Date:   7/18/2007 1:51:26 PM ( 17 y ago)
Hits:   3,501
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=921450

Hi, Forum,


I am really feeling angry and humiliated and vulnerable as I post today. Because I have failed at my fast. I succeeded at my first fast, but at this fast I have failed. It is harder to fast as I adhere to my new rule of waiting 2 hours for every 100 calories eaten, to eat again, each day.

This new rule should support and enable my fasting in the long run but it was harder to start this fast because I didn't exactly keep the 2-hour rule and then I had to wait an extra long time to eat again, to make up ... I am SO GLAD I waited the extra long time and put myself back on track... but that waiting took real endurance (since I am really disengaged from life and the food fix means everything, I am basically living to get high on food -- so to do without it is a real challenge... this is a desperate situation, my disengagement, but it is really happening and I have got to face it squarely, though it really hurts to face it... it has been continuing for a long time... like, since I was a teenager... it just gets more scary and the consequences get worse as I get older... as of now, I am trying to engage in life, really trying, since if I do not I will end up homeless in the street)

I am feeling scared also. I was out of control.

What happened was that I started out (a-ha! I see what has been happening!!! OK, just listen!...) ... I started out Monday eating 600 calories at like 1 am because I was "entitled" to eat at that time.

It was the breaking of my first fast, the 24-hour fast. Well, after 600 calories,I was supposed to wait 12 hours. But I woke up again at 6:30 a.m. and ate ANOTHER 600 calories; I could not stop myself.

But since I knew this was the WRONG thing for me and for my sense of self-esteem and for my body (I want to value ME first, though I value my body in this process... I feel tyrannized by people who scream about DOING WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOUR BODY, as though you had to submit to a sort of rape and be driven wherever your BODY said to go... besides which, this sort of talk is usually from people unable to identify toxic cravings as toxic cravings... these people are basically wedded to a food addiction and don't want to confront it... I guess I feel really violated by that sort of "WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOUR BODY" kind of talk and I feel it is so often so totally dishonest).... anyway... so! I was COMPULSED, toxically, to eat the additional 600 calories at 6:30 a.m (Most definitely NOT "directed by my body" to eat this). But since I KNEW how wrongly i was acting I experienced healthy anger and got right back on the wagon.

This is what I had my "a-ha" about. THis 600 cals. and then 600 more cals. in quick succession was after a fast. A short fast but still a fast. I see that after fasting I am triggered to binge. ('Cause this is ALSO what happened to me after breaking my failed 30-hour fast, which lasted only 21 hours and a bit but which was this period of SOME fasting) Okay. Now, I just have to figure out a way around the binge trigger. I know I can do this!!!!!! I know that I can fast WITHOUT bingeing afterward!!!

... I suppose the easiest and best way is really just to take a long fast cold turkey and the detox process will take away the binge cravings. But I experience that I ´just cannot get past my mental blocks to long fasts... so I just have to do what I am doing, which is learn to fast for a long time by building up the lengths of my fasts gradually. I began with a 24 hour fast and am now proceeding to a 30 hour fast, increasing the time fasting by 6 hours each fast. I am not scared about fasting frequently. I do not eat any more than normal in between fasts. I follow rules for eating. Green living (raw, vegan ) food only and always wait 2 hours for every 100 cals. eaten, before eating again. (This has been making me feel much better already and I can't wait to feel the healing of a longer fast, when I learn to do that). 600 cals. max. per sitting.

