The below post started as a response to this article posted by one of my friends on a social media platform: The Best Fat Loss Article on the Motherf*****’ Internet – I don’t speak to fat or weight loss but healing diet because really eating food that doesn’t ultimately help us stay healthy is pretty much insane. We are an insane world and most of us eat food that is so highly processed our bodies no longer know what to do with it. As you can see, in the spirit of the article that inspired my comments, I too used profanity in the title for a little fun, but the phrase did come out organically in my response to someone as I thought about all of this on social media.
This is what I’ve learned during my healing trip.
What made me sustain a healing diet is getting the nutrients I actually needed. Different people are in need of different nutrients at different times…macro and micro. What you eat, for that reason matters greatly.
What a healing diet looks like is going to be radically different for each person and is going to change a lot for individuals over time .. if one is healing there is no such thing as homeostasis, so it follows that your needs are going to change. With my radically dysregulated nervous system my needs can change daily. So becoming acutely mindfully aware of those changing needs became critically imperative. See: Somatic Imperative
When one is grossly imbalanced or grossly deficient in various nutrients it gets more complex.
Sometimes what we need most we can’t even tolerate because we’re so dysregulated. (See: Hypersensitivities) At those times we do the best we can in spite of what all the know-it-alls tell us about exactly what we should be doing even though they’ve never been in our bodies and have no idea what they’re talking about. There are no rules. We learn to be kind to ourselves on this journey. We must. In paying attention to my experience and learning to be kind to myself I’ve learned to be compassionate to both myself and others. This life is one heck of a challenging trip. For all of us.
As deficiencies etc are corrected our dietary needs change. What we eat matters…there is no way around that for sustaining good health…
As I’ve healed my body from the brink of death I’ve found that what I like/want is largely what I need now…intuitive eating got me here.
That’s what acute mindfulness 24/7 with a brain/nervous system injury has brought me. In any case, flexibility is also very important…
Believing we can control anything is a problem…do your best at whatever makes sense to you and pay attention. then you learn what works for you…it doesn’t matter what anyone else insists must be the case. What is it that works for you?
I’ve done just about every permutation of healing diet now…(from vegan variations to paleo/ketogenic etc variations) I learned from all of them…none of them are the ultimate truth in any shape or form. We all have different needs at different times. I’ve often wished I could be vegan all the time. I’ve gone months doing just that…but, man, my body, sure as hell tells me when that is no longer sustainable. There is no denying my body. My body knows. I listen. See: Diet and nutrition dogmatic ideologies are everywhere
I now know what I need and when I need it and the more I learn the more I simply eat whatever I want/need and now that’s pretty much always right. It took time to gain confidence but it comes. Our bodies know what we need…and we can learn to hear what they’re telling us…that’s what doing all sorts of extreme diets taught me…it was never about being on the *right* diet…it was always about learning about food and how it acts in the body.
All diets are bullsh*t…but they helped me a lot because it was otherwise overwhelming to figure out what was what… elimination makes it easier..all diets are in some regard elimination diets – that makes it easier to pay attention to whatever it is you’re still eating.
Someone said to me:
“I like this idea. Is it possible to learn to separate the “emotional ” impulses around food from the intuitive/nutritional? Must be.”
My response:
Yes, in fact, that’s been a huge part of healing for me…it’s an ongoing task however…perhaps never-ending.
The thing is, the “emotional” involvement with food is long-standing and therefore, quite often literally embodied and physical…illness is correlated with emotions in that way and I’ve seen from that – that there is literally no separation between emotional and physical. We are the whole ball of wax and everything matters.
Healing and coming to clarity is the untangling of all of that…again, most likely a never-ending process…and then the body dies in any case.
- Gut health, mental health, diet
- Mental health, whole foods
- Diet and nutrition dogmatic ideologies are everywhere
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I wonder why you are still doing blog and all such article if you were healed ? Are you just pretending to be healed like that jennifer leigh to just make people pay you 100$ a consultation because she cant work enough like before yet pretend to be healed ?
Isnt healed mean leaving life and turn the page of this ? I know if i heal no way i would still be online talking about that shit like you do
Good for you Monica. I used to get the trolls too. Whether or not one enjoys blogging, or most any activity,in absence of other knowledge, tells us little about a person.
There are people who comb through my blog and then assume they “know all about me.” Truth is, they do not. If they want to get to know me the least they can do is spend time, or pick up the phone. People assume we put our whole lives into our blogs and this is a grossly incorrect assumption.
Great on you! I just found your blog and loved this post. Then was surprised to read the troll comment. Never will understand blog trolls… seriously… live and let live!!!
There are those of us who are extremely generous with our hearts and experiences. An analogy: I healed from a surgery, but the scar is still there, the hardware still in my body. I don’t think the hardware makes my ankle still broken, nor does the scar on my flesh. Those of us who survive whatever circumstance that threatened our lives, wish to help others in ways we wish we were helped. I value Monica’s blogs which have, from time to time, sustained my waning mental strength. Thank you Monica for keeping the blog going. I need you <3
Oh my goodness I gotta laugh. I broke my leg because Risperdal thinned my bones way back when, in 1999. My femur, right at the knee, has had three gigantic screws in it ever since. I walk, and run, just fine on it. At least twice, doctors have told me I had to have the screws out. I laughed over that. Why, especially if I can run distances on my legs? Especially amusing is my memory of a doctor who informed me, back around six years ago, that I would never walk nor run again.
Even more amusing was the time the screws set off the security alarm right after 9/11. Must say, being criminalized momentarily at an airport, for me, was not as scary as most psych ERs. More recently the screws set off a drugstore shoplifting alarm.
They should just lock us all up and let the trolls roam free.
Hi Monica,
If you send me an address, I will send you a free copy of a
excellent survival story. She was subjected to extreme abuse,
locked in a closet etc, started hearing voices, was sent to a
psychiatrist, told she will never be well and needed meds,
forced to take one, left the office, spit the pill out, and
eventually recovered.
I was not the therapist but because I am familiar with
self-publishing and the subject needs to remain confidential,
I helped them publish it.
Ty Colbert
Hi Monica, I originally went to a therapist back in 1981 due to an eating disorder so I know all too well about “diets.” In 34 years my rather serious eating problems were never addressed by therapists nor psychiatrists the entire time. Instead they invented their DSM categories and tried to squeeze me into them. I didn’t fit.
The only logical solution was to flee psychiatry and their phony diagnoses altogether. I found that I still had the same eating problems I always had, and 34 years of intensive “therapy” and pills did nothing for me. I was totally on my own.
Then I discovered one amazing thing. That ditching their rules and phony protocol, their ideas about “diets” and what the ideal body needs, their “requirements” and their forced weigh-ins, leaving all that behind…
In a short time, without their imposing “supervision,” I was all better. And I do not have any eating “disorder” now. I am stronger and tons healthier. I can think more clearly, am more alert and feel happy and stronger every day. I no longer worry about what to eat and life is a joy.
If I could package that and give it as a gift to the entire world, I would do so.
Julie
Oh anytime. BTW the categorization either causes diseases or maintains the person in a state of sickness. Ditch the diagnosis! If you are an adult, you don’t need supervision like a toddler. Like they try to do to us.