Why do we Eat?

I recently read an article about a yoga instructor who gained 40 lbs as an experiment in self-judgment, social judgment, etc.

Of course, it was enlightening and wonderful and eye-opening. But what resonated with me?

This statement right here, that came out during and interview : "I wasn't trying to gain a certain amount of weight - I just let go of any control or dietary restrictions. My style of eating has always been eating for health. And I changed that to eating anything and everything and all amounts of food that I desired or wanted or thought, 'Oh, that would be great.' "

And then I thought: "Why do I eat?"

Usually the thought that goes through my mind right before my hand reaches for a snack is, "Oh, that looks good." Or the shorter, simpler, "yummy!" What if I didn't eat this way?

What if I put less emphasis on how food felt or tasted or smelled, and I focused on eating what nourished my body? What if I put less guilt around food in general and just said, "No, eating is about supporting my physical body, not my emotional moment." What if I judged two food options based on which was healthier, instead of which would make my toes tingle?

For a fat person, this is radical.

What if food became a source of disease or health to me, instead of an opportunity for pleasure? After all, I have plenty of pleasure in my life, and plenty of sources of pleasure. These are not the days of darkness and depression when I thought about quitting smoking and told myself, "This is the only thing I enjoy; I can't give it up."

I enjoy lots of things, now. I rarely need to dig out of a funk for more than a day in a row, I get to bask in the sunlight and work on pet projects. My sadnesses are real, but I am actively working to eliminate them. I have deep, meaningful conversations with my husband and no one gets hurt. We laugh together every day and we don't need to be mean to do it. Toes tingle regularly and often, and it has nothing to do with cheesecake.

So, what would happen if I ate for health (or for illness) instead?

It's not that I've been unaware of the health or unhealthiness of food. Of course I've known, intellectually, that excess sugar (or, it seems more and more, ANY sugar), trans fats, processed ingredients, etc. are unhealthy. I knew it, but the food tasted so good, I would eat it anyway and be like, "yummy."

I would get excited about a food. I would anticipate how good it would taste (it never does taste as good as you think it will, nor does it ever get better than the first bite).

I would pat my belly, even if I was uncomfortably full (stuffed), and feel proud of myself for conquering some kind of gustatory challenge: "I owned that pizza."

Oh, I'd feel guilty later.  In fact, once I started eating healthier (a temporary evil to lose weight, right?) I couldn't stomach a lot of fat or sugar, and it would make me ill to the point of needing to vomit (not a binge-purge, just an upset tummy). then I would feel really bad, because I so obviously just poisoned myself.

So I'd watch TV and avoid my feelings.

It's like, I know I'm doing this. I'm aware of it, and this awareness is also a source of guilt and just feeling generally icky about myself. I'm aware of it, but I cannot stop it.

Can I?

Is  it really as simple (not easy, but simple) as changing my perception of the exciting bits of food, and becoming excited about nutrition instead of "badness"?  Can I turn guilty pleasure into just plain pleasure?

Hello, Experiment!

If Not Now, When?

There's nothing like a few rapid-fire epiphanies.

I was sitting on the couch, popping candy into my mouth and watching junk TV, when a series of epiphanies roiled through me. The first one? I have choice.

Let's do that again:

I HAVE CHOICE

I hear a lot of self-help and women's empowerment people speaking of "co-creating" and being a "co-creator". Normally, I roll my eyes a little. It sounds a little too much like "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, which I--in times of skepticism--feel is little more than confirmation of types of confirmation bias. In other words, your life comes out more positively when you think positively because you only accept the data when that happens, and you reject the data when bad things happen (you assume you were "worrying" or other things).

It's the same argument as faith healing: if you were healed, you obviously had enough faith, but if you weren't, then you didn't. It's also the same argument as when you call a person a "fighter" for surviving something. It assumes that those who didn't survive weren't fighters, and of course they aren't around to argue with you, now, are they?

So, anyway, the point of this mini-diatribe is that the whole terminology of "Co-creator" or "Co-equal" always seemed a little Far Out/New Agey for me.

But there I was, sitting on the couch, eating something that I had sworn off eating several weeks ago, and I thought. "I choose this." I choose sitting on the couch right now. I choose stuffing this food item in my mouth. (Of course, did I put the item down? No. But hang in there a minute.)

I am choosing, right now, to be fat and unhealthy. I am choosing to waste my time on junk TV. I am choosing to harm my body with this candy. I can choose right now to be healthier. I can choose to get up and do push-ups. I can choose to exercise. I can choose to learn something new, or work on my websites, or go take a shower.

Note the verb-tense change: I went from "I am choosing" to "I can choose."

