Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not a lot of hype, no commercialism, just being grateful for the simple gifts in life: our loved ones, the wonderful bounty of nature, and all of our blessings. It’s about finding and celebrating the sacred in the seemingly ordinary: family, friends, home, hearth and a wholesome meal harvested from the good earth. So simple, yet so sacred.
There’s a saying that I used to think was so odd and meaningless, but in recent years I’ve realized it is very deep and profound: “You’ve got to take the good with the bad.” I used to hear people say that and I’d think, “You've got to take the good with the bad? What does that even mean?” Well, now, upon years of pondering it in my peppermint way, I know what it really means: there is always good and bad in our lives, so don’t let the bad stuff paralyze you and keep you from appreciating and enjoying the good stuff. A younger me used to think, I can’t be happy because I have A, B, and C bad stuff going on, so I can’t enjoy D, E and F good stuff that is also in the mix. How sad. Now I finally understand that, even with the inevitable bad stuff going on in your life at any given time, ya gots to make room for the good stuff, let it in, revel in it, appreciate it, and enjoy it! You've got to carpe diem! Don’t wait for the bad stuff to clear out, or you be waiting a lifetime. Grab hold of the good stuff and appreciate the hell out of it!
This year, like every year, sure, I have my share of difficulties and challenges, sad things and bad things, and I hasten to add that it is healthy to give them their fair share of energy and attention. However, perspective is the key. Thanksgiving is a day for focusing on all we have to be grateful for, and grounding ourselves deeply in that gratitude. As a matter of fact, every day, I thank God for all the blessings I’m grateful for, and even for the challenges given to me, as those can be, and usually are, blessings, too—even our losses contain gifts for us to open and learn from. I think it is important for my spiritual and emotional health, and I suspect for my physical health as well, to make every day a mini-Thanksgiving.
People who choose to focus on what they are grateful for are so much happier and healthier than those who focus on everything wrong in their lives. Mind you, I’m not saying we should ignore or sweep aside the “bad” things, or our feelings about them. In fact, I strongly believe it is imperative for our health to allow all our feelings to flow freely in and out like the ocean tides, and that feelings are to be acknowledged, accepted and respected, not judged and controlled (which is why I can’t STAND people like one infuriating Wayne Dyer or books like “The Secret”, as apparently, according to them, we are supposed to squash down all feelings and thoughts other than those involving flowers and rainbows, and if anything negative happens to us in our lives, it's our fault because we allowed “negative” feelings or thoughts in...don’t even get me started—rant-worthy blog unto itself ALERT!). I think that all feelings are okay and are there for a reason, so don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't feel something that you feel. It is how we choose to act on our feelings that counts. That said, on Thanksgiving and, really, every day, the healthiest approach is to stay firmly grounded in gratitude, for even in our darkest days, there is usually something to be grateful for, some light to acknowledge, fix our gaze upon and trust to lead us on, even when darkness seems to surround us. The very act of choosing to focus on the light and not the dark adds to the light. As the saying goes, “Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
This year, I’m most thankful that my 86-year-old mom is here with me in this world and that we will be together on Thanksgiving. That's the most sacred blessing of all to me. We are invited to her cousin’s house for Thanksgiving, which is another thing I’m grateful for, as when I moved to Florida, I had no family here--zero. Now I have my mom and her cousin, so my familial cup runneth over. It will be me, my Mom, her cousin, and one of her cousin’s daughters for Thanksgiving. I don’t have to cook the whole meal (yet another thing to be grateful for!), just “Page 26”, as we call it in my family, a DELICIOUS spinach-artichoke-cheese casserole side dish that my mom and I have every year. I’m also planning to bring cranberry relish and some sort of beverage. My mom’s cousin is making the turkey, veggies, and apparently there will be a pie (made by either the cousin or her daughter), but I’ll stay away from that on account of that I know wheat is not my friend (yet ANOTHER thing to be grateful for—my knowledge about what foods to eat to keep me healthy). If there is any stuffing, I'll stay away from that, too. I love stuffing, but it's a wheat-laden affair and wheat is my nemesis. I love health more than I love stuffing. Anyway, having spent more than a few Thanksgivings since moving to Florida with no family at all, I’m really looking forward to this foursome. Most years since my mom moved down here, it’s just been the two of us, which is lovely, but there will be something very special about getting together with extended family. I really appreciate it.
