Frozen Grapes

I'm eating frozen grapes in a vain attempt to stay away from the Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the freezer at the 7-11 next door. It's 4 dollars I shouldn't spend and1240 calories I don't need. It's 108 grams of sugar and a pint of dairy. It's a sore throat in the morning, stiff knees and tiny, painful pimples around my mouth next week. It's delicious.

Sticking to the AK diet is really hard for me. Hard enough that I'm not very good at it. One of the reasons I started this blog was to have a place of accountability. So far, I am my own only reader and that is just perfect; this whole writing in a public space thing is new and a little embarrassing for me. I've considered making a formal blog-posted commitment to swear off wheat, dairy, sugar and soy for X number of weeks or months, and to follow it with these posts... but I don't want to fail. Besides, I want to eat cookies and ice cream sometimes--and feel guilty enough about it as it is.

Fail.

That's what it feels like I'm doing every time I dip my spoon back into this pint of "Everything but the..." on my nightstand. That vague sense of "not good enough" just makes me want to eat it more. So does the sense of "I feel a headache coming on" and "gosh, my gut's not quite right." It's such a twisted place to be, mentally.

I do not have celiac disease. I am not a diabetic. There is not a single food I know of that would send me into anaphalaxis. In that sense, I feel blessed--if I want to, when I want to, I can eat anything without really having to think twice about it. At the same time, though, I feel like if I had a more concrete, more immediate consequence, this would be easier.

I poison myself slowly.

After taking the "static" out of my system (unswitched, as we call it), an AK practitioner can test my muscles with and without different foods in my mouth. A strong quad--related to the small intestine--will go weak if I sample dairy. A strong lat--related to the pancrease and spleen--will weaken instantly to sugar, just a pinch, applied to my tongue. I've been involved in demonstrations twice during which our teacher, a highly skilled chiropractor to whom I will refer as DTF, finds my problems and fixes them only to make them reappear by dosing me with one of these foods. Lying on an adjusting table, vulnerable in front of a stadium-seated classroom full of mentors and peers, future colleagues, DTF adjusts a few bones, adresses a few muscles, and clears away neurological disorganization, trigger points and digestive issues, facilitates muscles and increases passive range of motion. Then, he sprinkles sugar or powdered milk on my tongue... and all of the strong muscles are weak again, the subluxations return, the flexibility is gone, the switching reappears.

I know how these things affect me.

But I eat them anyway. And I pay the price.

I've never been overweight, really. I've never suffered from a chronic disease, or migraines, or anything worse than a nasty cold or virus. Before I started getting better, I didn't know I was sick.

I thought it was normal to get dizzy when you stood up, to feel stuffed after a meal, to get tired around 3pm, stay alert until 2am and never wake up rested. I thought that, at 15 years as a sophomore in high school, my wrists and knees were just old. The doctor tested me for Lupus when I kept complaining that it hurt; my tests were negative. He told me to take Ibuprofen, and wrote me a note to get out of P.E.

Since cutting back on these foods, since getting AK adjustments and taking whole food supplements, I wake up rested. My energy holds through the day. My menses are easy; I don't black out when I stand up, I don't get heart palpitations. As long as I stay off the cookies, my knees don't ache. I don't get tonsil stones, anymore. My tummy stays flat, the circles under my eyes dissapear, my gait is graceful, my posture is strong, my skin clears up.

I don't get "wing bone pain", the dull ache underneath my shoulder blade that plagued me from 8th grade through college, anymore.


On Wednesday, I walked to Trader Joe's during my lunch. I bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies. I ate six of them during my trip back to the office. (I never can just eat one. Of anything.) My wing bone pain returned, even as I walked. The next day, I woke up bloated and stiff. My knees are achey, my throat is sore, I had a headache, which I rarely suffer, and there are tender-sore muscles up and down my spine.

I know what this stuff does to me. I don't enjoy it. I eat it anyway.

I feel like I can't stop. Then, I feel like I could stop if I really put my mind to it. But, I don't really want to put my mind to it. Why not? Because I'm not really that sick. And then I eat some, and then I feel terrible, and then I want to--both, simultaneously-- 1) get hardcore about the diet and 2) binge.

Food is so emotional for me.

Don't get me wrong. I revel in the stuff. I absolutely adore it. I love to eat. And, I love to eat the good stuff much more than I love to eat the bad stuff. But, it's like there's something inside of me that's not okay with this. Something that I don't know how to deal with, yet.

[Addendum: a place of accountability may have been one, teeny tiny reason I started writing here... but more so, because it was about time I started doing something about sharing how we can eat wheat, dairy, sugar and soy-free instead of just telling people to do it.]