Today begins the last week of teaching for the semester. I have been fortunate enough to have had the time to stay home these last few days and let the withdrawal process pass. Every study I have ever seen on food addiction shows that the brain relates to food addiction just as severe as it does to Heroin addiction, so this has not been an easy last few days. I feel unready to go out into the world at this stage, especially into the midst of something that triggers my eating (academia) so severely, something I have woven into my eating problems, but I have no choice, it's going to be an easy week overall (student presentations, summaries, meetings, grading, final grades), and then I get a few days off, head to New Haven (CT) to visit the grandparents (which will more than likely cost me three days off of plan and diet), and then come home, get back into a groove, then we have a mini-vacation before Xmas (my present to my wife), and then Xmas itself, which will end up being a joyous time with family, but definitely off plan, eating and drinking, before I get to really focus and get deep into reclaiming my health and body back from all this fat and addiction and poor health.
Having time to reset the clock is really important. I feel like you need a lot of down time at first when overcoming an addiction, time to think about who you are and how you got here and what you are willing to do to change your situation. For me, I keep coming up with Yoga, that I used to be a very serious and intense Yogi, that I once wanted nothing and did nothing that interfered with my desire to be a Yogi long into the rest of my life. A lot of things changed that, my lifestyle and relationship status changed, and then I had to be social again, and then my time needed to be, I chose for it to be, divided up more fairly for others, and that is fine, it was fine, but unless you are on the path with another Yogi, it becomes hard to justify spending all of your time at class, reading about Yoga philosophy, going to events, going on retreats, saving to get to India, when you end up starving a non-Yoga relationship in the process. But I think I would feel this way if I did Daoist Martial Arts or Aikido or Kendo, anything else that would be a lifestyle to embrace, and not some part time thing I do everyday to keep my trendy sexy thing going. The big problem with all of this diet and health and body reclamation is I'm not a part-time, half-assed person, and I can't do this on a part time, half-assed basis, and now I find myself asking myself if I'm serious enough to risk losing a relationship I really enjoy so that I can be in control of my eating, exercise, and health. That's a tough question a lot of people have to ask themselves you find themselves in a lifestyle that is happy, in a relationship that is loving, but is going to kill them in a few years if they don't make major changes to how they are living. This current life is really loving and really supportive, but as someone who struggles with diet and health issues, who can struggle to be a shut-in eater and run his body to the ground, this is a life that supports that sort of action as well, I must admit that I am terrified that the start of a serious push to reclaim my diet and health, reclaim a Yoga practice, reclaim some personhood, is the beginning of the end of my relationship, and I have to ask myself if I would rather have 5-6 years of this relationship, and then die of heart and liver disease, or risk losing the relationship, and live into my 90's. The answer may seem obvious, but then again, what is a life without love? I wouldn't trade places with some of my perpetually single, unsexed, un-dateable, scared of intimacy, come home alone and eat Kitchari life for one minute, don't even get me started on the bullshit idea of a bramachara lifestyle. I see the damage it does to my friends, the mental damage, the loss of fire and life from their eyes because no one has gone down on them in 10 years, and that shit scares me just as much as death; they might as well not be alive at that stage they look so ghoulish and lost.
But back to me, this journey here, this path, I also know that I have unlimited control on how it works, the roles people play, and if I set up a life where my partner comes along, then that's the role I've asked her to play, if she leaves, I asked her to play that role as well. The role I want myself to play in my own life, that's the important thing here, that's what's at stake here, this is what I need to be focused on as I survive this Holiday month, as I pass through all the trials and obstacles to my momentum and inertia over the next month, and figure out how to make a new start, but a start that doesn't burn down the entire house I dwell in now, just gets rid of the ghost (guest) house I've made in the back, to hide in. Be neither a guest nor a ghost in your own life.
Having time to reset the clock is really important. I feel like you need a lot of down time at first when overcoming an addiction, time to think about who you are and how you got here and what you are willing to do to change your situation. For me, I keep coming up with Yoga, that I used to be a very serious and intense Yogi, that I once wanted nothing and did nothing that interfered with my desire to be a Yogi long into the rest of my life. A lot of things changed that, my lifestyle and relationship status changed, and then I had to be social again, and then my time needed to be, I chose for it to be, divided up more fairly for others, and that is fine, it was fine, but unless you are on the path with another Yogi, it becomes hard to justify spending all of your time at class, reading about Yoga philosophy, going to events, going on retreats, saving to get to India, when you end up starving a non-Yoga relationship in the process. But I think I would feel this way if I did Daoist Martial Arts or Aikido or Kendo, anything else that would be a lifestyle to embrace, and not some part time thing I do everyday to keep my trendy sexy thing going. The big problem with all of this diet and health and body reclamation is I'm not a part-time, half-assed person, and I can't do this on a part time, half-assed basis, and now I find myself asking myself if I'm serious enough to risk losing a relationship I really enjoy so that I can be in control of my eating, exercise, and health. That's a tough question a lot of people have to ask themselves you find themselves in a lifestyle that is happy, in a relationship that is loving, but is going to kill them in a few years if they don't make major changes to how they are living. This current life is really loving and really supportive, but as someone who struggles with diet and health issues, who can struggle to be a shut-in eater and run his body to the ground, this is a life that supports that sort of action as well, I must admit that I am terrified that the start of a serious push to reclaim my diet and health, reclaim a Yoga practice, reclaim some personhood, is the beginning of the end of my relationship, and I have to ask myself if I would rather have 5-6 years of this relationship, and then die of heart and liver disease, or risk losing the relationship, and live into my 90's. The answer may seem obvious, but then again, what is a life without love? I wouldn't trade places with some of my perpetually single, unsexed, un-dateable, scared of intimacy, come home alone and eat Kitchari life for one minute, don't even get me started on the bullshit idea of a bramachara lifestyle. I see the damage it does to my friends, the mental damage, the loss of fire and life from their eyes because no one has gone down on them in 10 years, and that shit scares me just as much as death; they might as well not be alive at that stage they look so ghoulish and lost.
But back to me, this journey here, this path, I also know that I have unlimited control on how it works, the roles people play, and if I set up a life where my partner comes along, then that's the role I've asked her to play, if she leaves, I asked her to play that role as well. The role I want myself to play in my own life, that's the important thing here, that's what's at stake here, this is what I need to be focused on as I survive this Holiday month, as I pass through all the trials and obstacles to my momentum and inertia over the next month, and figure out how to make a new start, but a start that doesn't burn down the entire house I dwell in now, just gets rid of the ghost (guest) house I've made in the back, to hide in. Be neither a guest nor a ghost in your own life.
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