Wandering Meg

Or as Tim Ferriss refers to it, the Slow Carb Diet.

I did this diet for six months before I had enough yesterday. It was fun at first, but after gaining 4-5lbs while travelling, then being unemployed for two months now, I quickly spiralled into a lovely cycle of binging and restricting. 

I’ve had a disordered relationship with food for years--it was either eating 75%-90% of my diet in sugar, or only eating “clean” in some way or other, but altogether trying to avoid the issue of finding some kind of moderation. Last year started with me trying to find that moderation and I made a lot of progress--but still did have issues with carb cravings and mini-binges (in the absence of restriction), as I’ve had for a few years, even before I lost 40-ish pounds in 2016.

Anyway.

These last few weeks were the first time in my life where I no longer had an aversion to the idea of starvation, diet pills, or purging. It truly scares me that I came to the point of feeling so out of control that that felt like the answer. The level of desperation was chilling. I didn’t care about the health effects, I just wanted the urges to binge to stop. Because SCD Cheat Days became a reason to food hoard and eat junk food until I felt ill, if I actually made it to Cheat Day without caving into the horrible urges. Which I usually couldn’t. 

So then I’d feel guilty. Try to restrict more because my weight wasn’t budging. Binge more. Restrict more. Repeat.

I suppose I was susceptible to going down this road because SCD advocates weekly binges, and anyone with binge-eating issues and sense would nope right out of there. But that’s just it--it’s presented as this ultimate solution, this no-fail diet, this means of indulging all your binge cravings without consequence. You look at it and think, “Maybe this will work. Maybe this will lessen the urges. Maybe I can binge and lose weight!”

And for a while, it’s okay. But then it didn’t get better like it did for other people, who lost their taste for big cheat days and stopped even wanting junk food. I don’t know who they are, but I want to be them, and so do the other people I’ve learned have also developed binge-eating as a result of SCD and had to stop doing it, too. 

My bitterness isn’t that other people had no problems on SCD. It’s that nobody even talks about the possibility it’s hugely risky for some people going down the dark road of an eating disorder. I had to hunt through forums to even find people mention binging problems, and everyone else is nothing but glowing reviews. “Binge Day” is made out to be light and fun and therapeutic, when it’s neither light, fun, nor therapeutic to find yourself considering bulimia as a viable option.

So yesterday, I’d had enough. I’d been thinking about it so much in the last few weeks as I struggled to find a way to control the binges, and I realized something really sad: I didn’t want junk food. I didn’t even like it anymore and yet had the strongest compulsion to fill my cheat days with it. I wanted things like roasted sweet potato. Unsweetened yogurt with blueberries. An avocado. Hummus. Squash. Fucking cheese, more than anything. 

Yet here I was, on my Cheat Day, stuffed to the brim and still feeling an overwhelming compulsion to eat more. It wasn’t healthy and I couldn’t do it anymore, unless I wanted to end up in the deep end of an eating disorder. 

So that was it. No more, I said. I’m eating healthy, going back to the 80/20 rule, allowing treats when I have room for them (but in most cases, I don’t want them because they aren’t worth it). It’s still going to be lower carb; I’m still going to avoid sugar, my nemesis, as it nukes your gut bacteria; I’m still going to cheat every now and again. 

And you know what? No longer having all the SCD rules, the agonizing days waiting for the next Cheat Day which ended in inevitable regret, just the simple variety of choice, has completely lifted the veil of disordered thinking about food. It was like flipping a switch in my brain. I feel like myself again. I want to eat to feel good, to live a good lifestyle, and be moderate. No more extremes. 

Does it mean the Slow Carb Diet is bad? No. So many people have had great success on it, and I enjoy the everyday food I eat enough I’ll continue having a lot of it, just with cheese and more leeway. 

But I think my experience is the hidden dark side nobody talks about with this diet. I know I’m not alone and I’m not the last person who will have to stop due to disordered behaviour. 

So I reported the farm I termed “the Sex Cult” a few weeks back. That was the farm that accepted my offer to volunteer primarily because they thought I was attractive/bisexual/into open relationships, and one of the household members hit on me for two weeks straight.

Well I won’t get too much into details but I essentially “lost” as I’m the only person to have complained and everyone else just loves them or something. So the Sex Cult is open to continue recruiting.

Perhaps I was just unlucky. Perhaps I was the only one. But nonetheless, I have absolutely zero faith in WWOOF and it’s sad that this is how they treat their members. Out of four farms, I was sexually harassed at two of them. I know I’m not the only person to have had similar problems with hosts that WWOOF did not take seriously--but of course they can always hide behind the fact I chose the farms and it’s my story against someone else’s.

