Day Eight

I woke up so proud of myself. I could feel a difference in my upper body. It felt "tight." I can feel my muscles more. I lose weight from the top down and the bottom up, ie. the stuff in the middle is the last to go. I can see a difference in my arms after only a week. I am down on the scale again...180.4 and that is with at least a pound of water weight from my monthly bloat.

I was doing so good today...parsley, spinach, banana and honeydew melon for breakfast, watermelon for a mid-morning snack, and cucumbers, tomatoes, and sun-dried tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, dill and italian seasoning for lunch. And then it happened...my sister-in-law is staying with us and she made dinner. I felt guilty, or not hospitable, not eating some of what she made. So I had my first cooked food in seven days. I might as well have fallen off a cliff. Not only did she make dinner, but she made chocolate, chocolate chip cookies. I partook of those too. Aaargh!

To be completely honest, having sugar from the cookies after going without, was a drug-like feeling. I felt a buzz and a sluggishness come over me. My food-addiction kicked in immediately. Instead of having a few bites of her food and maybe one cookie, I had a plate full of dinner and at least eight cookies. One of the things I noticed when eating totally raw was that I didn't crave sugar. Once I ate sugar today, I kept eating it. It is good, but I can never get enough of it. Fruit on the other hand is wonderfully satisfying. I get my "sweet" fix, but I don't overeat.

Old habits don't go away easily. i got sucked backwards by the rubber band around the tree behind me (see post on Day Three). But all is not lost. It is time to get back on my horse and ride again. I know how great I feel when I eat raw. I know how my body slims down when I eat raw. Tomorrow is a new day...but I can't rely on my tomorrows. Isn't there a Garth Brooks' song about that...how tomorrow never comes?

Whenever I get close to experiencing a drop in weight, I sabotauge myself. I knew that tomorrow I would be in the 170s. What do you know...I sabotauged myself and I won't be in the 170s tomorrow. My mental thermostat has been pegged in the 180s. Time to do some introspection and figure out how to reset that thermostat...even if it is to the 170s. Baby steps. I want to end up in the high 140s. I have been there before and I looked and felt amazing.

When I did HCG a year and a half ago, I started in the mid 180s and got down to 147. Here I am eighteen months later back to the 180s. On HCG I dropped like a rock, but didn't really change my eating habits. Yes it is a semi-starvation diet and when I got off it I returned to my old ways.

Tomorrow I will be perfectly raw again. To help me more committed, I am going to read the blogs of other people who are on this journey as well. It is kind of like reading the scriptures. When I read the scriptures each day, I am focused on living God's will for me and I am strengthened to overcome temptations that would lead me to make choices contrary to His will. Likewise, learning from others who are firmly committed to the raw lifestyle helps me to make good choices and reminds me of why I want to eat raw.