Holistic without Fanaticism

I would love a holistic view of nutrition and meal planning that would allow a fluid life style. I am certain there are many people who can see into the food they are eating, make constructive choices, and feel the benefit through continuing health. For me though, the task of both monitoring as well as enjoying my meals feels daunting. An unruly child within wants the autonomy to eat on impulse. Yet a super critical voice echoing also from within, particularly as my body registers a myriad of painful symptoms, endlessly slaughters my selections.

I am bored with the cyclical fanaticism of food fad eating, variations of dieting, and the counter-balance of my spontaneous but dubious binge choices. There is no pervasive wisdom with the credentials to veto my desires, most authoritative sources are too easily undermined by antithetical opinion. Invariably expedience and pleasure win out.

Dieting in the Future

This is the time of year when people begin to plan some summer dieting plan... at least that is what my daughter and I are doing. My plan is long daily hikes and shakes made on my new Vita-mix blender. Though I lack any deep faith in my ability to lose much and/or maintain any loss of my weight, I still feel I have a health obligation to try. Perhaps in the process I will learn some miraculous psychological device for this tedious process or at least have a nice summer trying.

Meanwhile my newest interest in secular humanism has provided hope in a more scientific perspective on healing... Finding a balance between reason and solution outside of fad and quackery.

There is Little to Term Decisive

There is great joy in feeding my children, my guests, and at times myself... The art of cuisine a luxury of excess and access to such abundance. Yet too, there is so much despair, as I am so acutely aware of my lack of physical exertion, to counterbalance my gluttonous reticence.

Mapping

Making a map is a habit of mine, when it comes to dieting.

Actually hiking the course is another matter.

Eating Simple Yet Eating Less

Eating simple yet eating less, trying to make less complex meals that satisfy... yet also learning to moderate. Eating alone is tough because proportions are off. Mastering the shift, one day feeding a family the next for just one, moderating proportions effectively while extinguishing hunger... not easy but feasible... in fact essential to master.

Getting it right, so damn important.

At times

Maybe, at times, it may be best just to watch which foods make me feel happy. To try and befriend my obsessive desires, judgement-less, and carry them through in a gentle yet persistent awareness.

There are reasons for the duplicitous confusion I have for what I eat. Issues of history, biological needs and addictions, emotional strings laced through every scent, taste and texture.

So at times it is best to just wait and watch.

Meat rekindled

Red meat has inched its way back into my life. How much of this is good and how much bad? Too many variables now. My foray into raw veganism and the very believable radical fringe... what did I learn? What could be/should be integrated in... How much can I do, in the real food-emotional world I live?

Fear of Impermanence

When I wake, I can some days be drenched in fear, aware of the temporal nature of my health, tortured by my sky rocketing blood pressure, my inching up of weight, and a myriad of daily aches and pains... like yesterday mostly wasted by headaches and lethargy. Weight 125

Inside the Head of deadly dangerous

My blood pressure reads "Danger Danger". My actions reflect no concern.

Only today, when I am free to be happy but instead have a headache and emotional lethargy do I reflect on the data. Time to play through some serious maintenance for car and body. Cleanliness both out and in, with appropriate lubricants...

Is my only moderating mechanism pain and fear of death?

Happy or Sad, hungry...

Today is one of perfection. A holiday, perfect spring weather, all my needs, physical and emotional, met fully.

I wonder why I still feel hungry?

Still I eat more than my share

Glorious green, early morning sun highlights my bliss filled neighborhood.
Bacon and eggs on rice.

Perhaps It Works

I see, by watching, it is a diet I am on. Just... there is sadness in knowing the truth. Well maybe just depressing... but you get over it, and try to do better.

Eating is good, but surviving is better, and, for the chronic obese, anything and everything that prevents chronic over-eating is helpful.

Exercise is my next hurdle. A life style change is called for, but I am uncertain still how that will happen. I just never seem to have the energy.

Quite Frank

124 kg

Sweet Mornings

There is a gray blanket of a sky, here at 6 am, adding drama and depth to my flower pot rows. I feel today an affirmation to what it will take for this diet to reemerge out of winter. Moderation, calorie control by eating less in mathematically substantiated numbers... no more smoke and mirrors. Watch much more carefully what I weigh and how much I eat.

In The Morning

In the morning I made a stew, a curried mix with fresh snow peas, broccoli, carrot, scallion, left over noodles, some egg... placed over white rice. It did not go over very well with my children. Curry is not my thing. There was the remainder of my home-made whole wheat - white flour blended bread. Lunch was more of the same curry, while dinner was a fresh salad of scallion, lettuce, cherry tomato, shredded salmon, avocado, and white dressing. This, too, did not go over well for my son, though I loved it. He supplemented with natto and rice. We had my coffee and chai blend when my friend Kei visited, as well.

The food is not bad, just not successful. So much more needs to be done. Am I looking for a process, some kind of perfection, which just doesn't exist?

Less Shopping Not Better

I had wanted to shield myself to excess by minimizing my shopping, but this is only partially working. There is this strange dilemma of trying to plan unpleasant meals. How I can ever reconciliate myself to dieting as a life style still feels way out of my grasp. I just do not find low calorie, low volume, non-toxic (i.e. vegan organic living food) groceries, raw or other wise, as appetizing.

Orgiastic Moments

Reading Living Nutrition Magazine and VegNews, wondering about carrots in the fridge getting old, I discover I had bought eggs yesterday, had bacon, potato and onion... an orgiastic feast followed... topped off with strawberries and banana with a side of Coffee with Chai mix.

Though I read Cousins it is in my heritage of pleasure I take solace. Now I am over-full on my way to work. The complex psychology of fatties like me. My entire day mapped out in meals, taking time only for house work and rearranging my flowers... and my video-audio podcasting distractions.

How does all this draw into survival...?

Lack of Vision

I have no clear vision of what exactly I am attempting to do with this diet process. With out an ethical stance, such as Veganism, or a rigorous process, as my experiments in Atkins and Raw Foods, I am a ship without a rudder.

Why I need dietary theatrics, to overcome the stubborn hungry child that dominates my choices, I just don't understand. Exercise, too, still lays just outside my daily pattern. Planning a meal with a friend remains a joyful daily inspiration, while most other healthier options drags far behind. I like eating with good company... no other activity compares in attractiveness for me, certainly no sport measures close.

Sunday

I made mushrooms sliced thin and sautéed in olive oil and soy sauce placed over fresh salad greens, with small seasoned cheese samplings for the kids and I for breakfast. Lunch was two hamburgers with bacon for Zen and I, and one for Kai. Salad greens, seasoned with mayo, catsup, and a salt/pepper mix inside the burger buns. There was a late afternoon snack, chocolate almond candy for the kids, for me two chocolate eclair and Starbucks style coffee. Dinner I made a white source stew with broccoli, carrots, and bacon over white rice and a Coco soy milk.

There was no exercise, just a hang over from Karaoke singing and drinking chuhai on Saturday night. Learning my daughter had such a beautiful voice was well worth the following day's symptoms. We live well, just do not get the job of losing weight done, in such a luscious life style.

Darkness of Early Morning Home

Symptoms chase me, throat glands, sore throat, tense painful jaw... and so when I wake without pain I feel festive. I had a night where waking up had not spoiled the rhythm. Of course it is 5 am now, perhaps too early for the pattern of my immediate universe, but soon I will need to wake the kids for school. Time for me now to collect my thoughts, calm away the static anxieties that soak my nights. Time to shower, replenish, check laundry, make breakfast... All the details that make being a single father an art form.