Did I Mention That The Buddha Wasn't A Fat Guy?

This is the last post in a three-part series about the food choices I am making and how that all fits in with everything else in my life (big topic!). The first part is here and the second here. You might want to read those to make more sense of what I am writing about in this post.

I am not suffering, I hope that is evident. I remember before I gave up other of my addictions (alcohol and tobacco in particular), one of the primary reasons I gave myself for not wanting to stop was that I would no longer have any fun, that these things were what gave me pleasure and without them my life would be dull and featureless. I felt much the same way about my food indulgences.

I was just speaking with someone yesterday who was curious about what I ate and I began to list off the things which I no longer consume: alcohol, drugs, tobacco, caffeine, sugar and all sweeteners, almost any processed food, nearly all fried food, meat, gluten, and most oils other than olive oil. I eat dairy sparingly. What a  bore my eating life must be!

But it isn't. Just as with alcohol and tobacco, I was kidding myself that these foods gave me pleasure. I should also point out that I did not give these things up all at once. I have been a vegetarian for nearly 20 years. I quit smoking 25 years ago, drinking 16. I haven't indulged in any drugs for even longer. And every choice I made regarding these things was made from a desire to avoid suffering. I have no impulse to be a purist, I really don't. But each of these had in some way or another caused me pain or difficulty.

As mentioned in an earlier post, one of the magical moments in following the elimination part of this dietary plan is the discovery, when foods are added back, how much they have been causing difficulties. My sister-in-law, who is also following this plan, went through a particularly stressful event not long ago and decided to treat herself to some ice cream. A lot of ice cream. Though previously she would not have attributed the consequences to the sugar therein, she had given it up entirely prior to this and knew that the body aches and pains and other bodily struggles had to be because of it. It was for her a revelatory moment.

But here is the most important thing: I am enjoying eating more than I ever have. In the absence of sweeteners, fresh fruits and vegetables taste more flavorful than ever. Grain salads (gluten-free, of course) are delicious to me. A dish full of (sugar-free) yogurt is a treat. A slice of good cheese is a delight. I made an eggplant Parmesan the other day that was to die for. I don't miss chips or ice cream (well, not much, anyway), chai tea lattes, donuts, cakes, pies, or cookies. I don't miss the digestive issues, the body aches, the tiredness, the malaise, the hangovers of indulgence. I feel better than I have in years. And I am no longer a fat guy.

And isn't this the very nature of what the Buddha meant when he talked about the end of suffering? At one point he said (I am paraphrasing) that what we believe gives us pleasure is precisely what causes suffering and what we believe causes suffering is what leads to freedom, which is the ultimate pleasure. While we pursue the short-term satisfaction of desire, we remove from our lives all possibility of Nirvana, which is not a place but a state of being that can only be found through concerted effort. But this effort is not that of conforming to a certain ideal. Rather, it is an internal investigation to find what is true for each of us. What Dharma means, after all, is Truth. And the only way we can find this Truth is to look closely at what causes us to suffer and what causes those around us to suffer.

I know this all doesn't sound like much fun. I wish I could convey to you more clearly that it is, in fact, the ultimate joy. It is as if we are surrounded by beauty and looking down at the dirt wishing for beauty. All we need to do is look up. Look up.

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.

The Buddha Wasn't A Fat Guy

This blog began as a meditation on being overweight and what it means (if anything) in relation to my belief in the Dharma, which is the collected teachings of the Buddha and his followers.

And then, last week, I reached my goal weight. My path to that point both was and was not the one I anticipated, but I have, somehow, arrived there. Even I am a bit surprised by this, especially that in the end it seemed to happen almost without my accord, as a desirable side effect to a completely different effort regarding food.

Let me explain: the proximal reason I have been able to lose the weight I have been seeking for years to lose is The Abascal Way (which I wrote about here and also here). Rather than a dietary plan, this really is a philosophical rethinking of one's relationship to food. This accords well with what I have been writing about here for years. But Kathy Abascal has coalesced a way of regarding our issues around food into a practical, down-to-earth guide.

But here's the thing: it is one thing to know that one ought to eat a certain way in order to feel better and quite another to pull it off. I hasten to say that this is not a way of bragging that I have succeeded where others have failed or that I am stronger or more disciplined than anyone else (you only have to read any randomly chosen half dozen of my entries here to see that I clearly am not). So, what made the difference and continues to make the difference for me?

Upfront, I want to say that a primary driver is the fact that I simply feel much better: fewer aches and pains. Abascal's primary focus is not weight or even food, per se—rather, her emphasis is on bringing the inflammation in our bodies under control, which leads to more comfort (less joint pain and the internal results of inflammation). Because part of this is regulating your body's insulin and other hormonal cycles more effectively, weight loss is a (nearly) inevitable consequence.

But why else have I been able to resist the urge to stray from this dietary plan when so many plans and hopes and schemes before have failed me? I am convinced that a large part of my willingness to stick to it stems from my study of the Dharma and from other spiritual disciplines that, in the end, are only tangentially about food or body weight. I find that one of the most potent forms of spiritual guidance I have are the Five Precepts (which I wrote about more extensively here). For the purposes of this post, let me just say that each of the Precepts—to avoid killing, stealing, sexual harm, harmful speech, and intoxication—is a training in the morality of purpose that points not just to being a Good Person, a status to which most of us aspire, but which can infiltrate our lives in ways that are unexpected and unexpectedly rich. This occurs because each opens us up to a broader understanding of our place in the world and our ability to influence that world for the better. In particular, the Precepts each correspond to a quality we can actively cultivate—in order, those of compassion, generosity, responsibility, kindness, and clarity. These are not simple things, and an aspiration is entirely inadequate to their cultivation. Rather, what is required is a long and sustained devotion coupled with a willingness to repeatedly fail and begin again.

