I Feel Good

Thank you for all your wonderful comments and messages on this past blog entry. I have had a great week of taking care of myself and reading all your inspiring and loving words.

Also, as an experiment I decided to see what would happen if I gave up all processed and sugary foods for the last week. I feel good, but then when I was at a shoot I encountered a giant platter loaded with croissants and muffins, nutty banana ‘breakfast’ breads, bagels, cinnamon rolls glazed with snowy white frosting. Of course this is Hollywood and of course no one was eating it, and everything was getting a little hard in the air conditioning – the cake ever so slightly drying in the southern California desert climate, all cut up into ‘actress’ size pieces, the sugar glinting and glistening like tiny diamonds – there is nothing as beautiful as coarse grains of sugar baked on top of something! I got kind of insane. I literally had to leave the room. The smell followed me like a curled up, yeasty finger, tapping me on the shoulder, hooking my nostrils – trying to lure me back. I started sweating and I actually got scared! I got scared of the baked goods!! Isn’t that insane??? My scalp itched and my face twitched. It really felt like some kind of drug withdrawal, which it probably was – like dopesickness – although I have never actually experienced an opiate withdrawal, that’s what it seemed was happening.

I had a nightmare that night where I was trying to eat the inside of a loaf of unsliced wheat bread and my teeth were stuck in the doughy middle, falling out and staying in the bread, bloodying the thing, making the hard swallows thick and copper tasting. I have many dreams in which I lose my teeth because when I was little a young gay man was killed outside the bookstore that my parents owned. He had been gay bashed and they never found the people who did it. it was so horrible and terrifying and we found his teeth outside the store for weeks afterwards. Ever since then, broken teeth are scattered throughout the landscape of my nightmares: sometimes mine, sometimes his – but they are always there, the teeth. I woke up scared that I had lost my teeth yet again, and even more scared that I had eaten carbs. This is really crazy.

Last night there were some cookies left out on the bus – our tour bus is a rolling collection of deliciousness – all chocolates and chips and candies and cakes and every kind of alcoholic beverage in every drawer and cabinet, even spilling out onto the countertops – how I love the bus. The cookies were new, and I hadn’t checked them out yet, like I had with the golden oreos, like I had my way with all the sweet goodies laying out for me in my moving castle, queen of the empty calories. They were packed tightly together, not one was missing, a perfect row of lemony cookie goodness, neat and made by a loving hand. I wanted them badly but I could just notice my desire for them and not act on them, the need was not as urgent as it had been with the big tray of baked goods at the shoot. I didn’t have to leave the room. I could just sit there with the want and it didn’t make my face itch. I didn’t judge myself for thinking they looked like they tasted good. I didn’t have any because I had already brushed my teeth.

This sounds dumb but it’s progress. Every moment I don’t give into these food addictions is a victory. Each day I get stronger and feel better.

16 thoughts on “I Feel Good

  1. How I understand… The battle with sugar is a rough one. I have loved sweets since childhood. As a young woman I crave to be healthy so I have recognized my true addiction to sugar and limit myself. In my coffee and a sweet treat once a week is my program thus far. Good luck you’re doing an amazing job. Keep goin!

  2. That’s awful about what happened to that man…people are so terrible sometimes.
    But that’s so awesome that you’re doing this. Keep fightin’, hon! You’ve got all your fans’ support and you can do this!

  3. It’s so difficult, giving up the baked goods, I understand. I’ve never tried, but when I get to the “Good for you food or die,” broke level, I think of stealing baking supplies from the store to make stuff with.

    I’m happy you’re beating it, and I know you can continue to do so!

  4. I have similar cravings for s&v chips. However, they don’t even have to be around for me to want them. I avoid the chip and pop isle in the grocery store and I won’t even go into a convenience store…if they are out forget about it.
    You have a much better handle on this then I do.

  5. Good for you! This is THE biggest struggle for me, especially cookies! I’ve had my “doughy, white boy middle” for about 6 years now and it’s an everyday struggle to get it to reduce and cutting out the processed stuff and sugars is the trick. Hard as hell but I know once I do, I’ll feel so much better, without it weighing me down. We’re heading into the fall and winter now here in the East, which makes it even worse! BUT, I will be moving to the West coast in the near future and I am looking forward to putting the cold, inside weather behind me and to a total life change! Thanks, as always for sharing as we all help each other get through this crazy, wonderful life!

  6. Grammar Nazi, college professor says : “I feel WELL.”
    We now return you to Margaret Cho and other ways of making you guffaw.

  7. Wow. I thought I was the only one. And now I know….there are others that hear the pastry voices. Every day we get stronger. With everyday comes a new victory to rejoice in. You made very good choices and you WON!! Take that you nasty cinnabons!

  8. I am a straight-up ABC living in the middle of Texas. I am no stranger to the sumptuous call of the carb.

    Strangely (& grossly) enough, when I had to fast for 14 days for the death of my Grandfather, I realized how much of my mind is CONSUMED with consumption.

    Trimming the fat…it’s a good thing

  9. those pastry voices can be so DEMANDING and persistent….and they will follow me around the house like little sneaky floating pies or something…..

  10. Everything I don’t get to have on my diet that I was eating before can get really exaggerated in my bad. I went hungry today for the first time before I got home from work. I didn’t think about all the goodies I could have had in the vending machine, or the food I could have ate at taco bell or starbucks across the street.

    I called someone to try and get my mind off of it. Someone I knew who wouldn’t leave me until I was off. We toured the whole store and I kept complaining about how hungry I was. I learned that several other people are on diets and how much they have lost with time. It kept me from eating, and somehow a little group conjugated outside for the last hour we were all supposed to be working.

    I’m smackin my sugarfree gum hella hard the whole time. Drinking a diet soda, and they start giving me shit about how diet soda is bad for you, and I should only have a taste and drink water. I drank that 20 oz bottle of Zero hoping it would curb my appetite. It did, a little, but I kept thinking about other ways of curbing appetite, like ephedra, phen phen, cocaine.

    I’ve been having using dreams lately. I’m doing alot of meth in my dreams and waking up grateful it was only a dream. It messes with me for a bit, but it’s nothing to write about.

    I’m on step 2 of my smoking cessation program tomorrow. Down 7mg of nicotine from 21mg. I had a cigarette over the weekend. Some say it’s cheating. As long as I’m not smoking habitually I don’t think it’s a big deal.

    I too feel better this week. I just woke up from my late afternoon nap. I’m usually still very drowsy and feel rather sluggish from all the food I normally had to eat after I got home from work. Chips and cookies are my weakness.

  11. it’s difficult to give up the sweets and your ability to leave the room and suffer from a panic attack instead of eating the snacks demonstrates strong will power. I like to compare most sweets to cigarettes – they are wrong and slow killers for most. for whatever reason, we naturally treat our bodies like crap and assume it can handle it when truth be told, our bodies deserve our love equally as much as we deserve to love and be loved by another. look at it from a scientific point of view and be glad that you want to stay on top of that hill and do what’s right for your “inner” self.

  12. another thought…. if you saw someone feeding sweets like that to a newborn baby, how would you react, especially if it was YOUR newborn baby? you would probably be horrified. it’s not OK to feed that type of food to a newborn baby so why should it be all right at any age? think of yourself as that newborn and stick to your current state of self “protection” because really that’s what you’re doing – you’re protecting yourself.

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