Spring Salvation

This has been a long and emotionally challenging Winter.... as has been my conscious 'un-participation' in this blog. In fact, I came close to destroying all records of my struggle.

Firstly, instead of using this time to lose weight, I rebounded back to my highest weight ever. I seemed to languish in a self-destructive pattern of over-eating and avoiding motion, knowing full well I was manifesting symptoms of a depression. As my body manifested the sickly physical symptoms of obesity my emotional fatigue and social self-conscientiousness festered.

There are personal events that I might attribute this to, but that would be unfair, as I believe in 'taking responsibility for my actions' (and in this case in-action). Therefore I will take this time to try and analyze my behavior.

I began by genuinely attempting a raw vegan style cleanse. While my intentions and initial actions were both genuine and extravagant, flaws appeared and undermined my progress quickly. The pendulum swing between my 'Natural' cultural diet (i.e. meat and potato fast food, American raised in the 50's heritage) and the enviable ideals of the New Age 'Natural Vegan' diet, remains absurdly wide and profoundly ludicrous. I am unhappy on either end of the spectrum, and shaken even in the middle. I do not trust nor fully believe the radical claims of conspiracy and psydo-science professed by the left and intrinsically mistrust the established nutritionists and marketers on the right.

In my fantasies I hunger for a support group where I might eat in peace... yet what I love in most indigenous food cultures is less than what is best for me, and the dietary lifestyles of dietary scarcity, where I might again rediscover health and physical potency, all leave me feeling desperately out of sync. I feel inordinately hopeless and ashamed, having tried so many paths short of my goal. My website and personal history is a burial ground of failed methodologies.

There are moments in most days when I make a gesture toward moderation and pro-action, but these are all so short of what is needed. Thus the parallel to depression is obvious. I would so much like to fall into a pattern of healthful behavior, when what is really needed is a climb up into a precise long-term commitment, to what inevitably would be a brutally uncomfortable sacrifice.

A commitment and sacrifice which must span a longer time then I am presently prepared to make. Yet my survival depends on it... Witness the downwardly spiraling logic of the defeatist. How much I'd love to blame someone besides myself, to be swallowed up in a cult who would lavish me in supportive sensuality while purging me of all my addictive patterns. But instead I am being asked by circumstance to heal myself.

How tedious reality... how unmovable... how frightfully real. How the hell can I beat this looping mania?

Life Time Leads to Now

A year old Victoria Boutenko podcast (a celebrity in the raw food movement) plays on this computer, as I mentally try and prepare for a raw vegan cleanse. I will do this purge starting next week, on January 6th. I just need to do something to help myself... already I have begun to revisit the research material of the last two years. I will meticulously coordinate my eating for 21 days. Needless to say, already I feel my resistance building. Already I have had odd mood swings and obsessive oral fixations.

I have been struggling with food and exercise all my life, never quite getting it right. I have my eyes now on a retreat to Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, run by Gabriel & Shanti Cousens in Patagonia Arizona. Cousens is another celebrity in whole food circles. It will be helpful seeing his operation, spending time alone with my thoughts and feelings, and experiencing their eating rituals. I hope I can draw my resources together to allow this to happen in the coming months.

Quietly talking to oneself

There is the slight airy hum of a hard disk on my desk. The house is quiet with my two teen children relaxing during their winter-break holiday. Hieidaira, where we live, is usually always fairly quiet during the day and I have done what I can to insulate my bedroom studio from the harsher street sounds of roaring engines and barking dogs.

I love having this time to update my website sections, reflect, and refocus on the core issues in my fast paced life. Fast paced only from the perspective of a turtle slow consciousness, a mind that hardly learns and must spend time recycling lessons over and over again until they sink in.

Today, despite a rather usual meaty concoction for breakfast, I reevaluate the merits of a 'living food' holiday, away from the destructive eating patterns I normally consume. Doctors have doubled my blood pressure medicine with the all too often repeated caveat, all I really need to do is lose weight. Exercise and moderation will work wonders to restoring my health and prolonging my life.

So daily, I hear a voice inside asking, why I hesitate to rise up and move, why I hesitate to bring a higher level of awareness to my eating choices. This resistance is a childish residue hardened into habit, yet it is for me, a key psychological battle. Whatever forces spun me into 'living foods' last year to take a 'Living Food' retreat to Puerto Rico with my children and equally cynically drew me away this year, returning all my old nasty physical symptoms, again need confronting.

This suggests a couple very pleasant, though deeply challenging puritanical programs, of overt counter measures. One or two specific planned campaigns back to normalcy (healthy normalcy verses habitual self-abuse) could launch me into a better year, allowing a more positive self image and less fear of my early demise.

I rightly fear too early and too bitter a death, in the shadow of my mother's legacy. I need to be proactive in very pragmatic ways, to allow exercise and nutrition back into my life. To allow myself to again feel handsome and healthy, virile and fluid...{to be my best, so I may do my best, to those whom I love including myself}.