In particular, I find the Precept to avoid intoxicants a cogent one. To begin with, I am an alcoholic, so this has a deeper meaning than it may for others. (On the other hand, it's also a great deal simpler for me, since I am obligated to refrain from all intoxicants—that little glass of wine or puff of marijuana are not for me, whereas for others these might not lead to true intoxication).

But this Precept has (as they all do) layers upon layers of meaning. I like to reflect on the fact that the Latin root of the word intoxication simply means "poison" (in Spanish, one of the word for poisoning is intoxicado). Of course, most of us have the wisdom not to knowingly swallow strychnine, but we take into our bodies many things that we know to be harmful to us, that we believe will give us pleasure, peace, and an surcease of pain.

I think I have gone on long enough for today, though. I will expand upon this a bit further the next time I write.

Abascal Dharma

[A note: this is a continuation of last week's post and parts of it, in particular my references to the Abascal Diet Plan, might not make as much sense if you haven't read that one.]

For one who wishes to take up in earnest regular meditative practice, it will be very desirable that he should be moderate in eating.

--The Buddha

For eight years, I worked as a burn ICU nurse. I encountered hundreds of badly burned patients in that time. What struck me as most remarkable is that a certain proportion of them, say a tenth or so, told me their lives were better, had more meaning since they were burned.

A study some years ago looked at people who had won the lottery and attempted to determine if they were happier since having become millionaires. What the researchers discovered is that if the winner was happy before getting all that money, they continued to be happy; if they were miserable before, the money did nothing to change that.

I have worked with some paraplegics and quadriplegics and heard stories of many others (and you probably have, too), who said that their lives had more meaning and purpose after the accidents that paralyzed them than they did before and that they were, for the most part, happier than when fully able-bodied.

For 15 years I have worked as a nurse in an HIV clinic. There is a subculture of deep emotional and material support for those who are positive that many never felt before they contracted the disease. We surround them with help that they could not have gotten prior to having the disease and their community often gives them a level of understanding that was absent before.

It is a fact that nearly all persons who survive a suicide attempt report regretting the choice and having more pleasure in life and less of an impulse to further suicidal behavior afterward.

Of course, I am not saying that one ought to seek out being badly burned, poor, paralyzed, a suicide survivor, or HIV positive in order to find meaning in life. Rather, I raise these examples to point out a very basic reality at the core of what the Buddha taught: we do not know what is good for us. In fact, the Buddha in many places argued that precisely what we believe will bring us happiness is what is most likely to cause suffering. We are certain where happiness lies and we are often absolutely, completely, utterly wrong.

Since food is what this post is about, let's take an example from that realm: sugar. We think sugar makes us happy. It tastes nice, it touches a primitive pleasure circuit in our minds, it feel luxurious. But what we choose to ignore is that it also causes suffering of both an immediate and long-term nature. Almost immediately our insulin goes wild trying to accommodate the overload of sucrose and makes us feel worse. A craving for more sugar kicks in and this can in turn cause a cycle of binging that makes us feel terrible. Long-term, as we all know, it can cause many ills, including dental caries and weight gain out of proportion to the calories consumed as sugar. It is implicated in the development of Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, and heart disease.

Yet, knowing all this, we continue to consume an enormous amount of it. I am not speaking out here against any and all consumption of sugar: I am a fan myself and intend to have it every now and then once I am off the strict part of this diet plan. But I am trying to make the point that we are more or less clueless when it comes to what will make us happy, and sugar is a pretty good illustration of that.

I called this post Abascal Dharma, not because Kathy Abascal had this in mind when she came up with the plan, but because it fits so neatly into the idea behind the Dharmic principle of Renunciation. The Buddha did not believe in self-punishment or deprivation. In fact, he was a proponent (and an example) of the Middle Way between self-indulgence and asceticism.  But he also recognized the basic fact I have been pointing to here, that our intuitive sense of what will make us happy, what will bring joy to ourselves and to others, is misguided. We could speculate endlessly about why this is, why our most basic impulses are so off course. The theory most tossed about (and which has the greatest appeal to me) is that these predispositions are hard-wired into our primitive brains as a mode of survival that no longer serves us well. For instance, our strong affinity for sugar might be a residual impulse from a time when sweetness in food made it highly desirable for survival because it supplied sorely needed calories. Much as the fight or flight instinct in us was useful when we were a young species but now causes untold suffering, our desire for sweetness often leads to a sourness our hunting and gathering forebears could never have imagined.

There are many teachings of the Buddha, but the one with which he began, and which constitutes the core of his philosophy is that of the Four Noble Truths, which, stated simply, is that there is suffering and there is an end of suffering. He went on to say that the source of all suffering is craving, which is the desire to have that which we do not, or to not have that which we would rather not. This is where Renunciation comes in. Renunciation is in a very real way an experiment. Something deep down in us believes that if we do without something, a certain food, tobacco, sex, a shopping trip, alcohol, that we will feel worse. It seems intuitively true: something that makes me feel good in the short term must be good for me overall. But we know this isn't always true. What the principle of Renunciation asks us to do is to be scientific about it, to do without something and see if our joy increases or decreases. The Buddha bet his spiritual life that we would discover, as he had, that it would increase.