If you'd asked me two weeks ago how my anxiety was these days, I'd say pretty good. Much better than before.

Wrong.

I went to the doc last week to check in about my recurring fatigue. He was a nice lad—not my usual doc, but the Resident. Kind. Really cared about how I was doing. I think we talked for a good half hour. I'd bussed down to Sussex and stayed at a $130-a-night BnB because it was the only central option. Round-trip, I probably spent like $250 to see the doctor.

Anyway.

He looked over my last blood tests and I gave him the rundown. He said it sounded like anxiety—there's no reason to think, based on my age, blood test results, and habits that in someone who's had anxiety for years, that it's not due to anxiety.

I've been thinking about it since then. And reading. At first, I had my doubts, as it didn't feel like I was that anxious anymore—not an overt feeling of fear in the usual situations, at least. But I guess when you knock down one symptom, the limbic system finds a new and inventive way to cause discomfort. Fear morphs into anger; headaches to dizziness; sweaty palms to abdominal tension; or any number of shifting symptoms. Instead of feeling afraid and nervous, I felt tired and weak and like ripping everyone's heads off. Instead of getting migraines, I got headaches. Instead of feeling hot, I felt cold. And so on.

I hadn't consider enough how stressed I was all the time. I learned to ignore it in order to function normally in social circumstances. When you aren't paying attention, it runs away from you; and then you realize how long it's been since you relaxed, and you didn't feel tense. You realize it's not normal to be so on edge all the time; to keep worrying people you pissed off are going to order a hit on you; to think your creepy roommate is going to be waiting to attack when you come back to your darkened room. It's not often the heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed vision we associate with an overactive limbic system; it is hypervigilance of the insidious kind. And I always think to myself, what's the harm? I can be prepared, then, for every potential threat. Right?

I knew that stress was neurodegenerative. Stress long enough, and your brain starts to atrophy; and then the dysfunction begins to snowball. But I learned that your adrenaline starts to run out, and you feel an exhaustion that is unparalleled. Kind of like the exhaustion I've been feeling this year.

I think the hardest pill to swallow about depression and anxiety is the neurological damage it causes. Medications, exercise, and different therapies can have a regenerative effect on the areas that are atrophied, so it is not hopeless. But sometimes, you can't go back; the damage is done, and that's your lot for life. I got by for years by trying to self-manage, and not very well—and now I have to deal with residual deficits for a lifetime.

The one thing that really comforts me is the management: the act of stopping, relaxing, and taking care of mind and body. People (and most doctors) tend to think of illness in isolation, but you can't effect one part of the body without also effecting everything else. This is why the effects of illness, namely stress, can be so broad, vague, and hard to pin down—because the human body is a system, not a machine.

Most of the management of anxiety is going to be in mindfulness and body-oriented therapies, rather than something like talk therapy, as rationality is something that can't touch a deeply reactive and instinctive process such as the fight-or-flight system. The way to, hopefully, snap out of the loop of hypervigilance comes in engaging the whole body, not just the mind, as the body has a mind of its own—so targeting one and not the other is often not the most effective. I usually take care of the mind, and neglect the rest—and my body feels relieved when I even think of remembering to take care of it.

What have I done?

1. Gotten nasty comments on my WWOOF profile from The Winery.

2. Flew from Victoria to Halifax!

3. Stayed on an alpaca farm in NS for 3 weeks, until the host, who was hitting on me for 2 weeks straight and seemed to want me to join their polyamorist commune, abruptly stopped when it became clear I wasn’t interested and then asked me to leave one morning. 

4. I decided to not take their offer of 3 more awkward days of board/meals and instead used my lunch break to pack and book it out of there. $70 later between cab and bus, I’m in Moncton and planning my next move.

5. My next move involves never WWOOFing again. Done with sexual harassment, done with hosts who hate me, done with working the equivalent of $3.08 an hour. I’d volunteer for novel experiences like sailing, I’d volunteer at a hostel. I’m sure there are great farms and I seem to have hit an unlucky streak, but I find myself wishing I could delete my profile and I don’t want to gamble on that. 

I was starting to think I was grievously offending everyone I met somehow, across Canadian hostels and in Vancouver, and it was getting me down. Was there something wrong with me? Was I saying something wrong or talking to them the wrong way? What was the deal?

