Day 8 Body Ecology: Finding My Way (Read Time: 3 min.)

At 4 am, sharp stomach pains woke me up.  Excruciating pain... It felt like the time I had food poisoning... and for a minute, I wanted to blame Body Ecology.  I thought, "See?  That's what I get trying to do this thing cold turkey!  I NEVER had these pains when I was eating the other way."  Truth be told, I didn't have these pains.  But I also didn't have clarity of mind.  I also walked around in a fog and a haze.  I also felt sleepy by 3 pm and required a coffee by 10 am in order to wake up.  I also craved sugar non-stop and had to run by 7 Eleven by 8 pm to be sure I bought one OR two Snicker bars.  7 Eleven hasn't seen me buying a Snicker bar in over a week. 

So I had the pain and the only thing I can surmise at this point is that eating white cannellini beans and collard greens on the same day does not agree with my stomach.  So I ate NO beans today (not even garbanzo) and my stomach feels fine.

Other epiphany I had today: I don't have to cut ALL sugar out. 

My husband invited me out to Coffee Bean tonight to share our usual hot chocolate (like we used to) and, for a moment, I wanted to say no.  After all, on Body Ecology, what the heck am I going to get at Coffee Bean?  Expensive yucky tea?  No thank you... But I decided to go anyway. 

I've been craving something sweet all day.  Not tea.  Not a lemon/lime sparkling water spritzer.  Something tangible, real and yummy.  So tonight we went to Coffee Bean and I asked them if they could do hot chocolate with almond milk.  No almond milk.  Then I asked if they could do it with something that wasn't dairy based.  They had some sort of non-dairy milk.  I sampled it and it was good. 

So we got to have our usual Coffee Bean date.  I got to have a small hot chocolate (no dairy) with whipped cream (probably a little bit of dairy in that) and I brought my favorite gluten free/wheat free Montana's chocolate chip cookies into Coffee Bean and had 4 of them... and it was DIVINE. 

Needless to say, Donna's recommendation on the first 90 days of Body Ecology is much stricter than what I'm doing but her unique principle speaks volumes about how I'm approaching this time on Body Ecology:

"We humans share many features, but underneath, we have distinct needs, different dreams, and changing situations.  This applies to our health, too.  Our bodies change constantly.  They change with the seasons, with the temperature, with where we live, with our age, with our mood.  This means that we need different ways to stay healthy depending on all the variables that affect our daily lives." 

- Donna Gates, The Body Ecology Diet