Dietary experiments

On October 5th, Steve Jobs died. On October 24th his biography was released, and I of course started reading it immediately.

Monday October 24th was also the day that I started my three-week detox program. It’s a program called Clean, described in this book by the same name.

It’s been fun reading the book and experimenting with diet myself at the same time. This weekend, I’m doing a brief 2-day fast.

Pushing your own boundaries, having different experiences, challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone, your normal routines, is always interesting. It has changed mt relationship with hunger quite a bit. I have learned about sensations and feeling which I thought were hunger, at turned out to be something else. I have not had ant alcohol for over six weeks now. That hasn’t happened before in the past 20 years.

Part of the idea in the clean program is the elimination diet, which badically just means avoiding all sorts of things that may be toxic or cause allergies. This includes things like sugar, alcohol, flour, cof, but also strawberries, tomatoes, bell pepps, beef, pork, and so on.

Yesterday my son turned four, and I cooked the meat sauce for the lasagne and went to pick up the ice cream dessert. Me, I just had carrot soup and water, while the others gorged. It felt fine, actually. Happy not to be drinking wine and eating ice cream. I would have liked to taste my own lasagne, though :)

There’s so much food you can’t eat. The parts of the lasagne I could eat would be the carrots, onions, and the spices in the sauce, and the rice milk that we based the bechamel sauce on. The mest, the tomato sauce, the pasta sheets, the red wine in the sauce, the flour, and the parmesan cheese on top are all out.

But I did learn how good it can feel to not have a stuffed belly busy digesting food, and that a roast actually makes me feel horrible.

I think the bigger aspect in all of is is to just break away from the way everyone else does things. Just because almost everyone in our society eats a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the right way or the best way. In fact, it’s almost certainly bad. I remember someone saying that if you want success, look at what 99% of the population is doing … and do the exact opposite. It makes sense. Most people you look at do not have enviable lives.

I saw something on Facebook today. It said:

In some countries it is illegal to have sex outside of your marriage. In some countries it is illegal to eat pork. In some countries it is illegal to drink alcohol. In Denmark it is what we do every year during December. It is called “julefrokost” (Xmas lunch)

Denmark is a morally corrupt country. And so are many other countries.

The diet thing is huge, when you look at the bigger picture. Our eating habits mean so much for our health, how well we sleep, how much energy we have. And there are huge industrial economic interests in keeping people addicted to sugar, alcohol, caffeine, so that we will keep buying these foods that are cheap to make and have a shelf-life of forever, and so we will get sick and need patented medications to treat our symptoms, while we keep doing the things that make us sick. It’s a great business model, as long as we don’t wake up and break out of the pattern.

Morale of the story: Don’t do what e people around you do just because they do. Experiment, try different things, get out of your rut, and see what happens.

Paraphrasing Steve Jobs: Life is short. Don’t waste it living with the results of other people’s thinking.