Though the Internet can be biassed and you can’t generalize a nuanced issue, I guess some places, for numerous cultural reasons, simply aren’t as friendly as others and this is why I’m finding people to be distant or even cold, be it locals or people traveling from abroad. I hadn’t considered people might be conditioned to be more guarded, and would continue to be even if I was being friendly.

I think finding friends in the Maritimes can be difficult, too; I know Fredericton is one of those places where if you didn’t go to school together or you aren’t related, it’s hard to get into someone’s inner circle. But I’m used to being able to talk, laugh, and relate to just about anyone on the street. While you aren’t immediately going to become bosom friends and get invited into their homes, you could certainly connect with them. 

I think my host and potential hosts fall into this culture of guardedness here in BC, and so I’m starting to re-think my plans for staying here for the winter. I think it’s too early to call it quits entirely but that’s what my gut is telling me to do--to tie things up early and seek WWOOF placement elsewhere.

Another thing about Vancouver is the little drug addiction/homelessness problem they have. I knew about East Hastings and the opioid epidemic, but it’s still been sad to see that there are homeless people absolutely everywhere. And I mean, I saw some guy smoking crack in the open this morning on a busy street. I’ve seen the “good parts of town” littered with little baggies and needles. I’ve seen drugged-up, spaced-out people wandering around all over the place. 

And they asked for a couple of character references.

That wigs me out. The same way it wigs me out when I have to ask to use the bathroom in a store as theft prevention--you can’t help but feel needlessly persecuted.

I think there’s a good balance between faith in strangers and asking enough questions to know if that faith is warranted--much like the lessons I learned at my last farm, where my host was great but more questions beforehand would have led me to make a more suitable choice of work. 

I walked 16.5km yesterday and was out of my AirBnB for 10 hours, 25 minutes. I realized the night I arrived, when I started planning what I wanted to do, that I didn’t book nearly enough time in the city. So next time it’ll have to be a few days at least; I definitely want to return.

Today I’m off to Niagara Falls for another couple of nights, before I bus to Vancouver. That ride will span 72 hours. I wanted to do it as a personal challenge because I think it’s going to be quite the tribulation. 

I also did Ottawa/Parliament. There have definitely been bumps along the road and I’ll admit I didn’t take them the best, because I’m not used to being delayed, getting lost or stranded, or nearly losing all my belongings. I think that’s something they don’t tell you about travel--not that those things happen, but that you have to get used to it, and it doesn’t mean you’re not built for it if you get upset when things go wrong. 

I always think of travellers as really mellow and laid-back about it all, and feel worse about whatever misfortune has befallen because I’m not chill as fuck about it, but in fact crying my eyes out/super pissed/having a panic attack. 

I think that’s the problem with most “sage wisdom” out there--it bypasses the sticky middle and shows the glowing, amazing ending. Not the moments when everything was terrible and you felt miserable. 

So if I was going to give advice, I’d tell you to fuck it up, and do it many times, and the change you want to see will come as long as you’re open to it. You’ll get used to the hard shit eventually, but the road to change is paved with hard shit--you can’t circumvent it--so expect it. 

My other advice, if you’re a worrywart like me and afraid of getting lost in cities . . . just go walk around. Seriously, it’s harder to get lost than you think. 

Also, I know how cool travelling across the country alone sounds, but it’s actually more tame than I anticipated. The people are the same, the trees are the same, the food is the same. When I’m staying with hosts, it quickly becomes home. More times than not, I’ve just chilled out at home rather than going out and doing anything interesting. And many, many hours have been spent planning--more than you’d expect. You learn how to cut down eventually.

Everybody has a story. In my many searches for hosts in the woofing, couchsurfing, and ridesharing worlds, this is the most requested form of payment: telling your story. For most people—everyone, really—their story is who they are. Where they came from. Who their family was. Where they went to school. What their culture is like.

The interesting thing is that this doesn't have much to do with you at all. Those are other people's stories. I suppose your story wouldn't be much without other people in it, but if you think about it, most of those questions focus on the people around you, but not on anything you've made, accomplished, or what you, as a person, are.

Past, present, and future is somewhat of an enigma. Because if you've ever stopped to think about it, you will realize that there's no way to prove the past is a tangible thing. It's nothing more than a figment of your imagination. It can't be reached and it can't be measured. It's dead and it's gone.

But the future, too, is an illusion. The future isn't something you can reach; it's a never-ending horizon. You can't plan for it, because your existence isn't guaranteed. It's like a dog chasing its own tail.

