Can anyone offer any honest advice!!!!!

whats the situation?

you can try going for a walk and just getting away from food all together till you can exercise your will power

go back over what makes you want to be raw in the first place, go over your goals and reasons and remind yourself

figure out whats pushing you off the wagon and deal with it or eliminate it

sorry i cant offer any more cuz im not sure what you are going thru !

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Actually what you say is good and helpful... i did go for a long bike ride so that was good to get me out of the house and away from food... i suppose re-evaluating why i am raw is a good idea as well...maybe i will sit down and journal a bit about this...but now i'm feeling rather terrible... belly swollen with wierd effervescent burps... yuck... it's crazy how our emotions can really take over...and ignore everything that we have been working for... even when my mind is saying stop... i still go... maybe i should say go... I started to talk to someone who does EFT about the problems i have with binge eating and it seems when i try to get help things get worse... she is also not Raw and we discussed me possibly using raw foods to contain my binging in a box so to speak... and she asked what if i just let go... and what happend is right now i feel terrible... i let go and went way overboard... if only i could let go and still be happy and healthy... uhg... i am also not around anyone who is raw and am staying with my sister... and there is SAD food available with little support... i'm starting to wonder if i should just give up...

Luv:

Most people hold themselves to too high a standard....instead of the standard that is right for THEM. It's OK to have good long-term goals.....but better to eat in a way that you are 100% comfortable with (even if it's not optimal) and then stretch from there....rather than proceeding from a place of conflict, failure or despair.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Don't give up if there is value for you in a Living Food Journey. Accept that there are cycles and sometimes we get overwhelmed by "life" or pressures, sometimes we end up reacting with old eating habits. It's okay, it passes and in time we get up with a new resolve. The new resolve may come by the next meal or the next couple of days. Life is too short to beat yourself up over a pizza, rather, learn from the pizza experience.

Peace,
Buzurg

well i wish my falling wouldn't be so painful... i've ended up fasting.... more because my stomach hurt so bad that i couldn't eat... and now i'm on day 2... ... it's frustrating to have to be so strict... so yes maybe i hold too high a standard for myself... and beat myself up over a slip... but when it hurts so bad do i really have a choice???

I simply wish i could feel in more control over it... where i could slip here and there and not worry about it...or not think of it as a slip and have it be such a big thing and then feel so horrible... do they go hand in hand... i suppose they do...

I know it's an emotional thing but i feel sort of trapped at the moment and i don't really know what to do about it.

love laugh and dream

When you say you wish you could slip here and there and not worry about it, it makes me think, "Why can't that be your goal?" You can do that if that is what you choose.

My biggest cravings are mexican food. I used to eat the greasiest, cheesiest mexican food. Now if I want mexican food I make a few beans and rice, grated carrots and lettuce and wrap it in an ezekial corn tortilla. I keep it vegan and healthier so I am controlling my "slip" up. I don't even think of it as a "slip." I plan it. I feel heavy and have some pain when I eat those foods, but emotionally I knew what I was getting into and I made a choice. I tell myself, "look how good you are doing! Three years ago your diet was not any where near this good." It is all a mind game. You can make your goals exactly where you want them. If you are too hard on yourself, you are sabotaging your goals.

pakd4fun,

Its great that you can "slip" on a planned basis. We are all different. I have found that when I include ANY cooked food in my diet it takes over. The next day I will have some cooked food and a little more. That scenario repeats day after day. The cooked becomes a larger % and the raw % becomes smaller. Once that door is open strong cravings return. The last slip I had (June 08) went on in an escalation process until my %'s were dismal and I finally had to start all over. I found cooked food to be more then just habit forming I found it to be addictive.

luvyuu, please don't worry. It's very common for people to go through this kind of thing during transition to raw. I know I did!

For me it took a whole lot of practice to stay raw. The more you practice, the easier it will become. Each off-the-wagon experience is a potential learning experience, if you can figure out the lesson and remember it.

Maybe you feel there are still a lot of missing pieces in your personal raw food puzzle. But even just learning what doesn't work for you, is a valuable lesson. Maybe you learned that it doesn't work too well to "just let go". So, Yay! You can scratch that lesson off the list! A small but important victory!

My own personal list of learning experiences was very long. And some items had to be checked off a number of times, because I'd forget a lesson and have to repeat it. It happens.

But now it seems that staying raw is the easiest thing in the world! Just took a lot of practice!

-Make sure that you're regularly getting a good share of all the essential (raw) nutrients so that you're not trying to fight against your body's natural defense mechanism of wanting to be fed!

