This is the end of my first month of moderation! I updated the progress page to reflect this week’s achievement of staying pretty nearly in the exact same place. And it’s okay! It doesn’t look like anything is happening, and yet I just know it is. I’m not worried at all about the lack of anything visible on the outside, because I know a lot is changing on the inside. Blogging is such a huge help, it really keeps me focused on this project, when I’d otherwise get bored and discouraged and wander off. I had some really hard days this week, and at one point I felt pretty sick and thought I was getting the Hamthrax, but through it all I kept thinking about how I could keep working toward my goals, even while I was miserable and curled up whining.

Food tracking success – by which I mean success at tracking, and success at inhaling anything chocolate that came near me

I tracked 4 days worth of food this week, which is a new habit, and an incredibly useful one. I don’t know if it was being sick, or what, but my nutrient percentages are awful. This is the daily average of four days worth of tracking food:

• 10% protein
• 51% carbohydrates
• 38% fat (which is hilarious when you consider that I myself am about 38% fat – suddenly that phrase “You are what you eat” takes on a whole new meaning).

This isn’t normal, for what it’s worth. I’ve eaten a heapload (that’s the technical term) of candy over the last four days, easily many times more than I usually would (normally I don’t really eat candy, to be honest – I’m more inclined toward cookies). What have I learned from this? First: Halloween is evil. Second: a bowl of candy in my house is sort of like a bowl of beer in a frat house – it just isn’t going to last long. Next year, there MUST BE PLANS put in place for the leftover crack cocaine candy.

I’m going to try and kick it up a notch in Month 2, starting with daily tracking using Lose It!, and a more structured exercise program that will include working with weights 2-3 times a week.

Panic attacks and lactic acid?

I’m currently doing research (uh, that is I have a good friend of mine doing research, she’s a librarian) on the connection between lactic acid and panic attacks. I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks, but basically I’ve noticed a very specific kind of “attack” that happens to me after weight lifting. It very rarely happens after aerobic exercise. For years I’ve tried to tell people that I have trouble with panic attacks after working out, and for years the response from shrinks and doctors has been, “Oh yah, people who are anxious get nervous about their heart rate getting high, and they panic.” I get that this is probably true for a great many panic sufferers, and I admit I’m not a big fan of my heart racing, but what I’m feeling is very different. I can do an aerobic workout with my heart thumping and be just fine, but it’s after I do anything with weights that I have this very particular kind of attack.

I finally made the connection to lactic acid, and the small amount of Googling I’ve done on the issue seems to suggest that there is a connection between lactic acid and panic attacks. For that reason, I’ll be starting my strength workouts very, very slowly, and build up. It will take a great deal of consistency to make the slow and steady progress I hope to make, and it’s really important to me that I stick to it. If you notice me over-focused on strength work for the next few weeks, this is why!

My body is a bit of a mess lately. Ever since that flu hit a week ago, I’ve been feeling awful. I’m exhausted all the time. I keep trying to do a few minutes of exercise, to get that effect where doing a little exercise gives you energy, but I can barely keep going longer than five minutes. Honestly, five. I set my watch and everything. If I make it past the 5-minute mark I’m pleased.

My innards are all confused and messed up, and food is also doing weird things. For example, whole wheat 7-grain toast seems to be pleasing and even soothing, but the Kashi 7-grain cereal I bought gives me headaches, stomach pains, “brain fog”, fatigue, tightness in my chest, anxiety, and bloating. What the heck? It’s happened three different times, consistently. Just to add to the confusion: the gluten-free, wheat-free coffee cake I made from a mix by The Cravings Place, does the same thing the Kashi cereal does (again, I tested a few times – leave it to me to make ABSOLUTELY SURE the coffee cake won’t work, heh).

At this point, I don’t know what to think. The plan of action I like the best is to start working on collecting veggie recipes, so that I can go back to eliminating a few things while not starving.

Tomorrow, on my 35th birthday (hurrah!), I’m off on a visit to Portland to see my bonus sister get married. I admit I’m a little nervous about coping with food, and a lot nervous about coping with anxiety, but I’m trying to keep an optimistic outlook on everything. I’m taking a lot of good snacks with me, and honestly I’m even tempted to take my Vita-Mix down too. I’ve heard a lot of people travel with theirs.

This guy probably doesn't feel sorry for me.

While I realize that there are worse things in the world than not being able to eat dairy products, like say elephantitis, or a third (or fourth) nipple, or having a few dozen nails shot though your head, it is sincerely frustrating to have to turn down every treat that comes your way because someone, a long time ago, thought, “HEY, you know that white stuff that comes out of a cow? Let’s PUT THAT CRAP IN EVERYTHING!”

And then the rest of the world was like, “Man, could those French get any more suave?”

I’m upstairs in my room right now, having run up here a half hour ago when I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or have a panic attack, or both. Now you could say that this is merely the karmic punishment of a food and fitness blogger who JUST YESTERDAY posted about how she was going to buckle down and get in shape and all that*, having had a decaf soy mocha and two chocolate chip cookies (the cookies were FREE, YO!) for breakfast. You could maybe argue that I sort of had this coming, but no, I’d like to blame it on the cows.

I just called the cafe where we got our treats, and yeah, the cookies are chock-full of butter.

LE SIGH.

*In my defense, I did 40 minutes of light aerobic exercise yesterday.

Last night certain monthly womanly things happened (subtlety, I has it), and I was craving something bad for me. Now, normally, I’d want Greg to run up to the corner store and get me a Skor bar, but for some magical reason, the mere mention of anything with milk (like milk chocolate) has me cringing. I haven’t had anything with milk or cow-derivatives since June 30th, and I sure paid for that salad and bread, lemme tell you.

Normally I start craving cheese about three hours after the last meal with cheese. The cycle goes something like this:

5pm: Eat cheese.

6pm: End up in bathroom for hours, cursing cheese’s name, calling out for chamomile tea, and sketching out plans for how I’m going to wipe out all cows with some kind of APPARATUS that I will call, THE BOVINATOR.

6pm-9pm: Vow never to eat dairy again.

9:30pm: Now that digestive system is completely empty, go to fridge to nosh. Hmmm……..leftover pizza sounds good….

Greg has been so fed up with me before that he’ll say things YOU JUST CAN’T TAKE BACK, like, “If you do that one more time, I’m never bringing you chamomile tea while you sit in the bathroom again,” or, “If you eat another slice of pizza, I’m not calling 911 when you think you’re dying later.”

So you’ll be proud to know, as he was proud to hear, that I turned to him after ten entire days off dairy and said, “I don’t want chocolate! I’d like a Twinkie, please! Everyone knows they don’t have dairy. They just have vanilla-flavored lard.”

“Well, that’s appetizing.”

“JUST DO IT, MAN.”

