"Every day, in every way, I get better and better..."

Day 153

Well gosh almighty but things seem to be improving. I have started the new diet and within two days the horrendous food cravings have almost completely disappeared. Instead, I feel a sense of calm and congruence, and my moods seem to have leveled out some. I also gave myself two nights on the sleeping tablets so that I could catch up a bit, and that has definitely helped.

The diet has reduced my constant snuffles already, (I have appeared to be nursing a streaming cold for the last three months, which I knew was actually a reaction to some food stuff that I was eating, just didn't know what). Despite cutting out all gluten, I am still bloated like a beachball though, and my wedding band is cutting off my circulation, but it's early days yet.

What surprises me is how content I am this diet, restrictive though it is. I don't feel like I'm missing out in any way, the signals from my body that tell me when I am full are working again (hallelujah!), and I don't seem to desire anything much other than what I am allowed.

We went to see 'Avatar' last night and Steve sat there munching his pic-an-mix while I had 12 cashew nuts in my pocket. Not only did I have no interest in the sweets, but I couldn't be bothered with the nuts either (so had 'em for breakfast). Everything feels safer and in control and it is so, so long since I felt free like this. I've had nineteen years of hormonal roller-coaster, during which time the one constant has been the presence of food cravings.

If I can get my body in a more balanced and less internally stressed state by adhering to this diet, then I can start to work on my weight which, in turn, may lesson the pain in my feet. I have just discovered this is called 'Peripheral mononeuropathy', which is essentially pain from a malfunctioning nerve system affecting, in my case, the feet.

Apparently, getting the right vitamin supplements may help this. When I was on the 'anti-candida' diet, I had a long list of minerals and vitamins to take, specifically prescribed by a nutritionist to help combat my symptoms. I know I felt better when I was taking them, but they cost over £130 a month, and we just can't afford that on the dole.

The good news is that Steve's old company is putting a bid in for some contract work and - if they get the deal - they will be giving him a job, on good pay, for a nice long time. I will then be able to afford the supplements again, yippee! And Steve will be without all the worries and difficulties he's had for the last 8 months, trying (and succeeding brilliantly) to keep us afloat.

So everything is looking up and moving along and all those other wonderful cliches. Maybe next time I write there will be more definite progress to report. Then I can get back to writing my books and painting my pictures and building My New Life, without this constant, dragging inertia, and mental fog. The good days are coming, and the winter chill will be left behind. It's all good, as they say.

Food, glorious food, (not)

Day 148

I put out a call into the universe, a query, a request, a challenge to the Gods, and would you Adam and Eve it, I got a reply, pronto. I was led to a book that I got from the library two weeks ago but had forgotten about - suddenly, I felt a desperate urge to take myself off to bed early with this book, and study it.

Just to back-track, a few years ago I was working part-time in the photo processing at Safeway, but was sometimes on the checkout, which was a lot of fun. If you, like me, are always having a nosey at what other people have in their baskets whilst queueing, then you'll understand how much better it is to be able to deliberately look at it, c'os it's your job.

One chap, I remember, had 40 cans of lager and an apple. I told him to go and get a bag of carrots because that one, lone apple wasn't going to counteract all that booze. I used to comment on everybody's shopping and had some great conversations, it was a fun time.

That's how I met 'candida girl'. She had the healthiest shopping I had ever seen - organic veg, rice cakes, fresh salmon, herb teas, wholemeal tampons, the lot - and I told her so. She said she used to have CFS but had been put on this diet and it had completely turned her life around. I made the queue wait while she wrote out the website address I needed to visit and her contact number.

I've always been of the opinion that what you put into your body affects your health - it's how I was brought up. After my sister was born and the medical profession had given up trying to 'cure' my mum of what was most likely post-natal depression, she and my dad spent years investigating alternative medicines and healthy diets.

It was the sixties, and they were definitely not hippes (mores the pity), but I remember a large, brown case of tissue salts, Bach flower remedies, natural homemade yoghourt (out in the garden - but in a thermos flask?), goat's milk, wholemeal-stone-ground-rock-hard bread, and spending weekends collecting chickweed for poultices, dandelion roots for coffee, or rosehips for syrup.

My mum's 'Keble Martin', as it was always called - 'The concise British flora in colour' being it's real title - has pages and pages of diligently researched, hand written notes at the back. Clematis is good for headaches, stings, eyes and sore feet, apparently, Rosemary (with salt) is for wounds, Meadowsweet helps feverish colds, and Burdock is good for chilblains as long as you're not pregnant. At the time I honestly thought my mother was a witch.

When in my turn the medical profession washed it's hands of me, my natural instinct was to go down the holistic therapy/alternative medicine route. I tried as many things as the budget of a family with only one working parent could allow, all with some limited success, and was left knowing that the one thing I could do at home, was monitor what I put in my body.

So when I found out about the anti-Candida diet, I was quite excited - this was the first time that all the symptoms I had were attributed to one cause, including many that I hadn't even considered as symptoms, but had been living with all the same.

The diet was hard - I had to cut out all sugars including those from fruit, all caffeine drinks and alcohol, anything fungal or fermented - vinegar, marmite, cheese, mushrooms, yeast and bread etc. - and lots more besides. At first I went through a horrible detox, then slowly I started to improve. I never broke the diet once. I cooked for the family without tasting their food, ever, so I'm not sure how great their diet was either. I had birthdays, weddings and Christmas - all on this diet.