So: Monday. Broke 24 h fast 1 am with 600 cals. Woke up compulsed to binge 6:30 am and ate 600 cals. After the 6:30 a.m. meal, which I did not enjoy at all since -- thank God -- I was full of such HEALTHY guilt (I was destroying my life! Every bite!), after this meal, I experienced wonderful HEALTHY ANGER and made a decision to wait a long time to eat after that, to give my body the rest it now needed. I decided to wait until the next appropriate time to eat WOULD HAVE BEEN had I gone through the day waiting 2 hours to process every 100 calories. Now, I ought to have waited until 1:30 pm to eat what I ate at 6:30 a.m. That was 12 hours after the last (break of fast) meal, which had been 600 calories. Then, after eating at 1:30 p.m., I would need to wait again 2 hours per 100 calories. Well, at 6:30 am I had already eaten 600 calories for the 1:30 p.m. time (eaten them at 6:30 a.m.). So then after 1:30 (2 pm finishing time) I would need to wait 12 hours... until 2 am. So! I totally repaired my self-esteem, and felt so great, by deciding, and following through on my decision, to wait from 7 am until 2 am at night to eat again... and at 2 am, feeling physically so well, from the needed break, which I had given myself instead of the usual cramming crowd of food in the day, at 2 am, was the first time I ate anything else that day. I ate 600 calories. Tuesday 2 am to 3 am. Emotionally I felt wonderful, too, and I felt also really calm and non-frantic and non-compulsed and really sober around the food. This emotional healing was of course due to the healing in my colon that my getting back on track had afforded. And to the connection between the enteric and central nervous systems. Overeat, and get Depression and anxiety. Because overeating acidifies the colon and the colon communicates with the brain. Refrain from overeating, or fast, and feel calm, stable, engaged, and well, and free from depression/anxiety. ... The feeling was wonderful. i felt so good and calm and hopeful and in control in a positive way.
Then: Tuesday 3 am. Just finished the 600 calories. The plan I had set for myself was to begin my 30 hour fast right after that meal. Well: I slept OK, I think, .... but I got up sad and angry, and resentful that I had set myself this fast to do. That morning (yesterday morning) I was just saying to myself: I don't want to do this. I can wait to eat, the 2 hours per 100 calories; I can wait to eat until 3 pm; but I just don't want to do this fast.

(probably I need to find much better ways of presenting fasts to myself .... I need to leaarn a lot of mental tricks... I mean 30 hours is nothing, even for me... I just need to shake myself right now and get back to some mental tools that I know I have... Not long ago I was fasting for 2 days straight, water only... more on this later. It's OK! I need to tell myself. The strain of trying this new sobriety of 2 hrs per 100 cals and green living food only except "emergency exceptions" which have been all raw anyway... this strain has had the effect of making me forget some of my fasting willingness and confidence. It is really all to fragile and raw to write about. I really want to get that confidence and willingness back! I know I can. i have it back already. This morning I again experienced healthy anger which said: "Hell with this! I am tired of failing! This is ridiculous! I know I can fast 30 hours or whatever!!! I am just going to go on the seven-day fast RIGHT NOW!" ... And I do have an idea, a hopeful plan, to make a fast of some days before I leave Berlin... though I do not want to set myself up to feel really bad if I do not achieve this... a part of me just doesn't want to hear about the difficulty of this fast... just wants to pin my hopes on it and go barreling into it, probably bingeing first... this is a part which I just now glimpse ... this part of me is in a hurry always. This part of me wants to skip over the reality and the pain )


So: Tuesday morning I went reluctantly out of the house and into what was supposed to be my 30-hour fast. Actually, I sort of thought: "I won't try to do this. I will put this off." But I don't want to put off fasts ever, really. it just is so intolerable to contemplate even one further day of toxicity and one further day of WAITING for release -- even if it would be strategic to wait and waiting in the short run would result in QUICKER success in the long run...

but this does not seem right so I want to look at this...

...HERE. I think fasting should NEVER be postponed! So I think my instinct NOT to postpone was and is right! I think -- I will just speak for myself -- I -- should always fast at the FIRST sign of needing to fast... I think this should be the policy; and I think that simultaneously I should just have in place rules or procedures or policies in place that PREVENT the binge that may be triggered after fasting...!!! ... The solution!


