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DAY 9 of Raw Only, No Fruit, and Lengthening Fasts!
getting gentle in order to maintain my day count of lengthening fasts... 42-hour fast now in progress.
Date: 5/2/2008 10:41:00 PM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 2409 times
I am using Alcoholics Anonymous as a support network.
I define sobriety for myself and am counting consecutive days of it in AA.
I have defined the following as sobriety:
Raw food only
No bloating
No watery vegetables
No salt
No fruit, not even non-sweet fruit (tomatoes, avocadoes)
and
One fast weekly, each fast being longer than the one previously, even if only by one minute.
The period of time between fasts to be adjusted as the fasts reach several days in length, whatever it takes not to jar my body, and to allow a nice long time in between fasts of VERY LIGHT eating immediately post-fast, and a stabilization before starting the next fast.
The most important thing in my Sobriety is that I behave AFTER the fasts in a way that preserves the healing of the fast. Only behaving in this gentle way will allow me to
By reporting my Days of Sobriety in AA I am supported to keep going in this program.
I have REALLY got to make changes in how I conduct my life and my post-fast eating in order to keep my day count. I have got to do this. I am determined to do it. It will be a process of my becoming GENTLE.
This gentleness will address the root of my whole compulsive overeating problem. In my life I "slam" myself around, and not gentle... over-work and over-drive myself. This pushes me to seek relief in "slamming" myself with food.
I will only succeed in lengthening my fasts if I BECOME GENTLE.
To commit to the Day Count -- to lengthening my fasts a little at a time -- is to commit to REALLY CHANGING and becoming VERY GENTLE.
Right this minute I am in the first 12 hours of my weekly fast. This fast will be 42 hours. I feel that I can do it.
I am very frustrated since I seem unable to get anything done, and simultaneously have overwhelming tasks (subletting my apartment in spite of a hostile landlord, getting out of this lease with the help of low-cost legal aid, God huge number of tasks, impossible ones, all dealing with government assistance programs.
I am scared and overwjelmed.
I have not acted enough today to get these tasks attended to.
I am so overwhelmed by tasks.
Therapy I have now 6 days per week and this is NOT good in some cases. One man has really beaten me and annihilated me. I needed silence and he threatened to end the relationship if I did not speak. a horror scenario. I depend on therapy, professional attention, so I keep seeing him... also I want to get the courage to sit there silently in defiance. As a dramatic catharsis, when I want to end the relationship, I may stage a sort of sit-in, in his officce, in which I refuse to speak all session, despite whatever abuse he throws at me (and he got abusive after only about 30 seconds of not speaking), and then, when the session ends, sit there and refuse to leave, just sit silent and still. Really scare him -- frustrate him. Pay him back. I won't leave until I am good and ready. Perhaps he will call the police. Perhaps I will be ready to leave before the police arrive, or he threatens me with them, and perhaps not. If I am not ready, I will not leave. I will just make someone pick me up and carry me out. I so hate this man that I will do this, to show that he cannot force or push me around or force me to speak or tell me what to do or force me to do things. He's a privileged-rich-well-educated person who apparently considers me disposable -- he's constantly threatening me with ending the relationship. Something in me demands that I defy him, and I want to honor this. Something in me is attracted to him - to his social power, to his privilege.
I share all this as a catharsis. When I assert myself this way I am healthy and this supports my fasting.
I am lost and confused and overwhelmed by tasks and am too busy during the day with support group meetings to get any of my tasks
Committing to this day count is really challenging. I have to make real changes if I want to sustain it. I have to get really gentle.
so, I have a 42-hour fast on now, from 11:14 am today until 5:14 am Sunday. Sunday: GENTLENESS!
A continuing lack in my life is rest and recreation. I really need to got rest. I really need to go to sleep now. I need to drive home now and go to bed. The trouble is -- the life-management problem is -- it's only after I go to bed that I get my recreation in, through reading. I have got to rectify this. Probably via my daily relaxation of 15 minutes prescribed by my therapist. ... this could eentually to a short recreation period. ... too hard to make time for any of this right now, though!! What is the way OUT of this???? out of being unabe to put tasks aside -- not that I am even getting anything done... ... my back hurts right now and i have got to stop!!!!!
so, I am committed to this day count....
I will write later.
One last thing: here is a letter I wrote to my therapist today which elaborates on this need for gentleness:
Hi, Pat,
I got your letters yesterday and wanted to thank you.