I’m also extremely grateful for my health, which I was scared about this time last year after my very first ever routine EKG during a physical resulted in me being diagnosed with left-bundle branch block (LBBB), an electrical conduction prob in my heart that results in a dyssynchronous heartbeat. After the primary care doctor used language that scared me to death and ended up NOT being the case for me (thank God, and I do!!!), such as “enlarged” and “hypertrophic” heart, and sent me to a cardiologist, who had me undergo further testing, it turns out that I’m basically healthy as a horse, other than the LBBB, as nothing else scary is present with it (no enlarged heart, no hypertrophic heart, no evidence of a heart attack, no heart disease, no nothing—thank God!), which is unusual, and is DEFINITELY something to be grateful for every day, especially on Thanksgiving. Also on the grateful-for-health front, I’ve lost about 81 lbs since I started the GenoType Diet two years ago Thanksgiving Day, so I am extremely grateful for that, as I've blogged about several times and no doubt will many more. I feel very empowered by knowing what foods to eat to keep myself in biochemical balance and at a healthy weight. Wow. And of course, I'm so blessed to have the means and access to keep my kitchen stocked with those healthy foods. Speaking of means...
In this horrible economy, I’ve got a job. Now, I could choose to focus on the many and varied BAD things about my job, but the bottom line is that it is, in fact, a JOB. Enough said. I’ve also got a house. Again, I could choose to focus on the fact that it is a termite-ridden pile of disintegrating sticks, but, hey, it’s MY termite-ridden pile of disintegrating sticks, dang it! And it’s on MY tiny bit of land, in a wonderful neighborhood (trust me: again, I’m choosing to AC-centuate the positive when I say that *tee heee*), in a beautiful city, in the greatest country in the world...even though said country is currently circling the drain—but you never know, maybe we’ll get it together before actually getting sucked down the drain, so THAT is what I'm choosing to focus on, on Thanksgiving.
As far as “Black Friday”, a day when many Americans choose to go thing-crazy to what I consider a ridiculous and severely pathological degree, I will instead be with a new friend of mine, whom I met at the dog park, doing something that involves no shopping, no consumerism (gasp!), and which continues the Thanksgiving theme of enjoying the simple, sacred things in life: we will be taking four dogs (my dog, her two dogs, and a visiting dog she is dog-sitting), to a gorgeous county park called Fort De Soto Park, which has a spectacular dog park and also a dog beach. Instead of a black Friday, we will have a bright Friday, full of shimmering blue-green water, sky, nature and enjoying our “furkids”. It doesn't get any better than that.
In short, I know we all have troubles, woes, and assorted and sundry losses, sadness and painful challenges in our lives. Yet, no matter how bad things are, surely we can all look around at our beautiful world, take a deep breath, and realize the miracle of being alive, can’t we? I’m grateful for this dazzling world/nature, my mom, my pets (who are like my children—heck, they are my children), my health, and all the gifts I've been given—including challenges and losses, for sometimes they are the greatest gifts of all, even though they sure don’t seem/feel like it when we are experiencing them. I pray that I will be a respectful human being and use all my blessings to do good in this world. I pray these things every day. On Thanksgiving Day, I try to stretch that prayer into the entire day, living my gratitude, appreciation, and intention to be respectful and do good. If I and all of us could stretch that Thanksgiving spirit out even further, into a lifetime of intentionally focusing on being and acting grateful for creation/nature and being a part of it, and being respectful and doing good, think of how we could heal our world.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Go With Nature Instead of Under the Knife to Reach And Sustain a Healthy Weight
I had a special request for this blog topic by a wonderful woman named Kate, whom I really respect from the on-line diet community I’m a long-time member of (www.dadamo.com). I had started a discussion on that forum on the topic and she said, quote, "Dude, please write about this on your blog! Your thoughts are both accurate and hilarious." Well, I hope accurate and hilarious will translate into enlightening for at least one obese person out there who needs help--real help, not radical, violent surgeries, pills that suppress and go against nature instead of support it and harmonize with it, and harmful fad diets. I say below that I wish I could shout this from the rooftops. Well, I realize that this blog is my cyber-rooftop and I pray, in this case—actually pray, not merely hope, because I’ve been there and I know what a despairing place obese people can be in—that this blog will reach someone who needs it. There is help out there for you that is so simple and so natural. Even though I’ve now lost 76 lbs on the GenoType Diet and I’m no longer physically fat, I’m still a “fat person” in the sense that I know I could gain it back in a split second if I don’t take good care to acknowledge that this is a lifetime challenge for me and that I need to make choices daily that respect that fact and employ the knowledge, tools and experience that I am blessed to have now to stay at a healthy weight. The wonderful news is that those choices, once you know about them, are joyful, satisfying, balancing and sustainable. That said, I’m now climbing up onto my peppermint rooftop...
When it comes to the diet I follow, The GenoType Diet (GTD) by naturopathic doctor Peter J. D’Adamo, I'm in "wish I could shout it from the rooftops and make every man, woman and child on planet earth understand" mode again. I usually don't get this way anymore. I used to want to make everyone understand how great the Blood Type Diet (BTD, the first D’Adamo diet I was on) is, how much it could help them, blah blah blah. But several years into it, I realized that, as the saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." You can't make anyone see anything or do anything that they aren't ready to see or do.
