A success story. Or is it?

Chapter 8: What's wrong with this picture?

My husband and I have lost a total of 130 pounds. We're exercising regularly, eating fruit and veggies, reversing chronic health conditions. A success story. Someone should buy our before and after photos and use them to sell Eat to Live, right?

Um, if this is a success story, then how come I still feel like crap.

Seriously, we still struggle with compliance. My husband is more philosophical, and therefore more moderate about it. I feel frustrated by going constantly off and on. I go off sugar, then a holiday binge would send me back to eating it daily again. I painfully, slowly got off the salt for over a month (and felt so much better--morning stiffness and achy-ness gone) only to go right back to square one after eating salty food at a social ocassion.

One month, I ate 5 pounds of raw cashews. Cashews by the handfuls day after day.

After having a miscarriage in November, 2006, I binged on SAD foods for 2-3 months... Easy to do since it was Christmas and everyone was giving out cookies. I gained back 13 pounds, while continuing to exercise 7 hours a week. Luckily, I've lost those pounds again. Yet here I remain, at the same weight I was a year ago, still 25 pounds from my goal.

I never quite felt right when following the diet 100% either. I found that I would get constipation with too many cooked greens. (Or maybe it was the nuts?)

I joined SparkPeople.com and began obsessively counting my calories and exercise minutes. Obsessively counting sometimes led to an almost ritualistic overeating pattern.

I would fast from the computer for weeks to break the cycle, only to begin it again.

I read other similar books such as the McDougall Plan for Maximum Weightloss and all of Dr. Neal Barnard's books. I began baking whole grain bread "for the kids" but eating much of it.

I consider raw-ism several times, but was turned off by the multiplicity of conflicting voices shouting at one another. Superfoods. NO, Natural Hygiene. Raw chocolate is good for you. Raw chocolate will kill you. B-12 deficiency will kill you. Green Smoothies. Juice. Don't juice. Sprouts. Sprouts will kill you! Ack!

Stress is killing me, is the problem.

And everyone has something to sell me, which makes them all a bit suspect in my mind.