On dieting, food and weight loss

I just did some serious thought-spamming in Sherry’s blog line concerning weight loss and it turned out to the size of an adult post. So I took the liberty of taking that what was for her to my blog too because I think / hope that it contains a valuable entry into dieting and weight loss. I started tweaking the post and then I really got into it. Hope you like it.

My preparation for quitting drinking started with studying weight loss. I was still in denial on my drinking so I thought I had a weight problem only. But that worked out fine because I learned a lot. 🙂 Or so I think, because I am not a nutritionist so what I say depends on what I learned from others.

ERIC BERG

Eric Berg has a lot of really good, informative video’s on weight loss. In essence he says: When people are ill they become overweight. Read ‘ill’ als ill or ‘out of balance’ – so you will. Berg is pretty convinced that cravings, overeating, gaining weight and what have you, only exist because the body is not functioning well. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Well, yes, it will start to work the other way around if one is seriously overweight but the basis is in the unhealthy situation. Guessing we can name a few unhealthy habits amongst us… :-S

Trying to lose weight will not happen very easily when one does not fix the underlying problem. Based on that he has defined 4 different body types – by their looks. Because depending on what part / organ / gland in our body is not functioning well, the body will store fat in different places. E.g. if the liver is not functioning well we tend to get a big (hard) belly and larger breasts or, for men it might look like they are pregnant or swallowed a basketball (beer belly, beer ‘tits’). If a person is stocking up on estrogens she will get a large chest but build firm hips and thighs as well. Yes, that would be the luxury side of weight gain 😉. In order to loose weight he has a diet plan for different body types that comes down to:

– loads of veggies, cruciferous foods for some types, less for others

– animal protein for some types and not for others,

– no sugar, low on carbs for all

– a kale, apple, parsley, ginger, celery shake is important

– cranberry – apple vinegar – fresh lemon – water drink before every meal

DO LIKE – AND IMPORTANT

His info where he says that taking synthetic nutrients is not good because it can actually make your body take up LESS of the nutrients in the long run because synthetic nutrients are not complete. Some nutrients need help stuff to be able to be processed in your body. If the nutrient pill does not contain the extra stuff too that will be taken from the stock in your body. So that’s a way of depleting the body from nutrients. He sells natural vitamins in his store. Food / veggies etc. normally contain all you need in one bite. If I would live in the USA I would order his vitamins but Fedex costs 60 to 80 dollars oversees 😦

He mentions that using dairy will TAKE Calcium from the bones. The use of dairy in The Netherlands is the highest in the world – and we have one of the highest figures in osteoporosis….. So much for the cheese. 😦 Chew sesame seeds if you want calcium.

Check out the a food nutrition table if you want to know what food contains what nutrients. I found that eating ecological pork meat is 10 times better against trembling hands (lack of vitamin B’s / damage of the nerve cells and brain) than eating vitamin B pills. Or combine them.

He is against Genetically Modified Organisms . And so am I. I am not religious but God created the earth and SHE SAW IT WAS GOOD ;-). That’s all we need to know. Arrogance to think we can outdo million years of organic process or the creation of (a) god(s) if you like. Very wrong in my, again, not so humble opinion.

Berg nicely explains the function of the liver in the fat storing / sugar making of stored fat. Very important.

DON’T LIKE

1 He is not a cook, he knows that and apologizes for it but e.g. he promotes using salad dressing from a jar and tells you to watch out for MSG’s. First, MSG’s have 10.001 different names by now, one of them being ‘yeast extract’. I find that very illogical all in all. What is wrong with mixing 2/3 olive oil, 1/3 lemon juice or vinegar, 1 tea-spoon of mustard, 1 teaspoon of honey, salt and pepper as a basic dressing? Takes 2 minutes max.

2 Berg is from the low carb – high veg and high fat school but does not explain the difference between white, finely milled flower and products made from that and all the products at the other end of the scale as: ecological full grains, brown rice, beans etc. It is not only the content but also the shape they are in. Finely milled is worse than full grain because of the work the body has to do to take it up and the time it consumes.

BARBARA O’NEILL

Barbara O’Neill, also on YouTube tells in her 10 different video’s about nutrition, how the body works and detox. She says: people jojo because they do not do a detox before loosing weight. In our body we have poisons that come from what we ate, drank, pollution, medicine, what have you. The really serious poisons like heavy metals are stored in the fat, out of the way. What happens when we lose weight is that the fat soluble poisons we carry are freed and the liver needs to break them down and make them water soluble so we can sweat and pee them out. If we do not take enough of specific nutrients (carrots, protein, vitamin B, C and another few things) the poisons will not become water soluble and the liver will say: ‘Ooooh, DANGER!! Let’s store these poisons in fat again so they are out of the system….’ So the liver will work against the weightloss by storing fat. Or which is why a lot of people experience headaches when dieting. Her story made me understand why I CRAVE meat after 2-5 days of dieting, that is where I go of the path totally. Those cravings are worse than my alcohol cravings. At a moment like that I can eat half a pound of meat, it feels like I am going berserk otherwise. This sounds silly but to me it is a sign from the body that it needs protein in order to convert the poisons.

