One of the problems with the E2 diet is that there are more gray areas than I should probably be expected to deal with. I love the diet, and in the thirteen and a half months (still counting in months) that I’ve been on it, I have lost a little weight, but more importantly I’m feeling a lot better physically and a million billion percent better emotionally. My state of mind is: I’m doing something I need to do to be healthy, and it’s working. That would make me sleep easier at night, if I slept at night at all.

In the important things, I’m not tempted at all. I wouldn’t even think of eating a hunk of meat or an egg. I have plenty of substitutes for dairy products, so there’s no reason to go there. As much as I used to love cheese, the very thought of it disgusts me now, so that’s the least tempting food I’ve given up.

The gray areas, though. That’s where the problems lie, because the diet is by no means only about meat, eggs and dairy. Some restrictions are easy, because I can look at food labels and see “High Fructose Corn Syrup” and know not to get anywhere near whatever’s inside that package. Sodium is another matter, though. I’m supposed to be calculating percentages, and instead I’m just looking for low numbers without doing the math. I could be taking in more salt than I should that way, if only from laziness.

Then there are the flours. Enriched, not good. Bleached, very bad. But finding an ambiguous label can be very tempting, especially if somewhere on the package you find words like “organic” or “whole grain.” I’m inclined to be a little lenient with myself at times in these areas, especially if it’s something like a cereal that is otherwise blameless.

Even worse are oils. I should not be using any salad dressing with any kind of oil as the first ingredient listed. But because certain kinds of oils are allowed at all, I sometimes make exceptions (then feel wrong about it later). In my defense the fake mayonnaise I use starts with canola oil but does say “vegan” prominently on the label. And these exceptions are so minor and so rare that I don’t feel as if I’m compromising more than I should. Nothing can be that black and white.

But I consider a little fudging like this to be a possible gateway to extravagant flouting of the rules, and that’s why I don’t do it often and usually feel guilty when I do. I’m doing all this for me. No one is holding a gun to my head or telling me that I’ll die (or go to hell) if I eat a hamburger, or even a Ritz cracker. What I need to do is reread the book and reinforce the mindset that got me started on this journey, so that I don’t backslide. Otherwise, it’s a battle with myself that I might not win.