Surfacing

I’ve been struggling with my health lately. Why? The short of it is this: I made a bunch of bad dietary decisions that sparked some pretty serious fallout. I’m writing this post because I know I’m not the only one out there who is confronted daily with decision that could make or break your life for months. I know that everyone out there struggles with something. Or many things.

The first half of the year saw me traveling quite a bit, to a series of conferences and to a handful of other countries. As most of us know, traveling is as stressful as much as it is fun. It’s exciting to see new places, but at the same time, it can be confusing, uncomfortable, and bewildering. Indeed, these are the part of the reasons we travel to begin with: to be removed from our comfort zone and sense of familiarity.

On top of traveling, we had to move. On very short notice. We got the news that our home had been sold and that we had to leave. We were given the requisite 60 days (that’s the law here in California if you’ve been a tenant for over a year), but our landlord incented us to leave earlier – much earlier. To add to that, we found the perfect apartment in a neighborhood both my husband and I love, for a price we were comfortable with. The trade off? We had to start paying rent within ten days to secure it. I learned this just a few days before I headed to Portland for a week, for the IACP conference. This meant that on top of traveling, I had an accumulative four days to pack our entire life and move it across town.

Why am I telling you this? Admittedly, I’m making excuses. The whole point of this post is to talk about making poor diet decisions, and if that’s the case, it’s important to explore how and why those bad decisions were made. I once referred to certain aspects of living healthy as similar to fighting addiction. You’re constantly fraught with attempts to break your resolve, and in the case of a dietary requirement, that onslaught assaults you every day, in any given place you happen to be.

Sure, I might seem like a big old drama queen about this, but when you struggle to live healthy in a world that doesn’t always seem to endorse the ease of doing so, it’s hard. Very hard. Those of us who have to live without something our minds seems to think we need understand how tough it is to walk away. It gets easier with time, but there are still pitfalls that remind you of the constant struggle.

Which [finally] brings me to the topic of this post: I fell off the wagon. And I didn’t just fall, I jumped whole-hog off the train, arms flailing, screaming my ever-loving head off.

While traveling, especially in different countries where you don’t speak the language, it can be difficult to avoid foods that are bad for you. In the case of an allergy, this fact can be downright life-threatening. There are options available to make it easier to avoid foods you can’t eat, but there’s still the matter of culture and human error to contend with, along with the desire to experience another place’s unique cuisine.

While I was in Mexico and Thailand, I tried to avoid gluten. I did the best I could, for the most part, but travel being stressful, I often found myself starving and groping for edible options. Not being fluent in either Spanish or Thai, and often finding myself in situations where no one spoke English (because these are my favorite places to explore!), I had to eat what was available.

And then there were the little street stands I’d run across, tempting me with the most delectably unfamiliar treats that I just couldn’t resist. Having no idea what was in any of these foods, I threw caution to the wind. Being stressed and a little depressed, eating things I thought might be bad for me was thrilling. There was a rush that popped me out of my malaise for a few seconds, and I began to seek that feeling out.

Then there was the move, a situation that plopped a boatload of anxiety (and again, depression) into my lap. More panicked, last minute eating, and more need for that little rush of excitement that only seems to come when you’re doing something you know is bad. A lot of people are familiar with this pattern.

I’m actually shocked that my poor body held out as long as it did. More likely, I completely ignored the warning signs. I can picture myself with my head in the sand, fingers in ears saying, “LA LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” But soon enough, my body held up a big STOP sign and there was no averting my attention. I completely fell apart physically – and as a result, emotionally as well.

Health is a very personal thing. Your symptoms are uniquely your own, as is how you deal with them. I my case, the first sign was a mental fog that crept across my intellect, a dense, gray mist that became impossible to see through. That was followed by a drowning fatigue and the inability to drag myself out of bed (or off the couch), which was caused by malnutrition and unchecked internal bleeding in my digestive system.

Next was the obvious digestive fallout: pain, cramping, the inability to digest even the simplest of foods and the feeling that someone was continually running a corkscrew through my abdomen. Add to that joint soreness, horrendous breakouts and the feeling that someone was constantly kicking me in gut, and you’ve got a tiny window into what I’ve been feeling for the past few months. Oh, and don’t forget the bone-crushing self pity.

As I said, the first part of this post was me making excuses for my bad decision-making. And while I acknowledge my human tendency to excuse my own behavior (um, hello! how annoying!) I also need to look at what caused me to make those decisions. There’s no avoiding life stress, but you can try to support yourself in ways that makes you more adept at coping, which is an ever-evolving process.

In my case, I tend to convince myself with the empty excuse that since I haven’t had any health problems in a while, my food problems have passed and I can eat whatever I want. I absolutely know this isn’t true, but if your resolve has been weakened and you want something bad enough, it’s funny how you can superficially convince yourself of outright myths. Now that I’ve realized this tendency, I have something to work with in the future to avoid another health-related Chernobyl.

I’ve got a renewed sense of purpose in regard to my health. Sure, it might not last forever, and who knows what will cause me to throw myself under a bus again in the future. But I truly believe that whenever I fail or falter, it’s a learning experience. I learned a lot about myself this time around, and for that, I’m grateful.