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Originally Posted by rightnow
This relates to food, I swear, bear with me.
So the other night I was in my local super-walmart (the only real store here) looking for a novel to read. SWM does not carry science fiction at all. I don't know why, their buyer clearly refuses it. Paranormal romance is as close as they come. So demons and vampires and sex are ok; space ships, no way. Go figure. Anyway, so I'm searching for a book that is 'positive' -- or at least, shall we say, not overwhelmingly focused on death and darkness, from one vantage or another.
I realize as I stand there that that most of the greatest books in literature would not be published today. Aside from a small hardback fiction novel niche, mostly dominated by the death-cult writers as I call them on NYT bestseller lists, ordinary fiction is dead. Little Women would die in a drawer. If you want to sell ordinary fiction today you have to write for the 'young' markets, which are more open by nature of less-supporting sex and gore.
It occurred to me with sadness, as I stood in the book section empty-handed, that if I was not willing to hold a pretty negative focus during the 2-3 hours it takes me to read most novels, that I no longer "fit into society." I could browse both sides of 3 rows of modern novels with lots of money and find nothing to spend it on. Don't get me wrong, I actually LIKE sex and violence and the dark side, but lately I'm working on maintaining a more positive focus, a side-effect of some meditation (mystic aka spiritual) work of late, and no offense to the Divine Will I'm trying to get closer to as part of this, but maintaining this state of mind in the modern world is a real pain in the ass. It is, as I once said about Low Carb, "like trying to be Amish in New York."
Irked by my failure to find a single book that wasn't focused entirely on sex, death or the dark side, I went to the grocery side to shop, where I then attempted to look for foods which had no gluten, no dairy, and little sugar/carbs.
Pretty much the same experience, except of course that I was able to find some meat and produce that fit the bill. Pretty much nothing else in the fairly giant grocery store, during thanksgiving week which is stuffed with food and yummy stuff, qualified.
Much of the time, I deal with the psychology of lowcarb pretty well. Eat meat. I like it. How hard is that. Not a big deal. If you eat meat you're not hungry that often. If you're ok with burgers/steak/chicken/eggs it's pretty easy to cook.
My 13 year old makes LC a pain by being too finicky for everything, then miserable when getting what she's willing to eat, then leaning hard as hell on eating crap, then miserable because she is still overweight. But aside from the HER aspect of lowcarb, most the time, it is ok with me.
And sometimes, it is not. Like the other night, when all the sudden I decided that I am just damn WEARY of having to be a grocery store, family gathering outcast because I don't eat carbs that are EVERYWHERE and I don't eat gluten that is EVERYWHERE and I was hoping to avoid dairy just for a week which is damn near everywhere those are not!
I'm standing in the meat section mourning I can't have cheese on the burgers, standing in the produce section mourning I can't have blue cheese as dressing, and I just snapped. I DON'T CARE.
I just finished eating pesto with ravioli. While drinking a diet mountain dew, now what was the point of that, I suppose . . .
I'm trying to care. It's broken! I'm broken. My I-care-because is broken. I know that I am hugely fat, and best-case scenario under apparently only one of 14 alternative and low-carb eating plans, I do lose weight, albeit verrrrry slowly.
I know that the prospect of eating perfectly rendering another 15 of my ~240 extra pounds gone in a mere few months, maybe, IF everything keeps working, ought to inspire me to fits of dedicated low-carb cooking.
I know that the prospect of becoming further- revoltingly- deformed by loose skin than my ~150# lost so far should inspire me to more of that too.
But, amazingly enough, it's just not working right now.
This happens in cycles. I decide I do not give a damn, I hate all of this, hate having to obsess about my food, hate that I can't just friggin EAT SOMETHING FAST that does not involve cooking, eat something out with other people that does not involve a limited order and vivisection of innocent hamburgers, hate that I feel like it would be so much easier if I were living in a cave with Grok rather than in a modern city with a 13 year old, and I just freak out.
Then I eat what I want for awhile. Usually 1-2 months.
When I come back to lowcarb, it is not because I am sane, have seen the light, am appropriately concerned for my health, or anything like that.
It's because the combination of carb-bloating, gluten-asthma, and dairy-allergies, and all their side-effects, have driven me to a degree of medical symptoms that finally, after 1-2 months depending on what I'm eating, finally has made me so miserable as to outweigh my frustration about how I am a cultural deviant and I can't eat hardly anything comparative to what I was raised to call 'food'.
I bought good food. Burger, chicken, bacon, produce, a filter for my Brita water picher, a few diet drinks. Then I went home, walked to the nearby tiny-store and bought ravioli and garlic bread, like passive-aggressive acting-out behavior.
I've been off LC "mostly" for about a month now. Hopefully, as of Friday (tomorrow we hope to go out somewhere to eat) that will change and the good food filling my fridge will again be enough to sustain me, and the kid, and we will return to being healthier.
Surely I can't be the only lowcarber, especially those with gluten-free and/or dairy-free approaches, that goes through this psychological cycle.
What do you guys do to deal with this? To prevent, or to cure it?
PJ
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I hesitate to continue on this tangent unless PJ finds it applicable to her situation - otherwise I'd feel like I'd hijacked her thread.
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