Duh moment

[Guest guest]

I flirted with diet mentality again this month and decided instead to

focus on gentle nutrition since I made it through moving twice in 3

months and buying a house and Christmas and work stress and in-law

drama with a net gain of 2 pounds instead of my normal yearly 5-10.

I immediately felt horribly sick and had terrible indigestion. I

noted that one perfectly healthy meal passed through my body in 6.5

hours, undigested. And I'm not sick!

This time, instead of beating myself up or quitting eating vegetables

entirely, I stepped back and understood something about myself. I

have an imbalance in my intestines and I can't easily digest raw

vegetables. Every diet I've ever been on told me to make raw

vegetables that basis of my eating plan.

Not only was I restricting calories, I was *starving*. Every diet

I've been on since age 11 has effectively been a fast! No WONDER I

freaked out and overate high density foods! No WONDER I felt so

horrible and crazy right away as soon as I even considered cleaning up

my eating. My body can't feel the difference between gentle nutrition

and prison camp rations! Not that other people haven't felt this way,

but my reactions have been visceral and extreme to the point where I

anti-dieted for months on straight french fries and burgers. I felt

icky and greasy and heavy but I just couldn't make myself eat a

vegetable that wasn't a sauteed onion or pepper or covered with cheese.

I called my dad and asked him if he'd ever had this problem and how he

dealt with it. (He's a low carb dieter for sugar control.) He said

that he only eats one vegetable per meal, steamed, avoids anything in

the broccoli family, and makes up the difference with meat. Clearly

that won't work for me. But now that I understand that avoiding

vegetables has been a *logical* thing my body wanted me to do, I can

start to really address it. Hopefully I can find ways to nourish my

body again so that I'm not living in a constant state of low grade

malnutrition (which I think may be causing part of my overweight).