Abascal Dharma is understanding that during this three week elimination phase of the diet, when I asked myself not to consume sugar, wheat, peanuts, dairy, or dried corn, as much as it at first felt a bit like deprivation, is actually the source of a sense of freedom. Though I have made many good food choices over the years, I feel as if I am coming (slowly, gradually) to a true wisdom about those choices and how they influence my life. And how they can lead to the end of suffering.

Abascal

Those of you with long memories may recall that the original intent of this blog was to explore my relationship to food and what it meant to be a person who embraces the Dharma and is also overweight. I hasten to add that this was not a personal judgment, but an exploration. The question was not (and is not) whether or not it was somehow wrong to be overweight and a practitioner of the Dharma, but what the connection is between the two.

I suppose the first question really must be whether or not is in unskillful to be heavy. Does that seem like an odd question? To put it in context, one might ask a similar question: is it unskillful to be angry? At first blush, one might say that it is clearly unskillful to be angry, since it disquiets us so badly and often does damage to ourselves and others and the relationships between us. But what underlies the anger? Why is it there? What does it feel like in our bodies? What is the real meaning of the anger? In other words, what precisely about anger makes it an unskillful emotion in this particular instance?

What I was trying to do, way back then, was explore similar questions in my relationship to food. So, rather than asking whether or not it is unskillful to be a fat guy (it clearly is not), what I was asking is, does the fact of being overweight speak to a larger reality? Am I dodging something that I would rather not face and using food to do it? That, of course, would be unskillful, because it is resistance that leads to suffering and this kind of suffering leads us away from the path to ultimate freedom.

It's a complicated thing. As I have written many times here, food is packed with emotion and memory and history and comfort. Food is the first comforter, straight out of the womb, and it doesn't really change much for the rest of our lives, as far as I can tell. Though we begin with breast milk, we soon branch out to creamed peas and French fries, a trajectory that has the potential to end in the booze aisle. We continue to seek comfort and if we can't find it where we are, we will go on seeking it until we do. And because most if not all of these things cannot provide the comfort we crave, we are setting ourselves up for failure and further suffering.

Which all comes back to the question of Renunciation. This is also tricky to talk about because it can feel very Catholic, as if we are giving things up in order to be good (an appropriate thought for this time of year). But that is not what the Buddha was talking about. When we renounce things in this context, we are letting them go so they don't stand in the way of our happiness. Or, put another way, the very things we think will give us comfort actually have precisely the opposite effect. By distracting us from squarely facing what stands in our way, they exacerbate our suffering, somewhat like pretending a rapidly spreading cancer is just a few aches and pain, which leads inevitably to yet greater suffering.

And so, the Abascal Plan. Kathy started doing this a few weeks ago and had such good results that I decided to give it a try. Here's the basic deal: first of all, all crap goes, which really just means sugar, chemicals and overly-processed foods. Then, for the first three weeks, the elimination phase, you also delete dairy, wheat, dried corn, and peanuts. After the three weeks you add these back one by one to determine if you have a problem with any of them. If you do, they should stay out of your diet forever. And throughout (which is to say, for the rest of your life) you eat proportionally, two thirds fruit and vegetables to one third protein and/or grain.

The basic idea behind the Abascal Plan is that inflammation causes many of the health issues we experience and that quieting this inflammation by eating the right foods for our bodies will help us have more energy, less pain, and will lead to natural weight loss. Though I remain skeptical, I am hopeful.

So, I have begun (I am on my sixth day of the elimination phase). This post has already gone on long enough, so I will close here. But next time I will go into more detail about how this relates to my relationship to the Dharma, because that connection is very cogent for me, and I hope to make it so for you.

I am not I

I recently read a very good book about Israel. I won't go into that whole mess here, but if you are interested in what I have to say about the book, you can see my review here.

I have not been meditating as much as I would like recently. Life has become very busy.

Our bodies are entirely dependent on the health of our microbiome. There is a very good article in the New York Times about this, and about how antibiotics—those we take and perhaps those in our food—might be at least part of the cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States.

I had to fast for 12 hours Thursday night and Friday morning so I could have my blood drawn Friday morning.

I have become more and more amazed how much time, thought, and effort must go into the maintenance of a single human life.

What in the world do all these things have to do with one another? Well you might ask.

The Buddha spoke of interdependence as being the core of all his teachings. I remember when one of my teachers first introduced this topic by saying flatly, "You don't exist". I can easily challenge this statement, naturally. I can hit you in the head and then ask you why your head hurts if I don't exist. But that, of course, is not what my teacher meant. The Buddha's philosophy is unique and challenging in many ways, but this may be where it is most difficult and by far the most elegant. Because it's true: we don't exist. Not in any substantial or lasting way. And we cannot exist alone.

The odd thing is not the assertion that we do not exist as discrete beings but that we have ever thought we did. From the very start of our earliest precursors to this very day we are entirely dependent on plants to supply the atmosphere with oxygen, to take just one example. We would never have evolved as these particular beings had there not been plants. Period. We might have become some sort of nitrogen-processing organisms, but the nature of the beings we are is predicated on our ability to use oxygen and the presence of that oxygen is predicated on the existence of other beings. So, too, with every other constituent of our bodies. We are the product of stars, comets, bacteria, slime mold, flowers, and dinosaurs. The blood of emperors and slaves flows through me.