So, yes, I tell people about the BTD and GTD, even urge some to try it, but that's it. If they aren't game, I don't lose sleep over it, or I try not to. I just think to myself, “Fine: more good food/chi for me! Enjoy your NutraSweet.”
But every once in a while...
Like this week. I kept seeing teasers for a show on ABC called “Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do”, about a “radical” (you can say that again!!!) new procedure to lose weight. Folks, brace yourselves: it is BRAIN SURGERY.
Sweet agave nectar, would you just try this "radical", "unproven" diet FIRST, before you let them CUT INTO YOUR BRAIN?!!!
Oh, but many retort, the BTD and GTD were not researched in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. They’re not "scientific"! No, better to have a scientific MD in a white coat saw open my head and attach electrodes to my brain. That isn't risky, like some unproven, unresearched diet based on organic, whole foods.
I want to scream.
These poor, desperate, morbidly obese people. I know what that despair feels like. I’ve been there. I just wish I could get to each and every one of them, tell them about the BTD and GTD, and make them try it before doing anything so radical as brain surgery. The simple little BTD and GTD are as powerful--MORE!!!--than any electrodes. They will stop your cravings, they will get your system into balance and normalize your weight.
What the woman in that ABC story needs is one of the Dr. D’Adamo diets (preferably the GTD, in her case, because if I don’t miss my mark, she is a fellow member of my genotype, a.k.a., a “Gatherer”—see link below re the GenoType Diet), not brain surgery! To wit (from ABC's site, linked below, about this story):
"The Brain and Food
Bashir takes a closer look at the brain's mysterious relationship with food and its impact on America's obesity epidemic. Go inside the brain of an obese person and see how the brain responds to fattening foods like chocolate cake.
Bashir reports on a story of an obese woman who has tried everything -- from diets to bariatric surgery -- to lose weight and manage her compulsion to eat all the time. She turns to brain surgery -- the most radical weight loss procedure ever attempted."
Mind you, I'm not blaming the person who is choosing this surgery, I'm just saying I wish I could get to her--get to them all--and teach them about Dr D's diets, before they hurt themselves like this.
Like I said, I usually don't work myself up anymore over people who need the BTD/GTD yet aren't on it. I tell them about it, and then, usually, I just say to myself: horse, water, up to it to drink. But in this case, the horse doesn't even know there's a pool of water for her. I wish I could at least lead all the horses to water. Up to them if they drink or not, but what breaks my heart are the desperately thirsty ones who don't even know about water. They try all these other things and still their thirst is not quenched. When all they need is the quenching water of the B or GTD.
Sad!
What I witnessed on that show was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVEN IMAGINED from the teasers. So much worse.
Upshot? This poor, long-suffering fellow member of my Gatherer genotype had "tried everything" (or so she thought--she never tried the GTD, poor thing), and she proceeded to rattle off a list of the most horrifying protocols imaginable, such as fen-phen, bariatric surgery, etc. Nothing worked. So now she was ready to be wheeled in for experimental brain surgery, wherein they drilled holes "ten centimeters into her brain from both sides" (!) to implant electrodes on the THEORY that MAYBE these could impact her cravings, which she was driven by. Her drug of choice, by the way, was Pepsi.
Well, post-electrodes, she was better on the Pepsi--and here is a VERY SAD PART to moi, although it was just a passing comment she made and no one other than a BTDer or GTDer would have probably even picked up on the significance: She said to someone she was shopping with, who was worried that a liter, or whatever it was she had of something among her groceries, was the dreaded Pepsi, quote "You thought it was Pepsi, didn't you? Don't worry, it's Crystal Light." Crystal Light! In other words: post-brain-drilling and electrode implanting, this poor, sweet-natured woman has learned NOTHING about NUTRITION. She is still ingesting toxic junk that TRIGGERS CRAVINGS and that keeps you addicted and out of balance, not to mention unhealthy. She has lost no weight in a year since the surgery, but is happy that she is no longer ruled by cravings. She has them, but they aren't as powerful.
That is the SHORT VERSION, but my strong thing is: God, the GenoType Diet could have "fixed" her. Cravings GONE, weight OFF, nutritional knowledge, IN, daily exercise, TAKING PLACE, balance IN THE HIZZZOUSE, and all without drilling into her brain and implanting electrodes!
This world has gone crazy. In a sad way.
And those "doctors" who did this! OMG, they were like mad scientists, like Frankenstein! They were just having some big fun with their willing guinea pig.
When I watched her "doctors", I kept thinking: "This is like when they used to do lobotomies on people, just to see if it would "work". All for the advancement of SCIENCE, you see (read: their wallets and/or fame in their field)."