I really admire and appreciate your consistently savvy, wise, generous willingness to help me in all these matters of government-assistance programs. I aspire to this degree of generosity and willingness to help and trust in others (you are displaying trust in me, in my good faith, which is wonderful for my self-esteem).
As I mentioned before, you also intelligently prevented my making the terrible mistake of unintentionally cutting off future student aid by accepting forgiveness of loans based on 'permanent disability.'
... Well, I am working my way to success in healing through fasting. I have devised a program of gradually lengthening my fasts and am counting days of my adherence to it, in AA meetings. Today is day 9. The trick is to be oh so gentle after a fast and eat oh so gently, and as lightly as possible for a while so you actually get healing from the fast. i think the eal healing happens after the fast, durign the period of gentleness and light eating. This is when you change the harmful ways in your life that pushed you into the compulsive overeating/ "slamming food." I don't quite know how to be gentle, but I have got to figure it out, and devote real time and attention to it. This gives a physical healing like no other. This is the way out of depression (a result of the violence which also provokes the "food slamming") and anxiety. If I heal from these this will be the greatest achievement anyone could make in a life.
... I appreciate your affirmation of my talents. i feel that, while these are nice things to have, the most important work I have to do is emotional/spiritual, just so I can function. ... Of course, as someone who talked to me after AA today advised, a very important part of maintaining spiritual healing, or creating it in the first place, is to engage, when you do have interest and ability to do it, in practices of meaningful work. But I think i am just saying that right now I do very well to devote myself just to getting through the day in a new, gentle way that is committed to a physical change in how I live my life (i.e., committed to the gentleness required to keep this day count of lengthening fasts). One of my therapists has prescribed 15 mins. of relaxation daily, which i am struggling to make time for but which has got to be my first step.
Things are quite horrible, or seem so, in my basic-functioning areas. I am trying to get out of my lease and get out of the situation with the horrible roommate but do not feel confident of doing so. I am trying to get legal aid from these terribly over-worked pro bono legal places. Just setting myself to these tasks is un-gentle and food-slam-provoking. It is so horribly painful. How can I get relaxed?????
My roommate I am sorry to say has also committed battery against me - hurt me (slightly) physically. I've reported this to the police. I guess I will try to use this as a basis for beign released from the lease.
The AA people and people in other fellowships seem OK and some are helpful.
I am back at the SHARE center daily now, trying to work on setting up my fasting support group. I go to Codependents Anonymous there daily at midday and share with I think complete freedom. I think this is helping. I still am a little alone, though. Funnily enough, I am getting the beginnings of some friendships with some people in AA, more than in other fellowships, where I share much more openly about my life. I think in AA I am making my most important sobriety commitment. They can feel how much it means to me. I am curiously unworried about the fact I tell nothing of my real situation -- just identify myself as an addict, never revealing that food is my substance, that I wish to consider myself first and foremost a compulsive overeater; and that my sobriety consists most importantly in my adherence to a program of lengthening fasts, which will slowly detox and heal me (raw foods only, too: I am out of the frozen yogurt now, I don't dare hope for ever, but I feel committed to raw foods only for the foreseeable future. I should really never fool around with anything that is not raw/unprocessed... I wish I really knew this, though, and wish society/medicine really were willing to realize the horrific effect on someone of my constitution of processed food -- even of food that is at all cooked...... but one good thing is that my AA day count depends on my adhering to raw foods only, as well as to lengthening my fasts. This is my sobriety: to do raw foods only and for each fast to be longer than the last one, even if only by one minute. And one fast weekly until the fasts get longer and require longer periods of very light eating to recover in between fasts -- to get the healing. Then a short fast weekly among the longer "day count" fasts. Just creating an engagement in a program of healing through fasting. I have been trying to get into such a program, a really transformative program, for a long time. I have been trying to get engaged in really changing my physical state, instead of spiraling back to where I was before. I have some hope that with this day count challenge I have set myself that I will be brought to real physical change. It requires such care and attention and gentleness.
So much of my personal narrative remains untold and I feel in this fasting group maybe I will have the chance to tell the food story. i think this story is really important. So much of my daily suffering I never even told you -- how i would just exist in this relentless tension all day (still do) and then intently compulsively slam down these planned meals of food at intervals, never from true hunger, and purely as a violent and never-effective attempt at release from tension.
I just wish for some really challenging art-work (or, support to do really challenging work) and thus a way to have pride in myself.
Well, I have gone on longer than I thought I would, but hope you are well and thank you for reading. How is Cambridge?
Love,
Laura
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