When we war with each other, when we claim territory as "ours" and not "theirs", we have entirely lost sight of our interdependence. Entirely aside from my opinion about the disposition of Palestine and the right of existence for Israel, not to mention the Russian claim to hegemony over Ukraine, when I have sufficient perspective to do so, I find myself astonished that we are still in such bellicose relation to one another. These days, it is amply evident that what will remove us from this earth is most likely either climate change or nuclear war, yet we focus on territorial disputes and health insurance. Never has it been so evident that we are interdependent than right now. If we do not take concerted and unified action to solve both of these problems, we won't last another generation.

My meditation practice is limited by the time I have available to sleep, which is impacted by the new position I have at work, which came to pass because of an injury to a co-worker. A relationship that ended years ago caused enough disruption in a girl's life that her mother, another of my co-workers, had to quit her job to spend more time with her daughter. The cruelty of a father, the coldness of a mother, rejection by a lover, failures in third grade and successes in high school—all of these influence the people who come to work where I work and limit how effectively they can work and therefore how much time I must spend there and therefore how much sleep I get and therefore how much I can meditate. Interdependence. In this context, I am interdependent with people who died before I was born and others I will never meet.

Need I say more about our microbiome (the internal microbiotic environment of our bodies, our gut in particular)? We are entirely interdependent with these billions of beasties. We would not have evolved to this state without them and would die overnight if they ceased to exist.

I take for granted how easily I am able to maintain this body's health. I also assume that my nice, healthy mind can function independent of what else goes on. Nothing like a 12-hour fast to put the lie to assumptions like these. I was irritable, could not think well, was fumbling and clumsy. It is astonishing how quickly we begin to fall apart without food. And from whence does this food come? I didn't grow it, harvest it, process it, ship it, stock it, or sell it. Literally hundreds of interlocking actions go into my breakfast. And if you consider that each being in the chain of my breakfast (cow, farmers, soil organisms, harvesters, processors, packagers, truckers, stockers, clerks, managers, executives, maintenance crews to keep all the machines and processes running, mechanics, oil rig workers, fuel processors and sellers, water engineers, research chemists, flatware and bowl manufacturers, and on and on) has its own interlocking chains of interdependence, then literally millions—billions, perhaps—of beings provide me with my breakfast, without which I am am mess before I get my blood drawn at 8:00 A.M.

But the Buddha's message, you will recall, was not one of chastisement; he was not trying to remind us where we come up short. His was and is a philosophy of freedom. He taught first of all about suffering, but only to teach the end of suffering. And the end of suffering is the end of delusion. All we must do is cease believing that which isn't so. And why not? Our believing in untruths does not make them exist—they still don't. So why not give them up?

That's the amazing thing about the Buddha's teachings: we have the choice to be entirely free today, right now, in this moment, and forever. We can choose that right now. Why do we not? Because we have so thoroughly incorporated into our consciousness the lies: that we are independent, free-standing, individual human beings with no need of anything or anyone else, nonetheless the whole of existence. We believe the lie that the problems of the world are not our problems because they are not currently on our doorsteps (they will be). We believe that the suffering of others is separate from our suffering. We believe that we deserve only good things and that when bad things happen something has gone wrong. And we believe that biggest lie of all—that we exist. But freedom awaits those of us who know that our molecules are only ours for the briefest of time, that we constantly interchange who we are with the rest of the world and they with us. We have no choice in the matter; it is who we are. But we do have the choice of whether or not we suffer.

Choosing freedom

I am reading the book "Work" by Thich Nhat Hanh. Sometimes I am disturbed by his writing because it seems to me rather unsophisticated—simplistic, even. But I think this is fully intentional on his part. What I am looking for, what I think of as sophistication, is a form of intellectual engagement which makes me feel as if I understand what is going on in the world, that I have a grasp of it that is somewhat superior to the average human. I know this sounds arrogant, but my point is that we do this very thing all the time, seek to be engaged on an intellectual level, at a level of sophistication that has nothing to do with true understanding. We try to live in a sort of academic model of the Buddha's teachings in which we begin with Enlightenment 101 and progress through the syllabus to Final Realization, the PhD of Buddhism.

But the Buddha himself rejected even the idea of "Buddhism" as being antithetical to his teachings. The problem with identifying oneself as a Buddhist is two-fold: it assumes that there is something which is not of the Dharma and it assumes that there is a class of people who are non-Buddhists. Both of these are fallacious concepts and do nothing but feed into the very egoism that is the core of suffering. So I think that the simplicity of Hanh's teachings is purposeful. This is the whole answer, he seems to be saying. Sometimes I can sense the Buddha smiling indulgently when I try to overcomplicate this thing.

Here is one realization that has become more real for me lately: the end of suffering is a choice, and not a particularly difficult one. Now, I have understood this intellectually for a long time. This is, after all, the core of the Buddha's teachings. But recently I have begun to incorporate this idea more viscerally. I have a choice, in each moment, for suffering or for freedom. Let me be even more clear about this. Nirvana is the end of suffering; that's all it is. And since we have it within our power to choose freedom, Nirvana, too, is within our grasp, right now, today, in this very life. No, but really. There is no further sophistication required and the seeking of such complexity creates suffering.

The question that immediately arises, then, is why can't we consistently choose freedom? What's stopping us? I sometimes feel I would like to march up to Dharma teachers and take them by the collar of their saffron robes and demand that they tell me the secret. Yes, yes, it's a simple thing to choose freedom. It also seems to be damn near impossible.

