When eating is a chore, you know there's a bigger problem

I think part of the problem here is that eating has begun to feel a bit like a chore, at least when I am home. "Oh dear, now I have to go and get the blender out, and the juice, and the fruit, and the coconut oil. Oh, now I have to mix it all up and then I have to drink it."

I put it off indefinitely because I'd rather be doing something else. Then what happens? I find myself at 5pm either faint or really hungry. When you're faint you'll shove anything in your mouth to make it go away; same goes when you're hungry.

Today I was in the middle of watching my taped The Bachelor: After The Rose (priorities, ppl) and I knew I had to eat. I was ravenous. I also knew I'd "started over", which in my case means, well, eating. And eating well. But it was such a good Bachelor! I couldn't believe what I was seeing! I didn't want to leave!

But I'd started over.

Sometimes I think I like being hungry. Or I like denying myself in some way; it's like control. Maybe it's an outward expression of something going on inside of me, something ambiguous I cannot define and which I'm only now beginning to perceive. I don't know. I have wrestled with eating disorders in the past; it would not surprise me if there was a distorted emotional component charging this whole thing.

In any case, I ultimately made a spinach salad with seeds and some chicken breast. I ate it all. I felt better instantly, and in a lot of ways.

And then I finished After The Rose.

My God, did you people see that?

Starting Over

I haven't been taking care of myself.

It wasn't that long ago (early summer?) that my body began telling me things I should and should not eat, and I listened. I grew my own tomatoes, my own herbs, my own cucumbers. I ate homemade hummus and crowned it with my very own harvest. I drank water and stopped drinking coffee because it literally made me sick. As did all alcohols. I ate spinach every day, as well as a variety of seeds and nuts, and cut out all meat (not on principle, but because my body literally phased those things out).

I was...healthy. I actually felt good.

Oh how the Crystals have fallen. Ever since my first surgery I have, for the most part, forgotten to eat. It's not driven by some misbegotten need to be thin, but rather a complete disregard for self, as well as an inappropriate focus on things of less importance. In other words, Crystal became secondary. Why feed and nurture my own body? Everything seemed wrong in my life, so why not my nutrition, too?

I didn't care.

On the train home the other day I had an intuitive flash, such as some of you know I do. It was of a fruit smoothie, believe it or not, with coconut oil in it. Benign, I'm sure you're thinking: maybe she was just hungry. But I wasn't. And it wasn't the visual that was important, but the feeling in my na'au (as we say in Hawaii), or spiritual gut, that was most relevant. And also frightening.

It was a warning.

I must get this back on track. My health is precarious because I have now made it so, along with the myriad procedures, etc., I have suffered in the last half year or so. Now I must undertake a nutritional intervention on myself. I have to go all-in again, becoming completely proactive, because if I don't, grim things may very well trickle down the pike in my direction. I do not want this.

You may think this is superstition but it's not. See, our bodies talk to us all the time. They tell us we need water, or minerals, or iron, etc. It's just that we don't listen, and in my case, I purposely stopped listening. Now look at me: my jeans all sag, my face is pale and there's no glow on my cheeks, at least compared to what used to be.

And so, today, I start again.