It has been seven days – that’s one hundred and sixty eight hours or, more dramatically, ten-thousand and eighty minutes – since my last encounter with sugar. Last Saturday night, I savored those Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, topped with coffee ice cream, knowing it would be the last time I partook of such an indulgent dessert for a long time. It is funny how we humans do that – savor those things which are hurting us, setting dates to lay them down, and holding on for a long good-bye.
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a doctor’s office and asked, “Why won’t my body heal?” Or, when offered a medication to deal with symptoms, I have asked, “But what is the underlying issue that is causing this problem?” Every time, I have been met with a firm, “We aren’t sure why, but studies have shown….”, and then they tell me how this cancer drug could be effective for mastitis, or how this super antibiotic (which could cause your tendons to rupture suddenly for up to a year after taking it, or in some cases cause your aorta to rupture) is likely to be the answer. Every time I’ve walked away from the doctor’s office with a brown paper bag, filled with pharmaceuticals, I have felt defeated – like my faith wasn’t enough, like I was destined to be hopeless forever. I felt unheard – by my doctor and by my God.
After my new friend, Mary, put Dr. Colbert’s book, Healthy Gut Zone in my hands a few Sundays ago, my medical journey began to make sense. Antibiotics kill bacteria – good and bad. I have been taking a variety of antibiotics for four years, in large doses, for extended periods of time. My gut has taken a huge hit. It is weak, it is out of balance, and it is in desperate need of repair. When your gut isn’t well, it doesn’t do its job. Things that are not supposed to breakthrough into your blood stream end up doing just that – things like gluten – and then your body goes into full attack mode. Gluten isn’t necessarily bad (although maybe it is), but when it breaks through the lining of your gut and enters your bloodstream, your body treats it like an invader – like a disease almost – and it attacks. The problem is, there is no “gluten antibody”, such as your body would look for when fighting an infection, or another illness, so it doesn’t really know what the remedy is. The result is that your body attacks itself, causing auto-immune disease. That is a very simple explanation (because I studied numbers, not science) of what has been going on in my body for several years. The medicine that was supposed to help me, hurt me.
Equipped with this new information and the second book Mary put in my hands, The 40 Day Sugar Fast by Wendy Speake, I made a plan to put this knowledge into action. I have decided to give up sugar, gluten, rice, legumes, dairy, corn and potatoes for forty days. Society has labeled foods as good and bad. I’ve had to weed through the rhetoric that I have learned over my forty years on this earth, as well as my personal experience, to determine what is right for me. It isn’t that dairy is bad, it just isn’t good for me to have right now. This list of things that I have chosen to abstain from – this is what I have determined from my research and experience are not beneficial to my health at this time. As a recovering perfectionist, I have been blessed with an on/off switch. Once I set my mind on something, it is relatively easy for me to move forward. Turing off the sugar switch is something I have done before. But this isn’t as simple as turning off the switch, because I don’t want to live on yo-yo diets anymore. This time of abstinence isn’t about being perfect, or getting God’s attention. It is about silencing my flesh, giving myself grace, and developing a new lifestyle that I can continue indefinitely.
Historically, if I made one wrong move I completely gave up. Years ago when I battled addiction, I would stop smoking or drinking for a time, and once I had one drink, that was it – I was a drinker again. I have never been a halfway kind of person, I am more in or out, hot or cold.
One wrong move was failure.
There was no grace for bad days, for mistakes, for weak moments. If I have learned anything over the last four and half years, it is that I am not perfect, and writing grace into my plans is not a sign of weakness, but of wisdom. One bite of mashed potatoes isn’t going to kill me, and it shouldn’t cause me to give up entirely.
While I miss sweet cream in my coffee, the bun on my burger, and most of all, cheese – any kind of cheese – this week has not been terrible. I know that this is a season, and if I can help my body heal, I can have those things which I am abstaining from again – in moderation. It’s funny – four and a half years ago, I decided to set a goal and reach it. I wanted to run a mile – not for the sake of running a mile, but to prove to myself that my mind could make my body do things that I never thought possible; to build mental strength; to feel the triumph of reaching a goal. The day that I finally ran a mile, the friction from running caused my skin to tear, which allowed bacteria in, which caused mastitis. The feeling of victory was very short-lived. I have been wandering in the wilderness ever since. And now, here I am – reminding myself that my mind can make my body do things it doesn’t want to do – here I am again, silencing my flesh.
Uncommonly Common Mom 