So, I think an urgent desire to fast is Healthy. In this state where detox is urgently needed, the thought of just eating through the day is so gross and I can feel how toxic it would be to eat(... I can feel this until until the cravings strike later and drown out the feeling) ... and i want always to heed this... not to heed it so destroys my self-esteem!

.... So, Tuesday morning: I had binged post fast on Monday but then gotten wonderfully back on track by Monday night and not even been binge-triggered... Tuesday morning I was feeling okay, only a little "worked out" by the effort of getting back on track -- though physically, as I mention, I had also a wonderful healing in the getting-back-on-track...


and so Tuesday morning I wanted to stay with my plan to take the 30 hour fast. I gues actually i felt a little ambivalent. i don't know. I guess was it toxic ambivalence I was feeling? just a negativity that says f**k it i jsut want to get high today?... or was I feeling just kind of tired and ... I really feel too vulnerable questioning ANY instinct to fast that I have ... I really want to protect my instincts to fast... I feel too vulnerable... I really want to fast and really want to believe that this is right and I am much too vulnerable even saying this... I feel horribly in danger and oppressed, feel unsupported in fasting, in refraining from eaating as I see fit to do...

anyway, on the way to the library Tuesday morning -- back on the wagon -- untriggered -- healthy -- just a little tired -- (to write these posts) I decided to take the fast. ...in the mornings I am more positive perhaps than later on...

well, I know there are also toxic reasons to feel urgent about fasting-- maybe -- i don't know -- I guess to the extent the body-mind sees fasting as an entree to (an access to) a binge.

(i would feel more justified in bingeing if I fasted, and enjoy it more, too... and the body-mind reads the intention to fast as some kind of promise of a legal binge... so there is a kind of toxic incentive ... if the fast is successful it alkalizes the body and heals the desire to binge and everything is good... but my fasts are still very brief and they don't detoxify me that much and I have to contend at the end of the fast -- as I have discovered, writing this post, -- with the compulsion to binge! ... I have fasted for longer times and the body really comes on strong at the ends of longer fasts and FORBIDS you to binge. I could not have binged if I had wanted to, after a longer fast; I would have gotten really sick. ... this didn't last long, unfortunately, and within maybe a day and a half I would be overeating again.

SO: It seems like my task, very clearly, right now, is to STAY ON the 2hr per 100 calorie rule and START a Real Day Count of Really doing Green Living (RAw, Vegan) ONLY... some organization and (aw, shucky-darn) grocery shopping (= p 0 r n o g r a p h y viewing) required... and the really kay task is to devise a system for NOT BINGEING AFTER FASTING... for just staying on the 2h per 100 cal rule even after a fast.

... I originally made a plan to break fasts, no matter how short, with 200 calories only, and then wait of course 4 hours before eating again.

.... When I was in the weak, late-night hours last night and deciding to fail at my 30 hour fast, I found that the promise of eating only 200 calories at the end of the ordeal was .. not enough of a reward.
i need to work on this problem. How to incentivize myself to keep fasts.

... Anyway, I need to finish up telling about Tuesday. All day I posted here and I got pretty solid, I really got positive (what I want to understand as positive) and I convinced myself to fast the 30 hours and I thought: come on. THis is easy.

