Healing Phases

Taking stock of all my healing phases... to understand the one I'm in now

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I was thinking the other day… as I was getting really mopey and frustrated that I’m still trying to figure out some big aspects of my health, after years and years and years of trying, and caring, and then letting go, and having some healing, and then trying again, and then letting go some more…. over and over…

I zoomed way out and thought about my health life in big chunks… and it all made more sense.

Phase ONE: Skinny Baby + Canola + Soy + Formula:

The first 14 years of my life were a total mess with health and food, starting with my insanity around food thanks to my mom being a “health nut” (I talk about this in both books), and my bingeing on food whenever I had a chance to eat something we didn’t usually get in my house. And now I can also see I was being fed like… shit food, disguising itself as “health food”: margarine, soy milk, tofu smoothies, fortified cereals (those forms of vitamins are arguably worse for you), lots of beans instead of meat, canola and corn oil instead of butter or olive oil….etc etc etc etc. 

Plus, I was basically born with heavy metal poisoning, in a body genetically impaired with detoxing, I was not breast fed, I projectile vomited the “milk” from my bottles, and I was a skinny baby, born to a skinny mother. Those things probably seemed good back then, and maybe even now: a skinny baby and a skinny mother, but it is not good. Babies are not supposed to be skinny.

My mom came home from the hospital thinner than when she got pregnant, which means IIIII absorbed all the toxins (heavy metals, etc) that were stored in her fat… because a fetus has got to eat. I don’t blame her for this. She had morning sickness, and also, women are encouraged not to gain weight when they’re pregnant, thanks to an insane and sick society. Staying thin seemed like a win, on my mom’s part. Then I was born, a skinny baby with jaundice and a period, probably because I… I dunno, absorbed her estrogen in her fat tissue that I had to eat to stay alive. I dunno man, but looking back, it was a mess. I had a rough start. I also had… 9 missing teeth, which is apparently linked to heavy metal poisoning as well.

Ok, moving on, phase TWO: Diets + Low-Carb + Fake Sugar.

14-24.

I… dieted like crazy. I ate faker foods filled with aspartame and soy protein isolate and inulin fiber. I starved. I binged. I had whacked out blood sugar. Whacked out hormones. I barely, if ever, got my period. I was on a slew of different pharmaceuticals, chasing symptoms and probably making the root cause of my health worth. I had cystic acne, PCOS, a thyroid nodule… I was stressed out of my mind in every way imaginable, not helped at ALL by my attempts to eat the smallest amount of carbs possible, and the sugar-free miracle whip I binged as a desert on The South Beach Diet.

Then I was raw vegan, not digesting anything, hair falling out in clumps, then I was just regular vegetarian eating boca burgers thinking I was actually eating something nutritious. Then I was paleo, and cut out carbs altogether again until I found myself bingeing on almond flour baked goods in the middle of the night.

Phase 3: The F*ck It Diet + WINE & COFFEE

This was the start of my healing. This is where I stopped restricting, and started eating all foods, and really believing that calories and carbs and food were good for me. And not only did I start to understand that I needed to eat more in order to heal my erratic, and guilt-ridden relationship with food, but that it would also help to heal my mental and physical health as well. And it did, to a certain point. 

But it was a huge huge step in the right direction. It changed my life, as I’ve said a million times. My sleep improved (to a point), my hormones improved (to a point), I started getting my period more often, however still irregularly. And, overall, it improved my quality of life a hundred fold. 

But… as I look back, I relied a lot on coffee and wine during those early fuck it diet years… not even as heavily as you may imagine, because I’ve always been less of a drinker than “drinkers,” but still, I can see now that I had my own kind of dependence. It wasn’t the kind of relationship with alcohol you’d look at in our culture and think: ‘oh GOD she needs to cut back.’ But now, to me, I can see where I had a dependence, and because my body is so sensitive, it held me back with my physical healing. Drinking lightly, and often, felt like it made my eating easier. But even more: it made my social life easier, at the time. And… strangely, I don’t think I would change those years, if I could. I feel like I really lived. I feel like I had a lot of fun, rich experiences, that I may have been too tired and introverted for if I wasn’t drinking at all. I feel like I lived a lot, in a good way, sometimes in a bad way, but ultimately in a way I’m thankful for. 

