The Trouble with Willpower

This diet thing is really hard. Much harder than the first time round, strangely. Or maybe it's not so strange: the first time I embarked upon a candida protocol, no fewer than three different doctors had told me I should do so. There's something about a doctor (or three) prescribing a diet to you that lends it a certain magical quality... you simply do what you're told. For three months solid. Then you remember you really, REALLY like a glass of white wine at lunch time when you are in the bushveld with your friends, and sooner or later, all bets are pretty much off. 

This puts me in mind of Dr Phil's wise words from one of those episodes of Oprah before he got sued. "To stick to a diet, you have to eliminate the idea of willpower," he said. 

This is a really crazy thought, especially if you've spent many years trying to subject your appetites to your better judgment. But it really makes sense once you click that it's your bodily imbalance itself giving you the idea that you want to eat every carb within a three-mile radius, NOT your weak will. 

I guess it's time to do a bit of explaining about all this.

WHAT CANDIDA IS

Candida is a little organism that lives in everyone's bodies. When your natural fauna is disturbed for some reason (e.g. an overzealous GP prescribes you a stupidly strong course of antibiotics for a bladder infection you didn't even get the fun way), candida can get madly enthusiastic and breed like wildfire. And one morning you wake up feeling like this.

And you stay that way forever.

But seriously. The more hayshawowee websites out there will tell you that candida is responsible for everything from chronic fatigue, to depression, to irritation with one's spouse, not to mention the always popular “brain fog” that renders you incapable of remembering your email password. More conventional indicators include womanly troubles, digestive troubles, and skin troubles.

One thing that comes out of the hippie rainbow camp that I do believe in, is that candida makes you crave carbohydrates. Because that's what it lives on. 

HOW TO FIX IT

If you go to a western doctor, chances are he'll prescribe an antifungal. In chronic sufferers, these only bring short term relief, and taking them too often actually results in resistance to these drugs. The more holistic approach is to deprive candida of its food source for a long time. If you want to kill it, you have to adhere to the following lists of do's and don't.

FOODS YOU CAN'T EAT

Anything nice

FOODS YOU CAN EAT

Organic protein

Hessian sack flour

Dust (as long as it is organic and yeast-free)

Water

Green vegetables

So. No caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy... there's a host of other "no's", including ALL FRUIT, for Pete's sake, but I mention these three because they are the ones I am finding really, really hard to cut out right now. Even the mention of the word 'caffeine' makes my heart give a little glad leap of expectation. It's been only one day since I last caved and had a cup of coffee. Oddly enough, I was not a coffee drinker until I stopped drinking alcohol! Your brain just needs that SOMETHING, right? When booze is out of the picture, any legal drug will do. Sigh.

I've been pretty good on the no-alcohol front for the last while - well, ever since my soon-to-be father-in-law conducted a blind wine tasting last month. How could I say no? It was to help us select wines for our wedding, a highly important duty. (Honestly though, that whole spitting it out after you've tasted it thing? That doesn't work. Wine critics are having a laugh. The back of the throat is where the crucial judging equipment is located. Am I right?) Anyway, as I was saying, since then I've been positively angelic. But coffee? Not letting go of me so easy. Nor is the Greek yoghurt... and the goat's cheese... I just can't say no to the goat's cheese. Damn you William Nicol Pick n Pay cheese room.

LOOKING GREAT NEKKID UPDATE

Yes we Dukan!

As of today I decided to try and get over these last hurdles by combining the candida diet with the Dukan Diet for weight loss. Hey, I might as well suffer in style. Dukan is also known as the "Princess Diet" because both Pippa and Kate Middleton are reportedly fans. Who am I to argue with royalty?

                                          Pippa's Ass: the money shot

The idea of Dukan, or any low carb diet, is that as soon as you stop stimulating insulin by eating sugar, you'll stop having cravings all the time for carby foods... like yoghurt and goat's cheese. Willpower eliminated from the equation. Easy as. 

...Although I do seem to have eaten an entire chicken today. (I know. I'm not sure how it happened either.) So maybe my ass will look like this.