I was out of control re food cravings driving me, when I first went on the BTD in 1997. And it took many years, even AFTER that watershed change, and many "slip and falls", lots of fortitude and faith (because I knew the BTD was the right track, I just still had my struggles staying on said track at times), and then finally getting on the GTD and putting it all together--everything I'd learned--to get to where I can now honestly and gratefully report that, not only am I not ruled by cravings, I don't have cravings. Maybe I get what normal people (i.e., non-Gatherers) would consider a "craving", but that is only because they don't know what us thrifty-genotype-sporting Gatherers mean by "cravings". I mean, sure, I get hankerings for certain things. Right now, I'm on a watermelon jag like you wouldn't believe. But that is DIFFERENT. Take a memo: a hankering is not a craving. It is not driving to the supermarket in the driving rain at 9:00 p.m. to clear the shelves of potato chips and sour cream dip, when you DON'T WANT TO BE DOING THAT...yet you do it anyway, like a drug addict drawn to her drug of choice.
The woman in that story could have achieved what she wanted in a natural, healthy way, but she didn't know it, and doesn't know it, poor soul. That's what kills me, so many folks simply don't know. I wish everyone knew.
True, it is more work in some ways to make lifestyle changes than to just pop a pill or even undergo a radical surgery. I have to walk for at least half an hour per day and I try for an hour, or I fear gaining my weight back. And there are certain foods that I have to avoid like the plague which are ubiquitous in our society, so in that sense, it is challenging to avoid them (not because I miss them AT ALL, but because they are in everything) and eating out, in particular, is a challenge. But I’ve learned to go the homemade route and I love it. I work full-time and am busy, yet I find the “slow food” lifestyle to actually be quite a timesaver and far more relaxing than constantly being “on the hunt” for take-out food. There is more of a learning curve, more time, more effort, required to go the natural route, but the pay-off is priceless: once you learn which foods are your friends and keep you cravings-free, satisfied, healthy, energized and in balance, YOU KNOW. No one can ever take that powerful knowledge from you. It, along with proper exercising for your type, can get you to a healthy weight and keep you there for life, with nary a craving, and always feeling very well-nourished and vital.
I implore any obese person out there who is in despair, as someone who has been there in spades: don’t be afraid to try this “radical” diet, versus what to me is the far more radical route of pills or surgeries. You can get there with whole foods, it is all about learning which ones to choose, which ones harmonize with your genetic makeup. This relationship between your individual hardwiring and specific foods is called nutrigenomics, and it is the key to helping you. The power to change your situation, to reach and sustain a healthy weight, comes not from fighting nature, but from working with nature. It comes not from fighting, suppressing and attacking your body and brain chemistry, but from understanding and befriending it, eliminating the foods which throw it out of wack, and giving it the foods that put it into balance.
Informational Links:
Blood Type Diet
GenoType Diet
Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do
When it comes to the diet I follow, The GenoType Diet (GTD) by naturopathic doctor Peter J. D’Adamo, I'm in "wish I could shout it from the rooftops and make every man, woman and child on planet earth understand" mode again. I usually don't get this way anymore. I used to want to make everyone understand how great the Blood Type Diet (BTD, the first D’Adamo diet I was on) is, how much it could help them, blah blah blah. But several years into it, I realized that, as the saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." You can't make anyone see anything or do anything that they aren't ready to see or do.
So, yes, I tell people about the BTD and GTD, even urge some to try it, but that's it. If they aren't game, I don't lose sleep over it, or I try not to. I just think to myself, “Fine: more good food/chi for me! Enjoy your NutraSweet.”
But every once in a while...
Like this week. I kept seeing teasers for a show on ABC called “Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do”, about a “radical” (you can say that again!!!) new procedure to lose weight. Folks, brace yourselves: it is BRAIN SURGERY.
Sweet agave nectar, would you just try this "radical", "unproven" diet FIRST, before you let them CUT INTO YOUR BRAIN?!!!
Oh, but many retort, the BTD and GTD were not researched in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. They’re not "scientific"! No, better to have a scientific MD in a white coat saw open my head and attach electrodes to my brain. That isn't risky, like some unproven, unresearched diet based on organic, whole foods.
I want to scream.
These poor, desperate, morbidly obese people. I know what that despair feels like. I’ve been there. I just wish I could get to each and every one of them, tell them about the BTD and GTD, and make them try it before doing anything so radical as brain surgery. The simple little BTD and GTD are as powerful--MORE!!!--than any electrodes. They will stop your cravings, they will get your system into balance and normalize your weight.
What the woman in that ABC story needs is one of the Dr. D’Adamo diets (preferably the GTD, in her case, because if I don’t miss my mark, she is a fellow member of my genotype, a.k.a., a “Gatherer”—see link below re the GenoType Diet), not brain surgery! To wit (from ABC's site, linked below, about this story):
"The Brain and Food
Bashir takes a closer look at the brain's mysterious relationship with food and its impact on America's obesity epidemic. Go inside the brain of an obese person and see how the brain responds to fattening foods like chocolate cake.
Bashir reports on a story of an obese woman who has tried everything -- from diets to bariatric surgery -- to lose weight and manage her compulsion to eat all the time. She turns to brain surgery -- the most radical weight loss procedure ever attempted."