Of course, the answer is complicated. But it's only complicated by our twisty minds. We have been conditioned to certain ways of thinking and being in the world that are antithetical to freedom. And we completely and utterly believe in our conditioning, so even if we come to an understanding of the nature of freedom we still seek comfort from those things that cannot supply it. Recall that in my last post I quoted the Buddha as saying "Everything the world considers a source of suffering I consider a source of freedom. Everything the world considers a source of freedom, I consider a source of suffering." This is worth musing on. He said, "everything", not most things or a few. Renunciation, for instance, which simply means giving up everything that does not and cannot give us happiness, a pizza, for instance, feels like deprivation in the practice. On the other hand, the attempt to derive lasting pleasure from a pizza would be considered by the Buddha a source of suffering. But life is too short, we think, to give up such pleasures as these. Life is hard enough, isn't it? The Buddha would reply, I think, that life is too short to ask pleasures like these to give us true happiness and divert us from the path that can lead to the real thing. These create suffering, not relieve it, because using them to supply happiness requires that they be constantly renewed. No sooner have we had the pleasurable experience than it must be re-experienced to sustain the pleasure. The deep joy that comes from true freedom, on the other hand, is perpetual, indestructible, and ever-present.

Last week, I listened to a fascinating talk on this subject by Robina Courtin. She makes the case that what the Buddha called "attachment" (the grasping onto something that gives us pleasure, the rejection of that which is perceived as unpleasant) we might more accurately call "addiction". Of course, this is not a new idea, but she gave it new life for me. It is instructive to look at the destructive cycle of a true addict, say one hooked on crystal meth, where the craving is constant and implacable, to the exclusion of everything wholesome and useful. It is easy to consider ourselves entirely above this kind of behavior, yet Courtin emphasizes that "we are all addicts; it's only a matter of degree." This is hard to hear, but is precisely what I was speaking of above. Because we have freedom within our grasp and take actions that stand between us and that freedom, we must be addicted to experiences that move counter to freedom, otherwise, why would we do them? We are just like the meth addict in this, but we use donuts and Starbucks and cars, television and shopping and wine, sex and vacations and food.

Now, you'll have to excuse me. I am going down the street to buy some gelato. I'm then going to come home and watch the World Series. I'm sure these will bring me lasting happiness. Just see if they don't.

(After I wrote this, I really did go down the street to buy some gelato. They didn't have any of my flavors, so I had to settle for sorbet, which I like, but not nearly as much. Then on the way home, a bird shit on my head. I kid you not.

Well played, Mr. Buddha, sir, well played).

Put the Lime in the Coconut

My visit to the doctor last week yielded some fairly ambiguous results. I am, despite my best efforts, getting older (go figure). I have nothing seriously wrong with my shoulder, which is, of course, good news, but also means that all I can do about it is work hard with a physical therapist. Damn. One can always hope for a quick fix, eh?

My labs told me pretty much what I already knew. I am what I call "pre-pre-diabetic," meaning the labs that measure such things say I am not yet there—in fact not even very close—but am trending in the wrong direction. Whereas my fasting glucose was just barely outside the range of normal, I would not consider myself in no danger whatsoever unless my result were smack dab in the middle of normal. I find little consolation in a result that was just barely on the other side of desirable. As I mentioned in my last post, my HDL was also slightly low. That does not bode well for the future, either. I am only 56 so must assume that, if nothing changes, I will eventually be facing larger problems.

*Sigh*

Of course, my immediate response is panic. I must eliminate all bad foods, all sugar, all fatty foods, all saturated fat....Silly, of course, especially the elimination of saturated fat, at least a small amount of which is essential to my physical well-being. When the small mind is in charge, nothing will do but an all-out assault on the Problem, whatever it may be.

But what is most fascinating for me is the shift in my relationship to food in a broader sense. This has been the theme of much of this blog. It is clear that I, that most of us, do not use food merely for sustenance. It is a social force, a source of comfort, a pleasure, a joy. Fat and sugar are two of the surest sources of pleasant food experiences. Nothing inherently wrong with any of this, of course. But when one's health is impacted, whether that health be spiritual or physical, different choices must be made. And from the point of view of the Dharma it is in facing those choices that the rub comes in.

The questions become these: am I living my life in full awareness of my relationship to food? Or do I wander through life trying to use food to solve insoluble problems? Is my response to discomfort (pain, undesired emotions, stress, unhappiness) to reach for food, as if it could take this away? Am I, in other words, hungry for something other than food and trying to use food to feed that hunger? Am I eating with mindfulness or eating to mask things of which I ought to be mindful? In response to these realizations, am I going overboard in the other direction, into the heedlessness of obsession over "healthy" foods? (I put that word--healthy--in quotes because if I run after bodily health at the expense of my spiritual growth, that is far from any kind of health I truly desire).

The even more significant question is this: why am I doing all this? Why should I struggle to achieve any understanding of this or any mastery over these impulses if the outcome is nothing other than more struggle at the next level? The Buddha had a vital and unequivocal answer: spiritual attainment is possible for all of us, in this very lifetime. The impression is sometimes given that in order to achieve anything like enlightenment, one must strive for lifetimes upon lifetimes. This may be true. On the other hand, there are many stories in the life of the Buddha where he speaks a few words and people are struck enlightened, just like that.

