eat light:

scratch that previous post (little lolcat pun there). it's neither diet nor regular soda that causes obesity. it's your friends and family.

:::yawn:::

if they ever settle this question, wake me up, ok?

i don't mean to sound all disdainful, but...like...duh. eating is a social activity. if you eat with your family and friends, you will probably be following similar eating patterns in terms of what, how much, and how often you eat. for example, my mother found it impossible to lose weight when she had teenagers living at home. why? because teenagers eat garbage, and they eat a lot of it. our house was always full of soda, chips, cookies, sugary cereal, ice cream, etc.--even if my mom didn't buy it, the shit was always around because we would buy it, and we were constantly snacking on it. once i was in college (i'm the youngest) and started eating with my friends more, and also started eating more healty stuff, my mom found it easier to lose weight.

added later:
but what i really find annoying about all of this is the normative, fear-mongering rhetoric. the NYT article i linked to above actually compares obesity to a virus. it's a contagion, so...like...if you know any fat people, you'd better quarantine yourself so you don't catch it!

gah! our culture already valorizes thin bodies and marginalizes (understatement!) heavier bodies. do we really need to heap more freight onto that dichotomy?

i've decided to try cutting sweets out of my diet, or at least mostly--i'm not going to get all hard core about it or anything. ;-) in the last 4 days i've had very little sweet stuff. i bought cookies for my students and had one in class on thursday (our last class). today i had an extremely small serving of ice cream from the cold stone creamery--i had the sweet cream flavor, and had them mix in copious amounts of raspberry. i don't drink very much soda at all, but i've decided to cut it out altogether (i think i last had a soda about a week ago). so far it has felt good--i don't miss the sweet at all, and i'm even feeling somewhat sweet averse. friday night i was out with C and L and had a margarita that was WAY too syrupy. i couldn't stand it, and had to stop drinking it.

(wow! i just heard thunder!)

i have also, tentatively, added a small amount of meat back into my diet. i mean meat from land animals--i've been eating fish all along, though not too often. i think i'm missing some essential vitamins that come from meat; i take a multivitamin and supplement with B-complex as well, but it still doesn't seem enough. i've been worried that i'm slightly anemic--i haven't had it checked, and i don't really want to start taking an iron supplement anyway, for lots of reasons. i've had a few small servings of meat over the last week or so, and i think it's helping. i'm being fairly tentative about it. trying this and that. eating it if i really want it, and not if i don't. it's too soon to tell if it's making any real difference; it might be in my head. in any case, i don't want to start eating tons of meat or anything, i just want to try allowing myself to eat meat again, when i really want it. i feel like really wanting it is indicative of bodily need, somehow. there's an instinct in there that i should trust.

(now it's raining...such a beautiful sound...with more thunder rolling around the sky. i love thunderstorms.)

today has been a hard day. i don't know what's going to happen. i feel sad and lonely, and yet i want to be alone.

so be it.

i think it's time i just went with my gut feelings, no matter what they are (speaking of instinct). i thought i had learned to do that a long time ago, but somewhere along the way i lost track. not surprisingly, lately i've also been feeling like i have lost track of my edge. i've grown too cautious. there has been a lot of loss and hurt this year, worry and fear...it's very tempting to retreat to safer ground, a more certain path.

no. that way leads to slow death. not the same thing as long life. certainty is an illusion, safety an empty promise. i know better.

went to the PCC early this afternoon. i felt crappy all morning, but i needed to get some stuff at the store so as to prevent myself from starving, and after some hemming and hawing decided to purchase a couple of turkey legs. i roasted them up and just ate part of one. with a little cranberry sauce.

i think my body has needed meat. more than the large amount of fish i ate at maneki on christmas eve. more meat than fish, i mean; not more meat than that quantity of fish.

funny, this is the exact time of year when last i "fell from the wagon" in...2002? 2003? and started eating meat more regularly again (this time i've been mostly veg since june 2005). i don't count thanksgiving, because i eat a little turkey every thanksgiving. to eat land animal meat at other times of the year is out of the ordinary for me, and i only do it when i've been craving it for a few days (which i have in this case, btw).
( more about meat )