The Buddha Still Wasn't A Fat Guy

I promised last time I wrote that I would return to the subject of the Precepts and how they apply to my (at this point successful) effort to lose weight and get to a healthier place in my relationship to food. If you have not done so yet, you might want to go back and read that previous post, because this one will make a whole lot more sense if you do.

The last of the Precepts the Buddha taught was that of avoiding intoxicants. We don't usually think of foods as intoxicants, that is, as things that create a literal state of intoxication. A few words about definitions, then:

• In the Buddhist sense, intoxication might not even be the right word. I can't read Pali, so I have no idea how the original word or words might be translated. But I interpret an intoxicant to be anything that diverts you from the ability to pursue your ultimate fulfillment (whatever that may be). This can also be something that does not affect you physically at all, such as intoxicating scents or music. And many foods—even healthy ones—can be used to mask our emotional states, which is another form of intoxication.
  
• As mentioned in the last post, the root word for intoxicant also means poison. In the broadest sense, then, an intoxicant could be anything that treats your body badly or causes you to abuse or not fully support it.
• Intoxication is not necessarily an event. Intoxication can occur over a long period of time and, as such, you may not even be aware of its effects until it stops.
• However, intoxication is a state, at least in the way I am thinking of it. The Precept says that we avoid intoxicants, but I think it is more accurate to say that we avoid intoxication. Though monks and nuns entirely eschew alcohol and all drugs, this is not necessarily the standard by which modern, Western lay practitioners (and their teachers) would judge intoxication. In other words, that occasional glass of wine is not generally seen as an intoxicant under those circumstances.

But, what does this have to do with food? Well, here's the thing. About that third point above: I think we have become entirely inured to the effects of certain food choices and have taken for granted that the harm they do is incidental to the pleasure we get from them. But this is actually far from being the case. Everything we put into our bodies has an effect, some of it desirable, but with many of them not. Especially in this world of highly processed, sugary foods, we are ingesting unimaginable amounts of stuff and much of it is doing us harm, whether subtle or more serious we can't always know.

Now, here's where we get into really touchy territory, and I want to proceed carefully. While talking about these issues, I have found that most people are very protective of their right to eat whatever they choose. Please hear me loud and clear: it is not now nor has it ever been my intent to judge or change anyone else's behavior around food. God knows, I have had to free myself from a huge number of intoxicants over the years, including alcohol, drugs, and nicotine, and I never once benefited from someone telling me that I was a bad person or was doing a bad thing. So, please don't think that what I am about to say is a judgment on what you choose to eat. It's all just information I have gleaned from my experience with this.

One of the primary tools of the Abascal Way and of any plan that aims to help you make wise choices about what you eat is the elimination diet, wherein you eliminate all those foods that might cause you to have a harmful reaction. The problem with the day-to-day ingestion of these foods is that the inflammation and other ill effects are often happening at such a low level they are not immediately noticeable. Or, they have been happening for so long that we simply consider them to be a normal part of our lives (joint and back pain being a prime example for those of us over 40). An elimination diet takes these out of our consumption for long enough for these effects to go away. You then add them back in one at a time to see which might cause you to react negatively. In this way, for example, my wife and I both discovered that we don't do all that well with gluten. We love our bread, but gluten was causing problems we never realized.

Another example (and here I move with trepidation) is sugar. I know, I know, every single person to whom I have ever mentioned this food plan has gone along with me right up until I say, "Oh, and by the way, sugar is simply gone forever. No more sugar", at which point they want nothing more to do with me. But, as much as I never wanted to admit it to myself, after eliminating it and then trying a little bit again, I am entirely convinced that sugar is an intoxicant. Our bodies are not designed to process sugar in such a refined form, and our bodily reactions are both predictable and negative. It creates inflammation and kicks you into a biochemical state from which your body has difficulty recovering. It also creates a craving for more of the same, so if you are not meticulous (and more highly disciplined than I am) you will continue consuming it, which will exacerbate the ill effects and set up a cycle of ever-increasing harm.

These effects are no joke. Sugar is a major player in the epidemics of both obesity and diabetes around the world, and these two conditions also predispose one to heart disease and stroke, not to mention many other inflammatory-induced harmful states such as arthritis and other body pain. All that from a doughnut? Sadly, yes. At least, that's how I read the evidence that is accumulating around the consumption of sugar. Don't believe me? Eliminate sugar (by which I mean ALL sweeteners of any sort—yep, no stevia, either. Nope, no honey, sorry) for three weeks and then eat some again. To make this a fair trial, you should eat a substantial amount of it when you add it back or else the effects might be too subtle to notice and you will assume they are not present. Believe me, you will feel the pain.

And the damn stuff is everywhere, have you noticed? Have you tried to buy a salad dressing without sugar lately? Good luck. It's even in most commercially produced soups, though God knows why, and nearly all microwaveable foods.

But all is not lost! When I write again, let me tell you about the joys we have found in consuming foods that do not cause all of these reactions. Because, even though I have a long list of foods (and other substances) I am no longer consuming, I enjoy eating more than ever. It turns out we don't even know what we're missing when we turn to intoxicants to feed us both physically and emotionally.