What does that leave? The present. Even that has big problems in quantifying what it is, and where it begins and ends. What we do know, however, is that there is only the present moment. And so anything else is irrelevant. Who we were doesn't matter nearly as much as who we are, because who we are is here and now.

We don't need to carry around stories that aren't us—stories that are dead weight and bring us down, and ruin what's in the present. Easier said than done, as it's human nature to shape our self-image in the form of our past experiences. But if there's anything I've learned by being a stranger to strangers, by facing a choice when I start to tell them my story, it's that my identity isn't in the environments I used to be in. My story is about now—who I am now, and though it isn't guaranteed, where I'm going. I don't have to rest my identity on where I used to work, who I used to surround myself with, or how I used to live. I can shape it around what I do and what makes me the individual that I am.

I think what helps shake this tendency to tell the same sad stories about ourselves, is being extracted from a familiar environment. My journey now is such a departure from life before, that it feels like a reincarnation of sorts. I know my memories belong to me, but it no longer feels like a seamless and connected story. It doesn't feel like a new chapter, but the next book in a series—a different story with some commonalities, but a story in its own right. For the first time, I feel like I'm starting fresh.

Well, I’m sure you knew it wasn’t all sunshine and roses in the lands far, far away. There’s one big, big problem with volunteering, and not just on WWOOF. This is the same on most membership-driven sites looking for work-food-accommodation exchanges: 

You can’t leave negative reviews of your hosts. 

I discovered this after I’d already been on my second stint. When I started looking into other volunteering opportunities, I ran into the same problem--people weren’t able to relate sometimes horrific experiences with hosts, because the website you found them on would simply remove them. 

So now there’s the extra fun of trying to find hosts who are legit. Though obviously, if someone’s been hosting for nearly ten years and doesn’t have any reviews, that’s a bad sign. But so is anyone who has glowing reviews set 1-2 years apart--there has to be some reason that people either aren’t coming to their farm, or that dozens who have come to the farm aren’t leaving reviews. 

Both experiences I’ve had so far were with people who had no reviews or sporadic reviews, and they turned out fine . . . ish. But I do find myself wondering where I want to go from here, and how I’m going to ensure I don’t end up living a nightmare and having to escape a farm in the dead of night, like some poor souls.

I also didn’t realize how difficult it was to get around in BC. I was pumped to go there . . . until I realized that some of these farms, which sound incredible in some cases, would be impossible for me to get to without paying a fortune.

You could say I’m having a world-weary and jaded day. But I know everything will work out. Plus, I’m going to be doing some sightseeing through Ottawa, Toronto, maybe Calgary, and some national parks (’CAUSE I GOT MY PASS YASS). That’ll eat up a couple of weeks of downtime. 

I’m on a chicken farm, right? Just imagine hundreds of chickens of different varieties running around, with roosters cawing constantly, and also there are turkeys. I didn’t know it was a chicken farm when I came here. Lesson #1 in Woofing: ask questions. 

Anyway. Today, for 720 of those chickens, it’s the end. It’s Slaughter Day. Last night, we caged them and stacked those on the truck to be taken away early this morning by my host. She’s delivering a bunch to Montreal after they’re toast.

When I grew up, I remember always having chickens. I’d help feed and water the small herd, and I liked getting the eggs every morning. I liked picking them up and petting them because they’re so soft. The last batch we got, we didn’t eat because they got too old. But before that batch, we ate them. I wasn’t allowed to watch, but I tried sneaking a peak of the process, because I was a truly morbid child. 

The process of rounding up the chickens last night was different, however. We waited until dark and closed the chickens (the non-laying variety) in their barn, like we do every night. But this time, we had the side door open and the crates waiting. 

My host taught me and Aurelie, the other volunteer here, how to pick up the chickens--by the legs, as it hurts them less. Me and Aurelie were put off by the violent flapping that ensued said grabbing-chickens-by-the-legs, but were soon pros, emerging from the barn with a chicken in each hand. But no one was was impressive as my host, Lucie, who’d come out with six chickens at a time.

At first, it was kind of sad--the kind of sad people get when they see where their food really comes from, and then want to become vegan for life and set all livestock free. The chickens, since the barn was dark, started to cuddle together and go to sleep. And even when you started to round them up, they didn’t run away because they couldn’t see anything. 