Barbara sort of follows the Atkinson diet but makes it partially or fully vegetarian I believe. The detox is vegetarian – which I guess is a smart thing to do specifically when you live in the USA where farmers are allowed to put hormones in meat. One way or the other, I will use her advice to build my own detox schedule. In all her video lessons she drops sentences here and there, I have written them down in draft, by the time I get to it I will put it in my blog as well. Don’t wait for me though 🙂

DO LIKE

Somewhere she has a comparison on what to eat when eating healthy and she takes it from the bible. Again, I am not religious but I found that fascinating because it is such ancient knowledge and it is so to the point. Not wanting to be arrogant here on thinking we now better than people did thousands of years ago. It is just fascinating. Cool. 🙂

DON’T LIKE

Her view on the acid-alkaline issue of the body seems one-sided. Liking Eric Berg’s more. And the start of her story on Salt and Water is a bit funny. She goes of my grid of ‘acceptable there’ with a few of her opinions. But don’t let that stop you because the rest is FASCINATING!

MY PLAN

This is quite a story but I am thinking there is truth in what they both say. I, for myself, have decided that I will (try to) follow this route:
1 Quit drinking (check!)
2 Become healthy using whatever natural medicine I can find – good food, Bach remedies, homeopathy, phythotherapy (herb teas), nutrients and Schuessler cell salts currently (doing so!) and get rid of the synthetic medicine I am taking. And I should introduce more fresh air, more exercise and yoga but as a good addict I (start with) take (ing) it in from the outside.
3 Quit sugar (not eating a lot now) and anything with additives.
4 Do a detox according to a mix from Barbara, Eric and my nutritionist
5 Continue a diet on a path that I have not set yet but is probably based on loads of veggies, fish, carbs only in the full grain version like brown rice, eco meat with moderation.

With step 2, getting healthy I mean that I e.g. need to get rid of the continuous diarrhea I had (check!), get rid of my high blood pressure with natural solutions (check! 130 over 80 measured today YEAH!!!! for the Schuessler cell salts 🙂  ), work out how I get my tongue back to a healthy colour and shape because the indents I have indicate mall nutrition (possibly due to alcohol or diarrhea?) or dehydration. I am still retaining water in my legs and I want to work on the too. Not wanting to bore you with my specific details but just give an impression of what level of detail I am thinking of – so getting rid of the tiny things that are indications of an error in the take up and let go.

GRAPHIC TEXT ON POOING

List of let go errors: diarrhea, not being able to go, slimy stuff coming with, itchy anus, floating deposits, smelling results are ok, foul-smelling results that offend the nose are not. Baby poo is normally non-offensive when they are only being breastfed because that is what is good for them. Adult poo should not smell offensive either, that is a sign of things not working well or the diet containing stuff that is not processing well like a combination of (under) cooked beans and meat, that takes too long to digest so it starts to rot. The ideal ‘turd’ should be firm but not hard, let go easily, not float, not smell offensive, be darkish brown in colour, should NOT make you have to wipe a lot – almost nothing, and should not leave marks in the toilet.

Marks in the toilet means that there is unprocessed fat in your stool. As far as I know that is a bile issue (too little bile or not getting out of the bile bladder because of stones). I am drinking tea that supports the bile making in the liver – ha, yes, that would be an organ that could do with a little support… The tea seems to be working. I don’t think that I will lose weight easier when I am low on bile and not processing it because not processing fat only makes my body crave for it. And that is worse. Also, when the fat is not processed or not correctly, I would assume that the fat soluble vitamins are not processed either. And that is not good.

ON CRAVINGS

Cravings mainly indicate that your body lacks nutrients. Google on ‘cravings + meaning’ to find out what you are missing. Chocolate means that you miss Magnesium. I have taken Magnesium in the Schuessler cell salt versions and I think it works. I am not there yet but when I eat chocolate now it is sufficient to eat a few small pieces. I don’t need half of the bar. Check out this site if you want to go deeper in the salts and the medical side.

Also: I am guessing that after years of drinking and/or eating junk food (including cookies, sweets, chocolate, drinking soda’s with or without sugar) our bodies are a little out of sync so they might yearn for bad food anyhow. I find that the further I get, the less I yearn and crave for bad things. Having said that: I come from a background where we cook when at home, nothing intelligent, meat and 3 vegs or so, but still. Home cooked. See what Jamie has to say on that on Ted about home cooking and the lack there off. Did you know that since 2011 something more people die of obesity and bad choice in nutrients than die of hunger?

