Skin

Complacency in the resting state of the human mind.

We would rather not be bothered by the thousands of events of cruelty, suffering, bigotry, despair, violence and casual dismissal of our fellow humans. In part this is certainly protective; too much goes on, we cannot absorb it all without ourselves falling into despair, which is perhaps the most destructive of all emotions, as it freezes us, makes us incapable of movement in any direction.

The other day I got in the mail a whole sheaf of photographs of myself. Naked. Yep, that's right, a pile of pics of yours truly in the buff! You won't be seeing them on the internet. Because I derive from Northern European stock (or, with less grandiosity, because I am a pasty-faced white boy),
my dermatologist (it feels odd to think I have my very own dermatologist) asked that I have high-resolution, full-body photographs taken of my naked body. She wanted to have something against which she could compare any new moles or blemishes, to make sure they were new and not just the same old, same old eruptions of dermis. The photography session itself was not particularly traumatic; I have no hang-up about my naked body and no delusion that the sight of it will be titillating. It is the body of a man of late middle age with lots of moles and lots of hair, pretty much average in pretty much every way. So, posing for a photographer, while it felt oddly like a fashion shoot (including the white umbrella-reflectors and striking poses as directed by the picture-snapper) was not in itself disturbing. But when my copy of the photos came in the mail, I felt a visceral reaction I had not expected, combined of dread and curiosity. Until this morning I had avoided looking at them.

Not from my portfolio

The Buddha taught that we should consider our bodies carefully: "In this fathom-long body, equipped with sense organs and faculties, I declare to you is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world and the path leading to the cessation thereof." The entire philosophy of suffering and the end of suffering can be found in the body. Many have insisted that the Buddha intended to denigrate the body, asking us to see it as foul and the source of our cravings and distractions from the path of purification which could lead to the end of suffering. I find no such sentiment in the teachings, or at least not wholly so. I have read and heard the teachings on revulsion toward the body, but have also absorbed the teachings of the glory of the body. This may sound inconsistent, but it is more truly the evocation of the body as the teacher of all things, both "the origin of the world" and "the cessation of the world". To cling to the idea that the body is only to be reviled is to miss the point. Reviling the body is an exercise, just as celebrating it is. To cling to either image is to invite suffering into our lives.

She clearly disapproves

I went to see an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum yesterday called "Elles", a tribute to women artists from the Pompidou museum in Paris. I expected to see the usual canvases of Kahlo, Cassatt  O'Keefe, Morisot and their ilk; there was very little so predictable as this. What I had not expected at all was the video installations, one of which was a naked woman (the artist) holding a live chicken by the legs until the chicken became calm, then having the head of the chicken chopped off and the same woman holding the chicken as it died, spewing blood over her and the floor. Just one example. The reason I evoke this disturbing image and the exhibit is to emphasize how clearly the show was designed to show our overwhelming disaffection and objectification toward our bodies and, in particular, the bodies of women (and to recommend to all Seattleites that they go see it).

Looking at the photos of my skin, there were few surprises. I thought my posture was better than that. Yep, there's that little inner tube around my middle that has been the subject of my most fervent hopes for weight loss. My, I have begun to sag! (Come now, Reid, you are well beyond mere beginning). What it did cause, though, was a crack in the skin of my routine image of myself and the world. We all carry with a certain version of our bodies that is notoriously inaccurate. Some of the paintings I admire the most are self-portraits that are honest and straightforward; the artist must have had to study his own body closely and in great detail (sometimes disheartening detail, we must believe) to paint such a portrait.

Both of these, as well as some other events in my recent life (A book by David Foster Wallace, a talk by Amy Goodman) have done is shake up my complacency, a necessary disturbance of the surface normality of my day-to-day life, a wake-up call of what the world is, both inside and outside my head.

I work with wounds, disturbances of skin integrity and its healing. One of the enemies of wound healing is what is called "biofilm", a glaze of bacterial matter on the surface of the wound that is fairly benign but prevents the wound from moving forward on the trajectory toward intact skin. It seems to me that our complacency serves the same purpose, this benign glaze that covers our eyes as we watch our televisions and stare into our omnipresent technoboxes. The best of art, of commentary, of actions by the outrageous, puncture our safe surround and bring us face to face with the reality—often ugly, as often gorgeous, sometimes both in a swirling admixture—of our daily lives.

This is precisely what the Buddha advocated. He did not wish for me to recoil with revulsion or swoon with delight at the sight of my own skin or the contemplation of my guts or my death. He had no desire for me to find the naked chicken woman disgusting or titillating (though of course she was a bit of both). He would have me give up neither my delight in escape nor my deeper seeking. What the Buddha asked of me is that I look at them and see what they are, truly are, in this moment, in my perception, right now. Really, the Buddha didn't advocate much of anything beyond WAKING UP.