He came back with a 2-pack of them, and I dove in. Halfway through the first one things seemed a little suspicious. Don’t get me wrong, they tasted just as horribly and delightfully gross as I’d hoped, but there was something…..amiss. I checked the wrapper. Yep. About twelve ingredients down, after all the preservatives and lard and vanilla flavoring and what I assume must be some alternative form of embalming fluid, there it was: sweet dairy whey.

I threw the rest out. Aren’t ya’ll proud? I chucked those puppies.

I still consider myself emotionally dairy-free, since accidental dairy doesn’t count.

It’s been barely two weeks (15 days!), and while I’ve screwed up and added things back in too early and accidentally eaten things I didn’t mean to, I feel like I’ve already learned so much!

The biggest thing I’ve learned so far is that I’m not anxious all the time. I was beginning to think that I was. I had so many ailments and sensations every day that didn’t seem to make sense, and I was grouping them all under “ANXIETY”. There were days when I’d feel so awful, I was sure I was just going to end up going completely nuts.

After tracking my food and my feelings and symptoms for the last two weeks, despite the fact that I haven’t stuck to the diet properly all the time, there are three very clear groupings of symptoms that are arising:

1) Specific symptoms that happen after I eat certain foods, which I’m beginning to assume means that I have some sort of mild allergy or intolerance to that food:

- nausea
- gas, cramps, bloating
- heartburn
- headaches
- irritability
- fatigue, an extreme version of “brain fog”
- joint pain and muscle soreness (often the next day)
- eyes feel “hot” (weird one, I know, but it happens)
- lights begin to feel too bright (often occurs with headache, though not painful enough I’d consider it a migraine).

2) Symptoms of panic and anxiety (I have an anxiety disorder, there’s no denying that):

- sense of doom, fear, extreme anxiety
- rapid heart rate, pounding heart, palpitations
- shaking, tremors
- dizziness
- chest feels tight, like the muscles are a band around my body pulling way too tight
- palms begin to sweat, the rest of me gets clammy
- blood pressure shoots up

3) Symptoms of low blood sugar:

- a sort of “shakiness”, a feeling that I could fall into a panic attack at any moment, lacking in physical stability.
- a light and “deep” sort of headache
- hyperfocus on something I’m working on, so that I’m ignoring a lot of physical signals (like right now I’m working on this post without having eaten breakfast yet – I’m resisting stopping to go eat, but I know if I don’t, I’ll end up in trouble soon….)
- strangely: repelled by the idea of eating, nothing sounds good, I don’t know what I want, and I’m too busy to think about it, and get annoyed by anyone asking me to eat (see last item!).
- irritability (heh!)

Part of the problem with having an anxiety disorder is that you become hyper-attuned to your physical state. A person without an anxiety disorder will often ignore strange or unaccounted for physical symptoms, or feel unafraid of them, finding them annoying at worst. They only “panic” and feel fear or real worry when something serious happens, like that abdominal pain doesn’t go away in a few days and the doctor says they have appendicitis. In other words, they have (generally) reasonable responses to bodily sensations. 

Someone with an anxiety disorder, however intelligent and rational they may be most of the time, can be plagued with an irrational hyperfocus on their body’s sensations. This is especially true with panic disorder, because panic attacks are terrifying, and someone who experiences them on a regular basis will basically go to any length not to experience another one. This is why people with panic attacks often become agoraphobic; they avoid places where they had attacks before. It’s also why they’re especially prone to hypochondria. I have issues with both; my agoraphobia manifests as difficulty driving long distances and difficulty being away from home for long periods, and my hypochondria manifests as a fear that there’s something wrong with my heart. 

What I’m realizing through doing this diet, is how the food that I’ve been eating and the way I’ve been eating it have been impacting and triggering my anxiety. Eating things I’m intolerant to cause symptoms that, while not producing a panic attack on their own, contribute to my hyper-focus on my body – asking myself, “What’s wrong? Why do I feel this way? What’s happening?” – and do nothing but increase my own sensitivity to physical sensations, which increases the likelihood of an attack being triggered. 

I used to think that I was just anxious 24 hours a day, but when I went on the diet, all the food intolerance symptoms went away. I began to actually feel good most of the time. I realized I wasn’t anxious all the time; I was anxious some of the time, and I was very likely reacting to my food the rest of the time. 

So what foods are problematic? Here’s a breakdown of what I know or strongly suspect so far: 

DAIRY: evil, evil, evil. 
On June 30th, Greg and I went out for a date night, and I wanted to just enjoy myself so badly, and I’d been so good, and I thought I’d just experiment and eat one meal with dairy and see what happened. Well, within about 40 minutes of eating two kinds of cheese, I began feeling almost all the symptoms of intolerance, as well as the symptoms of lactose intolerance. The next day, I had the worst panic attack I’ve had in six months. This is consistent with my notes from eliminating dairy a few years ago, when I noticed that it took about 12-48 hours for the panic attacks to hit after having it. I don’t know why, but it has happened that way repeatedly, for years, even during times when I didn’t know I’d eaten dairy. Many times during that trial I’d have attacks that hit out of the blue, I’d look back on what we ate, we’d see no evidence of dairy at all, and then we’d dig deeper and find that, oh yeah, that margarine has “milk solids”, or that soy cheese has “milk proteins”. 

Dairy just needs to go OUT. Completely. Permanently. 

SOY: seems okay.
Doesn’t seem to be an issue in the “light” forms I’m eating it in. Right now I have some small amount of soy in a protein powder I use, and I use soy sauce in cooking. I don’t notice any problems or symptoms of intolerance. I’m still not eating soy meats or other highly processed soy foods, and I likely won’t start for some time. They’ve always made me feel lethargic and nauseous, and I don’t feel like I need to “test” that right now. 

WHEAT: okay in small doses, so far.  
I need to do more testing with wheat. In small doses, like when wheat is an additive in something (a breading, or croutons on a salad), I don’t notice any food intolerance symptoms. When I eat a lot of wheat, I begin to notice symptoms from group #1. I’m still not sure how much of a problem wheat is, I’ll keep working on that. For now I seem to find myself gravitating toward gluten-free items. 

SUGAR: okay in small doses, but hard to only have small doses. 
Sugar in general doesn’t seem to give me any symptoms of intolerance, but it HUGELY contributes to low blood sugar issues, which are very triggering for anxiety. I also notice that if I don’t eat a lot of sugar for a few days and then eat, say, a small pastry or cookie (there are some great gluten-free cookies I was trying), that the cravings for MORE sugar become incredibly intense. I think my body really has the habit of using sugar as a mood stabilizer, so it tends to want a little, and then want a lot more to balance out what the little bit did, and then pretty soon I’m just wanting nothing but sugar. Interrupting the cycle with protein, and then sort of dodging the cravings with fruit, seems to help this a lot. 

LEGUMES: avoiding for now. 
Been working on the other foods, haven’t reintroduced legumes in any way yet. 