Craving sugar: that’s nasty. But I will again, try to get rid of the added sugars and most of the fruit sugars in my food because they are bad, cause diabetes, make me feel bad, and stimulate cravings for alcohol.

ON EXCERCISE

Check out what Barbara and Eric say on this, they promote the interval training thing with 3 minutes of extreme exercise like jumping 1 or 2 steps of a stair. And 10 minutes rest or so. That’s how the body works best. Proven. 😉

Also: exercise helps kidneys and liver and lymphen thingies to work bad stuff out of the body through the movement of the muscles – more a mechanical process than a chemical one. And it brings blood and oxygen into the corners of the body. Specifically those funny twist in yoga are meant to clean.

ON SALT FOR THE KITCHEN

There is a big discussion on salts momentarily. Barbara explains it well and she swears by Celtic Salt or Himalayan salt. However, there are other people, like my brother, that say: those unrefined salts can contain e.g. Bromide. And that is poisonous. I don’t know the truth.

ON LEARNING ABOUT FOOD

When you are looking for info on the internet try googling different versions. ‘Celtic Salt good for health’ gives different results than ‘Celtic Salt’ or ‘Celtic Salt bad for health’. On anything you learn you might want to check things out.

FINALLY

I hope you found this interesting reading. Please note that I am not a doctor or nutritionist and all I know comes from the internet. I hope it gives you some info or insight in things. Well, I found all of this hard to come by because there is so much nonsense too – so I am sharing it here. That is because I assume it is not nonsense. Disclaimer, disclaimer. Maybe it will proof to be in the future. Please drop me a comment here if you think I’ve been misinformed. Please also add links, movies, books that you would like to share.

Do remember: the path is the destination. I freaked out when all this info got to me but I just do what I can do easily. Not more. NO BERATING. I have this addicty ‘I want it all and I want it now’ behaviour, that does not suffice here. I decided to do: First no drink, stabelize, contine with health, stabelize… etc. I feel I have only one chance at getting sober and becoming healthy, getting myself on a good path. This is it. Thoroughly building a new life.

Hope this post brings you something. Again, comments, additions, book references, please drop them below. Only Potassium seems to have 1500 different functions in the body so getting to know stuff about food and the body is a path – never a destination.

If all of this turns you crazy: eat what the chimpanzees do. Stick to ecological food only, loads of veggies, home cooking only, 2-3 days without meat per week, no additives, no sugar, low on dairy. Loads of playing in the bush. And you’ll be fine 😉 That is a joke, but it is kind of true as well. 😀

Hope you liked it, Feeling.

Celebrate but don’t drink wine

Yesterday I decided I would order some extra supplements. But…. I keep on wondering: don’t I replace drinking with nutrients? Everybody needs nutrients and specifically with a history of alcohol abuse adding some supplements to my life would be a smart thing. However…. I don’t like the faith I put in it. I am fine I just still don’t believe that I am fine. This whole thing of getting sober was supposed to be so hard that I did not dare to walk the sober grounds for years. It scared me to death. And now I am here and it is not scary. It is a good thing to do, or drinking is a good thing not to do. Never knew that NOT doing something could be more important than DOING something.

So I wanted to get another opinion on the nutrients and find out what is behind this continuous I-need-this-stuff-no-I-do-not-need-this-stuff thinking. Obviously I do not ask anybody else, which would be a logic thing to do. No I ask the I-Tjing oracle. And the oracle says:

You have reached your goal and feel emptiness, psycho-analytically this would compare to fearing death. Make a new start. No matter what age you have, no matter what went wrong, live always gives you new chances at living.

A new time has come, celebrate, you are free now. But don’t drink wine.

No I won’t. 🙂

Happy that I quit! Strange it is sometimes.

Thought I’d do nothing for a while

Gabor Maté speaks of doing nothing to let your mind come to rest and really BE without using your brain or adding things from the outside. So I tried to come to a restful place.  Oooh, I remembered this goes way better if I light some candles and get some incense burning. And yes, let’s close the curtains. And feed the cats so they won’t disturb me.

I know the state ‘of mind’, been there before. Soooo…. I….. well, let’s say I tried. For about 1 minute, then I thought this would be going way better in a hot tub so I let the tub fill up. Then I thought of adding bath oil and pondered over ‘lemon’, ‘chestnut’, no marjoram because that stimulates, roses maybe? I decided on chestnut. In the bath, door closed. Foundling comes along and scratches the door, he wants in. I let him in because I do not want to be disturbed anymore by the feeling of shutting him out. He is in, he says something along the lines of ‘I don’t like the humidity in here, I want out’. So I let him out. (How on EARTH do people with kids run their lives?)

