… ambitious though my cause for worldly understanding may be, I didn’t take into consideration that I’ve been Americanized my entire life and may have a hard time immediately adjusting to just a drastic diet change.
Imagine that.
Forgetting the obvious fact that jumping from a 1,500-calorie diet to a 400-calorie diet overnight could take serious tolls on my overall health, I eagerly jumped on board with my Poverty Diet and found that vitamin and herbal supplements weren’t doing much to combat the EFFING CRAZIES that came around at about 8 p.m. By the second day the lightheadedness and drifting consciousness got to be too much, and, as Evil Slutopia mentioned I had to take my well-being as a parent into consideration.
I’m still trying the diet changes for meditational purposes, but I’m pacing myself a little better this time as, after all, the people I’m focusing on have lived with these conditions for a very long time and their bodies have become acclimated to taking in this amount of food. Even though many people are slowly starving to death, their bodies function differently than an American who is mostly sedentary and takes in 3-5 times as many calories each day. I have to keep that in mind if I’m going to keep myself functioning.
Right now I’m doing one rice-or-beans-or-oats meal a day and skipping snacks during the day, so I feel the hunger that was my intended purpose for meditation, anyway. I may move this to two and then three meals a day, but keeping my health in mind is my responsibility, second to Chloe’s.
It’s weird; this is another one of those things that I could’ve easily suffered through just a couple years ago. Greg and I have discussed that we’d definitely be willing to live a poor, bohemian, starving-artist lifestyle without question if we didn’t have Chloe to worry about, but I kinda thought that only pertained to life on a larger scheme. We’d think about that when choosing houses and neighborhoods and what she eats and cars, but I didn’t think it would affect even the little things like what I was putting into my body on a daily basis.
Hunh.
Wednesday, 3. December 2008
Oh good, I was worried about you. Don’t get scurvy!
I find that doing The Master Cleanse (there’s an actual book on it, not just the crap you might have read online about “OMG THE BEYONCE DIET”- it’s not a diet, it’s a cleanse) is a great way for me to re-evaluate my relationship with food, and with the culture of “chow down, wide load” that’s so ingrained in America. It’s 10 days where you’re still getting basic nutrients/calories (read: your body not going into starvation mode), but you only drink the same concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup + cayenne pepper mixed into a lemonade of sorts. It’s actually quite tasty. I do it once a year or so, and spend all my extra time when I’m not cooking/eating/obtaining food journaling, working on projects, doing yoga…. it’s a good thing.
Hugs!
Saturday, 6. December 2008
I did the Master Cleanse and while it is FANTASTIC, you should talk to your doctor before you do it. My doc says my meds make it a bad idea these days, but I did it in October of 2006 and lost about 13 lbs. I went from the cleanse directly into the South Beach Diet and it was wonderful.