Going Macro: Month 2. Traveling back to balance

Everybody knows you shouldn't make a major life decision when you're depressed, hungover or mad at your husband.

Same with Going Macro. You can't essentially turn your life upside down while doing something else major at the same time -- like staying in five different hotels in eight different Southern cities while visiting relatives and friends, some of whom you haven't seen in 40 years, some of whom have a history of holding you personally responsible for family dysfunctions dating back to 1972.

My counselor tried to tell me: Being on the road while eating macro, especially while trying to get used to macro, is downright antithetical to the philosophy. Macro means harmony, balance, miso and stainless steel cookware within reach. Macro means having access to a variety of beans, grains and vegetables in your own kitchen, not burgers and fries on the turnpike.  Macro means chewing your food 100 times in your back yard while birds trill around your calm self.

Where I usually eat my macro meals

Clearly, I knew this might  be hard to pull off while we were traveling 800 miles to a family reunion in the South where the operatives are barbecue, potato salad, sweet tea and cousin Gary.

But this trip, which has been in the works for about 10 years, just happened to butt up against my decision to go macro on May 22.

And, well, being the can-do person that I am, I thought I could do it.

I tried really hard. I packed up all the right stuff -- miso, unpasteurized sauerkraut, umeboshi plums, brown rice vinegar, several different kinds of seaweed.  I made up a couple of Pyrex containers of brown rice, beans and veggies and put them on ice in a cooler.

And for the first five days, I did really well. I ate what I had on hand, as my superbly helpful family never once complained about having to replenish the ice in the cooler we dragged from hotel to hotel. I cooked up oats at my goddaughter's house in Columbia. I made halibut, brown rice, miso soup and sautéed collards at our rented condo on the beach. I found macro restaurants and cafes in Asheville, where I got dishes to go.

Tempeh salad from the Laughing Seed in Asheville, N.C.

The Green Sage Cafe in Asheville has brown rice, miso
and steamed kale to go

But right around Myrtle Beach, right about the time I saw a sign for "Boiled peanuts," this is where macro turned micro. It didn't take long before I was eating store-bought hummus straight out of the plastic, BPA-leaching container and watermelon by the handsful. One day I ate so many sunflower seeds that I didn't have a bowel movement for three days. And I drank beer. Twice. OK, so  this may not be a teenager's idea of rebellion. I didn't consume barbecue or six margaritas with Morton's table salt. But, still, the way I was eating was not macro. And I knew it. What's more, I felt it.

Today, finally, I'm back.

With the help of a new compassionate counselor,  Francois Roland in Cleveland, I am back to eating the foods that truly feed not only my cells, tissues and blood, but my heart, soul and nature. I am back to remembering how I felt those first 17 days of Going Macro -- lighter, cleaner, more alert. I am back to believing this is the way of life and eating I've been looking for all my life.

This is what we have to do -- what we CAN do -- when we find ourselves out of balance.

Not beat ourselves up.

Just gently move ourselves back.

I am back, not just back home in Ohio, but back, with gratitude, to balance.

Lunch today: Miso soup with soybean miso paste, green onion, burdock root, rutabaga and wakame sea flakes. Grain dish with rye berries and brown rice sprinkled with fresh lemon and toasted sesame seeds and sea salt. Sauteed veggies (in a cast-iron pan brushed with olive oil) are daikon radish, famous for removing fat and mucus; dandelion greens; and green onion, sprinkled with umeboshi plum vinegar.