About fasting:

-I'm an X-cooked food binger. I almost always found it just about impossible to eat just a small amount of cooked food. I eventually came to the conclusion that for me, it was best to never fast the day immediately after eating cooked food. The reason is that I had begun to tell myself it was OK to eat something cooked, because I could just fast it off the next day. So this reasoning actually ended up supporting the bingeing! Kind of like my mind was saying, "Go ahead and binge, you can fast it off tomorrow". (Ah tomorrow!) Once I realized what I was doing, I stopped fasting the next day after a binge, and I was able to cross off one more excuse to binge! You may not have this problem, but I hope you'll keep the possibility in mind so you can avoid heading in that unfortunate direction. Fasting can be very good, but any purge - even a natural and often beneficial purge like fasting - can lead to psychological dependency. Binge/purge can become a much worse habit that just bingeing, because it's a cycle that's difficult to break. Each one leads back to the other. Bingeing leads to feeling bad which leads to purging. Purging leads to insatiable hunger which leads to bingeing. See how that can go? Beware!

Be patient with yourself. Give your body and your mind time to make mistakes, absorb the consequences with a determination to find your lesson and remember it; and gradually, but surely, you will become more confident and secure in your raw food lifestyle.

Feeling bad after cooked food? It will pass. FORWARD!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2009 08:31PM by suncloud.

With all that I posted above, I forgot to say that it can be very helpful to draw a line in the sand somewhere whenever you happen to be eating cooked food. Then you won't feel quite so bad the next day. I think a good first line is staying vegan.

If you're already doing that successfully, then maybe you're ready to draw a new line - like say - no bread or baked foods. Then later, no grains at all. Eating a lot of steamed veggies feels a lot better the next day than eating a lot of grains!

Gradually you'll lose the feeling that you need to have anything cooked at all.

These problems and conflicts are internally-generated.
In other words, they're based on the way you think
about yourself. A change in thinking will result in
different behaviors and (subsequently) emotions that
correspond with those behaviors.

This is why "Faking it 'til you make it" works. Our
behaviors lead to what we feel. And, in reality,
you're not really "faking it" in the first place;
but, actually, you're being more authentic.

I do not agree that standards are "too high" unless
those standards are either unhealthy or impossible.
Being 100% RAW, for example, is not impossible, but
if your reasoning for why a person wants to be that
way is unhealthy, then maybe one's motives ought to
be examined.

And speaking of examining one's motives, why is it
that you're "falling off the wagon" in the first
place? What are you trying to prove to yourself
by falling off the wagon?

I do think that's good advice (from above) to focus on
the positive. And I'd say that a mature, responsible,
self-accepting, and self-respectful person would repeatedly
ask his- or herself: "What's good in my life? and "What
needs to be done?"

Notice how the tone of those two questions is quite
different from: "Help!!! falling off the wagon!!!"

I also think it's good advice (from above) "The more you
practice, the easier it will become. Each off-the-wagon
experience is a potential learning experience, if you
can figure out the lesson and remember it." The key
here is to learn, not to be perfect all the time.

Mostly, I think these conflicts involve shame and fear.
More specifically, shame covered up by fear. Fear of
what? Of being authentic.

When the truth is that most of us have nothing to be
ashamed of and little to be fearful of. When you
integrate that into your life you'll truly be on the
path to emotional and psychological freedom. And that's
a FUN and exciting place to be!

Steve
[www.meetup.com]
[www.rawgosia.com]

Hi there all... you all give me such great advice... i think i agree with the addictive nature of cooked foods... but you know i binge on raw foods as well... nuts and raisons and carrots in particular...so i suppose i agree iwth the fear and shameful feelings as well...

I was doing a no sugar diet for awhile... meaning no sweet fruits...then i discovered that those of the cabbage family of which i was eating lots were not good for me and causeing a lot of the weakness i was having and so i had to change my choices of foods...

and then i came down to my sisters house for a stay and started having sweet fruits... and i thought well i'll try the frutarian style out for awhile... and i'll tell you sugar...even sweet fruits tends to starts my ball rolling towards the edge of the wagon...

and when i tried to cut back on the sweets by not having them around i started bingeing on the foods that are available at my sisters... peanut butter peanuts crackers granola bars cereal...etc... foods i wouldn't choose to have even if i were eating a cooked diet...

So I agree fasting after a binge tends to give me permission to have these binges... but i couldn't stop... i was out of control...sadly i will admit i was also using laxative teas...but the first "fast" was more that i was so sick i couldn't eat... but the next day i did it again... and again... i was out of control...

so i've chosen and maybe not the best choice... but i am doing the master cleanse for a few days... i know maple syrup isn't raw... but i sort of figure if i am on some sort of plan i will beable to get these things out of my system and then i can get back on a positive track... no more binge puge binge purge which i feel was doing me more harm...and just straight fasting was tending to make my body want more...