But then . . . You get used to it. You get used to hunting for the biggest ones, and if you can’t tell when they were all cuddled together, you can just pick one up and let it flap, and the others would stand up so you can choose your next victim more wisely. You get used to the chickens becoming docile when all the blood rushes to their heads. You get used to the drool that starts pouring out of their mouth when they’re upside down. Um, kind of.

It was interesting that the typical reaction of preparing animals for slaughter, which is sadness, fades after a few dozen birds have passed through your hands. Meaning in most of the cases where someone who’s never really seen that process gets so dejected they swear off meat for life, if they stomached more than one round of the process, they’d just . . . get used to it, and it wouldn’t bother them so much, and they’d eat meat in peace. 

Of course, these were free-range birds with a pretty good life, and seeing the deplorable conditions of most cattle, pig, and chicken operations . . . that’s a different story. I think you could get used to that, too--but no one should. Ever.

No, really. 

I’m not sure what I can say until I leave my current host. WHAT IF SHE FINDS MY BLOG?!?!

It’ll be soon, though. Not to worry.

I listened to the entire first season of Serial in about 24 hours. Friggin’ amazing, like everyone was telling me at the time. My verdict is Jay is lying, but so is Adnan. Honestly, the more you look at that case, the less sense it makes, and the more you realize how terrible human beings are at remembering anything accurately, and we’re probably never going to get to the bottom of the case because the evidence we need (pager, laptop, stuff in Jay’s apt) is long gone. 

I am safe in my hostel in Montreal. The drive was long, the fields were flat, AND THE METRO WAS UNBELIEVABLY, AMAZINGLY HORRIFYING AND WONDERFUL. I took it to get to my hostel after arriving in the city.

I’d taken it the last time I went to Montreal (with my fam) and we were on it for maybe two stops, and it was crowded and I couldn’t tell which stop was which or where we were going. I was worried, not being real great with French, that going alone might prove disastrous--you know, going the wrong way or missing my stop and having to walk two hours, or having to speak butchered French to the teller. 

But you know what? They have ticket machines you can buy from. (No need for au francais!) They have signs plastered everywhere of what stop you’re approaching or what stop you’re at. 

I feel like I could confidently master any metro now. I’m a little sad I don’t get to use it tomorrow. But tomorrow will be its own adventure--I’m going to Sherbrooke by bus and meeting up with my host for the next two weeks. Maybe I’ll use the metro when I come back through, just for funsies.

You may be wondering about the title. Well, how did I get here? 

Some of you are going to love this. And by love, I mean gasp in abject horror, like my landlady did when I told her.

I found someone online who was offering a seat in their car for $50 and leapt at the opportunity, instead of taking the $150 bus ride. I drove with her for nine hours. Yes, this was my first rideshare. 

Her name was Dior and she’s from Ontario. She was vacationing in the Maritimes and wanted someone to keep her company while she drove home. She’s training in physiotherapy, and likes neuroscience, like I do. We sang in the car and listened to podcasts. 

Yeah. Those serial killers you all warned me about! Somehow, I emerged unscathed! 

I understand everyone’s need to tell me to stay safe, and not do anything stupid. Trust me--no one cares more about my safety than I do. But I got a little weary of people telling me what I could or couldn’t do, and I think the broad mistrust of non-locals and strangers is misguided. 

In my amateur travels (thus far), I've discovered something wonderful: Travellers are amazing people. They're some of the warmest and most friendliest people I've come across. And so are the people who invite them into their homes or cars, who give them food and a place to sleep. In fact, almost all couchsurfing, and Woofing hosts, who invite strangers into their homes, were once the strangers being invited into homes. I've never met people who were as welcoming and generous as those who gave me shelter or passage on faith alone.

The trust between strangers helping each other is one that can't be bought or emulated. It's blind and it forges the strongest of bonds. If I wasn’t relying on the kindness of strangers, and they weren’t relying on me, I wouldn’t be on this journey. 

Dior was probably as afraid of who she was taking, as I was of who would be driving me. It’s human nature to be cautious. But notice how neither of us let that squander the opportunity to have an enriching experience together. (Not only that, she wasn’t the only possible ride, and I used common sense to filter out those I didn’t get a good vibe from.)

It was my first rideshare, but I can assure you, it won’t be the last. 

I was transferring some binders to a better box than I’d packed them in yesterday, when I found it.

How could I forget it? I wondered. 

I’d gotten a Canada 150 Discovery Pass, for free entry into any national park. Thinking, at the time, that I’d never actually get to use it, I’d squirrelled it away in a binder . . . until good fortune smiled upon me and I found it by chance.