Then a horrible thing happened - I started to get worse again. I worked really hard at it, but I continued to deteriorate. Going back to the Nutritionist who had outlined the diet for me, I was given tests from urine, spit, etc., and it was found that my liver was getting backed up like a clogged drain.

It was suggested that the illness had caused 'leaky gut syndrome' where particles of food sneak back into ones bloodstream and are treated as aliens by the immune system, the resulting detritus being more than the liver can handle. This in turn causes a sensitivity to those foods, the most common suspects being dairy, gluten products and all of the nightshade family, so I cut those out as well.

I was now on the most restricted diet imaginable, and another Christmas was coming up. I felt no better, but I had stopped getting worse. I decided to take Christmas off and start again after, as it had been eighteen months and I just couldn't bear it anymore. Trouble was, after Christmas, I couldn't seem to get back on it again - I didn't have the will-power and I felt too shitty.

I've tried many, many times since, all with no lasting success - my body just doesn't want that level of deprivation and hard work any more, with no actual results guaranteed. Had I felt great on it, it would have felt worth all the effort, but I didn't, I felt rotten, and I couldn't even have a glass of wine or some lemon sorbet to take my mind off it.

Roll forward a few years. Here I am again, stuck needing to change what I do to improve my health, feeling fitter and more emotionally able after the joy of college for the last two years, but knowing my body isn't happy with what I put in it - I am having too many headaches for that to be true.

So I send out a call and am drawn to a book - about a diet - that is even more restricted than the first! This one is about the natural chemicals that are present in all foods, but which can cause problems in 'sensitive' people, CFS being a common complaint.

It would be churlish in the extreme to ask God for an answer and then whine because it isn't what one wants, and consequently ignore it. So I will give it a go. It may have much less variety than the other diet but I can have more treats on it, mangoes, for instance. The sweetest thing I was allowed on the other diet was a sunflower seed and, call me picky, but I just can't overdose on them.

I need to wait until the next lot of housekeeping money comes in from the dole office, and then do some careful shopping, and a lot of planning and pre-cooking, but my intention is to give myself a few weeks on this in order to detox and have a good old clear out. (Hoping the pre-menstrual food-cravings don't sabotage it too much.)

If I feel a little better - great! If I don't, then I haven't lost anything by doing it and it's back to the drawing board. If I feel really bad when I revert to my normal, fairly healthy eating, then It looks like I'm stuck on another long term diet - Oh whoopee (not). Either way, wish me luck, and don't expect 'happy Bev' while I'm detoxing!

Finding my 'food story'

Day 93

It is now three months since I started blogging so it is time to take stock. Have just reviewed my first day blog, and while some things have changed, it is not as many as I had hoped, though probably more than I expected.

For one thing, I can now find more energy, focus and determination than I managed then, despite my illness. I did finish my book, I did send it off to lots of agents and - even if they have now all sent back rejections - it is only the first step. After Christmas I will start targeting publishers, and there are many, many more of them than agents, so that will keep me busy for a while.

As to my health, that isn't much better, but then I haven't been giving it much priority. I was expecting Steve to be back at work by now and I saw that as a time when I could focus just on myself more. There would be less distraction and more space to take things at my own pace, set my own agenda.

I am concerned that I may have been using that as an excuse to over-indulge in foods that disagree with me and hinder my healing. I keep telling myself I will do better at that once he is at work, but wonder if I'm just prolonging the condition by failing to knuckle down and do what is necessary.

I'm lucky in that my favourite foods are reasonably good for my body - I am not a chocoholic - but tiredness plays a big part in defining the meal choices that I make at the moment, and they are often less than good.

Unfortunately, changing those habits does feel like hard work - a punishment, almost - and I need to work through those issues as well, or I suspect my success will be limited. When I look back into my past, I see that my 'food story' is complicated and not very healthy.

As a child, I was emotionally abandoned by my mother very early on. With hindsight, it is probable that she had post-natal depression after my sister was born which developed into the same depressive and mood altering illness that I, in my turn, was struck down by. I was only four at the time, so all I knew was that I got shouted at constantly, and could do absolutely nothing right in her eyes from then on until her death, when I was 23.

My father stopped protecting me from her when I hit teenage, and even took her side against me, though he knew she lied. Worn down by her mood swings and vicious temper, he stopped standing up to her, probably suffering from depression himself.

As a family, we were constantly broke as well, which added extra pressure, and ensured that any scrap of something that was comforting was in short supply. A special treat was a Mars bar split between five, each of us hoping for the extra chocolaty piece from the end.

I used to steal food. I would find where biscuits or cashew nuts were hidden, (note, hidden, not available), and pinch as many as I thought I could get away with. This was the seventies, by the way, not some post war, ration book existence!

So now I find self denial really hard to do. When I have been on strict diets to help my body heal itself, I have felt emotionally distressed and often deeply sad. I think I still identify with that little girl looking for comfort any way she can, and denying myself a glass of wine or even a piece of toast and butter, takes me back to that time at an unconscious, cellular level.

I suspect I am accusing myself of taking up the mantel dropped by my mother, and continuing to treat that little girl badly by denying her what she wants and should be allowed to have. In order to resolve my health issues, I need to deal with these emotional ties - that bind food with love, and make it about comfort and safety, rather than nourishment and health.

This is not so straightforward.

No wonder I have been waiting for Steve to go back to work before tackling it!

And for Christmas to be over, obviously.