Clean Living

A Radical Plan for Rut-Wrangling and Illusion- Busting

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Anne Wells.

This past week she took me out for a wonderful birthday lunch. In a world filled with parallel monologues, gratuitous worry and self-critical comparisons, she always offers nourishing conversation, spiritual sustenance and love.

And this past week she offered something else. The word clean. Not simply the opposite of dirty. Not merely a synonym for healthy. But clean as a way of life.

Words can be powerful agents of change.

And surrounded by a Styrofoam culture of supersized opinions and bloated dreams, the idea of living clean is totally radical.

Clean emotion.

Like how you feel versus how you feel about how you feel, how other people will feel about the way you feel and what that means about you and the myriad of possible judgments and consequences that will be triggered.

Clean joy, grief and frustration.

Clean thought.

What you think, pure and simple. Without the added agenda of getting what you need, soliciting approval, posturing for fear of rejection, hedging to deflect disappointment or sugarcoating to avoid confrontation.

Clean let’s go for a run, visit the MOMA, donate to the WWF.

Clean art.

Expression channeled from pure imagination. Unimpeded by external or internal criticism. Anne’s daughter, Lila, was asked to do a self-portrait in class. All the other girls were doing dramatic renderings of themselves.

Lila decided she was like an onion, Deep, layered, complicated and healthy. So she painted this wonderful onion. Pure creativity.

Clean communication.

This is a tough one. It requires self-awareness, reflection and honesty. And often, time. To not react from a place of hurt, disappointment, abandonment. To not behave defensively when our buttons are pushed.

Finn’s executive functions tutor, Coach D, talked to him this past week about I statements. Brilliant idea.

I’d forgotten about them. Instead of you make me blah blah blah, we begin with I feel bummed out when you x,y,z and I really like it when you a,b,c.

Taking responsibility for the way we feel AND what will help us feel better.

Clean spirit. Clean passion. Clean ambition.

I have been trying to live this kind of clean for a long time with flip-flopping success

I never considered food as part of my obstacle. I saw food as a high-octane fuel source and tranquilizer of joy.

I’d pack a shit-ton of kale into a green juice in the morning along with four egg whites and then eat whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. Usually pretzels, chocolate covered almonds and frozen yogurt along with some No Pudge brownies.

Heaven!

I loved my unorthodox notion of a balanced diet.

And, it made me happy.

Sort of. Except when it didn’t. Which when I started thinking about it was most of the time. What I ate or didn’t eat consumed my thinking. I felt bad or good depending on my consumption. I felt rewarded or denied. Happy or sad.

I had cravings when I was anxious, stressed, happy, celebrating, grieving. I was feeding my state of mind more than my body. And this was also happening with Joe and our boys.

It affected all of us.

But I didn’t put my finger on it until about six months ago, after we watched the movie, That Sugar Film, as a family.

In it, the director, who uses himself as a test monkey, talks about all the hidden sugars in different foods and their effect on insulin levels and health, but also about the dramatic mood swings and energy slumps he experiences as well as a feeling of underlying impatience.

His emotional truths were also mine, but I had never connected mine to food. I always thought my impatience was really about the myriad in innane minutia that comes with having two boys. Or managing all of our schedules.

I had never considered food as the source.

Partly, I’m sure because then I’d have to change it.

My undercurrent of stress and inability to relax was impacting my ability to be present with my family. And although they may not have noticed all the time, I did. And it made me sad. So I knew, it was finally time to change.

A few days later Joe and I had a heavy conversation about addiction.

What it looks like and the path out.

So, the Monday after Thanksgiving I gave up all forms of baked treats, frozen treats, anything with chocolate, anything overtly filled with sweetness and everything with fake sweeteners.

Saying goodbye to diet soda and crystal light lemonade nearly killed me. And going from three Splendas per coffee to none… uggh. But, I did it. And after the first few weeks I felt better.

Clean applies to every facet of our life.

To do a clean squat you must tuck your tail to protect your lower back. I learned this last week. Slow to the party sometimes.

I recently discovered a new skincare line, Righteous Skin, with completely clean ingredients. And it feels great.

Clean feels great. Not easy. Not comfortable. But right.