... But then I left the library. i actually founda late-open bookstore. But wheile I was there I started having symptoms of detox. i felt a little fragile and weak. I was hyperventilating a little. i was having some panicked, lonely thoughts. I was scared. Because I had eaten raw legumes (thought by the ignorant to be Dangerous but this is b.s. and so whatever) ... I was being slightly strenuously detoxed by them and they were passing a lot of water out of my body and so I had the sort of "skinny" appearance and this was not really troubling, so that was fine, Iused to get scared by that and allow it to scare me off of fasting (a lot of things scare me off of fasting... I have got to address them all on this forum...) but what WAS scaring me was the feeling of tiredness-weakness. Was I hungry? No. And when I imagined eating I felt pain. my body was in a detox process and could not handle food. But I decided -- based on WHAT????? What made me decide to violate myself,my fast? What were my justifications? I am having a little trouble remembering, but I feel that even at the moment it is hard to know! It is like, the mind refuses to be examined on this point. The toxic mind says: you are going to go get high (eat), and that is that.
So... I decided to eat and suddenly the world had this rosy glow... it was so disgusting... I was justifying myself a bit with the fact i had achieved such healing the night before and that morning.
... I got into the Dreamy, Oh-I-Can-Eat-...I-Feel-All-Better-And-I'll-Just-Give-Myself-This-Food-"Tenderness" (Toxic Tenderness, really) -There-is-Nothing-Wrong-With-Me-After-All-despite-the-fact-of-my-being-food-drunk-all-the-time-and-living-on-social-security-for-disability-because-I-simply-cannot-get-food-sober-and-desoite-my-living-to-get-high-on-food-and-having-no-relationships-and-being-totally-disengaged-in-life-And-I-Feel-All-Better-And-All-That-Suffering-Was-Just-In-My-imagination-And-Surely-Just-A-Little-Binge-Can't-Hurt, sort of dreamy state. It is a euphoric state and precedes a decision to eat and is part of the "food trance."
Then I went home, pausing to buy rotten vegetables at the disgusting convenience store which is the only thing open, and brutally forced 600 calories down myself. I know this sounds overly precious and squeamish. i mean, 600 cals. But the point is my body could not handle it. I have abused this body so long and at this point it just does not work any more and I have jsut got to live by very strict rules for being gentle with it.

... Then I had my second experience of post-fast binge-triggering. I awoke at 4 am and -- feeling justified by the past few days' good behavior, stuffed down 600 calories more. This REALLY hurt. Not as badly as I used to suffer daily before the 2h per 100 cal rule, but badly. I was painfully bloated in the abdomen, hyperventilating, pressure in the head, tension, sense of strain, could no way sleep, horrible abdominal pain, bad.

... i awoke again at 10 am to begin my day and was simply compulsed again. i just wanted something like comfort or something. These are the emotional reasons for eating that I am not too clear on and have got to really work to identify and understand. ... I stopped at a supermarket on the way to this library and ate 300 calories (or, what I CALLED 300 calories, a banana and a mango, but it was probably twice that. I justified this by saying that this new 2 hour per 100 cal. rule was scary and might starve me and I was already eating less because of it... This is a major problem for me, I think, the habit of justifying overeating


I have feelings of frustration at everything being so out of control. Although, as I note in my headline, I am already back on my "wagon" -- that is, I have not lost my day count of (1) within each day, waiting 2 hours to process every 100 calories I eat and (2) being on living food only (with only "emergency" modifications; and always, totally on raw food only) (this program enables and supports fasting and in order to learn to fast I need to learn to live this way. Today is Day FIVE of this! So I have some progress toward fasting at length.

I also feel disoriented, having changed my regular schedule to spend basically all day at the internet working on sharing about and getting to the bottom of my failures at fasting and at the "food sobriety" that supports fasting -- so that I can succeed at fasting at last, and get healing in my life. The necessary healing will come only with a long fast. So my goal is to achieve this long fast. I believe I may achieve this goal by explicitly sharing on this site my struggle to achieve it.

