Meat Shoving

It is now week three back on the Standard American Diet - as in, meat heavy meals.

Does anyone ever stop to think about how tough this diet is to process? Does anyone realize the difference in body chemistry on meat and off meat? Am I even allowed to ponder those questions, without meat eaters and the meat producers getting all pissay and dramatic about questioning their habits and product?

The last time I checked in with you, I had been eating sandwiches. I was leaning toward red meat items. The other day I was at a training, and I tried eating a roast beef sandwich. I couldn't. I had one bite and then stayed with the vegetarian pasta salad and the potato salad. Although, I'm not naive - I know that mayo contains egg as well as the brownie I ate. So I was not choosing animal-product free foods.

The last three days it's been chicken. I have eaten at KFC every day. I got past the acid reflux - but now what am I experiencing? Itchy bunghole. That's right. It ain't pretty and it ain't polite, but that's what I got going on right now. All I've been eating is mashed potatoes, maybe half a biscuit, and a thigh and drumstick. And my butt hole itches like a mother fucker.

Doesn't that make sense? My fingers have re-instated their peeling abilities full force. My left foot is hesitently creating new little peelable-skin camps. My nose has it's little camps firmly set up in the front corners again. It would only make sense to me that the parasitic yeast that is populating inside me and eeking out my extremities would of course have a large spot at the edge of the cliff, aka, the poop shoot. They are right there, anyway, working their way through the intestines. Seems only right a few would hang on and hold on right there.

I wonder what it is about chicken and mashed potatos that generates the itchiness that I am experiencing. But it is. It's very uncomfortable. But, I'm living with it. I wonder how many other people have this experience, but don't question it's cause. Medically, I cannot say without a doubt that it is caused by chicken and mashed potatoes and biscuits. But I can tell you, that has been a major player in my diet. And things are not all that pleasant physically.

My legs are still extremely dry. I am simply not drinking as much water, as well as eating foods that require more liquids to process. My legs are taking the beating on that. Also, the skin on my face continues to look chalky, and I am broken out. Just a constant state of broken out. It's not pretty. But I'm not changing my eating habits yet.

I am seeing just how much I use food to comfort and/or distract me from things that are going on in my life. I am stressed about a few things - I eat and it's all gone.

Here's today's revelation: I was at KFC today, eating my lunch of a thigh and a drumstick and mashed potatoes. I have been doing inner child work in the other parts of my self development. So, I ask my inner child - we're at her five-year-old level - what she wants for lunch.

We get the meal, and I get a chocolate parfait dessert and a lemon parfait dessert. One for me, one for her if you know what I mean. So, I eat the meal, and I'm in the zone - I'm eating, I'm reading a book, I'm not looking around at any other patrons - it is my and my chicken in an intimate moment.

I get done with the chicken, and open up one of the parfaits. I have a couple bites, and as I do so, I notice that I am looking around the restaurant, looking at other people. In my imagination, I refocus on my inner child.

That's when I realized the cause of my own relationship to sweets. I realized that when we ate as a family, we were heads down, fork to mouth, balls to the walls, shoving as much food into us as possible; out of fear of getting enough food at that meal, out of determination to get satiated, out of wanting to efficiently get through eating so we could move on to the next task.

It wasn't until I myself realized that I had gotten back into relationship with myself and my surroundings once the food was consumed. Dessert was a bonus, an extra time to relax and hang out, but still part of the "meal" time, so it counted as valid use of time.

I realized then that is what I craved when I craved sweets - I craved that period of time when we would be in relationship with each other, we'd playfully interact, we'd relax and take a moment. There was still fear around getting your share of the sweets, but overall, it was bonus, because the meal was already consumed. Dessert was chill time. It could be stretched out as long as the dessert did.

Maybe that's why we all devoured dessert until there was no dessert left - because we all subconciously desired that playful time with each other. We rarely allowed a crumb of dessert left over for the next meal. It was grab it while you can at our house growing up.

Today it occured to me that we weren't really grabbing for desserts. We were grabbing for love, and wouldn't stop eating it until it was gone. And it did disappear - once dessert was gone, it was either get back to work, or go do your own thing and everyone scattered. There was no being in relationship if there was no food or no task to be in relationship over. Keep in mind how task-like food was to us. Tasks were big in my family growing up. You didn't count unless you were doing something.

Anyway, so in my imagination, at lunch today, when I got done scarfing down all my chicken, and I relaxed as I opened up my little dessert cups, I heard my inner child say to me, "Oh, good. We can talk now. I don't really care about eating - I just like it when I can have your attention back."

Man that rocked my world. It shook my entire understanding of how my family gets along, and cemented why I don't feel happier around them, even though I desperately want their love.

So, It was a good revelation today. Not sure how to overcome this for the holidays. But, realzing how much I crave the interaction more than the food wa a big deal.