It’s a roller coaster ride at times. Hang in there.

So, if this feels “off”, please forgive! And ignore!

Here is my thought: maybe what you’re doing is not exactly a supersecret diet, it’s like an experiment, a scientific experiment. So that, instead of believing what everyone else says is right for your body, you’re trying things out. Being careful with protein, just to see “hmm, what happens if I do this?” And if it doesn’t work, or even if it does (by work I mean “make you feel good, give you energy”), then you will change it. Try something else.

Maybe, if you’ve been disconnected from your food-feelings for a long time, you have to go through this, like a baby almost. To find that intuition.

Maybe I’m repeating myself here, but when I first stopped dieting, I found it impossible to live without rules entirely. When I stopped restricting quantities/calories, I became a vegetarian, a vegan, I adopted a rigid macrobiotic diet for a while — I just needed some rules. Gradually I started giving myself occasional, unscheduled “rule-free” days in which I would, say, visit my grandmother and eat whatever she cooked, as much as she encouraged me to eat; or I would try a new restaurant, a new style of cooking, a new ethnic cuisine I knew nothing about. I didn’t have any kind of a plan for this, I just let it happen when I could. Eventually (and I’m talking years), the rule-free days were not terrifying. I even worked as a cook for a while, and channeled all my obsessive knowledge about food into becoming a total and unrepentant food geek. I can taste something and it’ll take me one or two tries to approximate it in my own kitchen. I can talk people (chefs, grandmothers, aunts — my own and other people’s) into giving up their supersecret recipes.

But I’m still tempted to give up this item or that category of food, or force myself to eat on a schedule or include something “good for me” that I don’t actually like. And sometimes I try it — and I’m happy to say it does not work very well at all.

Giving up exercise, though, I did not do in a healthy, thought-out manner. I had to give it up cold turkey, and I lived without its considerable benefits entirely for a very long time. I injured my back, badly, and spent several months in physical therapy – unable to exercise at all. Barely able to walk or sit, let alone run or do sit-ups. I injured my back because I overtrained. I was doing it for fun, right? Not trying to lose weight, just enjoying how good a fit body feels. Totally healthy, not crazy at all to spend four hours a day in the gym, on the bike, at aerobics.

It was many years before I really was able to enjoy it again at all, but even now I’m tempted to overtrain, because I remember how fit I was, and I want it so badly, and it drives me crazy that it won’t happen overnight. And, at my (ahem) advanced age (43), it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever again look or feel like I did when I was 25.

So I congratulate you for not having a minimum of four hours a day instead of one. For noticing that you are on the brink of overtraining. That you’re tired and hurty. For noticing that this is not, in fact, what you are after. Pay attention to that.

What’s hardest about this is that you do have to continue eating. You do have to continue living in your body, and exercise really does feel good. A moderately fit body is more fun to be in. You can’t give it all up. You can’t ignore it all.

You can get through this.

And if I ever get around to opening a restaurant (ha!), I will call you. I will need wisecracking waitresses — in fact I will only hire wisecracking waitresses.

–Nora