And the coffee?? Well it wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t disordered. But still, looking at how I drank coffee, I think it did allow me to run on less food than I should have been eating from time to time. Not as a rule, but I would be buzzing through the morning, still running on caffeine and stress hormones, in phases in life. It was fine, but I don’t think it was good for my hormones, that, I’m convinced, are whacked out because I have lived so much of my life running on stress hormones.

But it was fun. It was freeing. It was a large part of my twenties. And again, I’m glad I got to feel that kind of fun, euphoric freedom. And… it all felt good! Until I didn’t.

Phase 4: Liver Pain + Chronic Fevers + Burnout

So… this is the phase I kind of talked about during my Parasites Part 1 post two weeks ago (and yes I will be continuing soon, and this is kind of a… related post in a way) but it’s when my body hit a wall. And I always worry that people will think it’s because of The F*ck it Diet … “oOoOH well THAT is what happens when you let yourself eat whatever you want!” But I am positive it was not that. It was… the years and years of crap and fake chemical food and erratic eating before hand, and then the fact that I was still being fueled by substances that were actively depleting me: too much coffee and too much alcohol (for me).

All of a sudden, my liver started hurting after just one glass of wine. Legit. I tell people that and they’re confused. IIII am confused, but it will still happen on occasion when I have more alcohol than my body can handle… meaning… like 3 drinks a week. Hahaha…. Seriously. 

Anyway, back then, I cut out alcohol, and went on my two years of rest. And pretty soon… started killing parasites, which, I actually think was too hard on my body. As I said in my post from the other week, I didn’t have the detox capacity to handle the rate I was killing them… so much so that I felt like I was going to die… or that I wanted to die, that one night before backing off my parasite killing intensity.

AND WHILE I did feel better, ultimately, 2 years later when I let myself STOP doing all the things I was doing in the name of healing, I still think it was really hard on my body in the process… because I didn’t realize that healing should not hurt so much. Meaning: if healing hurts that much, and makes you feel that bad, you’re either NOT healing, OR, you’re trying to heal/detox/ kill pathogens TOO FAST, and your body can’t keep up. 

This is… this is only my current understanding of everything. Because, as you can tell, I live my silly little life, and I try to find meaning, and I try to put the pieces together in a way that can eventually make some sense to me, and give me enough strength and clarity to carry on in one direction or another.

Phase 5: WEED + DEMONS?

THEN, “covid hit” 2 weeks after I had gotten my medical marijuana card, to see if it could help my restless leg syndrome and falling asleep. Restless legs is something I’ve had since I was 18… and still can’t track down the cause… and it wreaks havoc on my sleep… And all of a sudden thanks to government overreach, there was nothing to do, nowhere to go, living in a world gone insane, and there I was in my little house with all my weed edibles. So, I became a nightly-weed-addict. It became my go-to sleep aid, and I couldn’t beLIEVE how much kinder it was on my body than alcohol. Which made me convinced that it was totally no big deal. I mean really, just one drink can mess up my sleep and make me feel anxious and terrible and headachey. Weed? It didn’t matter how much I took, I felt fine the next day. Did I have nights where I was paranoid? Yes. Did I have nights where I overdid it and it actually made me more amped and fell asleep later? Yes. Did I have a week where it made me feel like my eyes were going to involuntarily roll back in my head while I was trying to fall asleep, and I said GOD IF THIS IS WHAT DEMONIC POSSESSION FEELS LIKE, I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING A DRUG ADDICT! I WILL STOP! I WILL STOP! And then I didn’t stop, I just took a lower dose the next night. 

I started joking with my friends about my drug addiction… I mean, it wasn’t RUINING my life, but it wasn’t NOT a drug addiction… My anxiety around taking weed started getting worse, because I started becoming dependent on it to sleep. And so if I didn’t take just the right dose, in just the right time, I would lie there til the right dose kicked in. And it took at least an hour to kick in… so… it became ridiculous. And then to make sure it kicked in in time, I’d take it earlier and earlier. To be honest… it wasn’t the worst habit ever. But… now that I’ve been off of it for a month, I’ve realized that it was pretty stressful and dysfunctional,. Will I take it occasionally for fun instead of a glass of wine, and get a way better night’s sleep than alcohol would give me? Yes. Eventually. But… I’m abstaining for now to try and get my life back on track. Hahahah. Ahhhh.

So that leads us to now. 

Phase 6? Or whatever.