Mind you, I'm not blaming the person who is choosing this surgery, I'm just saying I wish I could get to her--get to them all--and teach them about Dr D's diets, before they hurt themselves like this.
Like I said, I usually don't work myself up anymore over people who need the BTD/GTD yet aren't on it. I tell them about it, and then, usually, I just say to myself: horse, water, up to it to drink. But in this case, the horse doesn't even know there's a pool of water for her. I wish I could at least lead all the horses to water. Up to them if they drink or not, but what breaks my heart are the desperately thirsty ones who don't even know about water. They try all these other things and still their thirst is not quenched. When all they need is the quenching water of the B or GTD.
Sad!
What I witnessed on that show was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVEN IMAGINED from the teasers. So much worse.
Upshot? This poor, long-suffering fellow member of my Gatherer genotype had "tried everything" (or so she thought--she never tried the GTD, poor thing), and she proceeded to rattle off a list of the most horrifying protocols imaginable, such as fen-phen, bariatric surgery, etc. Nothing worked. So now she was ready to be wheeled in for experimental brain surgery, wherein they drilled holes "ten centimeters into her brain from both sides" (!) to implant electrodes on the THEORY that MAYBE these could impact her cravings, which she was driven by. Her drug of choice, by the way, was Pepsi.
Well, post-electrodes, she was better on the Pepsi--and here is a VERY SAD PART to moi, although it was just a passing comment she made and no one other than a BTDer or GTDer would have probably even picked up on the significance: She said to someone she was shopping with, who was worried that a liter, or whatever it was she had of something among her groceries, was the dreaded Pepsi, quote "You thought it was Pepsi, didn't you? Don't worry, it's Crystal Light." Crystal Light! In other words: post-brain-drilling and electrode implanting, this poor, sweet-natured woman has learned NOTHING about NUTRITION. She is still ingesting toxic junk that TRIGGERS CRAVINGS and that keeps you addicted and out of balance, not to mention unhealthy. She has lost no weight in a year since the surgery, but is happy that she is no longer ruled by cravings. She has them, but they aren't as powerful.
That is the SHORT VERSION, but my strong thing is: God, the GenoType Diet could have "fixed" her. Cravings GONE, weight OFF, nutritional knowledge, IN, daily exercise, TAKING PLACE, balance IN THE HIZZZOUSE, and all without drilling into her brain and implanting electrodes!
This world has gone crazy. In a sad way.
And those "doctors" who did this! OMG, they were like mad scientists, like Frankenstein! They were just having some big fun with their willing guinea pig.
When I watched her "doctors", I kept thinking: "This is like when they used to do lobotomies on people, just to see if it would "work". All for the advancement of SCIENCE, you see (read: their wallets and/or fame in their field)."
I was out of control re food cravings driving me, when I first went on the BTD in 1997. And it took many years, even AFTER that watershed change, and many "slip and falls", lots of fortitude and faith (because I knew the BTD was the right track, I just still had my struggles staying on said track at times), and then finally getting on the GTD and putting it all together--everything I'd learned--to get to where I can now honestly and gratefully report that, not only am I not ruled by cravings, I don't have cravings. Maybe I get what normal people (i.e., non-Gatherers) would consider a "craving", but that is only because they don't know what us thrifty-genotype-sporting Gatherers mean by "cravings". I mean, sure, I get hankerings for certain things. Right now, I'm on a watermelon jag like you wouldn't believe. But that is DIFFERENT. Take a memo: a hankering is not a craving. It is not driving to the supermarket in the driving rain at 9:00 p.m. to clear the shelves of potato chips and sour cream dip, when you DON'T WANT TO BE DOING THAT...yet you do it anyway, like a drug addict drawn to her drug of choice.
The woman in that story could have achieved what she wanted in a natural, healthy way, but she didn't know it, and doesn't know it, poor soul. That's what kills me, so many folks simply don't know. I wish everyone knew.
True, it is more work in some ways to make lifestyle changes than to just pop a pill or even undergo a radical surgery. I have to walk for at least half an hour per day and I try for an hour, or I fear gaining my weight back. And there are certain foods that I have to avoid like the plague which are ubiquitous in our society, so in that sense, it is challenging to avoid them (not because I miss them AT ALL, but because they are in everything) and eating out, in particular, is a challenge. But I’ve learned to go the homemade route and I love it. I work full-time and am busy, yet I find the “slow food” lifestyle to actually be quite a timesaver and far more relaxing than constantly being “on the hunt” for take-out food. There is more of a learning curve, more time, more effort, required to go the natural route, but the pay-off is priceless: once you learn which foods are your friends and keep you cravings-free, satisfied, healthy, energized and in balance, YOU KNOW. No one can ever take that powerful knowledge from you. It, along with proper exercising for your type, can get you to a healthy weight and keep you there for life, with nary a craving, and always feeling very well-nourished and vital.
