Yesterday I came home from work to leftover white buns on the counter. I don’t have an issue with eating bread, what I have an issue with is the fact that I want to eat ALL the bread with butter and make a ridiculous amount of garlic toast before dinner.

The potatoes were already in the oven baking on parchment paper.

I decided to shove a tray with my garlic bread loaded with vegan button on TOP of the potatoes and I pushed the parchment paper up and it caught on fire on the elements. 

I panicked and blew on the fire, duh, making the flames worse.

The fiery parchment was flying around the kitchen and went behind the stove all the while the fire was increasing, catching fire on more of the parchment.

I finally stamped it out with a tea towel.

I’m 44 years old and acting like a complete fiend, rushing to get my fix, starting a fire in the process.

Right after I ate ALL the garlic bread, I gobbled down some mandarins. The fibre’y grizzly part of the orange got stuck in my throat. I struggled to get it down and couldn’t fish it out. I panicked for a second and then was able to get it down the gullet.

I had to laugh for a second. My family leaves me alone and I almost burn the house down and then choke to death. What am I even doing? 

Then this morning, this showed up on my Facebook memories.

This is a reminder to myself or to anyone who struggles with the SAME issue year after year after year. Honestly, it’s hard not to be sickened seeing these memories. For DECADES, I’ve struggled with the same issues. I bounce between utter despair and hopelessness to hope.

The upside is since going vegan, while I splurge LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS on overeating and crap, I have easily maintained my 60 lb weight loss. I never counted calories to lose or maintain, I just live my life. I understand maintenance is the hard phase and I suppose I should be happy that my new lifestyle allows me to easily do that instead of gaining weight each year like the old me.

While this is a blessing, it’s a bit of a curse in the sense that my brain will push the limits and find the absolute EDGE of crappy food behavior I can get away with and still maintain.

Oddly seeing these old posts perhaps has motivated me to take this seriously and work on my residual eating issues once and for all.

That and I said to Cousin Clint, THIS TIME I’M DOING IT. His reply, ‘you always say that.’ Harsh, but true.

I binged some vegan cheese puffs the other night and Clint had me say out loud ‘eating these will get me further from my goals.’ It was good he made me do this. Truly, living with someone with a food addiction, with the highs and lows and shame spirals, is really hard on others. This is a reminder to me to get better, as I’m not only impacting my own health, I’m impacting the mental health of others around me who are stuck watching me in these cycles. It’s like this week is a culmination of things illuminating to me that enough is enough. I must deal with this.

The addict in me is all whiney and like ‘but i don’t want to have this problem.’ I would SO RATHER work on ANY other problem, on helping others, the animals, whatever than work on this, but I must SO I can get back to doing OTHER things.

Do I want to struggle with food and weight? Absolutely not, but I need to accept that this is my reality, that THIS will come up time and time again unless I deal with it. 

As my favourite podcast host, Chuck Carroll from The Exam Room live says ‘EMBRACE THE SUCK.’ His story is featured in multiple places, here’s one presentation that would be great to watch if you struggle like me. He is an incredible human and has a very inspiring story. He UNDERSTANDS food addiction.

I attended coach Kimberly’s word of the year workshop earlier this week and came up with the word EMBRACE for my word of this year.

I am sick of hearing myself talk about this. I’m sick of going PART way with my goal, veganism has given me a MASSIVE bump in this journey, but as I identify as an ethical vegan, I find it EASY EASY EASY to avoid any and all products that use animals. For some reason, I have no ethical qualms about overloading my body with junk and unnecessary calories.

The first 60 lbs was easy in the sense that it was all MINDSET. Once I wrapped my brain about how horrific dairy and eating animals was for my own health, along with increasing my understanding of the animals who are exploited along with the environmental impacts, it was easy to give it all up. There are actual living beings (the animals) who are victims, not to mention our planet. We have ONE home and we are destroying it to support the meat & dairy industry.

I need to touch on the animals for a second. Please try and absorb this. I get it is HARD to absorb when we have been CONDITIONED by industry and our own governments and societal norms that eating animals is ok. It’s not ok! The animals didn’t consent to being exploited. We are not in a survival situation. We can go to the grocery store and eat something else. We have tossed out our compassion, our ethics and morals and values. We turn a blind eye to these atrocities which would not exist if WE didn’t pay for the animals to be exploited. 

The animals are bred to grow fast, to produce more eggs, to produce more dairy and no matter how they were raised, ultimately lose their lives. What did they do to deserve this? Please take the time to learn and then remind your brain and keep re-learning until you want to stand up and fight for this grave injustice against the animals. Honestly, please try to absorb this. If YOU lived in a society that was raising and eating dogs, you would be as horrified as I am about pigs, cows and chickens and what we do to all ocean life and more. None of them deserve this. I was supporting industries who were KILLING animals. I LOVE animals! Industries who take taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies, whose primary concern is marketing to consumers, lobbying the government, to producing studies that cause mass confusion on what to eat. Why on earth would I want to support that? Why do you?

So yeah, it’s SO EASY for me to not eat animals or their secretions. So so so easy. I chatted with a vegan psychologist the other day on the fact that I have no ethics when it comes to putting junk in my body, like I have no problem with it. To help me, she shared this video on ultra processed foods, it’s not a vegan video, but is worth the watch.

I’d also like to add that this year I have experienced two major bouts of anxiety and felt like I was dying. I thought I was having a heart attack, it was anxiety. I’ve experienced changes in my life beyond my control that I’ve had to accept and no matter how I’m feeling, joyous, stressed, bored, ruminating, whatever, I’ve turned to food.

The same vegan psychologist said to me that my brain may still need time to heal. That I’m getting a dopamine hit from food and to EMBRACE the fact that I will NOT get that same dopamine hit from broccoli for example.

Change is hard, but it doesn’t remain hard forever. This is what I tell people curious to go vegan, but are scared. You keep trying, you keep learning and one day, you wake up and it’s just regular life. You have compassion for yourself when you slip up, but you don’t give up!

The Brain Over Binge book I am reading says that I need to dismiss/allow the urges. Just like I don’t want to have this food addiction, overeating/binge eating tendencies, I also don’t love to deal with strong emotions, I want to ‘stuff them down’ as my good friend Shannon says.

So here’s to a year of EMBRACE:

-Embracing who I am at this moment in time.

-Embracing the suck.

-Embracing the absolute heartbreak of what happens to the animals every single second of every single day and that I cannot save them.

-Embracing the fact that people are not waking up fast enough to save the animals, to save the world and carrying on with HOPE in my heart anyways.

-Embracing the fact that I am awake and can be a voice for the animals. In fact, it is my duty as one of the lucky ones who is awake.

-Embracing the fact that I can’t turn to food for that dopamine hit.

-Embracing the fact that it is NOT healthy to ignore my own emotions and to mask them with food or even mindless social media scrolling.

-Embrace the change. Becoming vegan has been the best decision of my life, so much good has come from it, beyond what I could have ever dreamt. Can I EMBRACE the fact that this could also be true once I truly resolve this brain malfunction and get healthy?

-Embrace the urges with open arms and allow myself to feel these urges pass through me, allow myself to practice NOT acting on these urges in order to create those new neural pathways in my brain.

-Embrace EXCITEMENT for when the urges come up as THAT’S the moment where I can create actual change in my brain. Experiencing an URGE and NOT acting on it, is KEY to getting rid of this bad habit for good. If I don’t act on my urges, then I won’t reinforce this bad habit. 

I could go on, you get the drift. I haven’t written on this blog recently because I like to report only good news, but I’m embracing that this is part of my journey.

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 😊

p.s. What can you EMBRACE this year?