Perhaps it would be helpful to define what is meant by enlightenment, at least in the way I am using it. Enlightenment is a state of being in which there are no preferences, no reactivity either for or against, complete and utter acceptance of the way things are. It is ultimate peace and serenity. But it is not passive; far from it. Enlightenment is total engagement in the ways of the world with a loving heart that does not judge but seeks to nudge others toward the ways of peace, justice, and harmony, all in the service of guiding them toward their own enlightenment and toward the enlightenment of yet others. The Bodhisattva (an enlightened being) does not sit idly by when violence, injustice, or prejudice rears its head, but works in ways that are loving and kind to change them, reflecting back their opposites (gentleness, justice, inclusion) as an antidote to the poisons that threaten well-being and peace. Enlightenment sees these unskillful mindstates and actions not as evils but as unwitting barriers to ultimate joy. Both victim and victimizer are struggling in a darkness that can be illuminated.

To get back to the question of whether it is possible (or even desirable) to achieve enlightenment in a flash, or whether it takes lifetimes: the answer is yes. Either is possible. Any time span in between is possible. But here's the kicker—as can be deduced from the definition above: one of the keys to enlightenment is not desiring it. Since striving toward this state is antithetical to the state itself (even the idea of "toward" is inaccurate), it is impossible to set a goal of being enlightened and then to work diligently for it. At this point, the small mind wants to throw in the towel and give up. What? A pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that I cannot work toward? Isn't enlightenment like the PhD of spiritual growth; I jump through enough hoops and pass sufficient trials and then am awarded the crown?

Well, no. In fact, desire is one of the barriers to enlightenment. So, what's a human to do? I believe with all my heart that the journey toward this ultimate mindstate beings with acceptance. We start there and work from that solid base. (A dictionary definition of acceptance I like: "to receive something offered, especially gladly"). We are as we are. Life is as it is. Reacting against (or for) any of it only creates suffering, divides the world into the camps of "wanted" and "unwanted", with us as both the arbiter and the one who strives incessantly to have the one and reject the other. The state of acceptance is a radically different way of viewing the world.

In my mind's eye I see a man who imagines himself in a pit. Out of the sky food is constantly falling. As they fall into his pit, the man immediately evaluates these foods as good and stores them away or as bad and throws them out. He does this constantly. He does this so assiduously and unceasingly that he never has any time to enjoy those tasty morsels he has stored away. His judgment is so clouded by prejudice and ignorance he often throws away the very best that is offered. What the man in the pit doesn't realize is that he is not in a pit. He is on a vast plain, infinite in its scope. He is in no danger of being overwhelmed by what falls his way; he can let it be. He need not judge what is good or bad, but can taste of each and find that which is pleasing or instructive or freeing. Some of what he tastes is bitter, but he need not reject anything on this basis. He can ask one simple question: is this nourishing? And he will find that all of it is. It is enough.

(P.S. If you find the title of this post perplexing, that's the prescription the doctor gave in a Harry Nilsson song).

Sugar

I have mentioned in this blog before the concept of renunciation, which is the Buddhist cosmology has a special meaning. Unlike the temporary giving up exemplified in Lent for certain Christians, renunciation in the Dharma is neither an abasement nor a sacrifice. Rather, it is a way of bringing to the forefront the ways in which we attempt to escape from the present moment into the trap of diversion. This form of renunciation can be permanent, such as my renunciation of meat and alcohol, or may be temporary, as a way of bringing these ways of thinking into sharper relief. A good example of this is a renunciation once taken on by the teacher Sylvia Boorstein in which she gave up purchasing fresh cut flowers for a full year. She truly loved buying these flowers, but had recognized the attachment she had to this practice and wished to come to a deeper understanding of this urge.

Over the years I have done some of what I call special renunciations, too. I once gave up ice cream for a year. Other of my renunciations have been more personal and private, but most have revolved around food. Recently I realized how much sugar has become a part of my life and have been contemplating a year-long renunciation of it.

First of all, it is important to realize that there are no rules to such a renunciation beyond those which are self-imposed. The Buddha did not say anything about the details of such a practice. For instance, though I say I intend to renounce sugar for a year, I understand that this can only be done within certain parameters, because naturally-occurring sugars exist in all fruits, vegetables, grains, and other food. It would be silly and possibly fatal to do away entirely with carbohydrates in my diet. What I use as my guide in such situations is a return to the reason for my renunciation. I must ask the question: to what, exactly, am I addicted?

Because addiction is what I'm really talking about here. This term can be overused, I know, but a definition of I like is this: an addiction is anything used as a way of avoiding the truth of one's existence. When thought of this way, one can see that such things as television, the internet, sex, shopping, focusing on the problems of others, exercise, gossip can all be addictive. I have certainly used sugar this way. This blog began as a quest for the meaning behind the reality of my inability to keep my weight within a range that is normal for a man of my age and size, and sugar has been a huge part of that struggle. One certain sign that this is an addiction for me is that the consumption of any processed sugar inevitably leads to a craving for more.

On April 13, 2011, Gary Taubes wrote a provocative article in the New York Times Magazine identifying sugar as a toxic substance. He paraphrased the pediatrician and specialist on pediatric hormone disorders Robert Lustig as saying that our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them." He refers to sugar as literally poisonous. Both Lustig and Taubes define "sugar" in this context as any source of sucrose (brown or white sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. They argue that the problem isn't merely that these substances are empty calories, but that the way our body processes them is entirely different from the way we process other sugars, and that the difference is inherently toxic.One of the ways in which this toxic reaction may happen is that the liver cannot easily process the fructose in these compounds at the rate at which they enter the blood stream. This inability in turn induces insulin resistance, which is a problem in both diabetes and obesity, both of which have seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades. Sugar may also be implicated in some cancers and heart disease. A pretty damning indictment.