I implore any obese person out there who is in despair, as someone who has been there in spades: don’t be afraid to try this “radical” diet, versus what to me is the far more radical route of pills or surgeries. You can get there with whole foods, it is all about learning which ones to choose, which ones harmonize with your genetic makeup. This relationship between your individual hardwiring and specific foods is called nutrigenomics, and it is the key to helping you. The power to change your situation, to reach and sustain a healthy weight, comes not from fighting nature, but from working with nature. It comes not from fighting, suppressing and attacking your body and brain chemistry, but from understanding and befriending it, eliminating the foods which throw it out of wack, and giving it the foods that put it into balance.
Informational Links:
Blood Type Diet
GenoType Diet
Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do
Monday, July 19, 2010
My Diet is a Delight, not Deprivation: On Lightening Up and Living a Little
As most of my vast legion of 10 blog followers already know, yet I have not blogged about, I joyously follow a certain diet, called The GenoType Diet, by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo. It, and it’s predecessor, The Blood Type Diet, have helped me tremendously and I’ve been meaning to blog about my diet journey, but haven’t had the requisite combination of internet access and time. I plan to do it at some point, but meanwhile I now want to talk about something specific regarding my diet, so I hope readers who are unfamiliar with the diet and/or with me and my personal diet journey will be able to understand what I’m talking about anyway. You don’t have to be on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s diets to get what I’m going to talk about; it really applies to any healthy, joyous diet that one chooses to adhere to. Here goes:
There is something that many folks, who aren’t on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s highly individualized diets, don’t get. Well-meaning people are forever gently encouraging me to have a piece of birthday cake, or “go off my diet” in some other way. I’m talking about all the poor folk in this world who have not experienced the wonder of what the Dr. D’Adamo diets (The Blood Type Diet, The GenoType Diet, or SWAMI) do for a body. They associate “diet” and “dieting” with deprivation and rigidity. In fact, there is an active discussion thread on Dr. D’Adamo’s message board (see link to his site under my “Mint-Worthy Links”) right now on “orthorexia”, and perhaps, along that sort of vein, some folks mistakenly think anyone who consistently sticks to any certain diet (such as I do) is being too rigid and thus not enjoying life. I mean, what other explanation could there be for turning down birthday cake at office party after office party? Obviously I am in serious need of living a little! But they don’t get it! I don’t want to go off my diet! And it isn’t due to rigidity, it is due to loving being strong, deeply nourished, satisfied, in balance, steady and healthy. What they don’t get is: this diet is abundance. It is going off it that is deprivation to me!
This is the reverse of most diets. Most diets are associated with giving up things you love. But on the GenoType Diet, I love all the foods I’m encouraged to eat. I naturally gravitate to them, which makes sense in light of the diet’s theory that I was designed to thrive on these foods. When you are eating as nature intended for you to eat, you are satisfied, nourished and in balance. Therefore, you don’t crave junk food “quick fixes” for your blood sugar, serotonin level, etc., as you might (and I do) when you are out of balance, deprived in some way(s) and hungry for something(s). Why on earth would I want to throw myself out of this precious place of balance that I’ve worked so hard to reach? It took me years and much trial and error to figure out how to get here, and I LOVE being here, so why would I want to jettison myself out of this long-elusive Brigadoon? I wouldn’t, I don’t! So thanks but no thanks, I honestly don’t want that piece of birthday cake, with the inflammatory wheat and the blood-sugar-spiking-then-crashing corn syrup. I don’t want the hydrogenated transfats and the artificial flavorings and colorings. It is not a “treat” for me in any way. My treat is every naturally colorful, life-filled, gorgeous, delicious, satisfying bite of healthy food that I eat in my diet every day! And no, the fact that I’m highly compliant on my diet does not mean that I, by definition, have “orthorexia." I’m not rigidly compliant on the diet. I’m joyously compliant on the diet. The foods that are recommended for me are a joy to eat, and I also joyously and with much gusto eat some things that are not recommended for me, such as some dairy products, some organic mayo (without mayo, what is the point of life, pray tell?), etc. But the “biggies”, the avoids that I’ve learned through experience are truly dangerous to me being in balance, steady, strong and not ruled by carbohydrate cravings, those I am very, very strict about avoiding. Is this due to “orthorexia”, i.e., being overly rigid on a diet? Hell no, it is due to having worked my butt off (literally) to jettison the cravings and feel steady and in balance, and, oh, by the way, to lose 76 pounds, and to wanting to continue being good to myself, to continue empowering myself and powering myself towards better and better health. Choosing health is a healthy impulse! And it’s a joyous, delicious, satisfying impulse. Again, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, as they associate consistent compliance on any “diet” as equaling “deprivation”: this diet, and any diet that is truly healthy for the particular individual following it, is not deprivation, it is abundance, it is joy, it is strength, it is balance, it is healthy. If your diet makes you feel deprived, it is not the right diet for you. The right diet will feel right, you will be satisfied and glad and every meal will be a celebration of life.