Complacency may have been the Buddha's only enemy.

Weight loss reflections

I started this blog with the intention of tracking my efforts to lose weight. A couple of posts back, when I was talking about what I eat and why, I said that I would revisit this topic, if only briefly. As those of you who have been following this blog for awhile are aware, I have shifted my focus more to the Dharma side of things and have de-emphasized the weight loss angle. Why?

Well, it's not because I no longer think that losing some of this excess weight would be wonderful. I am aware of the health consequences of carrying even a relatively small amount of extra poundage. But here's the thing: I am simply not willing to live my life under some sort of cloud, constantly concerned about every extra pound or calorie. Put another way, I would rather die a fat, diabetic, hypertensive mess than spend the precious hours of my life worrying about my weight. Whenever I hear myself, internally or aloud, speaking in martial terms (fighting weight, struggling with it, wrestling it), I recoil. I don't want to live my life in any more struggle than is called for. Just day-to-day living is hard enough.

On the other hand, I treasure discipline and commitment. And by saying I treasure them, I mean that I find great pleasure in them, a greater pleasure than I do in eating junk, for instance. Because of this, in a normal, average week I follow the strictures of my 1800 calorie regimen six days, giving myself Sundays off. When I do this, I steadily lose weight. But many of my weeks are not "normal". When I go on vacation or to visit my parents I find it very difficult to measure and parcel out everything I eat, especially since much of the time is taken up in social eating. Not that I am one of those who, when I feel released from obligation, go buy a box of Twinkies and eat the whole thing; I have never been that kind of binge eater. But a few chips here, a latte instead of drip coffee, a cookie or cinnamon roll or two and pretty soon I have put on an extra pound or five. And since I am now visiting my family once a month, when I factor in my vacations and other time off, my "abnormal" days begin to outnumber the "normal" ones. With the decreased metabolism of a 56-year-old, I have found that, even with moderate eating, if I am not ever-vigilant, I can gain up to 10 pounds in a week.

My friends Barbara and Jim say that when they decided to take off some extra weight they always took their own food wherever they went, even out to dinner with friends or on vacation, if they thought they would not be able to calculate accurately the "cost" of the food they would otherwise be eating. That would be very difficult for me, but I get the point. When I eat with my parents, for instance, we tend to eat at places that specialize in meat and potatoes types of meals. Nothing wrong with that, and they like pretty decent places, but for a vegetarian, lean meals are hard to come by in these restaurant. I'm not complaining, but it does make me wonder how to deal effectively with such times.

Kathy and I just came back from a mini-vacation to Doe Bay on Orcas Island in Washington state.

Doe Bay

It was beautiful and restful and damn near perfect, at least for us. We didn't do much, really, though we went on a couple of hikes in two different state parks on the island. I did not pork out while we were there. We had a couple of meals in the restaurant attached to the resort, but mostly cooked and ate moderately in our own little cabin. Still, I would not be at all surprised to find I gained between five and ten pounds over those five days.

Our sweet little cabin, Chakra

Don't get me wrong. This is not a "problem" for me. I refuse to let it be. But it is a curious conundrum and one with which my thoughts are often taken up. I wonder what kind of alternative strategy I could use for those times when I am out of town or relaxing that would not make these times less interesting or fun but would still allow me to remain on the path to good health? I guess I will find out.

Walkin'

I am, both by necessity and inclination, a walker. I don't own a car and while I can rent or borrow one (and do from time to time), for the most part I try not to. Given the other options, walking is my choice both for mode of transport and exercise. Though I live in a city with a better-than-average transit system (some would disagree with this assessment), I still prefer walking for several reasons:

• The bus doesn't go everywhere. Even when I take the bus, I must walk to the closest stop, then from the arrival stop to my final destination. In many cases, I might as well just walk the whole way.
• It can be something of a hassle to wait for the bus and accommodate to those times when it is not on schedule. When I am walking, I know pretty much exactly how long it will take.
• It's a bit expensive to ride the bus. If I am going to downtown Seattle, it is well worth the $5 to get there and back, but if I am travelling to a closer destination, it doesn't make as much sense.
• Walking just plain feels good.

Seattle is a pretty good city for walking. There are sidewalks in most neighborhoods and many interesting things to see, many of which would be missed from a car or bus. It's a pretty hilly place, though, which can be a challenge, but can also be good if you are up for that kind of workout. It depends on where you are, but most places in Seattle have hills to them or away from them. Going from the waterfront to the top of First Hill, for instance, is an epic hillclimb (the original Skid Row is here, so named because logs were skidded down to the water from the top of the hill). Going from University Village to the University District or Northgate up to Roosevelt is somewhat daunting. There are trails that are more level, such as the Burke-Gilman and around Green Lake, but these are crowded and less interesting (to me, anyway) than the neighborhood walks. Besides, I treasure the feeling of my legs working against so much gravity and my lungs taking in vast quantities of air.

