day on the wagon. Yesterday, I got strict with the ETL for Lent, albeit a little late. Parties over the weekend are my downfall. I know there are ways to overcome the difficulties presented by socializing, but I’m still feeling the effects of my very strong addictions to dairy, sugar, and caffeine. When I’m eating it, I just want to eat MORE!! Work is still very stressful as well. I’m researching more ways to soothe or reward myself besides using food. I’m proud of myself for avoiding sugar, caffeine, and dairy yesterday. The first three days of strictness is always the hardest. I swear I’m going to learn the lesson that abstinence works best. Why continue to start-over and feel the detox again and again? I need to keep reminding myself of this whenever I’m tempted by the addictive foods. Permanent change is hard work.

What’s motivating this round of strict ETL? I’m in pain. Serious pain. I’ve dealt with tendinitis in my shoulders and hips since, *sigh*, 2002. I’ve been in some sort of pain for going on 8 years. This fall, the pain went away when I did 30 days of raw back in September. And it didn’t return — probably because I was a mostly vegetable focused vegan. Since work stress began with a nasty surprise on February 3, I’ve been soothing myself with sugar, my old stand-by. The result has been lots of migraine headaches and a resurgence of my tendinitis.  My current goal is to make it through Lent doing strict ETL.  That means sugar & salt-free vegan.  And Lent, coincidentally, is around 6 weeks long.   Six weeks? Like the ETL 6 week challenge.  I love it!

It’s pretty easy to eat well when I’m suffering because I know that persistence will pay off and I should feel better in a few weeks. This is what we call a negative motivator. I do not want to be in pain. The “do-not” is negative. I’d rather be using positive “I-do” affirmations. Example: “I do feel energetic when I eat well.” Besides, the negative motivation is not sustainable. Eventually I’ll feel better. How to keep motivated then?

Accountability helps. I’ve revived my fitday journal and logged what I ate yesterday.  Not perfect ETL by any means.  I had an extra serving of refined carbs and I ate some processed soy.  But I avoided the sugar! And the cheese! And the coffee!   I call that a win.  No exercise, since I was too head-achy and sore.

I’m still quite head-achy and sore today.  I confess to having coffee this morning.  I was hoping it was caffeine withdrawal  rather than migraine and that a cuppa would help the pain go away.  No such luck.  Too bad.  I know the caffeine will only make it worse if it’s really migraine.  Could be a bit of a sinus thing. Fortunately I’m at a 4/10 on the pain scale so I can manage.  The periodic blurred vision is a bit of a pain in the ass though the coffee tasted good.  At least I used soy milk in it.  Unsweetened.  Go me!

Another positive way I stay motivated is to read ETL, vegan, and raw foods blogs and tweets.  I’ve been scouring the social media for excellent and easy recipes.  Organizing myself and planning menus is also very motivating for me.  Finally, I’ve picked up the latest copy of VegNews.  I love reading magazines.  It’s my reward for getting through day 2.  I really want to read it tonight before bed, so I’m not going to be as tempted to nosh on the naughties.

I had a great ETL friendly dinner.  I took Keen-O dog for a brisk but short walk.   Down with day 2 and onward to day 3!

I’ve been reading through the struggles of other bloggers who are dealing with new eating habits.  It seems pretty common to “white knuckle” it when it comes to refraining from the less-healthy edibles.   Sooner or later one loses one’s grip now matter how tightly (white knuckley) one grabs.   Willpower doesn’t work.  What does work is keeping it simple.  Change doesn’t come suddenly for most of us.  There are a few freaks (and I mean that in a good way) out there that do best by diving in, changing everything radically, and never looking back.  God bless’em.  Then there are the rest of us.

We’re busy. We’ve got kids, jobs, lives. We can’t spend our time expending the continuous conscious effort that willpower requires.  Even if you don’t think you’re thinking about your diet/body/food issues, you are on some level.  That’s how will power works.  You’ve got the will (i.e. your conscious) and you’re constantly applying your power.

That’s exhausting!!!

There are a few things that are helping me stay the course.  I fix food in advance and have lots of leftovers so I don’t spend tons of time in the kitchen.  I keep my meals simple.  Fruit and greens for breakfast.  Salad and beans for lunch.  Salad and a couple of veg dishs for dinner.  Rinse. Lather. Repeat.  I exercise where I can.   The key, is that I’m not thinking about it.  You don’t think about your other habits do you?  Showering, teeth-brushing, the route you drive to work, etc.  You do it every day effortlessly.

I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I’m not expending a lot of effort.  I check in with my support group every day.  I am looking at recipes for veggie entrees to add to my repertoire because I need to learn simple easy tasty ways to get dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes.  Otherwise it’s too easy to listen to my spouse beg for take-out.

I’m gradually spending less time and effort on my eating.  And I’m having success.  What a change from relying on willpower only to slip up and then get into the whole beating myself up thing.

