Food, Health, & Self-Love

This post is rambly. And it's essentially just a reposting of my comment on Chicory's post, linked below. It's in response to three posts that clearly had a strong impression on me: Chicory's Not Giving Up, Something Other Than That at An Accident of Hope; M. Leblanc's Shapely Prose Nails It Again at Bitch PhD; and Kate Harding's The Fantasy of Being Thin at Shapely Prose, the post about which the first two refer.

I am glad to have been reading about self acceptance, fat acceptance, about body image, about health. Glad to be thinking/feeling it. Glad on a lot of levels and for a lot of reasons. Introspection, shame, denial, sorrow, regret, internalized beliefs — lots of stuff going on in my brain and heart. There are lots of things to unpack.

A few years ago, I became a raw vegan. I blogged briefly about my first raw Thanksgiving, my parents' reaction, and a mishmash of links and a video here. A number of factors have reduced my raw intake since then and I’m hardly raw at all anymore. During the summer months my intake of raw food increases dramatically. But you know what keeps me from “doing” the nearly-all-raw thing again? Well, it’s a couple things.

1. I became an annoying proselytizer, despite my best efforts not to be that person and despite disclaimers that I wasn't being that person, erstwhile emailing websites and personal testimonials willy nilly. How grossly annoying.

2. Other people’s reactions to the supposed dangers and how unhealthy it was and how I was buying into a myth of being skinny=being healthy. And/or people saying, “But Moss you look great! Those raw vegans are too skinny! You don’t need to do that!” as if the only reason to eat predominantly fresh, living food is because I don’t like the way I look. That food choice affects how I FEEL seemed so unreasonable it was never considered as the reason I was making my decisions.

>>2.a. Social interactions became very very difficult and awkward and I found myself either coming off as having an eating disorder because I wouldn’t eat anything I was offered or seeming to be a snob who was too good for what food was available.

And you know what? That’s just bullshit. It’s bullshit that 1. I won’t take control of my own propensity to proselytize and 2. that I would seriously let other people affect such a fundamental and personal decision like what to put in my body.

It’s especially bullshit because *I really REALLY like the way I feel when I eat raw vegan food.* I feel better than I have EVER felt in my life (which has led to that #1 proselytizing problem, but that’s not insurmountable if I just get a fucking grip already and remember that what feels good for ME and what works for MY life is just that - MINE).

I won’t even get into what I weighed or my size at different points in time, because those numbers on the scale or on the tags of my clothes are not the measure. The measure is how I feel, and that is incredibly subjective and not readily quantified to anyone outside my own flesh.

What most struck home for me about Chicory's post and about Kate’s original post, was that self-acceptance is so much deeper and more profound and perhaps more difficult than “just” body issues. This new life I’ve created in my new home in a new state has provided me ample opportunity to really look close and hard at who I am, who I think I am, who I project myself to be, and who I would really like to be. Working that shit out might be a lifetime project, but it’s one that I’m finally willing to tackle.

Is thinking/feeling/acknowledging the first steps toward action? I sure hope so.