Interesting insight

[Guest guest]

Hi, All,

I just wanted to share with all of you the insight I've had from going off wheat for a few days. I'm fairly certain I'm allergic to it, because in addition to it making me have pretty bad digestive problems, I also find when I'm not eating it, I no longer feel lethargic. At all. Quite the contrary. My skin also no longer itches, and the rash I have had on my midsection for three months has disappeared. Hmmm. Pretty powerful evidence after only three days.

But here's the insight: While the first two days being less lethargic felt GREAT--I was able to get caught up on things and wasn't needing to sleep so much--yesterday, on the third day, I began to feel like my nerves were jangled. Not such a good feeling. And then this morning, I felt truly rattled. I still had high energy, but it didn't feel like something I want so much anymore. I wanted to be able to relax. I remember when I used to smoke, I'd always have a cigarette at times like this, to relax myself.

I'm beginning to think that I was using overeating in general, and eating something in particular that made me lethargic, to counteract this feeling. In other words, I was using the food to "self-medicate."

I always used to find it so offensive to see how nervous a person my father was, and my grandmother, and I always wanted to be one of those pacific people, full of grace and ease. I realized now that I have that same nervous energy in myself, and that I need to find some way other than food I'm allergic to, and food in general, and too much food, to calm myself down. I'm signing up for a Shambhala meditation training class that starts in January, and I've messed around with trying to meditate (without much success), but I think now I really need to do this in earnest, in addition to the gentle exercise I'm doing, which does also help. What I was feeling this morning is NOT good, but I don't want to use eating when I'm not hungry to "solve" the problem.

I also found it very interesting to read someone's (was it mj's? can't remember) discussion about nutritional support for our lives, how food can and does change the way we feel, and the importance of finding, for each person, our own best foods for keeping us feeling our best. I noticed this morning when I was feeling so jangled that eating half a grapefruit did me no damned good. I knew I needed something, fast, to slow down my racing heart, but I was feeding the dogs and didn't want to take the time out to eat something that would take too much time. I have one dog who came from a situation where she was starving, literally, so she gets terribly anxious in the morning especially to get her food. So I started to eat a half grapefruit while I was continuing to prep their food. The grapefruit looked and tasted great (once I got myself after the first two bites to actually sit down to eat it), but it left me still feeling jangled. After the dogs were fed, I sat down and ate my brown rice farina (something I recently discovered and just love), which I'd been warming as I fed them. I eat it with a little butter and salt.

And guess what? I now feel calmer. What a nice revelation! I think maybe the reason I was eating wheat was for this nice mellow carb reaction, but wheat specifically wasn't what my body could best use. It just wanted complex carbs. I have not put wheat on my "never-never" list, by all means, but given how horrible eating too much of it makes me feel, I think most of the time I will choose other foods instead when possible (like at home), ones that won't have cumulatively awful side effects for me.

I hope this is helpful to someone else; I just felt the need to put this out there, in the name of full disclosure if nothing else.

Thanks to everyone for being here all the time. You have no idea how much it means to me.

Laurie