I am considering myself as being in an intensive care facility or a rehab. I have an urgent desire for real change and progress and want to devote myself to this completely. So I get to the library internet access as early as I can daily and stay till 9 pm when the place closes (then it is a really bleak and lonely time for me but more on this later)....
With this daily posting I am bringing more awareness of myself to myself. I am feeling like shit since my progress is so slow but I believe I have effected some cha
..... I have never held myself to the project of really getting to the bottom of things and really learning to fast,before.
For instance, I am determined to begin a Real Day Count of doing LIVING, GREEN food ONLY... with no exceptions... I think this will really help. And what is more I am willing to do it... at least until I get back to the states and get access to my "raw" (though highly processed, and triggering) ice cream substitute. I have got to work on this issue. i have got to commit to green living food ONLY. This is TRULY THE ONLY WAY FOR ME TO LIVE AT ALL; TO EVEN BEGIN TO GET OR ENGAGE IN ANY SORT OF LIFE.... i got an email from my daad today and it is so sad, he has utterly given me up for a lost cause... i am such a drunk, a food drunk, that I cannot even function, let alone be a real person who is engaged in life. And he at this point just accepts this resignedly... it is INFURIATING to observe his attitude, or maybe I jsut mean horrifying. This actually motivates me to really go green living only... although it is negative motivation.... But what is infuriating is that my dad REFUSES blankly along with the rest of my family to ACKNOWLEDGE my food addiction... for decades now he has sat there and poisonously and viciously refused to support my instinct to refrain from eating or to fast, when this is the one thing that will save my LIFE. He sits there and says (to himself, he knows he is wrong and dares not say it to my face) that since i lost and kept off 20 pounds 12 years ago, any further "preoccupation" with food (and he was opposed to my losing any of the disgusting fat in the FIRST Place, and screamingly accused me of being "anorexic," when the rest of the world, including most importantly ME liked what it saw and no doctor could find anything but good health and I had achieved something I was really proud of) -- he sits there and says that the further "preoccupation" with food or desire to refrain from eating must be met with some sort of rigid resistance on his part... as I sit there horribly suffering from not being able to fast, and uncontrolllably forcing the (now non-fattening but still sufficienttly acidifying) food down my own throat... all this does not even acknowledge the fundamental moral truth that my body belongs to me and it is nobody's right to force me to be fatter tahn I want to be EVEN IF that interfering person LIKES the fat better or feels more comfortable with it or despite every evidence of my suffering horrifically in the fat sits there and says to himself that I am in better HEALTH! with the bingeing, the junkfood, and the unwanted fat!
... I am so sick and tired of this ignorance of fasting and health. I am so tired of it. And I do not want even to argue -- it is emotionally inappropriate for me to argue-- in favor of what I am doign on the basis that it is healthy since his violation of me consists in an ostensible desire that I be that -- healthy... so if I argue in favor of fasting that it is safe and healthy (which it is) I am giving my violator his way... well, maybe I can at least make him suffer by proving that I am healthier thin... but anyway i am just trying to find a motivation to live SOBER (i.e. on the 2 hr per 100 cal rule and ... my situation is that my dysfunctionality is being attributed to my having lost the weight I wanted to -- instead of to my continued compulsive overeating (of less fattening foods)... and this person is asserting essentially a moral right to rape me in the mouth with food (force feed me since he deems I am not fat enough)... and no recognition is being made of the fact that my dysfunctionality is so much improved since the weight loss and diet improvement... I SO do not suffer as much -- despite that I do suffer... mostly my suffering now is from loneliness... it is situational... it responds to cognitive therapy as well... I have got to address my loneliness... i am doing this NOW; by posting.


Last night: what made me fail? I was alone, I was not engaged, or "trying," in life (I was just in the let's-forget-everything and get high mode -- the my life's not worh taking care of mode); and I was scared. I was SCARED by my detox symptoms.
Scared and Lonely and Panicked and Without Connection or Engagement... How can I address these things -- not necessarily perfectly, just enough to make them stop making me binge, get high?


I am noticing some beliefs here -- some beliefs that are hurting me. ...
.. i mention "trying" in life -- as though being a material Success were the supreme value...
I have to make a definition of success that is really going to help me. This definition has got to be extremely specific, too; I mean that I have got to require certain things of myself every day ... and when I have done these things i can call myself a Success...



I need to give some background about where I was before all this New Rule and DAy Count stuff. I was sort of floating along; but I was in pain so much and getting more and more out of control and I waas undeniably using food and undeniably bingeing. Now i just feel sort of bleak and grim because I have to adjust to life without the bingeing and I have to do without that toxic tool. SO I need to remember this. My feelings today are or have been:

I am lost.
I don't want to go anywhere.
I don't want to do anything.
THere is nothing in the world out there for me

I am happy andd greateful I am committed, really committed this time, to waiting until the proper time to eat... i mean about waiting until 1 30 am tonight to finish my food for the day...