No martyrs permitted, shape up or painfully watch this ship of life sail without me.

Should I care?

Taking care, being one's own care giver, TLC (Tender Loving Care)... I am left with the dilemma of loving the man I am being placed in charge of, an adamant over-eater/under-exerciser. The cure of addiction is one firm 'cease and desist' order. The options are what?... some imprisonment scheme, some maintainable vigil, some powerful plan to override tendency (to eat everything, any chance I can, while hardly ever moving my butt) for solution (NOT to eat everything, any chance I can, while frequently moving my butt). How does this fox watch the hen house, when hens are what I live for?

Today a Crystal Clear Saturday

That feeling of over full. That distance, where my mind skips among tangents. Outside is so clear. A large box on the kitchen table sent from grandma in Saitama. Kai asleep in her friend's house, where math help was the pretext while solidarity and friendship more likely the inspiration. Zen is now hidden away in his bed has awakened and come up to use the upstairs toilet. The sweet silence of Hieidaira on a sunny Saturday late morning. I have been up for hours moving between podcasts, sorted microphones and cables, cleaning dishes, stuffing my face, napping, watering plants, folding laundry, all the gestures that slice my time into manageable distractions. All I have planned is to make some kind of movie to document our life here for my dad, and later meet a friend. Monday is sports day here in Japan. I am off. My life is a mystery, my obsessive behavior some textbook model for lessons being taught on another planet. A strange disturbing odor whiffs through my window. Is it vent gas, a dead cat, or a rancid planter.

Frankly, I haven't a clue

I take great joy and a considerable amount of pride in making appetizing and fairly nutritionally balanced meals for myself and my kids. I love an audience, so I welcome having a guest or my kids home to prepare a meal.

My one year exploration into alternative food patterns, from Atkins to raw veganism, has unfortunately produced no lasting radical alternative. Instead I have reverted back to childhood standards and patterns, though with a bit more insight into nutrition.

My flirtation with exercising side shows has been even less transformational. My only lasting, so far, physical activity outside the home has been gardening... though, even here, less than physically demanding. Right now I have some over-elaborate idea of having a bike mounted to my car, which I would use to commute to work after driving down the mountain and parking.

A more practical solution might be to take a bus to a bike. Unfortunately, because I work in a completely different location every day of the week (and sometimes at great distances) this idea will most likely never come to fruition. Using mass transportation alone would be a major improvement, though considering the life style change necessary, I can't see this happening any time soon.

Surreal Progression; Spinning Wheels

Briefly I maintained a goal, yet so short lived. The matrix of self-management is beyond me. Yet I am playing with alternatives in a desperate dance of confused values. There is a bizarre blend of being aware of the religiosity of diet yet having no solid alternatives. There is no secular vision, dominated as I am in my aesthetic bound lust of preference... taste over truth. Creamy meaty fantasies makes food a daily play land of inconsistencies and frustration.

There is no trust in the captain of my being i.e. me, wishing I had the naive faith of a twelve-step advocate. A God I could lean on, to win the mind game.

Master Cleanse

"Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days" by Peter Glickman, sounds ridiculous, yet a friend recommends this 'Lemonade Diet' and I am so in need of a fast... and I have the perfect window for a cleansing. Two weeks before my next physical check for my hemorrhoids. This is an excellent opportunity and will allow me a chance to prepare for school as I reflect at home. Let’s see where this leads me.

Old Age ain't for Sissies

The title is a quote from my Dad. I just took gout medicine. Decided to take it out of storage as meat eating resumed that tingling feeling in my toes. I also took my blood pressure medicine, medical reports made that eminent. I am in pain from broken hemorrhoids. Humidity fills my room despite my air conditioning as a typhoon circles through Japan. Is it wasted time this perpetual maintenance of car, home, body and job? Surely there is a more efficient way... or is it a matter of slow walking acceptance?

I'm Confused... even with the obvious.

Words are flowing over the bridge of my nose in a cacophonous deluge. Having just finished the latest and last Harry Potter novel I am sufficiently satiated, balancing that against my ferocious appetite for heady podcasts and stacks of non-fiction. My only distraction is the kitchen below my academic retreat. The heat makes as useful a rational for nonphysical exertion as the cold, yet my waste now makes my newer fat man pants pinch.

My occasional life necessitated exertions, like a walk to a bus stop or moving a bit of furniture, has me each time in a near cardiac emergency, making me feel it is 'just a matter of time'. Just a matter of time, until I must choose between life in pain or a life in healthy living. Both are not appetizing, and my appetite is what all this is about.

Just Is

Lust for meat settles in like a lamentable obsession.

Time is Getting Right

I have no excuse, no reason except I have to, and all of it just leaves me where I am.

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