And… get back in the bath. In the bath suddenly all these opinions about everything pop up. It reminds me of my first ayahuasca experience, opinions: not important. Aaah. That is actually true. How did I happen to forget that? ‘Because you think it defines you and you need it to give yourself a position in this world, you think that if you don’t have opinions you do not exist. Your famous ‘those that know better are better.’ principle.’ Aaah, how did I forget that? ‘Because you are scared.’ Yeah. I am. So I cried, crying is good. All that tension, holding on to straight believes, not relaxing. That’s another thing I need to watch. I sleep fine but I am still very, very tense.

So, I’d done my crying, now I can really start to do nothing.

‘Would the bath oil actually float on the water because that would mean that it is has been running away with the excess water.’

No, thinking.

Aah, no thinking. I’ll breathe instead. In, 2, 3, 4, out 2, 3, 4. Or was it 5? Out 2, 3, 4, 5. No, does not feel good. Actually I should do more exercise.

I would have thought that would have slipped into your organic plan automatically already.

Obviously not there yet. And no thinking and certainly NO opinions!

I could do some situps here. Ah, no thinking.

I have difficulty relaxing. No thinking.

Yes,very, very dangerous. Will get you relapsed if you don’t do something about it. Why have you not finished your book yet? And what if GP3 does not agree with your plan? Will you continue to do it by yourself? How much are you willing to spend on it? How much can you afford?

I can call Dr Larson and ask if all the test are really mandatory because the nutrients are not poisonous anyhow. So I might as well only do the hypoglycemia test and the candida test, and possibly one or two gland tests, well, maybe the hair test.

You should have finished the book by now.

I can’t! It is a difficult book, I can only do so many pages a day without my mind starting to wander.

This went on for another 10 minutes I guess. I covered loads of subjects. All fears and trying to work out how to control them. Parts of self pity. ‘This bath feels weird, my heart is going al funny, I might die here. Where is the phone. Why did I not put the phone out here? I’ll get out, you never know. Hey NOW I feel dizzy, better lay down a bit. Wouldn’t that be sad, getting all sober and then dying. Just my luck.

I’m low on salts, how can that be? Drank too much tea, ate too little? Don’t snack anymore? My blood pressure must have dropped by now. Sure of it. Don’t forget to test.

I don’t even want to repeat it. How on earth did I ever, ever in my life shut up? I could even start running again to get to the point where I am too tired to care about thinking. Good thing that the book has a formula for erratic minds :-).

Oooh, past my bedtime, should get to bed. That is The Plan.

Happy that I quit. Now getting to the stuff where the going gets tough. Or maybe I want too much. Or maybe I do too little, or maybe I just feel weird because I ran out of vitamin B complex.

4,5Kg, no wonder I am tired

Hmmm, lost 4,5Kg in total in 1 month. No wonder I am tired.

And that means that I should be paying extra attention to nutrition because fat stores all kind of poisons. When I lose fat the poisons start floating through the body, reach the liver and the liver says; Oh ooh, those are poisons I can’t break down, lets use fat to store them in. And this cycle will continue unless I give the liver vitamin A, E, protein and a whole lot of other stuff so it can make the poisons water-soluble. That is why it is so important to detox before loosing weight, otherwise the liver will work against loosing weight.

More on that in the beautiful, wholesome, very informative YouTube video’s of Barbara O’Neill. Please note: she sometimes does say funny stuff. And the acid-alkaline story is more logical from Eric Berg. Eric Berg has a theory that, fat stores in different places in a body depending on  which gland functions worst. People with a week gland x store it at the belly, people with a week gland y store it at the chest and hips etc. I’ve got the book :-D. He knows a hell of a lot on glands and hormones but is a bit funny when it comes to handing our recipes; do everything ecological – but buy your salad dressing. A big why? immediately springs to my mind.

I’m sort of done with the studying and sorting it all out by myself. I guess that is the price I pay. I my mother would be alive I think she would see that this ‘wanna do it myself!’ is not new. Guess there is another thinking about trust cycle coming up.

Happy that I quit, still a little too tired to be proud but happy that I am loosing weight too. 🙂

Glutamine quenches alcohol cravings

I am reading the book; Seven week Sobriety from Joan Mathews Larson and while so I am blogging about what I find. Here the following quote on quenching alcohol cravings using glutamine.

Glutamine

This amino acid has a truly amazing ability to reduce cravings for alcohol. In a study reported in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, the desire to drink was significantly diminished among alcoholics who took glutamine, while cravings continued unabated among a comparison group who received a placebo. The alcoholics who took glutamine also reported that they were less anxious and able to sleep better.

I have noticed that HRC clients complain of a return of cravings within forty-eight hours when they neglect to refill their glutamine supplies. You can quench a sudden desire for alcohol by opening a 500-milligram glutamine capsule and letting it dissolve in your mought. (Substances placed under the tongue are absorbed directly into the bloodstream and take effect immediately.) Glutamine is on of our clients’ favorite nutrients.

