Starting to Talk Diet Again: Fruit

 http://ulteriorharmony.org/?p=715

When I started this blog, it was pretty much a food blog, and pretty much a raw-vegan-oriented, gut-restoring/low sugar-oriented, permaculture/grow-your-own-food-oriented blog at that. I posted recipes more than once a week, I talked plants and herbs, I reviewed other bloggers' recipes.

That all stopped a couple years ago, and since then I've been almost afraid to talk about food because it's such a tricky topic tied in with my general health and wellbeing. It's true, I am somewhat of a freak around food, but through recent self experimentation I've come to realize that--in certain respects--my body isn't that different from anyone else's. And, since I do have a near-freakish amount of knowledge about diet and nutrition, it's time to share some of this experience.

Why else should you listen to me? My perversity and paradoxical nature, which leaves me tripping along both sides of any line in clay or sand (or macronutrient balance) and thus able to channel both sides. Consider this:

(1) When put under strong pressure to go inpatient this last winter, I drove across the country instead--and am loving my new environment!

(2) Having gotten myself out of an unprecedented and horrendous binge-purge cycle, I am now fasting (sundown to sundown) every other day (even though I know that fasting can drive eating if you're not careful)!

And that's enough for about five blog posts right there... 

Doorful of tinctures and potions--can't we just live on those?--but as you can see (bottom left) I still love carrots

...and I'll likely go on for at least five blog posts, as there is so much to talk about, so much to which many will relate, who wouldn't have expected me to be able to relate to them/you!

Today, though, I'm going to kick off with a renunciation of my ultimate redoubt of denial: fruit.
It's a funny cyclical serendipity that I was pretty much off fruit when I first started the blog, as it's the one food I've gravitated toward for much of my life and about which I've had almost magical beliefs. Renunciation doesn't always happen all at once. Fruit and its sugars have been controversial for as long as I've been studying nutrition, and as the voices grow ever more unanimous about the deleterious effects of sugar, fruit continues controversial. I've always so wanted it to be good and perfect...
I have believed:
(1) Fruit is humankind's most natural and ideal and perfect source of sustenance (cue Garden of Eden and fig leaves and happy bonobos).
(2) Fruit is easier to digest than anything else.
(3) (In my body at least): the sugar in fruit doesn't have the negative impact that other kinds of sugar have.

Myth (1) I really had to let go of this as soon as I studied any anthropology, but, more importantly, as soon as I became an arborist and tree carer. The truth:

Most fruit today is no more or less natural than any other man-made item, even as alive as it is. The peach tree whose fallen, bruised fruit were calling me and the clamoring craving colonies in my belly--none of its seeds could grow a fruit. The tree itself couldn't stand up by itself. Its fruit is so much sweeter than even drosophila can handle! It's analogous to those superbred turkeys that can't mate naturally anymore.

Note, by the way, "no more or less natural": two possibilities here: either (1) man-made = unnatural by definition or (2) anything man made is part of nature, as is man him/herself, so this peach is natural in the same way that a good quality home made bread might be.

Note, too--and this was the myth that I had to explode for myself: "natural" is not necessarily synonymous with "beneficial in your body" (am I really going to step on the "natural" rattlesnake?)

(2) Fruit seems to be easier to digest than anything else for me, and for the most part. I've gotten plenty sick from eating fruit too. How much of the ease is simply lifelong habit? And how much of the ease is because of the prevalence of simple sugar, in which case, is it feeding me or is it feeding a yeast colony? Some of the cravings I've dealt with recently suggest the latter, although I know that losing a lot of (non excess) weight last winter, moving across the country, and then doing a job that involved a lot of heavy lifting may have had something to do with that too. 

It's a great question to keep asking, literally, metaphorically, with every turn of the attention, every absorption: Who am I feeding? What part of me? Symbiote? Commensal? Parasite? (And the etymologies of those three words deserve a post of their own.)

