Day 8: Food history

I have had an annoying relationship with food ever since my early teens. As a kid I don't remember being overly interested much in food, and I was a teensy kid. But as I went into my teens, that's when the food cravings hit. I don't still understand it, what the trigger was. It might have had something to do with becoming acutely aware of my body image and trying to control it; I was quite involved in ballet, taking about 3 classes a week at age 14. By age 16 or 17 I was taking 12 classes a week. The ballet world is truly a breeding ground for eating disorders. All of the best dancers in my class (who went on to attend top-notch ballet schools and to dance professionally) had either anorexic tendencies or were bullemic. I remember being chastised by the teacher, who told me -- at 110 pounds and 5'2" -- that I could stand to lose a few pounds. I was very sensitive about feeling "fat" as a teen because I was no longer in the double digits, and was very clueless about what to do about it even if I did want to lose weight. One time I went on a broccoli, snickers bar, and coke diet (the drink, not the powder!) for a week. I was eating so little that I lost weight, but I was a raving lunatic the whole time too.

During my teens I had strange eating habits in general, even when I wasn't sticking to a regimen. I remember eating tons of cereal and yogurt. By high school I pretty much did my own thing, food wise. Not that everything I ate was awful, but I remember especially loving pepperoni pizza (I ate an entire large Domino's pizza one summer day on a dare when I was 18). I also loved fast food: Taco Bell nachos, McDonald's hamburgers and fries. I haven't had those things in years, but they can still make my mouth water.

I've been lacto -vegetarian since 1992. I had an old friend who I had recently seen after a long period of time who had become vegetarian, and I was inspired by the idea. A few days later I literally decided overnight to stop eating meat. I only wanted it for about a month, and then I was fine. I never noticed any difference from going vegetarian. None whatsoever.

Over the years I have tried going cooked food vegan from time to time, but I was never inspired to stick to it for very long since I didn't feel substantially better and always craved cheese and other dairy. I'm not one who's prone to allergies, for example, so I never had anything I was trying to solve through diet (apart from losing a very few pounds), until more recently.

I think I've always really been searching for truth in the diet arena, because I've always, since I became aware of such issues, felt that something was wrong, that the food cravings I had were not good and normal. Now I definitely feel it's addiction. But I'm not going to take the standard raw food approach and say that everyone's addicted to cooked food. That may be true on some level, but, quite frankly, my husband doesn't seem to care if he eats or not half the time (and in fact often just doesn't eat, which I find truly baffling). But for me, although I'm not necessarily totally out of control, to some extent I feel controlled by food, and I don't like it. I also feel that I'm always trying to exert control over food, something that "should" be natural and easy, not like how I experience it. If I could be over my food cravings (is that even possible??) life would be so much simpler.

I don't like feeling like there's some kind of annoying void in my life just because I can't have ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever my current craving is) when I'm hungry. But that's what I feel like right now at least some of the time. I want it to end once and for all, and I'm willing to stick it out to see if it passes. Thinking about that, I was reading one of Sarah's old posts yesterday and she said for the newbies that you have to be patient with this diet, and I'm so trying to do that.

In thinking about this blog, there's a part of me that wants to be really upbeat, you know, "Yeah, go 811 raw!" But there are a couple things that keep me from that: 1) That's obviously not truthful to my experience, and 2) If I ever can get through this -- and I hope and pray that I can -- I would like to show others with similar issues that just because it's difficult and horrible feeling at times doesn't mean you won't get there; that, in fact, the feelings you have along the way do not determine the outcome, only your determination at overcoming.

Today's Stats:
Food:

• 7 red bananas
• 1 asian pear
• Smoothie of 24 oz. strawberries, 1 red banana, 1.5 tangerines, 2/3 asian pear, 5 dates
• 6 dates
• Salad of 1 head of butterleaf lettuce, with dressing from 2 stalks of celery and 1.5 cups of tomato
• Smoothie made of 2 sticks of celery and two bananas (one of Sarah's recommended combos, but ICK! I hated it!)

Exercise: walk around a small lake (about a mile)
Weights and physical therapy
Bikram yoga class