CHOCOLATE/CAFFEINE: okay in small doses, but like sugar, hard to only have a small dose.
Those gluten-free brownies were wonderful, and after one small piece, I felt FINE. A few hours later, I had several more small pieces, and I felt anxious and sugar-crashy. Chocolate and sugar seem to be things that I could have in small doses if I could just only have them in small doses. 

CORN: perhaps the surprise problem food!
I wrote about how I wasn’t going to include corn in the elimination trial, because I just never thought I had a problem with it, but I was beginning to suspect I was wrong. Well, now it’s at the top of my list of suspects, after dairy. Last night we went to Greg’s parents’ house for dinner, and without even thinking about it, I devoured two cobs of fresh corn. I was distracted, I was so focused on not eating dairy that I completely forgot about my intention to continue avoiding corn.

I felt okay for awhile, and forgot about my mistake. Later that night, around bedtime, I noticed my joints were killing me again. I got out of bed to use the bathroom, and just walking from my bed to the bathroom door felt like torture. I was amazed, I hadn’t felt this sore in two weeks. It was awful. My first question was, could corn have cause this? I don’t know for sure, but it’s the only new thing I’d eaten. 

So what now? 

• I’m still avoiding beans. I’ll put those back after I have some stability, and a better idea of whether corn is a problem. 
• I’m avoiding corn as much as possible for awhile, to clear that out again and reintroduce it later. 
• I’m comfortable with small amounts of soy. 
• Sometimes I eat a gluten-free sweet treat (without corn syrup), but I’m working on only eating one or two and then stopping for the rest of the day. Sometimes this treat contains chocolate, but again, only in very small amounts. 
• I’m trying to eat lots of: VEGGIES! FRUITS! 
• I’m eating small amounts of meat and fish. 
• I tossed out the scale, and am now working on getting 30 minutes of exercise every day, and am committed to the idea of using exercise to heal or at least mitigate my underlying anxiety disorder. 

I do feel a lot better now than I did when I started. I’m becoming less sensitive to sensations now that I know their probable cause, which has helped me feel more in control of my body. I look at myself more from a data-collection perspective, rather than constantly throwing up my hands and feeling like my body is just melting down all the time. 

I’ll continue with the updates, as more connections are made and more news comes in! Thanks to everyone for their support, both here and in email (and in person!), and all the encouragement I’ve gotten to keep going.

This is me this morning after my half hour on the stationary bike. I’m exhausted. I’m so out of shape it’s surprising I can get up the stairs to bed.

Mmmmm, bed. The question at this point isn’t WILL I take a nap, it’s WHERE WILL I? The kids are in daycare today, which means I should get some things done – although as any mother will tell you, sleeping is doing. It might be the ultimate example of productivity as a parent.

The diet continues to go well. Having wheat back in makes things a million times easier, although I’m astounded at how much I want to eat it. I’m already wondering how I went 9 days without it – was I given some sort of super power I just don’t remember?

I threw my scale into the back of my closet last night. I’d gone out for breakfast with Greg, and we were talking about how exercise is the one thing that has made me feel great in the past, but that I have a lot of trouble sticking to. I began realizing over the course of the conversation that the way it’s set up in my brain is that exercise will lead me to weight loss.

Exercise —> weight loss.

Easy enough, right? Most people seem to think this way. Okay, most overweight women seem to think this way.

Except that I don’t think that’s motivation enough for me. Certainly I want to lose weight, if for nothing else than to get my cycles back on track. But a number just isn’t a motivator.

Instead, I’m reading a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, which happens to have an entire chapter on how anxiety can be treated and even reversed with exercise. I was reading this list night in my bath (yeah, on my Kindle, in the bath – did I mention he also has a chapter on how exercise can make you smarter? I’ll get on that chapter next), and it was the most hopeful I’ve felt in awhile. Exercise, combined with staying off dairy, combined with relaxation and combined with (as long as I need them) my twice daily meds……could I have hope here of approaching a normal life?

So while we were sitting at breakfast, mulling all this over, I said suddenly, and pardon my language but I promise there were no kids present: “Fuck the scale! Fuck the numbers!”

“That’s right!”, Greg said. “It’s never done you any good. Throw the damn thing away, or stick it somewhere you won’t find it.”

And I did. I stuck it in my closet, wedged it between a dresser and the wall. It felt like giving up a crutch. How will I know if I’m doing well? How will I know if I’m getting thinner?

Isn’t it funny how different those two questions are?

I’ll know I’m “doing well” if:

• I’m having less anxiety, better anxiety recovery, and fewer attacks.
• I do more in my life independently – driving, going out, going farther, being away from home.
• I have more energy to chase after the kids, to go for walks, to live.
• I sleep better and don’t feel so worn out all the time.
• I get stronger, which is easy to notice – I buff out nicely.

I’ll know if I’m “getting thinner” if:

• I need to buy new clothes.

There. That doesn’t seem too hard, does it? And I can attest to the fact that today it felt good to get up and not weigh myself. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel differently. I guess we’ll see.

It’s been a few days since my last update, and I’m sure everyone is wanting to know how much money to hand to their buddy, right? HOW BAD DID SHE GO OFF? Because I’ve got bets ridin’!

In fact I have gone off the diet in the last few days, but it’s actually been okay. I don’t feel like I’ve ruined anything.

Here’s my original list of things I was going to chuck, just so’s you remember:

• dairy
• wheat
• soy
• legumes
• corn
• sugar
• chocolate
• caffeine
• sugar/processed foods

Here’s what that list has shortened to, as of today:

• dairy
• corn
• legumes
• sugar (in large ridiculous concentrations – e.g., a candy bar? no. a bit of brown sugar on my oatmeal? okay).
• processed foods
• chocolate
• caffeine

As you can see, I’m adding back wheat, and I’m eating small amounts of unprocessed soy (miso soup, soy sauce).

On Friday, Jason came out to spend the weekend, and the six of us (Me, Greg, Jason, Sonja, Bethie, Miles), went into “Weekend Mode”, where we tend to be busy going on little trips and doing a lot of eating out. It became intensely difficult to figure out what to eat as we were traveling around, especially considering I wasn’t able to figure out what to eat much at home. So I faltered a little bit. I began eating wheat in a a few things, and some soy (mostly in the form of soy sauce).

At first, after I had that first bite of Something With Wheat, my mind wanted to go into Dieter Failure mentality, and chuck the whole entire thing out the window. After all, I FAILED, what’s the point of going on? Fortunately my inner drama queen calmed down, and once I got past the failure mentality, I realized I was learning a lot, and I could continue to learn, even if I wasn’t following the diet in the exact same way I’d planned to.

Some things I’ve observed over the last few days:

1) Dairy continues to be a problem.
On Friday night we went out to a restaurant specifically because we though it would have a Hollie-friendly menu. I got some delicious salmon with “apple butter”, which to me means a dairy-free jam-like toast topping made from apples, cinnamon, and sugar. I wasn’t really sure how this would taste on salmon, but hey, I’ll try anything once. Instead, the apple butter was literally a monster pat of butter, with apparent apple flavorings.