(3) Dovetailing nicely with the "who am I feeding" question is the belief that fruit's sugar is somehow different (at least for me), that its packaging with vitamins and fiber meant it didn't impact blood sugar. I was a fruitarian for about six years, and it probably saved my life at the time, bringing me back from an almost fatal low. It's true that in practice, when I moved to Hawaii--fruit heaven--I found myself much better off with more avocados, coconuts, and greens... but fruit remained the ideal. I have fruitarian-oriented friends, and I sense a righteousness to their choice; it seems almost like a religion.

Especially with all the hard physical work, and all the fasting, I've had the opportunity to feel really hungry at times. And I started to notice that when I ate a whole bunch of fruit, I didn't feel any less hungry than when I started--sometimes more hungry.

So that's when I got a blood glucose meter and started obsessively tracking my blood sugar. And that's for the next post. I'll close with an openended question: which data are more useful: "how you feel after eating something" or "a readout on a meter (which has some margin of error)" (Obviously, the answer is "both," but how do you weight the two kinds of data?)

Three More Lessons From Business to Spirit, and Why I'm Not Going Away

Three more mutual lessons from entrepreneurship and spiritual/personal growth empowerment, and their story:

1. Surround yourself with people of similar interests, intentions, and consciousness. It's said we are the cross section of the five people closest to us. I have a hard time taking this on board because I'm such a loner, but I do also believe it. If you want to get better at writing, hang out with writers--on which, more in a moment.
2. Work around a "no." I'm not good at taking no for an answer. And--if the thing that's being turned down has merit and goodness in it, often the no can be turned into a yes.
3. Create your flow. "Go with the flow" is great in concept, but I've had to acknowledge that often I've gone with someone else's flow rather than use my own idea muscle or act of will. When I'm conscious and intentional of what I'm working toward, and when my actions are reflecting my intentions, the focus creates a genuine flow all of its own, and everything I do has an ease and rightness and rhythm to it.

Storytime!

Starting from number 2: our wonderful local author Miranda Weiss was scheduled to teach a nonfiction course through the college this semester. Not enough people had registered, so the class was cancelled. Some of us were quite disappointed by this, and I (and probably some others) wrote her to ask if there was any way we could make the class a go on an informal basis, maybe at her home. It turned out that the dynamic and imaginative campus director was quite open to having a short version of the course hosted by the college, as a noncredit offering. There were eight spaces. And so, yesterday, nine of us showed up for the first meeting of Miranda's class at the college!

Which illustrates numbers 1 and 2. All of us were there to write. All of us were there to learn from Miranda and also from one another; to listen, offer feedback, write both in the class and in between meetings. We all happen to be women, and we all live in Homer; but aside from that we're such a diverse bunch--all of us choosing to surround ourselves with others who want to write, to write better, to explore more, to write deeper. 

As a sweet synchronicity for me, I received two lots of feedback from my mentor yesterday too, both of them excitingly encouraging. The most beautiful thing about the past two days has been number 3: I've been having an experience of creating flow. Whereas there are times when days go by without my writing anything except a bare bones journal entry, and I question myself, "What am I so afraid of? Do I really even like writing? If I loved it like I say I do, wouldn't I write all the time?" -- the past two days, on the other hand, have been characterized by involuntary flashes of "Hey! I like writing!" and, when I write in my journal first thing in the morning and ask what I could do to make it a really good day, the answer has been something like "Write x" or "Work on y." 

Underlying all this positive energy and buy-in, there's still this niggling piece about my physical health. The "go away to treatment" chorus has gotten a little louder, and I've become a little more adamant that I'm not going. I'm the one in this body, most of the time I feel okay, I know pretty much what I'd be going to and it would really suck; and there's way too much going on right here right now, plus my next moves to figure out. I just wish there wasn't this one little apple of discord.

In the Flux

I apologize for having left things hanging in a scary place!
Since I last wrote, I have returned to Homer.
I have moved from far in the beautiful back of beyond down to town, house-sitting for dear friends, getting around temporarily without my car.
I'm not running sprints yet, but my energy does seem to be steadily increasing.
I have been harvesting what others planted.

Feeling grateful for the abundance, warding myself off from the disappointment and self pity at not having planted a whole lot myself this year.

In this intense and poignant time, giving humor its space, narrow though its berth tends to be in my psychic space--thanks always to the carrots.