My own addiction to sugar does not take the predictable form of sodas or pastries or such things. I am more likely to get my sugar fix from ice cream or candy, from cookies, candied ginger or cocoa, lattes and mochas. No better for me than those others, certainly, but a bit more subtle. Which is part of the problem.

Another issue is the degree of comfort I get from these foods. If I am suffering from insomnia, there is nothing that works better for me than to have a big cup of cocoa. Never mind that there is caffeine in chocolate and the sugar is more likely to rev me up than calm me. Mine is clearly a psychologic rather than a physiologic response. The same applies to ice cream. It is for me the ultimate comfort food, as can be deduced from the fact that I felt the need to do a year's renunciation of it.

When I first contemplated doing a year-long sugar renunciation I thought it would be fairly simple. Cut out the candy and the cookies entirely and voila! it's done. Not so fast, bucko. The more I looked, the more I realized how much added sugar there is in so much of what I enjoy. Which brings up another question: at what point is the risk of possible toxic effects worth the pleasure it gives me? Clearly, if one is consuming a six pack of soda a day, the risks are far too high. But a dish of ice cream once a week? What could be the harm there?

(Then I went to the doctor this week and had my blood drawn. Mostly things are fine, but my HDL cholesterol is low and the first thing I thought to myself was, "Do I have to be freaking perfect just to be healthy? *Sigh*)

The answer for me, and for many such contemplations when the Dharma is applied to them, is what I referred to earlier: to what spiritual use am I putting these foods? Am I trying to (ahem) sugar-coat my experiences as a way of not having to actually live them? For me, the answer is clearly, yes, quite often that is the case.

I'm afraid it will take me a while to figure out exactly how to proceed with this renunciation plan. I will share my process with you as I go. This won't be easy but, as has been observed by those wiser than I, very few things worth doing are.

Anxiety

Let me reassure you right away that I am not about to launch into some autoanalytical diatribe like last week's. But anxiety does have me curious.

Right now it is Thursday morning, December 13. This evening I will fly to Sacramento to visit my family. I do this every month, mostly because my parents are aging and I want to be a vital part of their last years, but also because I don't want to become an afterthought to the rest of my family, most of whom live in that area. (You would have to ask my siblings if "not being an afterthought" equates to being a pain in the ass). And this morning I am anxious. In fact, I have been low-level cranky all week. But here's the thing: I love flying. I love being with my family. I've developed a cautious affection for Auburn, where I spend most of my time. My brother and his wife, son and dogs graciously welcome me into their home. Things generally go smoothly. And so on. So...whence the anxiety?

I don't wish to equate this kind of anxiety with the crippling condition from which some unfortunate folks suffer; this is nothing like that. But my anxious feelings do seem to transform me into a different person. My resolves and disciplines (food, behavior, attitude, demeanor, meditation, kindness above all) seem to fade into the background as this ravenous desire to be comforted takes hold.

What makes me curious is not the anxiety per se; that's actually pretty mundane. What I marvel at is how malleable is this thing we call personality. How can something so routine cause me not only to feel these symptoms but to feel that I have been, no matter how temporarily and, in the end, insignificantly yet nonetheless truly transformed?

By Thursday evening, on the train on the way to the airport, a calm, warm, benign feeling overcomes me. All is well.

Throughout this trip (I'm writing this having now returned) I noted my feeling states and couldn't help but be aware that I go through a similar cascade on every trip: I seem to become annoyed at pretty close to the same time, get the feeling that everything is just as it should be right on cue, and so on. Because my monthly trips are so much the same (fly in Thursday evening, stay Friday and Saturday, home Sunday morning), and the things I do on those days are almost as predictable, it makes for an interesting Petri dish, a replicable pattern in which to see who I am, who I become at each stop. As I mentioned above, it really does feel as if this is not just a shift of mood but an entire transformation.

Which is just what the Buddha would have predicted, actually. The delusion is that we are ever some sort of constant and invariable being. We shift and change and respond to events. The risk of thinking of ourselves as permanent manifestations is that we will exacerbate suffering (ours and that of others) by trying to make it so, attempt to nail down the person we are and keep it that way. When I thought of myself this weekend as a creature in flux and that there was nothing in particular I needed to do in response, I suffered less. I also felt much less of a need to act out my discomfort with food or other actions. Just in the simple noticing of the fact of my anxiety, I also found its antidote, just as the Buddha said I would. Smart guy, that Buddha, eh?

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.

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.

What I Eat and Why

This blog began as a discussion of food and our attitude toward it, with particular emphasis on how the teachings of the Buddha (the Dharma) gives us insight into our eating (and vice versa, as far as that goes). I thought it might be interesting (to me, at least) to tell you a little bit about how I eat and why I eat what I do. If this holds no interest for you, please feel free to skip this one!

A few notes first:

• I am a vegetarian. Why: the first precept taught by the Buddha (I have written on the precepts here) is not to kill. You will recall that the precepts are not commandments and we must each make our own determination as to what these mean to us, if anything. To me, this precept means that no creature should die for my convenience or to satisfy a mere desire. You will note that this prohibition would exclude any circumstance where the death of another creature was essential for my survival (which is to say, I would not refuse meat if that was the only food available, nor would I eschew insulin or exogenous skin products derived from pigs or other animals). I admit to being conflicted about the use of animals for essential medical research, but in general I am not opposed to this use if it leads to the saving of human lives. I am aware that this is a moral quagmire, as I am thus placing the value of human life above that of other creatures, but the fact is that I do place more value on human life; that's just the way it is for me. I am not a vegan, as I have no problem with taking milk and other products from animals. As noted below, it would also be very, very difficult for me to get adequate protein intake without dairy. I also love it (especially good cheese—yum!) and have no intention of giving it up.