There is also the opportunity to make walking into a meditative pursuit. Though walking meditation is usually taught as a slow-paced, concentrated focus on each movement, there are no rules about this and often a faster walk or even running can be just as meditative. I quite often turn my walks into an opportunity to listen to dharma talks; these tend to be about an hour long, which is how long I walk when I am going out for a pure exercise walk (as opposed to walking to get somewhere). Walking home from work at night has become my time to listen to audio books.

I am also fascinated with the physics of walking. It is truly the science of controlled falling, throwing oneself slightly off-balance with each step and then stopping the fall with the other foot, doing this over and over again. I love the feel of muscles responding to a grade and the lean I take on when it is steep, the better to recruit the major muscle groups in my thighs and butt and back. I love, too, that the whole body is involved in walking, not just the legs. When I pay attention I can feel how the arms and chest and abdomen add their voices to the chorus.

Many studies have shown that brisk walking is one of the best forms of exercise there is, giving the benefits of cardiovascular work without the high-impact damage of running or other more vigorous forms. Which is not to denigrate any other kind of workout, merely to advocate for the benefits of my favorite type. The other huge advantage I see is that I can continue to walk for the rest of my life. I am already anticipating that I will still walk an hour a day when I am 90, the only difference being that I won't go nearly as far.

See you out there....

What I Eat and Why II

So, last week I started detailing what I eat on a daily basis and why I make the choices I do. One of the most important things I discovered in this process is how much is involved in the choices we make about food, and we make these choices every day. These are political, economic, spiritual, physiological, psychological and emotional in nature. There is nothing simple about eating.

I was visiting my extended family in California over the weekend and was reminded how much of the social there is in eating, how we gather around food to celebrate anything and everything, from birth to death and everything inbetween. When we don't know what else to do for someone in grief or pain, we know we can cook for them, drop off some cookies or a casserole. There is something consoling, joyful, reassuring about food. Yet this can also contain the seed of addiction with which so many of us struggle.

My mother's mother was addicted to food in an entirely different way: her self-worth was caught up in how successful she was in feeding others and took it as a personal affront if you were not willing to be plied by her with food. This became more problematic the older (and more mentally feeble) she became. Food, it goes without saying, is complicated.

I left off with breakfast. Lunch, then: when I work I eat homemade lentil soup. I make a large batch every two weeks and refrigerate it. I find it unnecessary to freeze or otherwise preserve my soup—it lasts just fine for two weeks. This is one of the pleasures of being a vegetarian; without meat in my soup, I can worry less about what might make me sick in the things I keep in the refrigerator. I also eat a piece of fruit for lunch. Midmorning, I have half a granola bar each work day. I have another piece of fruit about 2:30 each day. This is why I eat this way: first of all, as stated in last week's post, I need a diet that is predictable in both calories and protein. My lentil soup is rich in protein. I have also discovered that my blood sugar drops between meals unless I eat something, thus the granola bar and fruit. This is especially true when I am working, because my work is physically and emotionally taxing.

When I am not working, I have a bit more leeway. I still track my calorie and protein intake, but can make choices within those requirements. I usually make fairly healthy choices because these have fewer calories and therefore I can eat more of them! I like cheese quite a bit. I usually eat some cottage cheese, as this contains more protein per calorie than nearly any other food. I always have a glass of V-8 to give me more vegetables in my diet (on work days, I treat lentil soup as my vegetable, since it has a healthy amount of spinach, squash, and potatoes in it).

In the evening I don't have a full meal. I tend to concentrate my calories and protein in the morning and afternoon hours; I really don't require all that much energy in the evening. But if I have not yet used up my 1800 calories for the day, I usually eat right up to that allowance. I don't think it is healthy for me to drop too far below that number of calories. I always include plain yogurt as part of my evening, both for protein content and for the probiotics contained therein, which at a minimum help with digestion and may also aid in immune function. Otherwise, I favor chips (Sun Chips, pretzels, that sort of thing), licorice (the real, black kind, none of that namby-pamby red stuff—ick) and a small amount of white chocolate, if I have the calories to afford it.

I take some more supplements in the evening: more vitamin C, a multivitamin, more garlic.

That's about it for My Day in Food. Next time, I will write a bit more about how this all fits into my original intent to have this be a blog about my attempt to lose weight and how this whole thing fits into the principles of Buddhism.