Immediately I wanted to find a silicone bracelet that said "choose", or even, "I choose". If I ever get one made up, I'll offer it here. But, if you've noticed, I led myself completely off the subject of taking responsibility for my actions in the moment. I was thinking, planning, hypothesizing of the future, not the now. I was still eating the candy and sitting on the couch, still half-watching trash TV.  I caught myself doing this and decided to try doing a real push-up instead. It was funny. That was the second epiphany:

Choice is now. 

The agency of choice is in the now. Either you are choosing something, or you are not choosing (choosing its opposite, unchoosing).

But this always happens right now: You can't really choose something in the future, because you are unchoosing it for now.

It goes along with mindfulness: the moment is mine. This minute, this hour, is completely under my control. It ties with the Seven Habits, too: I can control my response. It's also the basis for having an internal locus of control, and thus having increased confidence, success, and a bajillion other good things.

The third epiphany happened a little later. I was still watching Junk TV, and came across a show on Preppers. I love preppers. I am an intellectual prepper: I don't do anything about it, but I love to think about it. I'm also an armchair prepper: I think about what all the preppers are doing wrong.

So, my most comment lament  of preppers is that so few of them are living NOW the way they plan to live after the Shit Hits The Fan (SHTF)--yes, that's a real term.

Some people can foods for future catastrophes. Some people save seeds. Most have bug-out shelters and plans to get to their safe place when SHTF.

So, are they learning to cook with canned ingredients? Are they living in those bunkers now? What good are seeds unless SHTF when you can plant them and you don't need the food right away? I mean, plants take months to grow. Even leaf lettuce takes several weeks to get to a good size, and then, if you don't plant several weeks' worth at a time, you're out of lettuce for another several weeks.

I am a proponent of living a simpler life, of recycling more, of recognizing the bounty around us, of eating wild foods, of ten million other things that are all good and green and right.

but how many of them am I doing right now?!?

Like the preppers, I am failing big time on an important thing:

Live now the way you intend to live in the future, otherwise the future life will never happen.

So, if I want to eat wild foods in the future, I need to start eating them now. If I want to snare rabbits in the future, I should be snaring them now. If I want to make my own clothes in the future, I should make them now.

Of course, there are some limitations. I live in a suburb, and people are going to go a little nuts if I start poaching rabbits, or if I put a hutch on my patio and start slaughtering the beasties.  A lot of the plants nearby are contaminated with industrial fertilizers and pesticides, so I need to get my wild plants from the open space areas, and then I need to be careful I don't deplete any species.

But notice my verb tenses again: "I need to" , not "I am [doing]".

And that brings us to the fourth epiphany:

Healthful, balanced living is simple, but it's not easy.

And that's the real secret, isn't it?

Revising Activities

Since "revising" means "seeing again", I thought it would be a good name.

I had a conversation with my husband about perception this weekend. Namely, about how perceiving something as "work" can make it seem absolutely dreadful, even if it's something you love doing, whereas telling yourself it's a prize that you earn after doing chores turns it into something that's wonderful.

I read a lot of Amish books. Obviously, the books aren't Amish, but they're about the Amish, and a phrase that pops up a lot is "Work is fun."

I won't go so far to say that work is fun. In fact, work (the 9-5 Corporate kind, the Part-Time Service Industry kind, the Customer Service kind, and pretty much every other kind) has been so tortuous and horrifyingly soul-crushing that I doubt I will ever get past the trauma I've imbued that word with, but I understand the meaning behind the phrase.

An activity is not-fun, or it's fun, and the choice is yours.

So in that vein, I'm revising and re-seeing the "work" that I do. At least, the work I do for my family, the work I will be doing in the future to support my family without Corporate America on my back. I'm looking forward to doing the "work" that I've always wanted to do: learning about something new, sharing it with people via written words, and then learning another new thing. . .

Fiction, infopreneurial. . . it doesn't matter. This is my dream, my fun. Work? Never. This is what I do to get out of doing the un-fun stuff.

Recommitting

Today, a close-call reminded me why my goals are important:

My family is dependent on one primary source of income. The other sources can come or go, but this one source of income is the biggest, and without it, we would lose where we live, we would not be able to eat.

You might think that nearly losing this source would re-commit me to maintaining it.

And you couldn't be more wrong.

If anything, this near-disaster woke me up to the old adage: don't put all your eggs into one basket. Right now, one basket sure has most of my eggs.

So it's time to start weaving more baskets. Part of Eudaimonia is balance. Part of it is independence. All of it is being able to take care of myself and not leave myself in potentially abusive situations. And right now a single company has me bent so far over the rail that I cannot stand up on my own.

