On the Other Side of the Glass/Different Perspectives on (your partner's) Detox/My Failed Attempt at Self-Transformation

More posts about the energy bars are coming! But today I feel that I need to write about some more personal stuff, to open my soul and strive for clarity through revelation, hope for good advice from kindred spirits and also hope that my own experiences may be of help to others. It's probably going to take two posts to say what I have to say conveniently.

Many people who change their diets are familiar with the social acceptance issues that this can provoke. The person who changes has their own part in this, in terms of avoiding becoming obsessive or judgmental whilst preserving their integrity. Their loved ones and family members also have the challenge of acceptance and understanding. There are so many differences between Phil's and my choices, constantly requiring our mutual acceptance and understanding: in many ways it seems like we inhabit parallel but different universes! And right now, marvelously accepting and understanding though Phil is, the intense cleansing process I'm going through, together with the prognosis of remaining on a low-glycemic raw diet, are difficult because of this difference in world-view. 

Here's some back-story to explain why I think that the groundwork I laid made this even harder.

'A Vane Blown with All Winds'

I own the mixed blessing of being ridiculously flexible in the ability to see all perspectives, to the point that I don't hold my own ground but allow myself to be, as Shakespeare would say, 'a vane blown with all winds.' Especially if I admire someone, I'm very likely to emulate them.

Well, I admire Phil tremendously! Apart from being extremely loving, funny and intelligent, he is, simply put, superman. He thinks nothing of working hard chainsawing all morning and then going for a 15 mile hike in the afternoon just for relaxation. He's been farther out in the most inhospitable wilds than anyone I know, just roaring along covering decades of miles per day on foot, just because he has so much energy. In the huge blizzard a couple of weeks ago, on one of the worse wind days he ski'd in the morning and climbed down our bluff to hike along the beach to town in the afternoon. I met him in town and had a hard time walking just a few hundred yards, the wind was so strong and icy! Oh, and did I mention, he's 61?!

On top of all this, he eats for fuel (can easily make a plate of meat and potatoes disappear when I've barely taken two bites of my salad, and be ready to run out again, whereas I feel better letting things digest for a while) and especially, for pleasure. If he feels like it, he'll take care of the whole pan of brownies at a sitting, or eat ice cream by the quart although he knows it's bad for him and makes him mucusy. Although he loves plants and herbs and is willing to put anything in his mouth in terms of wildcrafting experiments, his preferred tastes really are sugar and salt. And in terms of fuel, meat and bread are at the center.

When we got together, I had been vegetarian basically my whole life and raw for a half dozen years, and was just experimenting with raw animal products. I was also just beginning to build significant strength, which it's always been hard for me to do, and which I wanted very badly. I had also just been doing my own diabolical 'supersize me' experiment with the 'Primal Diet,' which is another story I could tell if there's interest, and thought I had some weight to lose. 

The Dangers of Being Married to Superman

So, I admired him so much and wanted so much to fit in with his life, and until my body simply wouldn't let me do it anymore, I set it as a rule for myself that I had to do as he did, in terms of physical output. Somehow, I thought that  if he's still (at the time) pushing 60 and going strong, and his diet and attitude worked for him to make such a dynamic phenomenon, I could convert myself to be the same.  So, if we'd been hiking all day and then he wanted to launch the boat from our campsite and row it around a bit, I had to go too, instead of finally relaxing. He never wanted me to be like this, and it was torture to make myself do it That recent blizzard day when I didn't join him brought home to me how glad I am that I removed that rule from myself!

As for adjusting to his food beliefs, he has such a cast-iron constitution and, it should be added, such a successful 'pleasure' approach that, whilst he acknowledges that what we eat does have some effect on our health, he has little patience for 'faddism,' doesn't really believe that there's danger from toxins/pesticide residues, etc, and dislikes the tendency to obsessiveness/judgment/exclusivism that tends to accompany special diets. 

I couldn't possibly eat the way he does (if only because of the gluten) but for the first year or so that we were together, I tried to at least make my diet a subset of his. I quit paying so much attention to rawfood considerations, lost touch with rawfood acquaintances, educated myself about meat and fish, started eating cooked food - and there were some good parts to that. There were enjoyable times: I love to cook! I also tried to allow myself to be a little more pleasure-oriented, and especially, to be able to feed myself pleasurably no matter where we were: I conceived a guilt complex for having had 'special needs' and forbad myself to make my own 'special foods.'

Constant cravings were a totally new thing for me, as well as feelings of deprivation. This was a 'detox' of its own: a lot of repressed cravings and deprivation from the anorexic and then fruitarian days, unacknowledged and now clamoring for attention.

Unfortunately, as my digestion worsened and my frustration continued as the 'supersize me' weight dissipated only slowly, this led to my buying all kinds of 'special' diet bars, etc, instead of making my own, which only helped me to feel worse. Worse here means weaker, increasingly depressed, moods out of control.

I quit all that, as well as dairy (which I'd re-experimented with), which made things much better emotionally, and was eating mostly steamed vegetables and a little meat and fish. But even then, even taking strong digestive enzymes, I had intense stomach pain every time I ate. Now, eating no meat, raw salads, nuts, algae, I'm usually pain free! It is such a relief! 

Back to being deviant...

But it is so painful too, because of its divisiveness and because it puts paid to my eating solely local foods. I really did try to make myself successfully 'locavore' (fish and game, with seasonal plant matter) here in Alaska. 

And I really did try to eat more like everyone else. Those are the two dilemmas. The first, locavorism, is about abundance, which has been a life-long issue for me to work on, while the second is about social acceptance, which I scorned in as a food-choice-based issue for a long time but which actually does count for something. 

I really believe in self-transformation, and that we can perceive this life and universe through any of a myriad prisms of perspective. And I really believed that I could transform myself into engaging with it like Phil does, specifically in the realms of activity output and insouciance about food input. I'm trying not to view this as a failure but rather as a recognition that in this regard, we are on different paths. Trying to turn myself into Phil was not ultimately going to serve me on my path, and therefore probably wasn't even the best thing for our relationship. It's back to the Serenity Prayer and 'the wisdom to know the difference' (between what I can and cannot change).

In the next section, I'll talk about the deeper dangers and concerns over this deviant diet of mine in Phil's and my different paradigms, since that's the troublous thing at the moment. And I'm afraid that my 'feet first' attempt to completely remake myself as described above probably makes my current habits seem even more outlandish and hard to accept.