Restart

The last couple of weeks have been a sober return to good health. In large part due to my wife’s tireless cooking and preparing groceries, we have been able to get back to our normal diet.

The end of last year was polluted with the degenerative tradition of gifting sweets from family, friends, and coworkers over the Holy Days of the United States of America. Cookies, candies, cakes, and all kinds of creations from the products of modern agriculture saturated my body and mind. I had started to feel pain in my joints, knots in my neck, and generally lower energy and negative mood. I had at least two teeth getting cavities. It was time to stop the nonsense. I happened upon some delicious food provided at my workplace for lunch, and had two full plates of basmati rice topped with curried lamb, cilantro, and fried shallots as an indulgence. Incredibly, but of course, I felt no fatigue from eating this food as I continued to do good work. I was very grateful for this boost.

It is good to eat during the day here and there, as availability of good food and time allow. Eating a good midday meal provides energy and building material for the body. It also lowers tension and eases the mind, for times that do not require maximal intensity from a man. Eating bad substances like sugar, vegetable oils and wheat reduces energy and substitutes poor building materials for the body. It triggers defensive responses from the body in the form of hormonal reaction to the flood of manufactured substances, immune attacks on the food and body against poison, and a negative mindset in response to a general sense of unease and fading vitality. In short, it is better to avoid this kind of meal when it is reasonable to do so.

These types of products are farmed and processed for maximal profit to the man who makes them and for minimal benefit to the man who eats it. Humans can be much more vigorous and happy without them. However, along with the addictive nature of over-processed products, the marketing is almost inescapable. Almost. One of the easiest and most effective ways that my wife and I have avoided bad food product is to simply not buy them. These things end up in the pantry because someone picked them up off of a shelf and paid for them. That someone is you. It’s your choice what you eat, and it’s your choice what you buy. You can buy foods that are in their whole form or closer to it. You can buy foods that are raised and grown well. It’s in your control.

Man of today worries that he or she will not have enough energy to live without regular meals. This is a fallacy built of the rigid work schedule that was necessary to maintaining the structure of an agriculture-based society. In order to fulfill the labor that man was bonded to each day, living in the same place and no longer moving through the land for food and water, meals became routinized. In turn, the labor and the society were built to maintain a steady supply of food, which encouraged a regimen of eating and a ration of food. As humans of this type of society grew in number, and their ways became exponentially more efficient through the industrial revolution, the desire for regular meal times became more and more a need. Workers had to produce maximal products in a day to give employers profit. Meal times were measured and rest times were limited. This practice is still in effect nearly three hundred years later.

We are capable of going without any food for much longer than you would think, if you are in the habit of eating two or more meals every day. This cognitive bias is especially pronounced if those meals consist of manufactured substances. Depending on the current state of a man’s body, he can live well for days without any food. It is not likely that a human will die even after weeks without anything to eat but water. This is only natural, as man became man and survived as man for one million years taking food from the earth. To hunt for meat and search for edible plants, man had to endure periods of time without food. Those who couldn’t live without this ability to hunt and forage on an empty stomach would not survive. How could they? Even if they were fed and helped by their sturdier fellow men, would anyone want to couple with such a person? It doesn’t seem likely that such weak humans could be supported for long. It is even less likely that similar people would be born of them as their children. After one million years, the men that are alive are probably adapted to the changing environment in which they live.

I know from short periods of intentional fasting that I can even go for a run for fifteen or more minutes in the mornings for four days with a minor reduction in energy toward the end of the third day. And though I am more athletic than the average person, I have no experience in a life of hunting and foraging. A domestic man like myself can last for four days without food and still run. How much more capable would a wild man be? Perhaps he could track, find, observe, and then kill a large animal after several days without food. Watching videos of men in the Arctic hunt for seals all day long in extreme cold, I saw that men could last without food, catch an animal, eat a small portion of it, and then carry the rest back to their camp. A group of men would probably have an even greater ability to find good food on a regular enough basis.

All this says man can go without food for a while and be even healthier than when eating throughout the course of the day, day after day. Even abstaining from food for the first part of the day and waiting to eat a good dinner brings my body good health. There are no rules to eating, for who should ever tell anyone what or how to eat food for their own body? That is each human’s choice. The only thing in the way of a guideline I can derive from my experience is that enough good food gives good health, positive energy that does not turn to fatigue, and steady mood that does not turn to misery. Too much food or bad food does otherwise. Find the foods that you can eat in a way to improve your health for the course of the life that you choose.

Life is tough as it is, but this is a good thing. If you are feeling miserable day to day, there is a good chance that you are not providing your body with food that gives you the energy and the substance to be healthy. Remember too that some things you eat may be taking away from health, regardless of how good the other stuff is. Work it out!

Live powerfully,

Steve