The Path is Made by Walking

I’ve done the impossible. In fact I’m doing it right now. It’s been 18 weeks since I’ve had a taste of sugar or even a piece of bread. Twenty weeks without alcohol, six without dairy. I haven’t even eaten a single potato in 2018.  

Of course, none of this is actually impossible to do. It only looked that way from a distance, before I took the first step. Before I started I was filled with doubts and fears. What if it doesn’t even work? What I’m hungry the whole time? What if I’m miserable for months because I hate what I’m eating? What if I just can’t do it?

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Fast forward four months, and things have started to feel pretty comfortable. Normal, even. I’ve long since stopped counting days and weeks. To be honest, I haven’t even been paying attention to my end date recently because I’ve stopped caring about it.  

In truth, I think I’m a little scared to ever stop eating this way. I am finally starting to feel better, a LOT better, and I really don’t want that to change. I don’t wake up feeling like an old lady anymore, hands tight, knees sore, neck achy. I haven’t woken up with sore knees in over a month now. I had a friend visit last week and we spent two full days trekking up and over almost every major hill San Francisco has to offer, and my foot only started to protest at the very end of the second day. Even then, it didn’t last for days or weeks like it used to.

“Things are starting to shift” is how Brooke, my nutritionist said last week, and that felt like exactly the right way to phrase it. Things are not perfect, not 100% resolved, but there is movement happening. I am beginning to feel it now, the shift.

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At first it was really hard. I was hungry a lot. I didn’t know how to eat this way, so every meal felt like a struggle. What was I going to do for lunch? How was I going to stay full? I couldn’t bring myself to eat yet another salad. I felt so deprived. The hunger really messed with my head and my emotions. I started to wonder about my weight. Was I losing any? I should be losing weight if I’m putting myself through all this. That’s the reward I’ll get, right? Some part of me didn’t really believe that I was going to actually feel substantially better, so I was hoping to at least get some vanity rewards out of the whole ordeal.

I was at a really low point when I wrote my last piece about this. The hunger was constant and my body was still sore too much of the time. It all felt hopeless, and frankly I felt like a victim. Why me? Why this? Why were other people able to eat terrible diets and seemingly be fine? Would I ever feel better?

In some ways it felt good to feel sorry for myself, to get sympathy from others about my body and about food. I’ve been able to eat pretty much whatever I want all my life without gaining weight, which is not something one usually admits out loud. It’s probably the easiest way I can think of to provoke the resentment or downright hatred of other women.

So it felt good to share that I struggle with food and my body too, even if it’s not visible from the outside. That I can’t eat whatever I want anymore, and that maybe I never could. That maybe I wasn’t “getting away with it” all this time after all, but really doing damage on a deeper level. That despite I look like from the outside, I’m struggling too.

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I had my catharsis with some good cries and a few posts about my struggles, and then things slowly started to shift. It took me a while to notice because things were so gradual. I started to say “I feel about 10% better” when people asked, because I didn’t have the answer they were looking for. I wasn’t able to give them the grand success story “It’s all worth it! I feel amazing!”. But I also wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“It’s been months and you’re still not feeling substantially better?” I could hear the judgment, the assumption that I was wasting my time with all this diet stuff. In someone else’s mind this was a failure and that discouraged me, made me question myself and my plan. Then a client of mine, herself no stranger to health challenges said “10% in two months isn’t bad”, and I realized she was right. I’ve had joint problems for almost 10 years, gut problems dating back even longer than that. What was I expecting, that a few months of this diet and it would be like flipping a light switch? I guess I did kind of expect that at first.

The truth is it may take me years to get my body back to a healthy place, to get everything optimal again after so many years of neglect. I get that now, and I’m okay with that. I am laying the foundation now, that’s how I’ve come to see this phase that I’m in. I am fixing my gut, that’s step one. A month ago it seemed like this would get me 10% better, and now it’s starting to feel more like 50%. I’m also rebuilding my stores of the vitamins and nutrients I’ve been low on for years, letting those go to work on my blood and my bones. When I get all that sorted out, I’ll tackle step three, whatever that may be.

Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking. Antonio Machado

 

“I’m laying the foundation” has been a much easier perspective to inhabit on this journey. I stopped waiting for miracles, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and started noticing the small wins. I also figured out how I could still enjoy eating and stay full, thanks to both my nutritionist and a few of my clients who are on similar journeys. I eat a lot of meat and a lot of eggs and a lot of fat. I feel satisfied by my meals. I enjoy what I’m eating every day. I’m not even craving the things I thought I’d miss most, like french fries or pizza or parmesan cheese, because my savoury needs are being met.

Most importantly, I’m not hungry all the time anymore, which is probably the biggest thing. It’s pretty hard not to feel sorry for yourself when you’re hungry. Sure I have the occasional dream about apple pie or warm chocolate chip cookies, or catch myself squeezing and smelling bags of marshmallows at the grocery store, but for the most part I’m handling my sugar cravings too. I’ve discovered a deep and abiding love for all things coconut, especially coconut oil blended in my coffee every morning, and that goes a long way these days.

It’s amazing how much can change in the space of a few months. In January I stood starting at this ‘impossible’ chore ahead of me, and now I’m here. Here is not perfect, but it’s more than halfway through ‘impossible’, and I’m still going strong. I can’t wait to see what the rest of this year has in store for me now that I’m finally getting my stride.

K