Along with the explosion of live music, Americans’ taste for, well, taste, and refinement of their diets has emerged as the most promising of “trends” over the past 15 years or so. From food networks to food trucks, to farmer’s markets and supercenters, to boutique restaurants of urban renewal, Americans are showing a fine sense for refined dining, in and out.
Unfortunately that’s not all that’s showing. And this is not to blame the food industry either. But tell me, what percentage of the people you know make any real attempt to stay in good shape? It’s not easy, and that’s obvious. But do you wish to stay healthy or not? A lot of people don’t make it an agenda piece for themselves. Because of an ever-expanding waistline, we now figure that the rising prevalence of type 2 diabetes will make future generations drop their life expectancy for perhaps the first time since we evolved this way.
I’ll say this, it is hard to watch people struggle with their weight. They become much less beautiful, their physical performance becomes less impressive, and they’re less fun. They look older, age faster, and are much less healthy for the long haul, mentally and physically, which is a drag on everything including and especially themselves. And most have tried dietary manipulation with varying degrees of success, almost always temporary. There is exasperation, and behavioral problems like depression. All because of capitalism’s success at feeding them right into the grave. A battle lost.
Calorie Accountants
If you just plain don’t eat, you get skinny. Like in prison camps. So it stands to reason that if a person does some version of this, like “going on a diet”, that over time you will weigh less, and it’s true. But be sure of this: if you are counting calories, and picking food favorites as if to control your weight, you are completely on the wrong track.
Poor weight management, like poor conditioning, is a failure of the mind. Because if this “mind” really wanted to improve its body, for the good of the self, let alone for the sake of other humans who might enjoy and be inspired by such behavior, then it would not have let this happen. But instead, there was bullshit and cobwebs and lies, and as if below its very nose, the beauty of youth has morphed into this poor form.
Mistreatment of the digestive system is the single most common crime of the self. This mistreatment, of not only the self but the body as well, to repeatedly employ this set of organs for the pure and simple serving and satiation of the self and it’s culinary fascination, is top. Ahead of drugging, emotioning, laziness, or antisocialing, as far as indulgences that are reliably self-defeating.
We were given the big reservoir, the stomach, to take in a load of food at once, and then over hours these organs all get to working and involving, and they are wired to get everything they can out of this food ingestion, and store the energy molecules for future use. During our long evolution, coming up with something to eat was what you did all day long, because it was hard to get and secure and save. Needless to say, that’s not the case anymore. And since it all feels so good and tastes and looks so good, we go quickly from “starving” to satiated, a fantastic modern age journey. Who could blame us?
“Experimenting” with prolonged periods of not eating
Thus, I have favored people approaching it as a mind exercise, because the mind is the problem, not the mirror or the clothes or the lab testing. It’s you. So I tell people they should experiment with prolonged periods of not eating. Simple, right?
When you wake up in the morning, your body has spent several hours completing the “processing” of meals from the day before, and all the packaging by the liver and activities at the “storage facilities” (fat tissue for lipids, muscular tissue for sugars) are winding down, what do you do? Eat. Yuk. I mean, here’s the body ready to do work, and now you’re going to re-direct everything into a vegetative mode. Again.
When you eat a meal, the stomach stores the food, delivering it gradually to the small intestine in small dumps every 20 minutes or so. As this call of duty falls on the very active small intestine the impressive latticework of arteries and veins engorges, to whisk off the nutrients to the liver for manipulation. The liver, you may know, is perhaps the bloodiest organ of them all, and so for hours there is this engorgement and energy expenditure as the metabolic work that is necessary to manage this latest fill-up takes place. The body’s vegetative nervous system is running this show, so the heart slows, and the mind drags, and the couch looks very enticing. So you jump in your car and head to “work”.
Ever hear that breakfast is the “most important” meal? Yeah, me too, in magazines and from fat people. But never from medical people. To me this is among the most cruel of all the urban myths. Keeping up “the fast” is just such a beautiful thing to me. Or maybe a small intake of food, but really any amount of eating gets that whole ball rolling. And while it might be OK for thin, wiry, in-shape people like me, it is where I recommend people start when they are wanting to improve their weight and “shape” issues, this “prolonged period of not eating”.
So I tell them to try this. Pick a few days of the week, or even just one to start, and experiment with not eating all day. At first you will be hungry, and please don’t say you’re “starving” like so many do. Just don’t use that word. It shows that hunger has its hold on you. But you’re fat, not starving. And a snack is OK somewhere in there. But what I want you to feel is that as the hours go by, that hunger reflex fades, and rarely comes back like it did. Feel the mind sharpen. Fell the musculature thrive with all the blood flow and perfusion it needs, without having to play the tug of war game with the digestive system and its big latticework of vessels. Then try to make it to nighttime. Tomorrow, go ahead and eat like you like to so much. Two such days a week not only will guarantee weight loss, but will hopefully serve to re-introduce you to yourself, especially the sharper mind. And only you can treat yourself to this experiment, and see how it makes you feel. And how many days of the week you might want to try it.
Add to this some wise foodstuff selections, like fruits and vegetables, and you can expect to become a much more impressive creature almost immediately. And by shocking the self into this, you can really feel like you’re doing something, other than some little trick of still eating too frequently, but with prettier looking food.
The Role of Exercise
It is among the urban myths that you can lose weight by exercising. At least a lot of weight. Your body is chewing up lots of energy by just living, and by the work of the heart and kidneys and brain and muscles. So as caloric intake drops, these parts of the body are more than adequate at burning up the excess for you.
But to be beautiful, of course exercising and conditioning is plain flat essential. To what degree you can do it, well we’re all different, and some people are so out of shape they can barely walk. But surely, walk a little, then run walk, and whatever, and gradually you can pull off some regimen. But you have to want to, and a lot of people can’t and won’t. What has to happen though is an entirely different approach to your relationship with food.
I want to tell you something that really worked for me: quadriceps strengthening. The quads, the front thigh muscles, are extensors, and they are thin and long and age poorly. This causes us to lose stride, and get winded with minor exertion. I bought a quad strengthener when I was forty and my knees were starting to bother me. I could see the thigh atrophy in the shower. I bought the machine, put it in the basement, and hit it a few times a week. I’ve rebuilt them, and I can’t believe how much not only my leg strength improved, but my ability to run and jump and climb stairs and play basketball and seemingly never get winded. It’s like my whole muscular system toned up. I’ve added chin-ups and pull-ups, and it’s really been fun for me. Full disclosure: I have no investments in quad strengthening benches.
So there’s your recipe. Start with a day, or ideally two, of the week, and make them the days of experimenting with prolonged periods of not eating. Explore the self as it reverts to that lean nifty creature we all are deep inside. On the other days, be wise with what you eat, but not overly so, because it just doesn’t matter nearly as much as how often you eat. And buy a quad strengthener.
Once you get to the weight you’ve decided on, use the PPNE’s to maintain it, by weighing yourself frequently, and expecting it to rise and need to be smacked down again. But especially, be impressed that your mind works better. Consider strength training and your very own exercise routine, not only to make the shirts fit better, but to improve your esteem. And remember, you got fat because you ignored and denied it was happening, which is a self-cruelty that only you can explain to you.