The intestinal pyrotechnics that resulted from this one small serving of dairy was pretty impressive. I believe that dairy is something I’ll need to phase out of my life almost completely (I’m willing to suffer these pyrotechnics for very special occasions, like, say, this cake. Overall, though, I think I’m beginning to see the real possibility of a truly dairy-free life.

2) I’m recovering from episodes of anxiety much quicker than usual.
This change is simply incredible to me. Two good examples happened this weekend.

On Saturday night, Greg and Jason and I went to a movie (The Proposal with Sandra Bullock — anyone else get While You Were Sleeping flashbacks? Sandy in a white dress, apologizing to a family at the altar for why she can’t go through with the wedding, an orphan who misses the feelings of being in a family?), and over the last couple years  movies have become incredibly difficult for me. I usually need at least one, sometimes two doses of anxiety medication to make it through, and when it’s done (if I’ve made it – I’ve left at least six movies over the last few years after a bad attack), I’m wiped out. I’m so drained from trying to hold it together that I need to take a nap afterward. This isn’t just action movies or thrillers; I could barely get through Pixar’s UP. Also, due to both the anxiety and the meds, I usually don’t remember much of the movie anyway; thus you can understand why I frequently just don’t go, even though before all this got bad, going to the movies was a favorite hobby of mine.

For some reason, during the movie on Saturday night, I was happy. I was having a good time. I didn’t need any meds, and I didn’t need my earplugs, and I didn’t need to leave partway through.  After it was over, I was still doing great! We got in the car and I wanted to GO somewhere, like a cafe or or a restaurant, just to hang out and talk. I couldn’t believe how stable and good I felt! I wanted to take advantage of it while it lasted! Unfortunately we live in Ellensburg, and there wasn’t anything to do at 11:20pm on a Saturday night, so we headed home, but I was giddy.

Me hiding behind Llyra, grabbing onto her for dear life (do you see how high we are?)

On Sunday afternoon, Sonja had rounded up a bunch of us to go to the Salmon La Sac campground, which I thought wasn’t that far away from town. I was wrong, it was pretty far out, and by the time we got there I was so anxious I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was examining my options; do I make one of the guys drive me home? Do I take a whole lot of meds and just hole up in the car and sleep? How am I going to cope with this?

I grabbed a camp chair and plopped down into it. I opened up a bag of sunflower seeds and started munching. I put on my sunglasses. I grabbed a magazine. I endeavored to sit there until I felt calmer. To my complete shock, that only took about half an hour. Not an hour, not several hours, not here-let’s-take-some-meds-and-wait-all-afternoon-for-things-to-improve; I just felt good. Again. Quickly. And I continued to feel good the whole rest of the day. And to top it off? I drove us all home. Here, let me continue to italicize things to impress upon you the amazing-ness of this event.

I even ended up playing in the river, and climbing up onto a big pile of rocks. Llyra followed me, at which point we screamed in triumph, and then I realized how high we were – at that point I think I started holding on to her a little too tightly. Thanks to Jason for the photo!

3) Wheat doesn’t appear to be a problem.
So far, the small amounts of wheat I’ve been having (croutons on salad, in soy sauce), don’t seem to be causing me any issues. I don’t feel any more sore in the morning (in fact I continue to feel better, in very small degrees). I’m trying not to overdo it.

4) Soy in small amounts, so far, doesn’t seem to be causing any issues either.
I’m not eating a ton of it, and I’m not eating any processed stuff (like tofurkey or tofu dogs or soy ice cream).

5) I really need to learn how to cook and eat vegetables.
During the salmon dinner Saturday night, Jason endeavored to instruct me on how to eat broccoli with my salmon; by eating a piece of salmon, and then slipping a small piece of broccoli in, unnoticed. I tried it once, and was chewing, and he began saying, “You need more salmon! MORE SALMON!” I began waving my hand at him. “You’re making a face!”, he said. When I was done swallowing, I think I was still making a face, but to my great shock, the broccoli was not putrid. I ended up eating several pieces of broccoli. Miracle.

Clearly this means I need to continue trying to figure out how to get more veggies into my diet.

GEE, MAYBE I COULD WRITE A BLOG TO THAT EFFECT?

Going forward, I’ll be eating small amounts of wheat and soy, attempting to cook more veggies, and trying desperately to stay away from dairy and sugar, which are the two hardest exclusions. Corn and beans, which I’m leaving out for awhile as all this settles down (I’ll re-introduce in a trial in a few weeks), aren’t too hard to stay away from (the exception being corn syrup – but avoiding that also means avoiding most chocolate and candy, so it works out).

Ahhhhh, Day 4, lovely Day 4. Look at me smile! That’s a real smile! I’m feeling much happier today! I woke up with some anxiety symptoms, but I took a dose of my anxiety medication before I even got up, and within a short while I was feeling much better. I’m definitely convinced at this point that I start having benzo withdrawal symptoms when I go more than about 15 hours without a small dose (and I’m talking small – just 1/4th or even 1/8th of a milligram). 

Speaking of meds……Meg and Janine commented that I should keep taking my anxiety meds and not try to taper off. No worries guys! I’m used to taking them as needed, but I’m going to start taking a daily dose, so that, as I think Janine put it, I don’t muck up my data. 

Beans are out for today, but I am going to consider bringing back wheat. Maybe not today, but perhaps tomorrow, if I really feel like I need to. I made some meal plans for today, so as long as I get off my butt and GO COOK, I ought to be fine on my usual fare. I really am just taking this one day at a time. 

I slept well last night once I actually got to sleep – I had a three-hour nap yesterday and that meant I wasn’t even tired until about 2:30am, but it worked out. I got up at 7:30, took a shower, and have been feeling fairly energetic. We’ll see if it lasts!   

I keep meaning to make a list of what I’ve been eating. I’ll try to get to that today.

After I wrote my last post, I began considering the idea that I might want to add back in one major group, just so that I’d have something else to eat. Right now it’s pretty lean times over here, made much worse by the fact that I just don’t like a lot of vegetables. 

So I went ahead and made some split pea soup (which, no kidding, I just found out today was a lentil – I thought peas were vegetables and thus, split peas were just dried veggies), and afterward had what’s been my usual reaction to beans; bad heartburn, only this time I also wrote down that I noticed headaches, gas, and pressure in my chest (bloating?), as well as feeling anxious and just generally grouchy. It took hours to go away, but finally it all did. 

A little while ago I had some hummus on my rice crackers, and geez, here it all is again. What the heck? 

