One night when I was prepping dinner at the rehab one of the clients came through the kitchen and scoffed at the broccoli on my cutting board. “Gross! Is that what’s for dinner?” A question followed by a rant about the many other vegetables that they really did not like. One of the technicians came through in time to hear this pretty powerful monologue and shut it down by saying “you used to shoot up with toilet water. I think you can handle some broccoli.” Then they both went off to group. I caught a lot of complaints and eye rolls about the healthy food I made there and I totally understood. They wanted their comfort food. French fries, cookie dough ice cream, gummy bears, meatball subs, sodas, Mac n cheese and endless bags of potato chips. However, I could not in good conscience feed them these things. They played into the same reward system in their brains that drugs and alcohol did. All that junky salty sweet stuff would only be standing in until they got back out into the world and could get their hands on what they were in there to recover from. I watched it happen. Many people who did not use the time in rehab to begin to change their diet - came back. It was always the ones who lived on coffee, cigarettes, pastries and juice. So I just started offering less of those things. I’ve never told anybody this but… I watered down the juice and started cutting the coffee with decaf.. I’d trick them and make chocolate cake for dessert… only later to reveal it was made with beets. I kept it up and dealt with the push back because eating was the only thing I could be sure our clients would continue to do outside of rehab. The exercising, meditating, journaling or going to meetings could easily get dropped but eating? That’s a necessity. If they could begin to change that one behavior they stood a better chance of recovering. As they say - how you do one thing is how you do anything. I also know what it is to not like things and to know that can change. Real talk - it would be challenging to describe how much I once detested oatmeal. Back in my 20’s I had a boyfriend that ate it all the time and it turned my stomach on the reg. I called it things like “sad” or “pasty” and offered to make him literally anything else but - he legit liked it. In my book it was warm, weak, old people food. Gruel.. Now? I love it. I love gruel! Who am I? I like her..
Day 360: Really good gruel. Oat groats, ghee, almond milk, cinnamon, bananas, bloobs, almonds, pumpkin seeds, cocoa nibs and coconut cream.