I wish i could chose to have an off the wagon experience with out going out of control... i wish i wouldn't get so out of control at all... i wish my belly could handle it a lot better than it does...I wish i had some more support in the people that are immediately around me... all i get now is well you just need to eat more...

and i have a theory as well... do you think that our skin and our breathing can absorb the smells of other foods and make you crave it... my sister's family eats a lot of greasy meaty carbohydrate type foods... typical SAD diet...maybe i am craving it because i'm smelling it a lot... and in many cases cleaning up after them... but then again i should have a bit of control... because i can't live in a bubble...

love laugh and dream

Right, luvyuu, you can't live in a bubble, so you might as well cross off those cooked food smells as something to worry about!

Seems to me that it might help to try being a little less "all or nothing" in your raw food choices. It's not usually so necessary to be either a fruit-only fruitarian or have absolutely no fruit at all. You may find you can have as much fruit as you want, but no more than that (Debbietook has good suggestions).

Even though you may binge on both cooked and raw stuff, you might feel a lot better the next day after bingeing on raw stuff. Steamed veggies aren't so bad either.

About the binge-purge syndrome in general: it's a nightmare, it truly is. I speak as one who knows, because I was totally out of control with bulimia for about 10 years, eating everything I could get my mouth around, including gross dead animals, etc., so I know something of the pain and frustration you're going through.

I think I was half dead before I finally found a way out.

My mistake was in thinking that if only I could stop the bingeing part, of course I could easily stop the purging part. Wrong! This is going to be hard to hear, and even harder to accept, but for me, the purging part had to be stopped first! There was no way that I could stop the bingeing until I gutted up and made myself accept the full consequences of the bingeing without resorting to some "trick" like vomiting or laxatives or excessive fasting to get it out later. As long as I kept purging, I was perpetually obsessed with food because I was starving myself (even though I wasn't losing weight), and I was able to consistently allow myself to binge because I allowed myself the ridiculous (usually unconscious) thought that I could somehow avoid the consequences.

But we can never truly escape the consequences of our actions. The more we try to avoid the consequences, the more we hurt ourselves doing it. I finally stopped the purging, took on the consequences of overeating, and kept all the food down after I ate it without vomiting, laxatives, or waterfasting.

Guess what? That's when I was finally able to be successful on a raw food diet. That was almost 23 years ago. I'd tried to be a raw foodist for the preceeding 10 years(!) and I wasn't successful until I determined to stop the purging.

And guess what? I didn't gain weight. Within a few months, I lost 10 pounds!

It was hard at first of course. And I had my transgressions and ate too much raw food in the beginning. And sometimes too much cooked food. 2 things that helped were a binding commitment to staying vegan - no matter what - and beginning a yoga practice that I've happily continued to this day. I can safely waterfast now. I might eat a little too much sometimes afterwards, but it's raw and I don't let that bother me.

The first 4 years raw, I didn't eat any nuts or seeds on my raw food diet - only fruits, greens, and avocados. On that diet, I still resorted to cooked food (and overate) about once every 3 weeks. Once I added a moderate amount of nuts and seeds, my cooked food binges immediately decreased substantially, and there have been no cooked food binges now for many years.

I was probably much worse off than you are now, but I hope you might find something worthwhile from my experience.

Best wishes, luvyuu. We're hoping for the best for you!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2009 09:41PM by suncloud.

Thank you...

You are right it is hard to hear... to stop the purging is hard to hear even though in my head i know it's not so good... i find i feel better when i'm fasting then when i'm eating...and i enjoy the fasts... but i am reading a book about it now and this has been very helpful... though it has roused some tears and brought up some fear and some stuborn attitudes about it... I don't think i'm so bad off... but as i look back through my life i'm seeing the pattern and i would deffinitely like to get a handle on it... though part of me wants to just disappear into it...

I am finishing my short master cleanse tomorrow... though my brain is saying go on... i promised myself only to the end of the bottle of maple syrup and it lasted 4 days so tomorrow i journey back to the land of the eating... it's always a rough first couple of days and i can already feel myself getting a bit anxious about it... I will start with the orange juice though since it was short i will probably eat a bit tomorrow in the evening... are bananas ok to break a fast with??? how about watermelon???

So not to be too restrictive... well that's a tricky one... the cabbage family including kale, brocoli, cauliflour, cabbage... make me feel instantly depleated... nuts and seeds trigger me to binge until i'm sick... and sweet fruits too...but you are probably right better to binge on the raw stuff... cept for the nuts... maybe i will draw a line of only soaked nuts... we'll see if that helps... and the no vegan rule definitely helped on the last binge... so i will keep this in...

anyhow... we'll see how this journey goes...

love laugh and dream

Luvyuu,

Yes, I think bananas and/or watermelon are wonderful for breaking a fast.