I went to Google and looked up “food intolerance”, and found this page at WebMd on food allergies vs. intolerances, and they have this list for “symptoms of a food intolerance”:

• Nausea
• Stomach pain
• Gas, cramps, or bloating
• Vomiting
• Heartburn
• Diarrhea
• Headaches
• Irritability or nervousness

Okay, well that’s interesting. So here I was thinking I should let beans back in, and now I’m having second thoughts. I’ll think more on this and get back to it tomorrow. For now I’m going to go to bed and hope these symptoms don’t keep me up half the night. Gah, the headache is astounding.

Megan asked these questions in a comment, and they went along with some questions that one of my Megs asked, and I figure I ought to answer it in a post in case a few people are wondering.

Megan’s questions are in bold:

I have some technical questions:

1.  Why eliminate everything at once?  Why not eliminate one thing, see how it works, then do the next thing serially?  I know elimination diets regularly do it in the manner you are, I just am not sure why.  It seems like it is such an incredible limit on what you can eat that it would be really hard to maintain and feel good (because it would be hard to get enough of the nutrients that you need).??

I started doing it this way because, like you said, that’s how elimination diets frequently work.  I read a lot about them before I started, and the reason usually given for why they’re so limited is that it’s quicker and more accurate to do it this way. If you have an intolerance to two things, for instance, and you only cut one out of your diet, your symptoms might go down, making the detection of the first problem group more difficult. You have to be looking for much more subtle changes.

It actually isn’t that big a limit on nutrition – nursing mothers do this diet all the time when babies are fussy or suffering from digestive problems, and they suspect something in their own breastmilk. The problem for me, I’m finding, is that I just don’t eat a big enough variety of vegetables, and that is really putting a crimp in my own diet. For that reason, I’m considering adding in a major group and rotating it out later.

The other major reason, and forgive me for sounding defensive, but it isn’t really at you, it’s kind of at everyone in the entire world who leads a freaking normal life, is that THIS ANXIETY IS KILLING ME. The last three weeks have been so awful, I was having attack after attack, and in the last three days? I’ve had one, and I’ve been taking much less of my meds. That’s significant to me.

Are you able to go to the grocery store and pick up some dinner without being completely preoccupied with managing your own fear? Are you able to get in your car and drive somewhere, even a few miles, just you and your child, without wondering if you’re going to need to pull over and freak your kid out by having a massive, body-melting panic attack that often ends in weeping, and will require you to take so much medication you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to drive you both home?

If you can do these things, if you can just BE IN THE WORLD by yourself without wondering if your own body is going to fail you, embarrass you, humiliate you, and impact those you love, not to mention total strangers who might be called upon to help you – well then that to me is MIRACULOUS. I’d give anything for that.

I don’t think that all my problems with anxiety are due to food, but I know that there is something in my diet triggering certain symptoms, many of which are often the start of me feeling anxious and bringing on attacks, and yeah, I’m basically willing to do whatever it takes right now to figure out what it is. I want to be normal again. I remember what it was like to be normal, and I’m going to get that back, I don’t care what I have to do to get there. If it means feeling like crap for three weeks, while I wait for this diet to work, I’ll do it.

2.  Beans?  I never saw you mention beans as a potential problem before?

I never did, actually, and that’s the group I’m thinking about adding back in right now. The protein is needed, since I just don’t like eating as much meat as I really need to be able to keep my protein levels up.

I took it out because it’s one of the major things these diets eliminate, but it’s the one I’m actually the least suspicious of.

3.  So what ARE you eating?

Apples, oranges, bananas, pears, strawberries, kale, lettuces, lemon, beef, chicken, brown rice, rice chex, rice milk, rice crackers, green beans, pea pods, peppers,and juiced veggies. I’m also supplementing with vegetable protein powder, and hemp protein powder.

I can’t believe I made it to Day 3!

This is me after a shower this morning, with Beth sitting in my lap, eating an apple. We’ve both been eating a lot of apples lately. They’re sweet and crunchy and they’re easy to eat quickly (wash and go!). 

General Status: 
I still feel crappy. Very worn out. It’s like I just can’t get enough energy. I keep feeling like I want to take naps. Like right now…zzzzzzzz……

Greg says this could be detox, or my just not being used to the diet. We don’t know. I sure wish I’d feel better. This is just really hard. 

My morale fluctuates, but is mostly good. While I find all of this super difficult, I resist temptations to quit. There’s too much I don’t know, that I want to find out. 

Muscle aches: 
I still wake up with aching in my joints, but I think it’s getting better. The reason I say this is that while the aching is still there, when I move (like this morning, shaking my groove thang in the shower),  my joints actually feel a lot better. 

Sleep: 
I went to sleep around 12:30 last night, and crashed hard, with lots of dreaming; in contrast with the night before, when I slept horribly. Last night was a definite improvement. 

Anxiety: 
I woke up pretty anxious, and after checking my blood pressure and finding it high for me, I took a small dose of anxiety med. Within ten minutes, I was feeling much better. This supports my theory that I’m actually physically addicted to my meds, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but is noteworthy in how the symptoms of withdrawal are very much the symptoms of anxiety, except without the situational aspect. Basically, the drug gives me “fake” anxiety to treat with…..more drug. And yeah, if you’re familiar with drugs; both meds I take are benzos. The question is, is this treating real anxiety underneath? Or is it causing more anxiety than I would normally have if I tapered off of it? Anti-benzo people proliferate online, and the would definitely suggest it’s ALL the benzo’s fault. I don’t feel that extreme about it, but their stories are interesting to read. 

Allergies: 
I live in the country, and every field I pass by has cut their hay. Which explains the sore, itchy eyes, and the ridiculously runny nose. It’s been so bad that last night, while watching a movie, I just wedged some toilet paper up each nostril. THERE YOU GO INTERNET. More than you needed to know.  

This afternoon I feel like I’m getting a cold or something. UGH. My eyeballs feel hot. 

Cravings:
If I think about muffins and pizza and bread, I’ll want them, but if I don’t think about them, I do okay. They aren’t popping into my head all the time, like I expected. 

Hunger:
I’m still struggling a lot with getting FULL. I can’t seem to fill up on anything. I’m realizing how much, before this, I just filled up on grain products all the time.  I never filled up on fruits or veggies, it was always just grains. I find this whole inability to feel full without grains really interesting – what does that say about my digestive system? Is it just the result of habit? I should be more specific I think, and say “wheat”, because brown rice is a grain, and that doesn’t seem to do much for me. 

Weight:
I’ve lost 2.2 pounds. As a data point. No, this isn’t HURRAH WEIGHT LOSS, it’s more like, “Hmmm, how much water weight am I losing as a result of this?” Apparently a little bit.  I’m trying to drink a lot of fluids, but it’s hard to remember. 

Apologies:
For this being out-of-joint. I’m so tired right now I’m about ready to fall asleep in my chair. Greg just said I could go up and sleep for a bit while he watches the kids. What would I do without him? I don’t even want to think about it.