I actually bought a whole parasite protocol kit again, and started doing it around this past December/January. I was going to go SLOW and kill them methodically, according to this 4 month protocol, which, I knew… haha. I knew from my previous 2-year killing spree, that 4 months was wishful thinking. But even just getting rid of SOME would be great, I thought. (I never actually went through with it because….)

Then… I stumbled again on, what some refer to as the “pro-metabolic” community online, and some refer to it as “ancestral” eating. And funny enough, this corner of the internet is actually what started my own F*ck It Diet, because it’s sharing the science about why PROTEIN, SUGAR, CARBS, FULL FAT DAIRY, SATURATED FAT, and alllll the minerals we miss out on now because we don’t eat enough animal products and organ meat…. how good all of that is for us. Edited to add: And how much I’d been depleting my minerals with my coffee, wine, stress, and …. these parasite protocols…. (I didn’t even put this important part in my voice recording because I forgot.)

Interestingly, I found this pro-metabolic info ten years ago, and back then, it taught me that allllll these macronutrients we are afraid of… it’s wrong. We are wrong. These foods are good for us. It’ll heal our bodies. But then, 10 years ago, I also realized I had an eating disorder, so I threw all the extra rules and guidelines about seed oils out the window, so I could heal my mind. But now… I’ve become so intuitive and blasé about food that it’s actually incredibly easy for me to start casually following these general guidelines again… to see if it helps my body, hormones, cycle, sleep…. And it already has.

It’s funny because I can see the cultiness of the different groups… the warring factions, where some are throwing shade at the other group because THEY take cod liver oil, which is so DUMB because cod liver oil is an unstable PUFA (poly unsaturated fatty acid). NO THEY are stupid because they are avoiding cod liver oil which is one of the HIGHEST forms of RETINOL. They’re RETINOL depleted. And THOSE people get too much SUN, they’re so DUMB. No THOSE people don’t get enough SUN and are only BURNING because they don’t eat enough VITAMIN E and eat too many PUFAS. THOSE people are so STUPID because THEY don’t think MOLD poisoning is REAL. UGH no THOSE people are stupid because THEY just haven’t healed their BODY enough to be RESILIENT to MOLD. It’s not the MOLD ALONE, it’s their unHEALTHY TOXic BODIES. THOSE people take FULVIC ACID which will DEPLETE their MINERALS, and THOSE people DON’T take ANY BINDERS which is STUPID because we live in a TOXIC WORLD.

Ok. You get the point. They don’t even agree with each other. It’s interesting to watch, and to know… that there isn’t really one ultimate truth here do, and calm down bitches.

But then there are the ones who get it, who get that… eating more good food, not being afraid of it… getting good sleep, eating those demonized animal products… it’ll end up helping in time. Or so they say. And so I’m seeing, slowly.

This is like… my deeper F*ck It Diet. The version I wasn’t ready for ten years ago, and the version I could only get to NOW after living through my coffee and wine fueled TFID 20s, but now I am eating such delicious sugary, carby, fatty, protein rich nourishing foods, without my coffee and alcohol (and weed) to fuel me. And I KNOW in my bones it is what I need.

And when I look back at my healing in those big phases… it makes sense that my body still needs this support… when remember where I came from. I mean, I literally just JUST started making myself to eat breakfast BEFORE coffee. And cut way back to just one, small-ish cup of coffee a day. 

For now, if you’re curious WTF I’m generally doing to support my body, it’s incorporating some of the work/ideas of Jessica Ash (who recommends TFID book), Fundamental Nourishment (who also likes TFID), but I look at their work, for me, as the next phase after healing my disordered eating. And remember… I’ve been doing this eating healing for 10 years already. I’m also working with Parris Hodges on slowly remineralizing my body… And I just want to say again, that I’m only doing this because I can intuitively tell that there are big things my body still needs support with. And I do think everyone is different — in that some people’s bodies need more support than others.

I’ll elaborate more in the future on all of this, because there is so so much more to say but… my eyes are tired. It’s almost 9 pm. And I am now a bitch who goes to bed early and gets “morning light” in my eyes, to reset my circadian rhythm, because remember: I very recently was a weed-for-sleeping addict.

Anyway… I will continue this very soon, probably next week. And this DOES tie into the parasite posts… so…. more soon.

This paywall below is just so it only let’s paying subscribers listen to my voiceover recording of this post!