                                             Miley Cyrus does the funky chicken

Heck, I'm not too picky.

Get Fit Challenge

When it comes to dragging your ass to the gym, unfortunately it's ALL about willpower. Unless you short-circuit your instincts somehow. I signed up this month for the mid-year Get Fit Challenge. This is where you pay R4000 for a bunch of extremely cute instructors to shout at you while you do situps and burpies. It is, to be honest, nothing that my gym doesn't offer for peanuts (I'm on Vitality), BUT I'm badly in need of that magical “I have no choice in this” factor. Parting with four grand is a great way to snooker yourself.

I've been to two classes this week, and boy, am I unfit. It makes me sort of awed at my younger self, in a wistful way, to think that I used to be able to do three or four hours of karate straight and not even feel it the next day. I am excited to Get Fitter, if not actually Fit, by the time this twelve week challenge is up. Oh, and if I am among the most transformed at the end of the cycle, I could win R10 000! Now THERE'S a good way to take willpower out of the equation. When in doubt, go for greed!

Is it possible to beat candida, change careers, move cities and get married in four months? I'm going to find out.

I always try and do too much.

That's probably partly why I haven't ended up doing the things I really, REALLY want to do with my time over the past five years or so. Things like writing books, getting back into karate and yoga, finding a way to horseride regularly, and truly beating candida.

If you don't know what candida is, here is one of many sites that will explain. No doubt it will come up a lot if I stick to this blog, but this being the first post, there are a few other things to get out of the way first.

Thing number 1: Ima get hitched

In January this year, my boyfriend Dan asked me to be his bride. This gave me quite a lot of thinking to do. Not thinking about whether to say yes or not. (That I had had PLENTY of time to think about). But thinking about paragraph 1 above.

Two years back, while we were doing a long distance stint of about ten months (he in CT working on a film, me in Joburg doing my advertising thing), some random chick from church gave me a piece of advice, totally out of the blue, that stuck with me. "Just make sure that you're doing what you really WANT to do before you get married. It's much harder to change course afterwards," she said.

This struck me as true... but being the kind of person who always tries to do too much, I was way too busy at the time to pay it much attention. Now, with my wedding a scant four months away, it's suddenly very real. And I constantly fear that once I'm in ye olde matrimonial groove, I might stay in exactly the same routine (career, hobbies, and even diet) simply out of habit. Or I could change it ALL right now. Sometime before I do the aisle thing on September 13, 2014. That sounds like me. Let's do ALL the things at once!


Thing number 2: I wanna be a writer

I am a copywriter (that has nothing to with copyright. It has to do with selling stuff using words). I actually want to be a fiction and drama writer. Last month, I took a huge step to get myself from A to B: I stepped down as creative director and am now working a part-time week and doing more writing. Yay me.

Thing number 3: I really really do need to get this candida thing sorted out.

I've suffered from this bodily imbalance for quite a while. Much like Justin Bieber, candida is currently wildly popular, and yet little understood.

Treatments vary (wow, what a world of confusing information and misinformation is contained in those two words) but the consensus is that killing the "C-monster" involves sticking to a particularly harsh and restrictive diet. My main reason for starting this blog is to make myself accountable to someone - even if only the vast yawning abyss of the Net - in sticking to this diet. It is hard. But I have just four months left to kick the ass of candida.* This is not entirely unrelated to...

Thing number 4: I want to look great nekkid.

And more to the point, in my wedding dress.

So here begins my accountability. I will try and get to this blog once a week at least - but, because of that whole "doing too much thing",  I have also undertaken to achieve the following:

1. pack up my house and figure out how to get my stuff to Cape Town. Oh yes, I didn't mention. Daniel is also moving to Cape Town to work on another film. And this time I'm moving too.

2. write a treatment for a feature film

3. finish a draft of my many-times-finished novel

... and that's just in May. So yes. I can't promise to stick to my schedule. But I promise to share everything I learn along the way, the good, the bad, and the surprisingly tasty despite being composed of high-protein hessian-sack flour. Let the countdown begin.


*If you're wondering why this deadline coincides with my honeymoon, I'll tell you when you're older.