My first response was despair and self-flagellation.  I had checked Twitter and Facebook when I started this blog in August of 2009.  My day gig is in the information technology  field.  I know that I need to include social media with any blog.  However, I work at this blog in my (rare) spare time.  I’m not especially savvy when it comes to web marketing and all of the various hot social media sites.  Nor am I adept at the art of inter-linking my blog posts to jack up search engine traffic.  When I started, the term rawhabit was open at Twitter. Feeling safe I became too complacent at getting around to setting up the appropriate accounts and getting the links between the blog and tweets established.    I knew there were was a risk that somebody might create an account with the same name.   Somehow I figured it was a unique enough term that nobody would think of it before I got around to it.    I take some blame here.

I also didn’t purchase domain names that were similar to this one.  I am paying off debts.  I wasn’t able to spend a lot of money squatting on domain names for spec. I know domains are cheap cheap cheap.  I bought as many rawhabit domains as I could. But if you have to buy a bunch of variations it can add up.  Especially with taxes and critical services like auto-renewals, domain protections etc.

I’m building my dreams with this blog.  As I’ve said in my bio, I feel a calling to help others incorporate living foods into their daily lives.  I’m in raw culinary school.  I’m on a 5-10 year plan to finish that up, define specifically how I’m going to manifest my dream, and make my best life happen.  My plan for this web space was to write it as a personal blog until I’m done my courses at Living Light and then change it around to support my livelihood — either as a restaurateur, a cook book author, a personal chef, a raw food coach, or all of the above.

With that mindset, I saw rawhabits.com as a threat.  What gives? Has the author seen this site? I assume so. One doesn’t go to the effort to purchase a domain without at least google-ing similar terms. One probably doesn’t go to the domain registrar to buy rawhabits without seeing that rawhabit is already taken (and then take a curious look-see).  I read her bio.  She was a marketing exec. She probably knows enough about web promotion and search engine optimization to bury any “competition” so far into the Internet ether that it would never see light of day.

But one can’t assume.  The words ass and me aren’t in assume for nothing.   It’s possible that she didn’t find this site.   I was deliberately keeping it low profile until I could build up some content, get my own css rather than the out-of-the-box wordpress template, figure out which social media sites to target with updates, figure out non-obnoxious ways to build “link-love” and improve search engine rankings, etc.

I cried for an hour when I saw what she had done.  I was so upset.   The shock did wear off though.  And I made a conscious effort to see the positive.  The living foods community is full of loving wonderful people who only want to share the gift of good health.  The universe is an abundant place.  There is room for all of us.  There is no competition. Our sites are NOT exactly the same.  Similar yes. Same no.   Why not believe that both sites can benefit from synergy? Sure we’re both all about habits and goals and making change.  We see with different lenses.  I approach habit/goal/change from the making yummy food angle. She approaches it through formal worksheets and exercise challenges.

I’m sure there are many creative ways to help each other out. At minimum we can acknowledge each others existence, make online friends, and link to one another.  What about a meta-site which incorporates both rawhabit.net and rawhabits.com? What about  a feed aggregator?  I haven’t yet a found a raw foods “Planet”, only mega-lists of all the raw blogs .   A planet is a type of software that auto-generates a feed aggregation of blogs.   Or we can do a mash-up with Yahoo Pipes or something.   Just brainstorming here.   I don’t know what will manifest or if anything will manifest at all.

I do know that I can’t take it so personally.  I do know that I’ve learned a very hard lesson about web presence and marketing.  Let’s see what comes.

Given how I feel today, I doubt I’ll be indulging in alcohol again anytime soon.

I got tons of compliments from my friends at the bbq. Over and over I heard how good my skin looks.  Somebody even used the term “glowing.”  I suppose that’s a small thing which the all raw eating has brought me.

The other thing it may have brought to me is a little weight loss.  I’ve dropped 3.6 lbs since the 1st of the month. I won’t mind if this rate of loss continues for the rest of the month. I’ve been exercising a lot too. I can’t attribute the loss to raw eating alone.  Correlation is not causation.

Also, the other thing that eating raw may be doing is increasing my energy level. I don’t find myself sleepy at all when bed time rolls around. In fact, I’m having trouble getting to sleep ’cause I’m just not tired.  Of course, it’s been over 100 degrees here for the past week and a half.  The tossing and turning from the heat isn’t helping.

I’m not feeling more energetic in the morning.  I’ve always been incredibly groggy and foggy in the morning.  So much so that I’ve been a huge coffee fan for almost 30 years.  I haven’t drank coffee since starting the challenge.  Usually I’m drinking water instead.  Or peppermint tea.  This habit was one of the “one smallest thing” I said I could do in support of my health each day.

In sum, I’d have to say that whatever effect eating 100% raw has had upon me has been subtle. I did find it incredibly difficult for the first 3 days.  I’m starting to get into the routine of it though.  I make a smoothie in the morning.  I grab a salad for lunch.  And I make some sort of tasty raw entree in the evening.  This pattern seems to be working.  I’m hoping I won’t get bored with it.  I’ve got mock salmon pate and raw marinara sauce left over from last week.   I made pizza flax crackers over the weekend.  I’ll be repeating those foods this week since I need to use them up.  I’ll have to get creative in how I use them.

I’ll also need to incorporate more green juices. I hope if I manage to go another full week of raw, with more greens, that my joint pain will eventually start to improve.