That would be page 107.

Glutamine is found in beef, pork, chicken, turkey but also in seafood, milk and milk products (remember that glass of milk after a heavy night?), eggs (remember the fried eggs in the morning?). Glutamine can also be found in cabbage, beets, spinach, kale, parsley and wheat grass. Quantities differ per food source of course.

I always wondered why I ate loads and loads of meat and eggs after a night of serious boozing. And why a glass of milk or two before going to bed lessened a hangover and food cravings in the morning. That’s actually what I did, drink and then eat to diminish the consequences in my body. As I said before, I wanted to be alive whenever I decided I would start living.

When looking up the book from doctor Mathews Larsons on e.g. Amazon you will find that there are loads of other books on the subject that are less ‘old’. This book is last revised in 1997. If anybody has read other books on the subject of a nutritional approach to alcohol addiction I am very interested to hear about that.

By the way. The writer claims that her approach will seriously diminish depression and anxiety as well because those are/can be worsened by lack of nutrients like zinc and magnesium.

Do read the book if you want to diminish cravings easily and restore your body so you have less depression, tiredness, anxiety and what have you. I am personally convinced that my attempt at a nutritional approach has helped me stop drinking and keeps my cravings to a minimum.

Don’t read the book if you are looking for a mental guidance. There is no solace here. 🙂 Well apart from the promise that quitting will be easy, there will be only a minimum of cravings and the chance that you stay of the booze is 3 times higher than any other non-nutricional treatment – so they say.

The book is almost, well I would say ‘obviously’ written by somebody that has had no addiction herself. Ghegheghe. She does not beat around the bush and has a ‘This is how you can stop drinking, we have 74% result so do as I say’ approach. ‘And by the way, stop smoking and eating and drinking caffeine products and also sugar because both those addictions will make it harder to quit alcohol.’ And for those with hypoglycemia (that would be most people addicted to alcohol) sugar will spark alcohol cravings. But don’t let that stop you, quitting anything WILL be easier if you have got your nutritions worked out.

Happy that I quit, happy that I quit sugar, smoking and caffeine before I did alcohol. Happy that I found this book. Trying to work out in my head how to do work this theory into my live.

28 Days and A Plan

28 Days today. Going to celebrate that with watching the movie 28 Days tonight. In this movie Sandra Bullock is a loose post-teen woman with a serious alcohol problem. She gets caught for drunk driving and has to go to rehab. She is very apprehensive but along the line you will see her change.

The first time I watched it must be 10 years ago, I had no idea what it the movie was about, just watched it but it did get me thinking. The whole movie is generally good fun but specifically the end stayed with me. I guess it set me on the path of selecting and letting go friends and acquaintances that I knew would get me in trouble if I would ever stop. It might have also showed me that drinking in public is not elegant.

When I look back it is actually strange that I drank for so long. Drinking stopped being ‘fun’ after I studied. By the age I was about 25 it already had a quality of something I needed to lift myself from below zero to zero. Well, that would exactly be addiction; not being able to stop.

And today? Hmmm, let me try to make a plan for the day.

– I’ll start of reading Seven weeks to sobriety.

– Then when I get cold I’ll shower and eat.

– Make a Bach remedy cocktail focussed on getting stuff done and moving away from the feeling that I am ‘still ill’ and ‘need to be carefull’.

– Get my vitamins in, have been neglecting that.

– Call girlfriends, make appointments for the week.

– Clean the kitchen, livingroom and bedroom.

– Do food shopping.

– Clean the communal garden and try to see if the cat dares to come out of the house when I’m out.

Those are 2 things too many. Ditch the communal garden.

– Add: planning a date to make the plan to present the GP.

– Add: enjoy what you are doing and relax.

I’ve gone all tense now when thinking of A Plan. Don’t want to be accountable (yet?) or ‘just’? Ha! I’m really getting stuck internally here. Hmmm. No wonder I never get stuff done. I go into panic mode only by thinking of a plan. Even a day plan. I have had this all my adult life as I remember but normally I would drink the uneasiness away and wait for deadlines to come closer so the stress of the deadline would outdo the stress of the plan.

Deadline surfer I am. Let’s look that up on the internet. Aaah, internet has the ‘attack it with your will and brainpower approach.’ That has not worked for me ever. I guess I’ll just have to ponder on what is keeping me. Perfect therapy subject. Guess what?!! I have that book from Covey, it says ‘Priorities’ on the back. Never read it. Might be good to get an inkling of what it takes to prioritize. Oooh, feeling some resistance here. 😀 Breathe, breathe…

Happy that I quit but not proud anymore because I’m getting to the part now where things start to matter and I feel I can’t deliver. Happy that I have given myself the opportunity to come to this stage and see where the barriers and traps are. Let’s see how this develops.

