Coming Back to Life

The eating plan that works the best for me is low carbohydrate, a lot of vegetables and proteins and healthy fat.   When I have done this, I have felt wonderful emotionally and physically. But when I’ve been eating unhealthy and I’m transitioning back to it I feel hungry, ravenously hungry, exhausted, and nothing satisfies. It isn’t that my belly isn’t full enough. It isn’t that I’m not getting enough calories. It is the transition. And it is a hard one.

When unhealthy relationships end, whether that be the person is gone or the relationship becomes healthy, there has been, in my life, a sadness and emptiness. Now, part of it is simply grieving that someone is gone if they are indeed gone. And some of it is grieving the lost good, because even unhealthy relationships have some good in them; most things aren’t black and white.  But I’ve also missed the unhealthiness. Losing that has also felt like a death to me.

I remember one time I put so much into someone, that when they were gone, I found that there was nothing of me left.

I remember one time that the unhealthy friendship had been so exciting that when that person was gone, I felt as though my life had no meaning. The world had become “technicolor”, and now the natural colors seemed grey.

But there was something of me left, and slowly I came back to life. I kept telling myself, “you had a life before this,” and slowly I came back to life.  There was so much beauty in the natural colors of creation, and eventually I saw them.  There was much more life in a diet without sugar, and eventually I leveled off and felt better than I ever had.

Ten years ago, I felt that if there wasn’t a crisis in my life, mine or someone else’s, I wasn’t really living. I didn’t know that is how I felt, but it seemed to be necessary to be fixing someone’s problem or being fixed in order to feel like I was OK, which isn’t a healthy way to be.  Now I enjoy much more peace and joy in the little things of relationships and life, but sometimes, it feels a little dead.

Coming back to life can feel like that. Eventually we reach balance. If you thought you were getting healthier but feel less so, remember, these feelings don’t always speak truth. Letting go is hard, even if it is letting go of something bad for us. It doesn’t mean life isn’t getting better.

And if you are where you need to let go of something, unhealthy attitudes again, or sugar again, or something else, please remember that it will be OK. You can do this. No matter how it feels, you are coming back to life.

May God bless your day.