Humans are complicated animals, I know. Vexing. Frustrating. Even enraging. The better part of me yearns to hold all with compassion, understanding, empathy…and then there is the better part of me that needs to mirror what she sees, hold what she knows close inside so to not lose it, forget it…amidst the pressures of all else.
I have learned in the last year that my life is more peaceful, steadier, more grounded and curious when I do not consume sugar. Added sugars. Sweets. Desserts. Whatever. Same thing with carbs like bread, rice, pasta, couscous, quinoa. When I’m intentional about eating good food, not processed, protein and plants, higher fat, I’m the happiest woman I’ve ever known myself to be.
I don’t spike up and crash down during a day. I don’t get shaky-hungry, requiring an immediate ‘something’ to stop feeling like I might pass out. I don’t feel afraid of hunger anymore. (I used to fear it like the plague…like something was wrong with me). I don’t visualize meals that would offer reprieve from said cravings, spiking up, crashing down, shaky-hungry spells. I’m not very receptive to billboards and digital seductions of desire, food-porn, or quick-fix. I know a food-freedom that I have never known before…a way of being in my body that opens me to a much steadier presence all around me and within me. This is a choice-for, not a choice-against or -without. For-life...
Now, most people I know would hear this collection of choices as a life of deprivation and self-denial. A woman of strong-will who has learned to diet for the rest of her life. I get that, as it has been internalized into me too, for most of my life. But it’s simply not the case for me. Still, there is almost nothing I can say that can convince otherwise. (Including my husband, sad to say). Most cannot hear that eating good food, avoiding processed foods, eating mostly plants and protein, more fat, makes me the happiest woman I have ever known I could be.
So it remains exhaustingly challenging to maintain, to continue to know this freedom inside…
For instance...Brian is delighted to have found a new spice for our pork meals—tenderloins, chops, shoulder in the slow-cooker. He used it for last week’s pork shoulder and we both enjoyed the change of flavors. So tonight was either going to be pork chops or pork tenderloin, “bicentennial rub”, the new spice. While slow-cooking the bacon for breakfast, however, I began to put the new spices into the cupboard. On a hunch, I checked the label of the new bicentennial rub. Argh. Cane sugar. The rush of irritation and feeling of being unsupported, exasperation at this, our difference. Why can he NOT check the labels, knowing as he does that it matters to me?
Next step then...venturing into the difference and advocating for what I need while he gets irritated and frustrated with my so-called rigidity about sugar and carbs. A couple post-workout exchanges, beginning to check in with one another about the possibility of a walk to the preserve with Nala, our dog. The psychological terrain feels steady enough for the naming of what I need.
Adopting a nonchalant tone of low-anxiety: "Oh, and we better choose pork chops for tonight. The Bicentennial rub? It’s got cane sugar in it and I’m trying to get back on Plan for several days in a row, remember? You can use that rub on yours, and let’s use the Adobo on mine, okay?” Tensive pause as he looks at me, a bit crestfallen. "Sorry. I didn’t think to look," he says. Biting my tongue, I hear inside my head, “No, you didn’t. Again. How freakin’ hard can it be, for someone you love and live with, who has made these choices for over a year now?!? Any chance of you being supportive of me, given you see the fruits of it written all over my body?"
But saying aloud, “Great! Let me get my walking shoes on. Ready to go in 5.”
This is why eating good food, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding 'added sugars’ and carbs like bread/rice/couscous/quinoa etc. is so freaking challenging! I admit I am envious about those families who have made the move to on-plan eating together. While it is just Brian and me—no children, by choice—I get so very weary having to make the choices again and again amidst his refusal to support me in it, his neglect of what I have demonstrated I need, his resistances, his own disregard of his body, his increasingly fraught use of food to numb out or avoid his higher stress levels with work and the world.
And yet it is his own journey, his own body, his own freedom that I want to honor, protect, too. I don’t want him making choices for me, so I don’t make choices for him either. And yet…. And yet… Sometimes…just sometimes…I wish the living into the freedom I know would be just a bit easier, with fewer obstacles from those I love.
Humans are complicated animals, through and through. My own tenacity gets refined by his neglect and refusal. My conviction grows as I watch his own body deteriorate from the inside with high sugar, acid-reflux, and more… I wish he would take better care of himself. I wish he would love his body in a way that is healthy for it. But that will never be my call, in the end.
Freedom is what freedom is, after all…
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