• I monitor and supplement my protein intake. Why: I was experiencing very low energy states a few years ago (more about that later) and one of the discoveries I made at that time was that I (like many people the world over) do not digest soy well. Not that it causes particular digestive issues, I just don't get the protein benefit others do from it. This is pretty common, actually. In combination with my vegetarianism, this makes it more of a challenge to get enough protein into my diet. I found I had to monitor my protein intake closely and every day.

• I believe in the use of supplements. Why: I am a scientific guy at heart and like evidence-based practices, but I think there is something to be said for the use of products with a long history of efficacy that nonetheless cannot be conclusively proven to be effective (I am thinking of such things as vitamins and certain herbs). This is an age-old debate—must we have proof of something before we can declare that it might have some usefulness? Are we simply wasting our money on these products or are they truly an adjunct to our better health?

So, here's what I eat:

For breakfast I eat some kind of cold cereal, usually. I eat something that is not too sugary, but still has some taste without adding any sugar or other sweetener. Now, I should say at this point that what I have done is figured out how many calories and how much protein I am consuming when I start the day with a particular cereal, since all the cereals vary somewhat on both metrics. This is easy to do in my case because (as you will see below) I eat essentially the same thing each day, with some variation built in. The reason I bring this up is because a lot of people think it is just too much hassle to track calories and protein. But, by having a chart of what a typical, basic day's measures of these two are, it is much less of a hassle for me.

I put about a quarter cup of bran cereal on my cereal, for the purposes of colonic health. There is pretty strong evidence that increased consumption of fiber helps prevent colon cancer. I also put a handful of blueberries on my cereal each day. The anecdotal evidence of many centuries suggests that berries in this family can boost immune function. 

I eat nonfat milk on my cereal. I also mix a scoop of whey-based protein powder with some more milk. As noted above, I cannot use soy-based protein powder, and a boost to my total protein is essential. My goal is to consume one gram of protein for every kilogram of ideal body weight. I have done quite a bit of study around this figure and, although studies and experts vary widely in their recommendations for protein intake, for me, 80g per day seems about right. This is also tied into the fatigue I was feeling a few years back—the measured protein intake is one of my responses to this.

I also eat a piece of fruit with breakfast. I am not so compulsive that I get all hung up on the calorie difference between different pieces of fruit. This is counted into my daily tally at a particular level and doesn't vary. Fruit is actually not all that nutritious, by the way, but does provide a complex carbohydrate to keep my blood sugar up. It also provides an extra amount of fiber (see above). The superiority of fruit over juices or even other sources of sugar has been exaggerated, though. Over-consumption of fruit can be a source of empty calories if one is not judicious.

With breakfast I take many supplements. I take 1000 mg of vitamin C. I know, I know, this has come in and out of fashion and recent science suggests that there is very little efficacy to vitamin C either as prophylaxis of common viral infections such as colds or as a scavenger of free radicals (purported to prevent cancers). Still, there was a time not long ago that I was getting sick at the rate of five or six times each winter, sick enough to take a day or two off work each time. When I complained to my doctor, she suggested that I try vitamin C and garlic. So, after doing some study on the subject, I started taking a total of 4500 mg of vitamin C per day as well as four tablets of garlic. I spread the vitamin C out throughout the day (it is water-soluble and taking too much at any one time means you are just urinating out the excess; it can also cause diarrhea at high doses). I also take two of the garlic tabs in the morning and two in the evening, hoping to spread the effects from that intake. And I have gotten sick much, much less since I started doing that. Granted, there are many other factors that could have caused this change to come about, but the temporal relationship between these measures being taken and the improvement in my health is suggestive to me of some causal relationship.

I also take vitamin D, 5000 IU every other day in the winter (less sun exposure) and three times a week in the summer. This was suggested by my naturopath after I went to him with my complaints of fatigue (my regular physician was at the end of what she could do for me). One very important proviso to supplementing with vitamin D, though: you must have your vitamin D levels checked at least yearly and more often when starting supplementation or substantially increasing your dose. Vitamin D can accumulate in your body (it is fat- and not water-soluble) if you take too much and cause much worse problems than the ones you are solving with it. You will also need to do your homework to determine the ideal blood level for you; traditional medicine tends to set the acceptable levels quite low. Recent studies have suggested that nearly everyone could benefit from some degree of vitamin D supplementation.

I also take a vitamin B50 tablet, which provides about 50 mg of most B vitamins, and a selenium tablet. These two were suggested by the LEVITY study conducted at the University of Washington about ten years ago as being efficacious for improved mood (along with exercise and exposure to as much natural light as possible).

These days I am also taking 1000 mg of organic American ginseng daily. I know, that's pretty specific, but here's why: an Australian study demonstrated that this type of ginseng was efficacious in providing feelings of more energy and improved stamina in a particular group of patients. So, I am running an experiment on myself, taking 1000 mg every day for a month, then 2000 mg (the dose recommended on the bottle) for two months, to see if I detect any improvement. Though my fatigue has improved a great deal, it is an issue that is far from entirely solved. I doubt this type of ginseng is better than any other kind, but am trying to replicate the study conditions to the best of my ability. I am nearly through the first month (1000 mg) and have seen no change.

Well, I got pretty wordy describing all that, and I'm only up through breakfast! I will tackle lunch, dinner, and my other food in my next post. I will also talk about my weight loss (the original purpose of this site) and where I stand in relation to that.