So a major focus on the Eudaimonia Project are going to be becoming financially independent, so I can say "Take this job and shove it" just as soon as my job starts demanding impossible things of me (like they always eventually do."

What have you done to lessen your dependence on a single company?

Finance Blows

As part of this project, I needed to get a grip on my finances.

Of course, that meant digging up all of those bills I've been shoving into a drawer (or throwing out).

It also meant looking at my credit score (yikes!).

I still have yet to get my credit report, but before I can undo any of the damage I've done, we have a HUGE expense coming up, that derails all of our efforts to invest and save and do the other things we had been trying to do so well.

There's nothing like a financial emergency to break up your good karma.

So here I am, suddenly feeling the responsibility I've been trying to hide from, but I'm not in a position to make it better.  Or, at least, that's what I thought.

It's amazing how creative you get when you let recrimination go. Yes, I've screwed up and lowered my credit score. Divorces and custody battles will do that. But I can pay things off one by one. I can make deals with creditors, and pay off part of an overdue balance every month. I actually can improve my score by paying my bills on time, and putting notes on my credit history about the divorce process and how long it took.

Finance blows sometimes, but the best thing to do is get it off your back.

Face it, Fight it, WIN.

This is what I'm learning to do, purchase by purchase.

Dreaming the Dream

Yesterday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech's 50th Anniversary. Although it saddens me to acknowledge that we have not achieved his dream, it also inspires me to dream my own dreams. I have dreams of being happy, of making a living doing things I love, of not letting my past and the abuse others rained down on me reign in my dreams.

I don't want equality for a whole group, just myself. And while my rights have not been taken away by another group, my belief in my rights was taken away piece by piece.

In grade school, we had an exercise once a year called "LILAC", which stood for "Look, I'm Lovable and Capable". We'd make these signs and hang them around our neck for the day.

When someone made you feel bad, you tore a piece of your sign off. When someone made you feel good, you put a piece back on.

There was one girl who was left with nothing but nubs on the ends of her string. To this day, I will never forget that girl or her LILAC sign. And while, in this particular story, that girl wasn't me, she was me in the larger story of my life. People were like piranhas to me: they picked and bit and excised pieces of me and who I believed I was until there was nothing left.

So, on this Anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, which encourages--no, demands--action until we have the same opportunities as others, and demands that we stand up for one another when someone's Constitutional rights are being violated, and that we change the system that allowed this to happen in the first place, I launched a new blog, called The Revolution Starts Now: Buck the American Dream.

Why? Because I have to fight. I have to make a difference. I'm not going to achieve much in the way of Eudaimonia if I don't start fighting for what's right, and there isn't much left that's right in our world.

I have a dream that I and others will achieve a lasting sort of peace that comes with being happy with ourselves and our accomplishments. That feels well-earned pride, but knows humility as well. I have a dream that we can make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream a reality if we all do the right thing.

That might be respecting others, helping single mothers, being good role models, or just not popping the locks when we see a Black man on the corner. We have to stop living this way we've been living: this raping the world and bullying one another and putting our happiness into things.

On Broken Promises and Re-Commitment

We just got back last night from driving the children more than halfway across the country to drop them off at Dad's for their visit. I have learned some very important lessons:
1) We need to fly them from now on.
2) "Bad" food isn't good; but it is addictive.
3) Pizza puts 3 inches around my waist, no matter how "in control" I stay.
4) Sleep is critical to life-changing transformations.

There's really no way to travel and not break promises to myself.  I "let myself off the hook" for the trip, but I was promising myself I'd behave better than I did. I promised myself it was just for the two days of intense travelling. But it's not.

I'm spending today and tomorrow recovering; easing back into my dietary goals, easing back into my exercise goals. But coming back also brings into focus those changes I haven't started making yet, but need to: the financial goals.

I guess it's not fair to say that I haven't started working on these goals. I have. I have been tracking expenses like an anal-yst and am about to analyze July's expenditures. I will evaluate how I feel about these categories of spending. I have been budgeting, also, and planning the purchases I intend to make.

But upon arriving back home, I find I need to look into the acquiring of more money to pay down previous debts and clear up my credit history (and my husband's). While my husband will be working massive overtime, I--who have no overtime--will look at other ways. We are ready to pursue the other parts of our dream: buying land and eventually moving onto it.

It's a scary step, but a good one. This is why we're working, after all. To live. To make our dreams come true.

So, looking forward to the future, as full as it may be of work and planning, I re-commit myself to my goal: to live peacefully and harmoniously, enjoying the process, and working toward my goals.