Status Report: 0555;102025;LUKE;N;DEASY
A week of food!
Getting uncomfortably public about addiction and mental health (and other random stuff) through unfiltered stream-of-consciousness writing [is that redundant?].
Introductory Remarks
Dear Zesters,
In last Friday’s post, Getting Graphic #57: Aye-I, we looked at a chart showing the share of articles written by humans vs articles written by AI. I thought it was a pretty unsurprising graphic, although it’s one of those things that is kind of jarring to actually see. I think it further reinforces my general belief in the future of the internet where it will pretty much just be a digital wasteland of miscellaneous information that our fleet of bots will explore to find relevant information for us. I do wonder actually if it will become more difficult for them to find that relevant information as the amount of information compounds exponentially. But that’s a reflection for another day.
Body
Food
So it’s officially been just over a week of regular food consumption—which has been great! I also didn’t exercise this past week and don’t intend to exercise this coming week—so it will be basically two weeks of “normal” food intake and no exercise to kind of let my body adjust to things. From there, I’ll get back into my normal exercise routine and kind of just see how things go from there. I will say it’s been an interesting and surprisingly emotional experience—which I’ll talk about more later—but overall I’m glad to be eating and I also think that I’m done taking the excuse that I’m just “not good at food” or whatever because I really owe it to myself and my wellbeing to figure out how to make relatively easy meals that give me sufficient sustenance to be at my best and to move forward confidently and energetically into the world. I think that’s the biggest thing there: more, good food should result in more energy and more vitality and a more robust existence—and I just totally was missing that simple fact. For some reason I was trying to force-trigger like longevity and health benefits by restricting food intake—and I’m sure that that works on some moderated level—but to do that for like 3.5 years I think was just pushing it too far and way beyond the point of short-term health benefits (like autophagy and stuff). So we’ll see how things develop here but for now I’m enjoying eating 3 meals per day and seeing where things go from there. I also think it’s interesting because in the past I’d like binge eat dessert or some gross like dinner meal relatively frequently because I had been hungry all day and was really looking forward to that one meal—and so that definitely wasn’t healthy. But now that I feel pretty nourished like most of the time, and I think I feel much less inclined to like binge eat gross food and so I think it’s a fun new normal of existing—that is normal for like most of the world and which was abnormal that I didn’t adhere to—which I totally get. So I know maybe all of this sounds silly or pretty basic and naive—but that’s also where I am right now and where I am in life—and that’s okay!
Exercise
I will say that this whole experience of not exercising for a couple of weeks has made me realize really how important regular exercise is, not even from a physical perspective but mostly from a psychological perspective. Like I feel so much more relaxed and so much better about myself when I’m regularly exercising. And it’s not even, again, about the physical components of exercise, it’s more just the repeated act of taking time out of the day for me and my wellbeing that really is what makes exercise important. So I think it’s one of those things where you’re most appreciative of the thing when you’re not letting yourself do it and so I think that’s been an interesting experience. I also think I’m in a relatively experimental period right now where I’m kind of redefining and exploring new habits that still allow me to maintain my physical health and wellbeing while also working within the bounds of new freedom and a new schedule and stuff. I guess we’ll see. But the point here also around eating is that I want to basically do exercises and physical activities that like strengthen my body and my mind and make me more resilient and stuff. And I think I was trying to build resilience through like intense and prolonged stress or whatever—and that’s good to some extent maybe—but really I want to build resilience through short periods of sustained intensity—and then build trust with myself that I can also take care of myself and give myself a sustained environment and stuff.