It's usually good to try to avoid nuts/seeds completely the first day after a fast, but even those are better than starchy stuff like macaroni, bread, potatoes or whatever! Greens that are easy to digest and feel good to you are OK. For me, I prefer to have greens a little later after having fruit. Avocado is usually OK a little later too. Some people prefer to break their fast on greens. Probably best not to combine the two right off. One or the other, and then wait a while - at least a half hour if you eat the fruit first, longer if you eat the greens first. However, I've always found that oranges combine well with greens. Avo, tomato, cucumber, and lemon seem to combine well with greens too.

Until you feel you're back in control, you might consider keeping some veggies in the house all the time to steam up if the urge for something cooked becomes overwhelming. I found that very helpful for me. I'd steam up a bunch of frozen peas or brussels sprouts or some fresh broccoli, spinach, or cauliflower, add some minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and turmeric, put it all on top of some fresh lettuce, and voila! - a feast that was OK for me to have without feeling like I just had to purge afterwards. Wasn't as good as raw food of course, but way better than what I could have eaten!

I kind of think that once certain nutrients are replenished, you'll be much less likely to overeat the nuts. But I guess you'll have to see how it goes. You might try seeds too. I really like sesame seeds (unhulled). They take forever to chew, so it's very hard to overeat them.

If some foods make you feel depleted, and if you really don't want them, there's no reason to force yourself to eat them. If you do want them, maybe try to eat them less often and/or not as much until they feel better when you eat them.

I think it's still OK for you to fast sometimes, as long as it's not right after a binge. And don't overdo it. Try one day a week maybe, after you feel more in control. If you do it and it leads serious bad overeating afterwards, then you might consider that you're not ready yet, and it might be better to wait a little longer before fasting again.

Love, laugh, and dream! I like it!

This thread has caused me to stop and think about the effects of purging for the first time in a long time. Please correct me if I'm wrong: Isn't the problem with purging that the body puts energy and resources into preparing the food for digestion and then abruptly the food is removed from the stomach causing a loss of the digestives enzymes and stomach juices without getting any return on investment. This situation repeated over and over again causes the body to go into bankruptcy and results in the body being deposited into a coffin as happened to Karen Carpenter and others. Is that about the way it works ?

yes thats correct EZ , in addition to what happens above , when the microcells in the body is *tricked* into thinking it just had a shot of nutrition which has now exited the body, the cells are turned on and lookng for energy to absorb, because the energy is not there the turned on cells turn to body stores for fuel, because there is no fat or carbs for energy the cells start to feast on protein/muscle tissue generally the first things to start to go is for example the heart and other major organs, thats why there is so many people with ED's die of heart failure or other major organ failure

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

I think all of the above, the severity depending on how often and how bad the purging is.

There is potentially major electrolyte depletion, acid reflux, slowing of metabolism, and constipation from dependence on laxatives. All of these can lead to some very serious consequences.

For me, at my worst, I had very painful angina in my late 20s (heart pain related to restricted blood flow to the heart), even though I weighed less than 100 pounds. Walking up a stairway was difficult because of the pain.

My brain would feel numb, like pins and needles in the top of my head. I probably was not getting enough blood flow to my brain. I started noticing some behavior changes - irritability after purging, lasting several days - that seemed to come from a lack of proper brain function.

Thoughts of suicide after a purge became the expected norm. These thoughts probably came from the physical stress, as much as from the guilt and self-blame that I felt.

The outcome of it all can surely be fatal, as in the case of Karen Carpenter and others.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2009 08:15PM by suncloud.

oh, wow, suncloud, so glad you are still with us and healing : )

well... well... well... I know this life style stuff isn't good for the body... i've known for a long time... i feel as if i'm sort of on the edge between not so good and potential for bad... and i've just started opening myself up to it... more honestly... and realizing that it is a problem... that i am out of control that getting help is not such a horrible idea... though it's a bit scarey... ok more than a bit...

I get confused because some of the things i restrict are because they make me feel bad... the cabbage family because i have some gall bladder issues... and i tried cutting them out for a bit and then adding them in and wow... i was a mazed at how exhaused and weak i feel after eating them... almost immediately... and then other things i cut out because i know they trigger binge eating...

and i know fasting can be good for you when done properly and i've been dealing with health issues through an alternative nutritional way for many years now... or am i just justifying... i don't think so entirely... but it's like a combination of so many things...

Sun cloud i am sorry for your struggles and am glad you have pulled through it and are here to talk about it because it helps me to get a real handle on things because i haven't wanted to give up being raw just yet and you make me realize that i don't have to...

thank you ... and thank you to everyone for your support it is very helpful in this time of confusion for me...

love laugh and dream