Physical disease with psychological consequenses

Went to my therapist, it is in my homeland so I had a long train trip. Which is good, got to read the book on nutrition and alcohol addiction. Figured out that if I took a seat with a window left of me that other people could not read the cover. By now covering up for not drinking seems to take up the same kind (not amount) of energy as covering up for drinking. I am actually scared that I get an accident, not because of me, but because the books are in my bag and ‘somebody might notice’. My therapist said I should watch the paranoia. I should, I should. It’s lurking and I should keep a close eye on it – which is actually only half a joke 😦

Next week I host the ‘hooker club’ at my place. No that is not a Hooker anonymous, it is a language joke on a crochet club, in my language the bad English translation of crochet could be hooker. Well, nobody actually really crochets but everybody takes their work with them. Only new moms actually finish stuff. I mailed the invite saying that if anybody wanted some alcohol they should bring their own and take the rest with them because I was off the booze. I added ‘for a while’. Said that it made me depressed and that I was happy that I was not depressed anymore, added some joke to it. I am getting more relaxed about telling people I don’t drink, still don’t feel like coming out of the closet as an alcoholic though. I do expect me to blurt out something one day that might make people wonder. I’m not so good at keeping secrets. Well, that is not here now so not to worry.

So what did I do, I did some falling apart at the therapist, came to a point where I remembered exactly why I choose booze as my favourite companion, then got myself together again. Walked to the train. The train from my homeland to where I live is always difficult. So many sad memories. Did a smart thing though, got into second class that was stuffed with students going home on a Friday night and that typical energy of studying and talking people made me happy. Ok, I did use my earplugs. 😉

My therapist also said I should not be trying to transform my general aggression into aggression against AA and religion. Sorry world :-(. I should not do that and I should not be ranting.

All in all I was pretty convinced I have a long way to go but I am doing somethings ok. Like being happy that I quit. By the time I was in the city again I was all enthusiast about the new book. Happy that I finally found all the nutritional info I have been looking for for so long! So, feeling my way back into life is working out pretty good so far. I write a lot of feeling but there’s a lot of thinking involved too.

If you are experiencing cravings, depression, anxiety or just like nutritional info I guess this is the book to read. The author is from the Health Recovery Center in Minneapolis. They say that addiction is a physical disease with psychological consequences , and not the other way around. It is like using XTC, everybody knows it makes you depressed because these pills deplete your happy hormone stock, so it is with alcohol.

They claim a very high recovery rate, the book says 74% versus 22% for treatment centers following the idea that it is a mental disease (I have corrected physical to mental after publishing the blog). Not sure how it works but in my country you are not allowed to make such statements if they are not true. Also, I see that I have in 4 weeks had 20 – 30 seconds of cravings in total and I have taken part of all these nutrients in overdose over the last months. So I tend to believe what she says. We shall see.

If you check out the site or read the book: brace yourself for some aggression in the style of writing and where I just said sorry about ranting: she seems to have no problem with that. Keep in mind that she has lost a son to alcohol, he committed suicide after his personality changed due to alcohol. Reading the book I get the idea that she is angry at the persons that ‘did not cure’  her son and possibly also that these care centers are still refusing her solution that she says is way better.

The site uses words like orthomolecular therapy but all the stuff she writes in the book is available at any vitamin shop. The book could very well be a big part of a DIY box to getting sober. The plan is to determine what spurred your addiction, then to determine the current state of the vitamin levels together with your GP. Next to get some healthy stuff in you get your levels up and stop drinking. In that order. No sugar and no caffeïne either.

To me it sounds like a good plan but I have not read everything and I don’t have the medical background to check it all out. So… But, still, sounds like a good plan.  She does believe in the combination of Mind, Body, Spirit and holistic but this book is mostly about the nutrients. Can’t wait to read on.

I am happy that I quit, emotionally stepping back into the reason why I think I drank was very confronting but it is good to see that side of my life from a sober perspective. And with saying that I believe I am not totally convinced yet that alcohol is a (only) physical diseas.

Well, happy that I quit. Bit tired of the work it takes.

Nutrients based approach to alcohol addiction

Very excited: started in the new book ‘Seven weeks to sobriety’ by Joan Mattews Larson she advocates to cure alcohol addiction by getting the right nutrients in your body so that your brain can function normal again. She says addiction to alcohol is very much a physical disease. Only in 19 pages in the book yet but loving it! Wish I had this before, I had to look up all the nutrient info myself on the internet. She claims an 80% recovery at the Health Recovery Center and promises ‘no cravings’. 80% Is very high compared to the maximum of, I believe, 22% that other methods claim. I am reading it because I want to learn more about addiction and because I have no cravings as opposed to ‘all’ the others in this sober blog world. I am assuming that there is a relation to the nutrients I have taken while prepping for detoxing and during detoxing. Very curious as to how it works exactly.

