The Yellow Door Life

Weeks 4-6

I’m rolling my eyes at myself right now. 

I talk a big game, till I get behind, seriously behind.

I’m on track with protocol, just not writing about it. 😉 

So here we are looking back at Weeks 4, 5, and 6. Yikes. 

This new journey has been so incredibly gratifying because it has given me energy to work a retail job while I look for a full-time job in my field. Which is why I have been so busy and distracted, but it is also seriously amazing, because I have been working full days, on my feet, 4-5 days a week. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD DO THIS AGAIN.

I figured with my conditions and previously low energy levels, working a service job was out of the question. But look at ya girl go. 

This part of protocol has given me the strength to push past the unpleasant parts. Like missing the gooiness of cheese and desperately avoiding eye contact with cookies in the store.

The funny thing is I’m good without these things, I know I don’t need them, but when those little jerks are looking right at me in Publix, I visibly twitch. 

That’s the thing about addiction. You condition your mind, soul, and body to need something you don’t actually need at all.

My food addiction started when I was young. Food was always a source of comfort and reward. When school was over, my best friend’s parents and my own would rotate taking us to Burger King. I lived on Lunchables and Fruit Gushers. Ice cream was something we always kept in the house.

This is not to say my family ALWAYS made bad choices, on the contrary, but we certainly didn’t make good choices all day, every day. 

This is how disease creeps in. Slowly. With each bad choice, and not enough good ones. Eventually you end up on the receiving end of a diagnosis of some condition you have never heard of, and can’t pronounce, and don’t know how to spell (I’m totally referring to scleroderma here y’all, I definitely knew how to spell pulmonary hypertension 😀). 

You are suddenly labeled “unhealthy” and spend all your time on Google trying to find some piece of hope that what the doctor said isn’t true. 

Since I have started protocol, I have had several people point out that I eat so “healthy.” 

These are the definitions that come up for “healthy” in Merriam Webster’s dictionary: 

1. a: enjoying good health

b: not displaying clinical signs of disease or infection

2. a: beneficial to one’s physical, mental, or emotional state : conducive to or associated with good health or reduced risk of disease

3. a: showing physical, mental, or emotional well-being : evincing good health

4 a: PROSPEROUS, FLOURISHING

b: not small or feeble : CONSIDERABLE

You could in fact consider yourself healthy, if there are no visible signs of disease, yet you are stuffing your face with sugar throughout the day. Eventually those signs of disease will surface and you will be handed a diagnosis that sounds something like Type 2 Diabetes, an Autoimmune Disease, Heart Disease, Cancer, etc. 

The problem is you were never told you were “unhealthy” until the signs appeared, not during the behavior that caused them in the first place.* 

*Read that AGAIN.

You will then be upset that you are living with this disease, accept whatever treatment the doctor suggests, and succumb even further to your condition. Almost every single medical condition will also come with it at least one prescription for pharmaceutical drugs. 

We have got to stop normalizing this. There should not be healthy, and then inevitably unhealthy, after years of bad choices.

We have got to start making good choices and teaching our children to make good choices, first. Not after years of pain, overeating, smoking, drinking, not getting enough sleep, not drinking enough water, etc. etc. etc. 

I always think of the humans in Wall-E when I talk to people about health. It may have just been a kid’s movie, but it spoke volumes about the absolute insanity that is human reasoning and subsequent decision-making. Burn up ourselves, and the planet, and just leave it as the next generation’s problem. Enough.

I shouldn’t have to remind people that they need to drink water or eat vegetables. People are just being stubborn. I know this sounds harsh, but again are y’all reading the ingredient labels on the food you’re eating? You can’t even pronounce half of that nonsense, let alone know what it ACTUALLY is. 

In my humble opinion, God created us out of the earth and placed us in a garden. Y’all can do the math on that. 

In conclusion, we have to stop measuring health on the visible absence of disease and instead on the choices we make daily. The foods we consume. The rest we allow our body to take. The information we allow into our hearts. It all matters and it all impacts your real health.