Day 76

Long time, no post.

My eye issues are much better, and I've managed to get back on a more regular schedule with the work-outs. The diet continues strong--I've gotten into a pretty good rhythm of cooking 2-3 times per week and storing everything I need for a few days (or more) well ahead of time. I haven't even touched the punch card for my local salad joint, which still offers plenty of Gong-Fu-y choices, in almost one month. Here's a recent meal, with baked tilapia, salad, and farmers market bread:

For the most recent mindful food experience, I revisted the earlier one--a nice, big fat cup--OK, a bowl, really--of sugary, syrupy nutty coffee over-load:

And it's sweet, doughy side-kick, the low-fat, high-carb bran "muffin" (which is, in its essence, just a cake):

The muffin seemed thicker and doughier than the last experience. I was eating it later in the day, so it may have lost some of its moisture throughout the afternoon (or it could also have been a hold-over from the previous day). Perhaps for that reason, it actually seemed sweeter. My teeth actually stung a little from the sugar onslaught. Likewise, the macadamia nut mocha seemed consistently sweet over the course of my drinking it. Again, about half way through the gargantuan porcelein bucket-o-java, I felt a satiation switch in my head flip to the 'on' position. After this, I had trouble keeping my focus on the flavors, which felt less delightfully sweet, and more sickeningly so. Drinking and tasting became a little less mindful, and a little more mechanical. (Side note--if you are aware of losing your state of mindfulness, are you really losing your state of mindfulness?)

The interesting thing about this experience was how I paid closer to the after-effects. I went to see a comedy show later in the evening, after doing dinner with a friend. I felt much more hyped-up early in the show--and defintiely laughed a lot more than I did later, after the unavoidable sugar-crash. And hanging out after the show, I certainly felt much less awake and alert. It's probably true that there were more solidly humorous moments early in the improv show, but I the blood-sugar crash definitely brought me down more than I would otherwise have experienced. In earlier times, I may have seen the crash as a 'problem' that needed a quick 'solution'--another hit of caffeine, another shot of sugar. Now I feel like it's OK just to go with the feeling, and act on it with skill by acknowledging the message, heading home, and getting sleep.

A couple months back, I watched the documentary that Deborah had recommended, about the relationship between humans, our primate cousins, stress, and social higherarchy. I've come to appreciate the role that stress has in pushing us towards unhealthy choices. The stress created by working on the lower-rungs of a job higherarchy, at the mercy of clients and supervisors and with little control over what you do and when and how you do it, drives us to seek out quick and easy dopamine hits via food, booze, cigarettes, even shopping for symbols of higher status--which are in turn produced by companies with similarly stress-inducing structures. Eventually we become sick enough to seek out real drugs, which a different set of organizations--legal and otherwise--is more than happy to provide. The temporary stress-solutions we consume therefore end up creating ever more problems for ever more quick-fix producers to 'solve.' Naturally, we can't escape the costs forever, and eventually we all end up paying--through higher taxes, insurance premiums, and hospital bills to support a far older and far sicker population than we otherwsie would have.

Granted, this is a bit pessimistic; there are always going to be real, unavoidable problems that benefit from healthy, creative and efficient means to address them (such as, ahem, innovative on-line fitness programs). But once we've addressed these, I think we should just sit back and ride the flow of the experience of that better life we've created, rather than monkey around with everyone else.

That's my soap-box speach for the week. Off to bed, and looking forward to another week...