Emotions
The biggest surprise of the whole experience is how emotional it’s been—which has honestly been really interesting to me. I think when you take something as fundamental as food and you sort of radically restructure your relationship with that fundamental component of the human experience, it compels you to almost like question everything. Like how on earth could I have been so wrong about something so important for so long? That’s really the main difficulty, it just leads to some amount of like, pain and regret and then you literally only have the person in the mirror to blame. Like how could I do this to myself for so long? And I think that’s what I’ll really have to continue sorting through and grappling with—because I wasn’t like doing anything intentionally like harmful to myself, but it probably still was pretty harmful—but I was pretty fucking dug in, and so it’s just this weird like hodgepodge of confusion and distrust and stuff. I think it’s all probably pretty normal—but even though it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s normal to me and I still have to sift through it all and let it course through me and try to make some sense of it and stuff. I also think there’s some degree of, like, biologically, taking yourself from a position of scarcity and fear to one of like abundance and comfort with food—or like literally just getting your body out of starvation mode unlocks more higher-order thinking and stuff which is why all these difficult emotions can start to surface. Like for so long I basically was in semi-starvation mode and so I was like forcing my body to focus only on the most vital functions and stuff, and I think I was definitely unintentionally or subconsciously suppressing emotions in that process. And honestly in hindsight, if we’re being completely honest with one another, I think that the suppression of emotions might have been a main subconscious driver of the behavior in the first place, and sort of the reason for me doing that. And then I think also when things became more difficult in my life or when I was faced with adversity, then I sort of got a bit more severe with the caloric restrictions and stuff. Whatever. I’m sure this is all pretty basic stuff for relatively unhealthy eating, but it’s just so fascinating to actually experience in real time.
Control
And so then I think really what a lot of this comes down to ultimately is control—or something—which is difficult because I think there is some legitimacy to, like, focus on what you can control and stuff like that. But I think I didn’t really realize how much control matters to me and how important one-meal-a-day was to maintaining a sense of control in my life. And so I think control is an area that I really will probably grapple with for most of my life. Because then I also think you can probably trace a line back to my substance abuse years and also kind of relate that to control too, I’m sure, but more so from the perspective of I abused drugs and alcohol to like let myself let go and to cede control of my life and my mind to something else. And it just so happened that drugs and alcohol are the surest and easiest and quickest way to get there. I guess it all does come back to the “liberating the spirit” which usually I think about in a foo-foo-beautiful kind of way like when you’re creating or exploring or loving and stuff, but really it’s kind of when you get lost in yourself and lost in the world in a way that like is freeing—like liberation is freedom from the control of the fearful conscious-self, I think. And so it’s all kind of just adding more layers to my understanding of self and understanding my past behaviors and like why I was so drawn to drugs and alcohol and stuff. And then also I think control has been like part of my life from like my childhood—and I’m sure that control is how I’ve generally coped with any adversity and trauma and stuff—and then also I think I’ve exhibited control-behaviors in a manner where it’s like the only person I have to rely on is me or whatever—and so I think it’s like individualistic expressions of control. And I think just there are very fine lines between like unhealthy expression of control and self-possession and like self-reliance, and then like legitimately healthy wellbeing and self-possession and stuff. So I guess really the bottom-line is that the most important thing is probably like moderation and self-awareness and mindfulness and stuff—but that’s the most difficult thing for me to achieve honestly.
I also don’t think my own lived experience is necessarily super different from that of others’—and I’m sure there are those who also deal with control issues and stuff—and I guess really that’s kind of a pretty rational response to an incredibly uncontrollable and irrational and scary world. Because if the truth of our existence, most likely, is that really we have very little control over all that we experience and all that we’re faced with and so on, then I think we value most what we’re able to possess the least, if that makes any sense. I think it does make sense. And so we fight and push and we strive and we accept and we pray and we love and we fuck and we fail and we hope and we give and we take to kind of drown out the overwhelming sound of our immense fear and futility of our lives. But I guess that’s kind of more of a doomer take.
On Halloween
Last quick thing here, I generally don’t really love Halloween, but, a fun shirt that someone is wearing as I write this:
If you can believe in ghosts, you can believe in yourself.
Concluding Remarks
A lot of change going on in me life but also a lot of positive growth on the other side of that change I think and new frontiers of emotional experience and self-discovery and stuff—and so really I think a lot of good. My life lately has been defined by immense ups and soul-shattering downs. But I guess that’s the price of a nutrient-rich existence, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Have a wonderful beautiful amazing week! You’re awesome!
With infinite zest for life,
Luke