For my elimination diet I took out: 

• wheat/gluten
• dairy
• soy
• sugar
• caffeine
• chocolate

You’ll notice one thing missing: 

• corn

I didn’t take out corn because I’ve just never thought I ever had a problem with it, even though it’s a relatively common thing to eliminate in a diet like this. 

Well, yesterday I had some corn chips and salsa. I felt awful afterward, even though the chips were organic and contained ONLY corn (no hidden wheat, or, you know, CHOCOLATE…..mmmmm….fried crispy chocolate…..). I went back to the fridge and got out the salsa, and discovered it had, among a host of safe ingredients, BEANS. I hadn’t realized that. So I blamed my awful feeling on either the fact that I’d had simple carbs, or the beans. 

Today, I ate the corn chips again, without the salsa, and again, I felt awful. Really, really awful. Foggy headed, anxious, tired, lethargic, and irritable. My first thought was, “Okay, maybe it’s just simple carbs”, but the rice crackers I had earlier in the day, which were about as simple as simple can get, didn’t cause any reaction at all, except, “Wow, these are the blandest things I’ve ever tasted, what I wouldn’t do for a nice cheese ball and a sharp knife.” 

I don’t know if this means corn is A Problem, but I certainly think I should eliminate it for the purpose of the diet. It looks like it could at least be a contender.

Okay, so for those of you counting at home, which I’m sure is everyone no one, it’s now been approximately 36 hours and 12 minutes since I had sugar.

As you can see from this incredibly flattering picture: NO BOILS. My skin is not burning off, nor do I seem to have any rashes or other unsightly blemishes.

Apparently people did exist before there was sugar! THE ARCHEOLOGISTS WERE RIGHT, YO! Man, science really is our friend.

I’m drinking a blueberry and banana smoothie, with rice milk and some vegetable protein powder (no soy).

Here’s what’s going on with me on Day 2:

Mental:

I haven’t had any anxiety medication since the night before Day 1. This is very unusual for me, especially lately. I’d been taking my “as needed” medication almost twice a day for nearly two weeks. The anxiety had been getting very bad, but now I’m wondering if many of the physical symptoms I had wasn’t anxiety at all, but just from something I was eating. Since I got up yesterday morning, I haven’t had those symptoms, and so haven’t taken the meds.

The thing about this though, is that I think my body is physically addicted to the medication, because I feel like I’m having some withdrawal symptoms. I might take some today just to help with that a little bit, but does this mean that if I figure out what foods to eat, I might not need to take it at all, or nearly as much? I sure hope so. Not so much because the meds are that bad, but the symptoms that make me take them are awful.  I also have to keep in mind the “three day effect”, where any big change in my life/diet seems to have the effect of stalling anxiety for about three days. If I’m still not feeling like I need meds on Day 5 or Day 10, I’ll be more interested in this data point.

Physical:

I feel strange. I slept horribly last night, in part I think because I hadn’t taken any meds, which usually knock me out and let me sleep deeply. I kept waking up, and then I was really awake at 7:15am when the kids got up. I feel like I need to eat, like my body wants to be FULL of something, but the fruits aren’t helping, and the meat doesn’t help, and the rice doesn’t help. I just want WHEAT. I’m craving a big stack of toast, or muffins, or something like that. The only thing that seems to help a little bit are smoothies, because I can suck them down – everything else, that I have to chew, just doesn’t sound that appealing.

I also feel…..I’m not sure how to describe it….tight. Maybe that’s dehydration? I’ll try to remember to drink a lot of water today.  I lost about a pound overnight, but that isn’t a lot of water weight. I feel tired and wired at the same time, which, going from past experience, will likely lead to anxiety later. I’ve felt this way before when I’m not getting enough food, but I don’t think I’m starving here.

Should I start posting what I eat?

As part of a plan to try and find out what’s triggering my anxiety attacks, as well as perhaps discover what’s been causing general fatigue, foggy-headedness, morning soreness, bloating, and several other symptoms that scream “FOOD INTOLERANCE”, I’ve decided to try an elimination diet. 

My initial plan was to cut out sugar, dairy, wheat, soy, caffeine, and chocolate, for one month. Then, when I wrote about this on a BBS I’m on, I was advised to cut out dairy for a full two months if I wanted to know for sure if that was a problem. TWO MONTHS. I know, you vegans are rolling your eyes, but I sneak in a little cheese at least 2-3 times a week. Two months without any dairy feels impossible at this point, but that’s why I’m going to take all this one day at a time. 

I’m going to take a picture of myself every day, so you can watch as the sugar withdrawals cause boils and rashes to form all over my body. At least, that’s what I assume happens when you stop eating sugar, right? That’s me, up there, waiting for the boils to start. Do I feel a suspicious itch at my ear? 

This morning I had two farm fresh eggs for brekkies, and…………..oh wow, that’s it. See, this is a problem, RIGHT HERE. It’s already after 1pm and I’ve eaten nothing but two eggs. I also need to work on regular mealtimes. I tried to make food earlier, but I got distracted by cleaning out the entire fridge (holy fuzzy guacamole, was that a lot of work), and then I was coloring with Beth, and then making appointments. See? This is the life of the person with adult ADD. On your way to do something, and then, OH SHINY! And now you’re doing something else…..

I’m going to go make a green smoothie.

I’ve made two loaves of the no-knead artisan bread, and I’m here to tell you, it’s freaking amazing. Go buy the book, go grab a giant bag of flour, and get right to it. You will not be sorry.

Oh, and while they say to use a pizza stone, I didn’t have one, and I’m trying to get rid of stuff, not go buy more (ironically enough, my pizza stone was sold at our garage sale a few weeks ago). Instead, I used my Le Creuset Cast-Iron Bistro/Pizza Pan, which apparently they don’t make anymore (I couldn’t find it on Amazon, which is where I got it a few years ago). It works beautifully.

I would have posted this earlier, but I’ve been having a lot of anxiety troubles the last few days. Due to the bread? I doubt it. I’m not willing to speculate, it could be any number of things, but I did decide tonight that I want to try an elimination diet soon. Greg said he fully supports this, and he’ll be there for me, but that he wants me to come up with some menus and recipes before I dive in – otherwise I’ll flounder and just not eat for long stretches of the day, which is worse for the anxiety than the wrong food.

I’ll let you know when I get started! And I’m sure you’ll enjoy the daily reports of my suffering.

This report covers the last two weeks or so.

Weight:
I’ve only lost about a pound. I just didn’t feel too concerned about weight these last two weeks, there were other things going on that felt a lot more important (see “Exercise” down below). My cycle came, and arrived on time and ended on time, which was a great sign. While I doubt that losing a pound contributed greatly to the positive change, it was still a welcome sign of possibly bettering health that has kept my morale up.

