An Experiment (and Breakfast!)
14 Jan
As my friend Eric said in a post on his blog the other day, “when you change your diet, suddenly things you used to eat/drink are totally disgusting”. After an experiment gone horribly awry the other night, I have come to believe this is absolutely true.
For all one of you who follow my blog, you may know that I’ve made a concerted effort to stop eating like the inhabitants of the movie Idiocracy. That’s right folks, no more Flaturin “Hand-to-Mouth Goodness”. I’ve been subsisting mostly on yummy home-made meals, low in carbs, high in fat and protein, just like Mamma Nature intended us to eat! Every weekend or so I’ll go out with my dad and have a nice restaurant meal, but lately I’ve been eating very cleanly.
Last night after a little workout and Kung-Fu class I went out to dinner with some friends to the local McCormick & Schmick’s, where they have a quite-nice “Happy Hour”, which consists of extremely cheap food from 9-11pm. Since I had been eating rather well for the week, I thought I’d reward myself with a little restaurant fare. I ordered a pretty large amount of food (Burger, BBQ Sandwich, Chicken Satay, and Buffalo Wings), but nothing out of the ordinary volume-wise for me.
From the first bite, I could tell that something wasn’t right. The food didn’t really taste that good to me, but I was hungry enough to keep eating it. After all, I’d ordered it! About halfway through the first item, I started wishing I’d ordered less. After I finished, I started wishing I’d passed on the food in the first place.
I felt bloated, not clean and energetic like I do when I cook my own food. I didn’t even derive any pleasure from the act of eating it. It just didn’t taste all that good to me. I think when I do eat restaurant food from now on, I’m going to make sure that it’s high-quality. I’m not sure what sort of meat they were making a 1/2lb $2 burger with!
It just goes to show, living your life by a different set of rules requires discipline and the willingness to eschew convention and even be looked upon as ‘weird’ by others. I feel that it’s a price I’m willing to pay for the added longevity, health, and happiness that I feel now compared to even 1-2 years ago.
Today I’m fasting, somewhat to cleanse myself, and I’m a little overdue for my twice weekly fast. Let’s see if the three cups of black coffee I had for breakfast will get me through ’til 9PM! I suspect Crossfit will be rough today…
This too has started happening to me… which is good, because it helps stay away from the bad show-me-where-it-touched-you-on-this-doll food I am known to eat.
I can’t believe I am going with what I just said. I’m terrible.
You know, it just goes to show you that the human body is an amazing thing, adaptable to a wide variety of circumstances, even if those circumstances aren’t “optimal”. It’s like boiling a frog. As children we’re taught to eat a certain way, and our bodies eventually adapt to it as “normal”.
I have seen a study (but cannot recall where) that the difference between someone who is extremely healthy and someone who is extremely unhealthy could actually be seen as a difference in speciation! This means that adaptations to a bad diet are almost the equivalent of changing your phenotype to that of a different species! Absolutely amazing.
The great news though, is that all the damage we do to ourselves is reversible. I can imagine a time when I wouldn’t have told the story in this post, the food I ate would seem absolutely normal to me. Now I’m attuned to a more natural, healthy way of eating that is more in line with how (evolutionarily) we are supposed to eat.
Looking back now, everything else seems so abnormal. I can’t fathom at this point, for instance, sidling up to the taco bell and ordering from the .99c menu anymore. It seems strange and not even food to me.
I think we would all do well to avoid the “bad touch” food that gave us the “cold pricklies”, and strive to eat food that gives us the warm fuzzies instead