What remains though is that at many times throughout the day I just crave to binge I gues and maybe I am just fighting against this
it is overpowering to me. how can I get out of this state?
only by lengthy fast?


I had the thought that after fasting and being "so good" I had the need to be disobedient. I had the need to do this for "relief" from the anxiety caused by operating in an unfamiliar way also...

But then I bounced back with a joy in getting right back on the wagon and being defiantly sober, really strongly helping and defending my own life...an appreciation of discipline....
....which may be spurious, I worry ... may be more of a high.. like deciding on a path in life and getting high on that decision until you confront the reality of it.. discipline seems fun until about the fortieth hour of it (this is when I hit detox in fasting... though if I could keep fasting, how healed I would be, and I would feel so much better after the 3rd day, everyone says so and I have experienced this myself)

More feelings today...
i want to go to california and work toward being a movie actress there; I have chosen a school, based on the recommendation of someone I truly trust, but i only see misery for myself there ...and I do not even feel that I even want to be an actress... this terrifies me... there is nothing I want to do in life... and without mastering fasting, without getting alkaline, detoxed, and out of my food addiction, I can go nowhere! I could not manage a full time school schedule! No way! ... Though as soon as I do get truly sober and fasting, I can do anything, and what to do will becoem apparent... i have to connect this fact with the action of abstaining from my "raw" frozen dessert substitute and with stayiing on Green Living food only and with keeping my fasts and with not getting high on food and with not overeating and with staying on the 2 hr per 600 calories rule.... no matter how little fun this all is!!!

More feelings...
I am desperate .. I have nothing to look forward to.
i am going back to stupid boston, where I live...
Boston... horrible east coast people understanding and acknowledging nothing of feeling
in calif they understand feeling but there is nothing for me there
i am lost
i have no will to do this post
i dont want to go to therapy since i will be abused (therapist is nuts)


A word about the nature of my food addiction. Quickly and then I need to look over this post and finish it, try to address anything important I have missed...

... i am addicted to the sensation of being abdominally bloated. ... When i eat I am compulsed to create this bloating in myself. I guess really only certain foods cause the bloating and simultaneously create the craving for that sensation (which is also incredibly painful, after about 5 minutes after finishing eating) ... so the thing is to stick to green living foods only... no fruit or watery vegetables or garlic or cabbage-type heating cruciferous vegetables... just nonwatery leafy greens (arugula and other herbs, basil, lambs' lettuce, some spring mixes);sprouts that are green/leafy; sprouted spices only, green, leafy; and because it so effectively, really alkalizes, takes me out of the urge to binge, fresh ginger root.

This post is not that helpful to me I fear since I have been too tired and been driving myself too hard to do it... but I have got to keep trying

... Looking over this post, i am struck by 2 main incompletenesses...
1. how exectly to prevent post-fast bingeing
(Also, how to deal with fears -- panics, I would like to say they are -- that cause the premature breaking of fasts)

i want to think about this and come up with a plan... maybe just sharing about the compulsion will make the compulsion go away

and 2. My fears and doubts about whether it is Right for me to fast. .. For now, i will say that WHATEVER I DO in life, I am still a GOOD PERSON. So even if it is Wrong... I am good anyway. I really want to assert myself on this forum by coming out with some things that I have not come out with... that I really have doubt about and that really trouble me. This is a hard task but I must do it and God wouldn't have made a world in which my nightmares were what I deserved. i really need to clear the air but this is too vulnerable and I ned to stop writing.

But also 3. How to Post better. I need to address the posting more conscientiously and energetically and probably have a format and comment on certain benchmarks of behavior and progress every day .

Sincerely,
LAURAY



 

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