My family arrives this week from out of state, as they do every summer, for a visit which this year will be of one week’s duration. While it is a sacred, wonderful blessing to have and to see family, it is also stressful for me on several levels, one major one being that we eat out virtually every meal while they're here and I end up in all manner of wheat and corn syrup dispensaries that I never normally frequent. Even though I’m actually not strict with dietary compliance in many ways, the two things that I am extremely compliant on are wheat and corn. And, unfortunately, those are the exact two items that our society is hell bent on sneaking into every food possible, especially in restaurants, so one almost HAS to be rigid, or “orthorexic”, to use that inherently pejorative term, in order to avoid what I, for one, consider to be toxic substances for me. Yet is it some sort of diagnosable disease to choose not to poison oneself? Is it some sort of rigid obsessiveness to avoid known toxins that set in motion a chain of biochemical events in some of our bodies that are akin to what happens if an alcoholic takes that first drink? No one in this day and age would think of urging an alcoholic to “lighten up” and “just have one drink, one drink won’t kill you!” Well, no, one drink won’t kill an alcoholic and one piece of cake, or bag of chips, or whatever the “trigger” food may be won’t kill a food addict, either...but it could and often DOES set in motion a chain of biochemical events that ultimately will kill us, not to be too dramatic about it. It’s just the truth: one drink can and predictably often DOES trigger an alcoholic to drink more and throw them out of sobriety into active alcoholism. Serious stuff. Well it is the exact same thing for a “food addict”, or someone with sensitivities to certain foods, a “carb addict”, or whatever you want to call people like me. So is it “orthorexic”, namely, pathological, to make the healthy choice to avoid something that is poisonous to you, that threatens your "food sobriety"? I submit to you that, by definition, choosing health is NOT a pathology!
I’m a child of an alcoholic family, I know what alcoholism is, up close and personal. I know what addiction is. And I know what my response to certain foods is and what my patterns are, as I’ve now had many years of observing, experiencing and dismaying over my own particular patterns, and I can tell you that a “food addict” is no different from an alcoholic or drug addict, at least, many of us aren’t. Many of us are hard-wired to be biochemically sensitive to certain foods and those certain foods (like wheat and corn syrup) will throw us out of balance and into a whole world of being controlled by carb cravings. And those trigger foods are ubiquitous in our food supply, so is it “obsessive”, if after having learned through many years of hard-won experience, what works and what can threaten that for you, to strictly avoid those threatening trigger foods if you know the serious problems they will cause you, or is it a healthy thing? Answer Key: it is a very, very healthy thing, and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!
Why would I EVER willingly choose to threaten my “food sobriety”—the aforementioned place of balance and health—any more than an alcoholic or drug addict would choose to “lighten up” and have just one drink, or just one nostalgic fling with their drug of choice? It’s not worth it!!! The old gray mare (a.k.a., a bag of potato chips and some sour cream dip), she ain’t what she used to be. The thrill is gone! I choose health. Choosing health is the way I “lighten up”. Choosing health is the way I live a little.
There is something that many folks, who aren’t on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s highly individualized diets, don’t get. Well-meaning people are forever gently encouraging me to have a piece of birthday cake, or “go off my diet” in some other way. I’m talking about all the poor folk in this world who have not experienced the wonder of what the Dr. D’Adamo diets (The Blood Type Diet, The GenoType Diet, or SWAMI) do for a body. They associate “diet” and “dieting” with deprivation and rigidity. In fact, there is an active discussion thread on Dr. D’Adamo’s message board (see link to his site under my “Mint-Worthy Links”) right now on “orthorexia”, and perhaps, along that sort of vein, some folks mistakenly think anyone who consistently sticks to any certain diet (such as I do) is being too rigid and thus not enjoying life. I mean, what other explanation could there be for turning down birthday cake at office party after office party? Obviously I am in serious need of living a little! But they don’t get it! I don’t want to go off my diet! And it isn’t due to rigidity, it is due to loving being strong, deeply nourished, satisfied, in balance, steady and healthy. What they don’t get is: this diet is abundance. It is going off it that is deprivation to me!