Also she says hypoglycemia and alcohol addiction are related. I have hypoglycemia myself, the effects are not as bad anymore as I used have  because I eat more regularly and used to not eat added sugar (except for the drinkable ones, yes hypocrite) and not even fruit because that set me off. Everybody I know that has hypoglycemia has a drinking problem. And, when reading all these sober blogs, everybody has an issue with sugar intake after they have stopped. And I am developing a sweet tooth myself, which is ridiculous. I, 100% convinced that sugar is poison, becoming a sugar addict now? Well actually in my life, I quit cold turkey from not eating a lot of sugar (10 biscuits in a week max), 25-40 cigarets a day, 3 liters of cola light and 12 units of alcohol a day. Quitting the sugar was the worst, tremendous headaches . I got back ‘on it’ 5 years later when I stopped smoking.

Also recognising what she says is ‘being over sensitive to chemicals’. I have that. Not sure anymore if I left it in the blog but a ‘fluoride poisoning’ and my approach to that was what lead me to believe I could quit.

Really looking forward to reading everything. Can’t wait. Have to get ready to leave now though.

‘Extreme mood swings’ is also one of the signs of a lack of nutrients. 😉

In a ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!’ kind of way.

Day 4

2 Persons have read my blog, not sure if they finished, but somebody found it! Now I’m starting to feel responsible for what I put out there. That is a funny thing, feel like there is a trap in that. Like I’m automatically trying to tune into The Other. The trap is in losing me and then trying to wash (drink) away the feeling of being lost.

It’s day 4, I slept from posting the 2^nd post to 10:30 this morning, woke up once to drink water. Normally I would wake up 10 times in the night. I dreamed all kinds of stuff. One part of it was being at a university in Japan where this tall, blond, muscular, male, handsome, young student was wasting his life on booze. Always funny how I dream about myself, well I guess the student was me as well, in pictures that are the total opposite of how I look. He gave me a glass of heavy liquor but it looked like water. He did it on purpose because he thought I was an arrogant bitch and wanted to break me. Noting some issues with aggression and self hate here? I spit it right back in his face and then flipped a massive table over him (turned the tables?) in a ‘YOU, SHALL NOT PASS!’ kind of way, ghegheghe. But one thing I did not do is break the double bind, he still has me caught in his despise. Need to read up on that, repair myself. Or maybe: I still despise myself for drinking. I do.

The guy sought me out because I was insecure, felt like I was trespassing in a world that was unknown to me but known to everybody. Much like any school I went to actually. He got a double bind on me in seconds. Forgot how he did that. Or maybe the feeling of being an alien is enough to make me shrink. ‘If you are them, if you are with them, they will not hurt you – thought.’ Nasty system fault.

I noticed that I take giant steps internally through this writing. That’s part of my character that needs looking into. There’s a trap in not being able to stand still and feel the moment. Part of it is that I have nobody to speak with about getting sober. I was in this medical intake process but it somehow did not feel right. And then I noticed that ever since I started the intake process I only felt worst and worst. I figured out it was because I had given my Initiative away and got this ‘I am a patient, only The Other will make me better’ thought over me.

When they did not call me at the day they said they would I felt like they thought I was not important enough. So I stopped drinking by myself quite probably to prove that I could do it. Should I apologise for this childish trait? Not sure.

Yes, I know, major trap number 1 there: ‘You hurt me so I don’t need you and I can do it better myself anyway.’ Note to self: the hurt only happened because you placed yourself in their hands and gave up your Initiative. I have an issue with connecting, can’t balance it, but now disconnecting is helping me to set my own personal energy boundaries again. With the help of Jason’s book feel through every lie that is within me and out there to see and mostly feel how it enters / entered my system and made me drink. During the reading I would spot where the lie would attach to my thinking and energy and chuck it out, close the door. I’ve seen these words ‘practising the sober muscle’ somewhere online. I guess that’s what it is what I did before I stopped and then I stopped. It is part of how I feel my way back into life.

Still need to decide on what to tell the intake people.

The way I see it now is that I have taken what is my weakness ‘not connecting’ and turned it into a strength. I did exactly what I did not dare to. I thought I was going to die or at least be taken into hospital at the weirdest hour of the day. I have this motto, it’s a bit long (like the rest of what I write) but it goes like this; when you want something but are afraid to do it, start with that what you are most afraid of.

That was part of my decision and of course, and this is a bit dangerous… Jason said in his book that the effects of withdrawal are minimal if you get some good nutrition in you. I actually don’t think he should be saying that, but he was right in my case / I made the case right. For me it worked out fine. But, but, my blood values were good to start with AND I have this strange sensitivity that I can sometimes feel stuff and ‘know’ stuff about health – which is the thought that helped me trough the last 3 days but actually it might as well be a very fake idea of coping that I made up myself. You never know… But it worked for me.