I still feel strongly that Weight Watchers and other similar programs aren’t helpful for me. I listen to others talk about their WW experiences, and nothing resonates anymore. Instead, what feels good is just what I’m doing: loosely tracking food and weight, and just noticing trends. I feel that changes will come with time, and that it’s this watching that feels important. The TPS Reports are a good way to consolidate what I’m learning.

Food Lessons:
I’ve learned by direct experience what I already knew intellectually: that things made with white sugar (which I just appropriately began to mistype as “shit”), and white flour, cause me to feel bloated and miserable. I learned this during a few days when I was trying to go Paleo. I wasn’t eating any grains, and then when I did, the bloat was astounding. I’d eat two pieces of bread and gain four pounds in a single day. Note that I am NOT attempting to vilify grains, nor to say that people shouldn’t eat them. 

Rather, my experiment was to eat no grains at all, and then when my system felt “clear”, to eat a few items made from refined white sugar and/or flour. What did I learn? That these refined flour products cause in me: 

• impressive water weight gain (if I ever have to gain ten pounds in a week, I’ll know how)
• muscle soreness the next day (sometimes it’s hard to even get out of bed)
• cranky mood (ironically craving the thing that got me into this mess; RAWWWR GET ME A TWIX BAR NOW, YOU MINIONS!)
• can contribute greatly to anxiety and/or a panic attack by leaving me feeling sugar crashed and generally fragile (emotionally and physically)
• general lethargy and lack of energy
• confused, inability to focus, feel frustrated by otherwise simple tasks
• constipation (is this why some guy named “Colon Health” just started following me on Twitter?)

If you’d asked me before whether white flour/sugar -based junk caused any of these problems, I of course would have said YA DUH. But there’s a difference between knowing something intellectually because I read it all the time in my perusal of nutrition articles, and really feeling the effect of going without them for awhile and then tossing them back in. The contrast was quite a learning experience. 

What would be interesting would be to try the same experiment but instead of breaking the grain fast with JUNK, break it with some whole grains, maybe something delicious whipped up in my pressure cooker. I’ll try that next time. 

Exercise: 

Unfortunately between TPS #2 and #3 I had a bit of a health scare. My left calf muscle has been hurting for about three weeks now, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going to the doctor every few days, while they measure it, palpate it, and draw blood to see what’s going on. Finally he admitted he was flummoxed, and sent me in today for a vascular ultrasound. While I don’t have the results back, I suspect from today’s events that things are fine, and I’ll be able to get back to exercise this week. During this period, the doc didn’t want me working out, getting massaged, or doing anything else that could potentially dislodge a clot. Thankfully I think the scare will be over tomorrow, when I get the call from my doc’s office. 

The whole vegan/paleo/raw debate: 

I’m still interested in all of these lifestyles, and read about them frequently. I really enjoy the reading, it’s like nutritional sociology. I debate posting things here, because I’m afraid it will come across as endorsing rather than encouraging conversation, but heck, it’s my blog, I should just do what I want, right? 

Going into this week: 

• I’ve realized that dairy is not my friend. I’m still trying to avoid it. I’m currently in discussion with some aliens regarding having all cows shipped off-world. 
• While my body does seem to do better on a little meat, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to eat paleo (hey! moderation….it’s calling my name…..). 
• Need to experiment a little more with beans – it feels like they give me heartburn every time, as well as brain-fog and anxiety problems. I’ll need to isolate them a bit more before I can be sure these problems are legume-related. 
• Hopefully some exercise! 

It may sound contradictory, but while I have severe anxiety and panic attacks, I generally don’t have any depression or mood problems. When I’ve seen therapists for the first time, they typically ask me to sit down to various tests to measure THE CRAZY, and while I routinely score off the charts for anxiety (I love some of the comments I’ve gotten; “How did you even get to my office with scores like this?”), I consistently score low on depression.

I’ve always thought of this as a major blessing, because anxiety this crippling often feels like a sort of emotional paraplegia. To further weigh down this extraordinary metaphor, if I had depression, it would feel like I’d just gotten my arms ripped off, too.

For some reason, the last few days have been pretty awful for me in terms of mood. While I use the phrase “feeling depressed”, I’m not ready to say it’s a “depression”. I had one of those once. Just one, and it was enough. If I had to make up my own mental illness (OH WHAT FUN), I’d have to say this is something like Sudden-Onset Age-Related Mental-Exhaustion-From-Recurring Life Issues  Spectrum Disorder. Or SOARMEFRLISD, for short.

While SOARMEFRLISD is based in real, quantitative issues, I feel sure that it’s exacerbated by diet. The last few days have seen me abandoning my vegan leanings, my paleo leanings, and my sugar-addict leanings, and settling instead into a place of “moderation”, which has stupidly included a fair amount of dairy. While I can’t prove it, because no one has given me a ton of money to begin my own study, and there’s also that nagging lack of a PhD to lend me some scientific authority, I’m convinced that at least in this particular meat sack I inhabit, dairy products makes moodiness, anxiety, and depression, significantly worse.

While this can’t be true for everyone, by all available data it certainly seems true for me, and why I continue to eat the crap is something I simply don’t get. Okay, it’s DELICIOUS, sure, and it’s addicting, sure, and it’s smooth and tasty and comes in a wide variety of awesome permutations (to be fair, we should really be including goats in this hate-fest), but it’s so not good for me. I think this post is intended to be something that you can all use as a reason to pelt me with olives the next time I report that I ate some pizza, because it was there, and it was looking at me, with that big doughy expanse of white, cheesy goodness, and EVERYONE ELSE WAS DOING IT SO WHY NOT ME?

My husband is leaving for California tomorrow, to cavort with other geeks at WWDC, and enjoy his rock-star status as a senior engineer at Omni. One of my favorite ways to make him laugh during the week before he goes is to ask him how he’ll manage writing GREG WAS HERE across the breasts of all those hot women programmers, and did he remember his black Sharpie?

My commitment, during the next 6 Greg-free days, which will be stressful for many reasons, not least of which is his absence, my kids possibly getting sick, myself possibly getting sick, and of course SOARMEFRLISD, is that:

1. I will eat no dairy. Not even a smidgen. Not even a skosh.

2. Okay, I will TRY to eat no dairy.

3. No, I’ll just commit to not eating any. That’s better.

And next weekend, we’ll see if I’m feeling better. I’m hoping the moodiness will have mostly packed it in, and maybe I’ll have learned something.

After years of not liking almonds, a couple years ago I finally started trying to integrate them into my diet. I began finding that I liked the taste, and it was easy to grind them up and add them to all kinds of things. I don’t like walnuts (besides the taste, they make me feel sick and my mouth peel, which I thought a bit suspicious of a sensitivity or allergy), so I loved the idea of getting some good NUTrition (hahahHAHAHA ohhhhhh I know, it’s bad), via the almonds.