This is the reverse of most diets. Most diets are associated with giving up things you love. But on the GenoType Diet, I love all the foods I’m encouraged to eat. I naturally gravitate to them, which makes sense in light of the diet’s theory that I was designed to thrive on these foods. When you are eating as nature intended for you to eat, you are satisfied, nourished and in balance. Therefore, you don’t crave junk food “quick fixes” for your blood sugar, serotonin level, etc., as you might (and I do) when you are out of balance, deprived in some way(s) and hungry for something(s). Why on earth would I want to throw myself out of this precious place of balance that I’ve worked so hard to reach? It took me years and much trial and error to figure out how to get here, and I LOVE being here, so why would I want to jettison myself out of this long-elusive Brigadoon? I wouldn’t, I don’t! So thanks but no thanks, I honestly don’t want that piece of birthday cake, with the inflammatory wheat and the blood-sugar-spiking-then-crashing corn syrup. I don’t want the hydrogenated transfats and the artificial flavorings and colorings. It is not a “treat” for me in any way. My treat is every naturally colorful, life-filled, gorgeous, delicious, satisfying bite of healthy food that I eat in my diet every day! And no, the fact that I’m highly compliant on my diet does not mean that I, by definition, have “orthorexia." I’m not rigidly compliant on the diet. I’m joyously compliant on the diet. The foods that are recommended for me are a joy to eat, and I also joyously and with much gusto eat some things that are not recommended for me, such as some dairy products, some organic mayo (without mayo, what is the point of life, pray tell?), etc. But the “biggies”, the avoids that I’ve learned through experience are truly dangerous to me being in balance, steady, strong and not ruled by carbohydrate cravings, those I am very, very strict about avoiding. Is this due to “orthorexia”, i.e., being overly rigid on a diet? Hell no, it is due to having worked my butt off (literally) to jettison the cravings and feel steady and in balance, and, oh, by the way, to lose 76 pounds, and to wanting to continue being good to myself, to continue empowering myself and powering myself towards better and better health. Choosing health is a healthy impulse! And it’s a joyous, delicious, satisfying impulse. Again, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, as they associate consistent compliance on any “diet” as equaling “deprivation”: this diet, and any diet that is truly healthy for the particular individual following it, is not deprivation, it is abundance, it is joy, it is strength, it is balance, it is healthy. If your diet makes you feel deprived, it is not the right diet for you. The right diet will feel right, you will be satisfied and glad and every meal will be a celebration of life.
My family arrives this week from out of state, as they do every summer, for a visit which this year will be of one week’s duration. While it is a sacred, wonderful blessing to have and to see family, it is also stressful for me on several levels, one major one being that we eat out virtually every meal while they're here and I end up in all manner of wheat and corn syrup dispensaries that I never normally frequent. Even though I’m actually not strict with dietary compliance in many ways, the two things that I am extremely compliant on are wheat and corn. And, unfortunately, those are the exact two items that our society is hell bent on sneaking into every food possible, especially in restaurants, so one almost HAS to be rigid, or “orthorexic”, to use that inherently pejorative term, in order to avoid what I, for one, consider to be toxic substances for me. Yet is it some sort of diagnosable disease to choose not to poison oneself? Is it some sort of rigid obsessiveness to avoid known toxins that set in motion a chain of biochemical events in some of our bodies that are akin to what happens if an alcoholic takes that first drink? No one in this day and age would think of urging an alcoholic to “lighten up” and “just have one drink, one drink won’t kill you!” Well, no, one drink won’t kill an alcoholic and one piece of cake, or bag of chips, or whatever the “trigger” food may be won’t kill a food addict, either...but it could and often DOES set in motion a chain of biochemical events that ultimately will kill us, not to be too dramatic about it. It’s just the truth: one drink can and predictably often DOES trigger an alcoholic to drink more and throw them out of sobriety into active alcoholism. Serious stuff. Well it is the exact same thing for a “food addict”, or someone with sensitivities to certain foods, a “carb addict”, or whatever you want to call people like me. So is it “orthorexic”, namely, pathological, to make the healthy choice to avoid something that is poisonous to you, that threatens your "food sobriety"? I submit to you that, by definition, choosing health is NOT a pathology!
I’m a child of an alcoholic family, I know what alcoholism is, up close and personal. I know what addiction is. And I know what my response to certain foods is and what my patterns are, as I’ve now had many years of observing, experiencing and dismaying over my own particular patterns, and I can tell you that a “food addict” is no different from an alcoholic or drug addict, at least, many of us aren’t. Many of us are hard-wired to be biochemically sensitive to certain foods and those certain foods (like wheat and corn syrup) will throw us out of balance and into a whole world of being controlled by carb cravings. And those trigger foods are ubiquitous in our food supply, so is it “obsessive”, if after having learned through many years of hard-won experience, what works and what can threaten that for you, to strictly avoid those threatening trigger foods if you know the serious problems they will cause you, or is it a healthy thing? Answer Key: it is a very, very healthy thing, and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!
Why would I EVER willingly choose to threaten my “food sobriety”—the aforementioned place of balance and health—any more than an alcoholic or drug addict would choose to “lighten up” and have just one drink, or just one nostalgic fling with their drug of choice? It’s not worth it!!! The old gray mare (a.k.a., a bag of potato chips and some sour cream dip), she ain’t what she used to be. The thrill is gone! I choose health. Choosing health is the way I “lighten up”. Choosing health is the way I live a little.
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