Do or Die

One day I realized that I didn't have time for small changes. Small changes may be good because they're the lasting ones, but my reality became wondering when I was going to collapse--when my body was going to finally rebel against the way I was treating it. And because this is an addiction for me, even knowing that was not enough to make me change. That was very hard for me, because I know better! I fully well know better. I love my husband. I love my kids. I love my life. And yet day after day after day, I kept choosing food, knowing that eventually I would lose it all because I would die way too young.

There is no defining moment I can identify when I had the aha about what I should do. It ever so softly just became a reality for me. I had to do something fast, or I was going to die. I knew it, even though all the tests for all those diseases came back fine. Not everyone gets diagnosably sick first, some people just keel over and die.

It is very scary for me to remember a couple of times when I honestly started to accept the fact that I was just going to die in my 30s, and that was okay because that's just the way it is for me. Food is too important. How is it that someone with my amazing life, and my undeniable beliefs, could just accept that? This is what it means to have an addiction. It distorts reality. I understand. I truly understand. For anyone who has suffered it…we may not all have the same brand of addiction, but I know what it's like to go down that path. I have never tasted alcohol, never touched a cigarette, never been tempted with drugs, but I get addiction. Food, the stuff that keeps us alive, was killing me.

And like a whisper, slowly and quietly, the knowledge that I needed to do a real juice fast was right there in the forefront of my mind.

But that's extreme, I thought. I can't do that. Extremes sabotage me every time. Besides, I've tried to do that before and I just can't.

But I knew.

For about 3 weeks I mentally prepared. Valentine's Day. I'd start after Valentine's Day. It was far enough off that I didn't have to really deal with it like reality. I'd tell myself I was going to do it, wondering if I was lying to myself. I'm a person with no food rules at all. Do you know what that means about the way I'd been eating? How can a person just flip the switch like that? I don't know. I only knew that it was do or die time. A for real matter of life and death. And I hoped like nothing else that that would be important enough to me.