Getting Clean
After some times of being very strict with myself in terms of diet, experimenting with no meat, no dairy, no animal products, no sugar, no artificial flavours or chemicals, no wheat, no caffeine, no alcohol, no unseasonal foods, and then times of being less strict with myself, indulging in just about any food I wanted, gorging on chocolate and sugary things and fatty burgers and regular tea and coffee caffeine pick-me-ups, I’ve tasted both ends of the scale in terms of how food affects a person.
In the end, a diet is nothing more than a self-imposed limitation, an invention of the mind. It is someone’s ideal of what is healthy, or what will achieve whatever ends you want to achieve (lose that weight, cure those health problems). As such, it doesn’t always fit in with what the body needs, nor what your instincts may tell you to eat. Like any sort of instinct, it’s not easy to trust in them when they can be so easily mislead, when you suffer from addictions to foods that don’t do you much good in the long run, or have gotten used to eating a certain way so that a move towards a more healthy balance actually feels worse and doesn’t seem better at all.
In the end, it is up to you what stance you adopt on the factor of food. Glutton, Puritan, you make your bed and you lie in it, you reap the consequences of whatever you decide. This is as it should be. A couple of things I would like to you bear in mind though, things that are often neglected, is that one, the body is a remarkably adaptable thing, and so seeking one single “perfect” diet isn’t possible or necessary. And two, being strict to the point of feeling like all you ever say to yourself is “no sugar, no caffeine, no chocolate, no tea, no sex, no sin, no fun” isn’t going to achieve the health that you might desire in eating so healthfully. Creative creatures that we are, this can be the case with any restrictive discipline. When diet becomes such an issue that the main feeling surrounding food is one of stress, then whatever good qualities that could be gained from such wholesome eating are somewhat tainted, and even completely counteracted. Though it is true that we are what we eat, it is also true that we are more than just what we put into our bodies.
Now, my times of puritanism have taught me a lot about what’s good and bad for me, and helped me to trust in my instincts a lot more, so that even if I’m eating a load of chocolate or piles of fatty meat, I don’t neglect getting my vegetables and salads and fruits in me, not so much because I think I should be eating those things, but because I feel it (and thus desire them). That said, the nature of a lot of the more indulgent foods is addictive and habit-forming if you aren’t careful, so when I found myself reaching for that cookie out of habit, looking for something sweet to “hit the spot” , I asked myself, “do I really want this? Do I really need it?” And, realizing I didn’t, my thoughts moved away from it and on to something else, the craving subsiding naturally. So began a short detox that I’ve begun. Nothing fancy, it’s really no big deal. Just eating wholefoods, fruit, veg, salads and a small amount of meat here and there.
We are always detoxifying ourselves. All we really need to do to get clean is to limit the amount of toxins we take into our body or create in our mind, and our natural processes take care of the rest. After a few days and some niggles and swings in mood and eruptions on the skin, I feel much better, and coupled with some Chi Kung and Tai Chi, and Alexander Technique and Pilates practice, I feel my body (and thus mind) arriving at a place of huge energy. So much so in fact that I don’t know what to do with it. In the end that’s what we’re after when we detox, new energy, to feel bright and shiny and clean again.
And so, in a new position of larger energy, like any positive change, the challenge is not so much in making it happen, but in not reverting back to the old way. When this new energy level arrives, it can be very tempting to start scoffing chocolate down by the boat load in a desperate attempt to quell the uneasy restless feeling of having so much energy, before you get used to it. But, I’ve managed to resist that so far, and I’m getting comfortable with feeling this way (it is becoming a part of the concept I have for “me”, as it were). Now, this doesn’t mean I’ll go on eating this way forever, almost certainly not, for attempting that would soon bring in negative consequences as well (and hey, if I like a bit of chocolate now and then, why not?), but I will always bear in mind the power of getting clean once in a while, and think it’d be great if you did too.
July 27th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
You and your pendulums! I swear, once I am a millionaire I shall construct the dungeon from The Pit And The Pendulum just for you! haha!
But indeed, you describe some very familiar processes. Wanting something to drink, and stopping by the fridge on eh way to the faucet, considering that coke can.
The word of “diet” is a curious one, for it’s meaning has changed so much for us! Nowadays, it’s what I personally feel is a very American concept. You gorge on fatty things, and then you simply remove it all by eating differently for a week or two, and you’re thin again! The older word was far better, and fits your method much better: A consistent system of food intake. Simply organising what you eat for all your time, not denying yourself, but not gorging yourself.
Simply thinking about what you’re doing!
As always my friend, you’re an odd one, which is why you always come with these interesting experiences! This post has made me interested though, what exactly IS your current diet?
July 28th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Hahaah.. Dude, once you’re a millionnaire, I’m sure there’d be other things I’d prefer you to buy me… but then, hey, that sounds pretty cool
I agree about the usage of “diet”. Generally it’s to be something restrictive for a specific thing, as if you’re only on a diet when you’re too fat or something, and that otherwise, you’re not on a diet. In that respect, it sounds like not being on a diet is optimum as if eating whatever you want is the ideal (yet it acknowledges at the same time that you can’t keep that up forever without having to diet again). There’s a different usage there… one is a noun, your diet, as in the things that you eat, and the other is a verb, to diet, meaning to restrict certain foods or eat specific foods in order to bring about a certain effect.
Well, currently I’m just generally eating things like muesli or porriage with soya milk for breakfast and some red bush tea mostly (I have to say that breakfast is my most habitual mealtime, I tend to have the same most of the time, I enjoy it that way). Then lunch and dinner tend to be things like stir fry vegetables and brown rice, or salad and chips, smoken salmon sandwiches sometimes, occasional meat for a kind of roast dinner (potatoes and steamed veg), and then fruits or plain potato crisps or a brown roll with some margerine on for a snack if I’m hungry, maybe some nuts or seeds at times. Red lentils now and then, tofu or mostly various beansprouts in the stir fry. Generally just drink water, though sometimes other teas or maybe pure apple or orange juice, sometimes blend up some cooked vegetables and lentils into a soup, or blend some fruits and soya milk into a smoothie.
That may not sound very varied, but when you consider the different types of fruits, vegetables and salads I have it’s far from having the same meals over and over again. I tend to have 4 or 5 different things in a salad, and a similar number of things in a stir fry, so there’s a big scope for various nutrients there. That’s about as specific as I can be, obviously that changes over time depending on what I feel like eating or cooking or preparing, or if I’m eating out somewhere. What I’ve said there is just “the things I generally like to eat”.. I’m not all that specific in terms of a plan. We get a lot of fresh organic produce delivered to us from a farm in Devon (Riverford Vegetables), which is mostly seasonal, and so tends to be varied as well.
So yeah, that’s the main diet there (but don’t let that make you think I don’t eat the occasional cake or icecream or bit of chocolate, I just haven’t done over the last few days)