DISCLAIMER: what I write below is NOT meant as medical advice. I’m not a doctor, non of this is in any way meant as medical advice, it is just written down to inform you of my thought process during my detox. Please consult your GP or addiction doctor to discuss detoxing.

What I did is I felt my way through the detox. Detox as far as my knowledge goes has to do with 5 things:

• Mineral balance of potassium, calcium, sodium (mostly in too high supply anyway), magnesium, phosphorus and zinc.They arrange the communication of molecules between cells. It they are out of balance, all your systems go wrong.
• Lack of vitamin C, D and probably A, E, B something, called Thiamine, general lack of any of the vitamin B’s.
• Making sure my sugar level are correct / if breath, sweat or pee smell like acetone the shit hits the fan. Not good. Up front I told myself that this for me was a point were I would call a doctor. But in fact I did not, I immediately ate some grapes and All Brans with milk and got by.
• Serotonin overdose. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that connects brain cells. If they become too high a brain starts to connect like crazy and that can actually make people psychosis crazy. Not good. I slept a lot, it calms me.
• Omega 3 and 9 fats, we seem to get plenty of 6 anyhow. The brain wallows in Omega 3 fat and funny enough all our food is deprived of it and alcohol wears omega stocks down so I eat loads.

If I felt a tiny lightning in my brain I drank water with Celtic Salt which is a special salt that contains all the salty minerals. I ate 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds per day, chew to paste and swallow for calcium. Started of the day with 1,5 pint of home juiced vegetable juice made of celery, apple, ginger, cucumber, a lemon and some carrots which is generally good, they cleanse and bring minerals in the correct balance in your body. During the day I ate 2 handfuls of walnuts and almonds for minerals and vitamins, about 5 dried apricots for potassium, 1 spoon of cod-liver for vitamin A and D, several multi-vitamin pills, several multi-vitamin B pills, some beer yeast pills, some maria-thistle pills to cleanse the liver and some All Bran cornflakes with milk when my blood sugar would feel like it got of track. Next to that I ate ecological pork meat when I felt like it because that is a very good source of al kinds of vitamin B and while drinking I noticed that it has better results than nuts and pills on tremors. Also, when my brain would feel like it overworked I took 2 spoons of flax-oil. I also had about 5 cooked potatoes, 3 servings of wild rice with avocado. And I ate cheese, but that’s just because I like it. I should have eaten chocolate as well but I incidentally bought the milk version in stead of the extra pure so that was only going to make me fat and not add a lot of Magnesium.

In between I drank about 2-3 liters herb thee and water with Bach Remedies. That’s one of the reasons as well not to want to go internally to do a detox; Back Remedies are herbal medicine that influence mental stuff and I think manage energy levels of all kinds. But they are conserved in alcohol. AA minded people would want me to loose them but they have actually helped me get healthy and happy in a lot of situations. I do 10 drops in 1,5 liter water, pour half a glass and then dilute this with water. If I do taste the alcohol I water it down. For me they are not in the drink area, they are in the medicine area. But you’ll be the first to know if I got it wrong.

And here I am. At the other end of a 3 days detox. Ghegheghe, did not lose weight, but that will not surprise you. Actually I gained 1,5 kilo in the first day. I guess the retaining water has to do with not getting the usual diuretic (booze). Think it does not have to do with the salt. Salt is bad for the blood pressure and heart but I think to notice that the Celtic salt does not influence me that much. It is the table salt that has only the Sodium Chloride that throws the body out of balance. But yes, I am still waiting for national pee day; the day that I go to the toilet more than I drink water or tea. Also, I went to bed when I wanted and did what I wanted and made sure I was absolutely glad that I had stopped drinking. That seems like an important part of it.

They say it takes 3 days for the last alcohol to be out of your body. And then there is another 10 day mark or so and then, with training the brain, it will take another 4 months before the path of drink think is removed from the brain as a reward system.

My head is tired. Wrote for 3 hours. Tired. Don’t want to stop, feel like I need to get stuff out there. See, there’s a trap. I need to write for myself, but if I do that for myself only then I feel alone. But if I write for other people I have the fear that I look crazy when I would write down the funny stuff. Then again, I feel that a lot of learning has to be done there were the funny stuff starts. Like that I’ve not had a shower since I stopped. It feels that if I would relax under the shower I would wash off the determination. Major Trap. It probably means that the ‘relaxation’ and ‘peace’ that I feel is actually something that I force upon myself. WHAAAAA! Ooooh! I let it go for a second, now I know why I hang on to the determination and am out here blogging the hell out of me. Ghegheghe. I hang on to the determination because if I don’t there’s an empty world with nothing out there. Major Not Knowing. Infinity is sooooo big. Finally crying.

Going to lay down now, taking care of me also needs to be done when I want to do something else.