The first thing I used them for were making some thumbprint cookies that Natasha gave me the recipe for. I LOVE these cookies, and used to make them frequently. I did notice that I often had problems with panic attacks after eating them, but I was having attacks all the time, and I was a lot more suspicious of excess sugar than of almonds. Finally, I had to admit that something in the cookies was causing a consistent problem, and I gave them up.

Then, last year I began making another awesome Natasha recipe: Almond Butter Balls, made with (surprise) almond butter. I LOVED them, I couldn’t get enough, I’d lay in bed and just crave these little suckers. They were so amazingly delicious. Almost immediately they seemed to trigger panic attacks. I was so surprised! I ended up removing the chocolate chips and subbing in carob – assuming the caffeine in the chocolate was causing the problem. Still, the attacks came. Fine. Great. Something I loved that I couldn’t eat.

This same story was repeated with a third recipe for a granola-like treat that a vegan chef gave me; massive panic attacks after eating just one or two small pieces (again, I subbed out the chocolate and anything else I thought could possibly be offensive, but the attacks still occurred).

Unfortunately, the baklava I made this weekend had the same effect. I love baklava, and I was hoping so much that this wouldn’t happen, but the evidence at this point is overwhelming. Something in almonds triggers anxiety. Specifically, it triggers a physical symptom of feeling my chest get very tight, and difficulty taking deep breaths. An allergy? I don’t think it’s that severe. It seems severe enough to trigger physical symptoms that cause anxiety, but if I were severely allergic I’d have croaked by now. A sensitivity? I suppose that’s possible.

Either way, it’s a pain in the ass. I love almonds. I hate giving up another food. I’m still in denial of my own lactose intolerance. So much of eating lately feels like a lesson in Let’s Stop Pretending. Let’s stop pretending this food doesn’t make me sick/anxious/bloated/miserable.

Why do we like what makes us feel awful? That’s more rhetorical than anything else. I know that foods we’re sensitive to can be, paradoxically, foods we crave. I just don’t think it’s fair. Life without almond baklava? NOOOOOOOO.

Well, the last three days I’ve had two servings of meat a day, a whole slew of fruits and veggies, and hardly any grains at all. I feel a little confused and guilty admitting this, but I feel amazing. In two days:

• My anxiety has been much better. Yesterday I almost missed a dose of my daily medication because I just forgot (anxiety didn’t remind me), and I didn’t take another medication that I use for acute panic attacks – because I didn’t have any. In the 9 days prior to that, I’d taken this medication at least once a day, sometimes twice.
• My mood has improved dramatically (likely a morale issue based in the anxiety improving).
• My joints aren’t stiff when I get out of bed. I roll over, stand up, and walk away from the bed with a startling lack of pain. I had no idea how much pain I was having until I realized it was gone. This has perplexed me for the last year – why am I so stiff and sore in the morning? If I were running marathons in my sleep, wouldn’t I be losing weight or at least noticing an increase in workout-wear laundry?
• I don’t have my usual mid-day slumps in energy. I feel great right up to bedtime.

The important thing to remember is that this is 72 HOURS. Not a week, or a month, or six months. It’s nice and all, but what I’m really curious about is how I’ll feel on June 30th. I’ve read many times, especially from people struggling with anxiety, and it has been true for me countless times; any significant thing in life done differently tends to make you feel better for a few days. In my case, I think of it as the 3-day rule. Whenever I’ve changed meds, or tried a new herb or exercise or habit or whatever to help my anxiety and panic attacks, EVERYTHING generates some improvement for about 3 days.

When those 3 days are over, usually the improvement goes with it, and I’m back where I started. Perhaps this is some version of the placebo effect? I don’t know for certain the mechanism, but I know it happens, so while these changes are fascinating to me, I’m not counting my chickens quite yet.

Yesterday Greg made me some strip steak for lunch, in the wok. It was delicious, but I felt horribly guilty eating it, because I haven’t had time to locate any respected, grass-fed beef yet (I think I found a place last night online – Agape Wells Farm) and this was just from our regular grocery store. I know some people are probably rolling their eyes at me, but hopefully others get it. Anyway, the entire time I thought I could practically feel my arteries hardening. I was laughing to myself that I might need some anxiety meds just to cope with this.

An hour later Sonja and I were in the backyard setting up our new pool, and I said, “Is it possible for someone to eat meat for three days and then DIE FROM CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE?”

The look on her face was priceless.

“Uh. No.”

“Right. I totally knew that.”

I’ve been a vegan groupie since I was a teenager. That’s a loooooong time. I have a scrapbook from High School with articles cut out about the benefits of becoming a vegetarian. I’ve had years and years of self-conditioning that meat is BAD, and I’ve eaten it only because I had to – because I didn’t like vegetables. I’m startled at the depth of my own beliefs around food, and that of people around me (even moderation begins to sound dogmatic when it’s spoken of in a certain tone).

This whole food journey gets more interesting by the day.

Okay.

DEEP BREATH.

So….I’m taking a break from trying to go vegan.

I’ve been trying for months, and I’m doing horribly. My weight has gone up, my anxiety has gone WAY up, my panic attacks have increased, and while I don’t blame going vegan for any of this specifically, I have been keeping track of what I eat for awhile now, and I HATE TO ADMIT THIS, believe me, I do, but…..I feel better when I eat some meat.

Mostly it’s the anxiety; people who have been reading my blog on Livejournal for the last decade know the extent of it, while I haven’t been very open about it here. Readers of this blog know that I have panic disorder, but maybe don’t know the severity, because the effects of that have been very personal and not something I’ve been wiling to talk about publicly for a long time. I’m still not.

So, hopefully, you’ll understand when I say that these effects have been very, very bad, for me and those who love me, and when I noticed that on days that I ate one or two servings of meat I was far less anxious, well……I’ve been fighting this for months. I’ve been trying to eat more beans and soy, and it just isn’t working very well. The beans give me heartburn, almost universally, and the soy makes me feel sick, except in a few forms – edamame is fine, and miso is great, but other, processed soys (including the soy ice cream I just got that is so tasty) makes me feel sick and very thick-headed after I eat it.

I’m not making any big ideology changes right now. I’m still passionately against factory farms, both for their animal cruelty and their environmental degradation. I don’t know what I’m really going to do with this conflict. I’m not giving up ever trying to go vegan again; I just know that right at this moment, even a little bit of meat seems to help a lot, and I’m not willing to give that up if it means less medication and more mental health for me.

I’ll keep writing, of course! I hope readers won’t abandon the blog entirely. I’m still committed to raw foods, juicing, and MORE VEGGIES. I’m still committed to all of my ideas about agriculture and eating ethically – I just don’t want to pretend anymore that I’m doing really well trying to go vegan. I’m really not. Maybe that will change? Maybe it won’t? Maybe I’ll end up like this guy someday? Okay, admittedly that’s hard to picture. I just know the figuring-out-what-to-eat journey isn’t as over as I thought, since, well, I never actually arrived. I think my path is going to meander a little bit more…..