I don't yet know what room or apartment, and what fellow-dwellers, will be in my life this winter (if you have the room I'm meant to live in, please let me know!) and, as with everything else right now, I interpret that it's my job to be okay with that uncertainty.

Kidneys are all about water, flux, fluidity and shifting; in the Chinese cosmology they're associated with winter, the season into which we're moving now. I suppose it might be ideal if that energy were balanced with a rock of security in my life now--of warmth, comfort and safety--but perhaps the lesson and blessing here will be to sink down and find that security and comfort in each moment that I live from boxes, packed and ready to move, each time I throw out freezer burned veggies that have moved with me three times now, each time I release my habits of buying in bulk and storing as neither appropriate to my lifestyle nor actually providing of any real comfort or safety. Each time I let go another specious tie to safety, each time I invite the universe to show me real safety. Sinking means finding depth. The water bloat from the IV that troubled me so much when I left the hospital barely able to do up my jeans dissipated in less than a week--a little flag that told me to have faith (and not freak out over engorged body). But yesterday I got stung by a bumblebee (first time for that) when working in the garden, so I have a little reminding reservoir of fluid on my right wrist. Ebb and flow.

On a good day, this makes sense! What is also there for security is the writing and translating. The writing which has gotten all serious and intent and goal-oriented and "thesis year of the MFA program" titled. How did that happen so fast? And why don't I feel any less of a novice as a writer? And now I must make time to write as never before, and yet not feel that I'm up to the ankles in time's spilled milk when I sit a whole evening and morning, as I did recently, trying to 'catch' a poem and get barely a pair of consecutive words down. My dictionary translating job is marching toward its completion, and in order to stay on track, I must translate a certain number of words each day, an intended lemma on which to close the day. As time bound and time sensitive as the MFA completion is, I somehow have to admit the space for the 'get nowhere' times, the times when the blank page stays obstinately blank, the times when the scribbles stay obstinately obtuse and uninspired.

As for this blog, I intend to continue updating, more frequently than of late but not more than three times a week. I'll be musing mostly about writerly things, I suspect, but also some on sustenance of other kinds.
Thank you for letting me share my voice.
With love.

Lament for Fall

"April is the cruelest month," they say--perhaps because it fails to fulfill promises, spring struggling to break out of winter like bubbles of steam trying to break out of liquid water. As for autumn? Many people's favorite time of year, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..."

thank goodness for the barges that allow us to ape that fruitfulness here

 In these polar regions, though, spring may be more exciting--think The Rite of Spring--visceral eruptions of fertility through ice. And here, for me, autumn may be the cruelest season. Were I still in CA right now, I'd be harvesting persimmons, just getting into oranges. Better not to even think about HI's harvest this time of year.

Here, though, fall is a paper-thin prelude to a long winter. We were harvesting cranberries in full fall colors in early September; in late September, blueberries through the ice. Before October is over, the convivial fire ring at our neighbors' (where we're house-/menagerie-sitting now) looks like this, the garden beds off to the left languishing similarly.

 And our garden beds are blanketed with thin foam (gosh this one's close to the edge!)

You see this dark cast to the light also: yes, "light" can be an oxymoron at this time of year. I like bright fluorescent light shone right in my eyes--except when I'm driving! It's true, the sun is so low in the sky that when clouds aren't in the way, it shines directly into the eyes.

 

We've been floating on the meniscus of surface water pooled over freezing ground; buoyed by warm south wind storms like in the last two days, floating from one house- and dog-sit to the next, soon to fly out of state altogether for ten days; also enjoying visitors, principally this wonderful lady: 

Phil's mom is 89, whip-smart, strong, full of wisdom and positivity around life. She brought a breath of the bounty of Oregon fall with her. 

Now, I'm trying hard to get back on track with work and, please life-force and all the angels, my creative writing, and so to pull myself out of my physical tailspin. More on that soon--I had to post my lament for fall first.

HAWMC Reflections--and What's Next?

Yes, I did!

It's been a month of transformations... 

...and, as I mentioned yesterday, of many endings. At the beginning of April, here's how it looked outside our front door... 

...and by a couple days ago, there was green on the ground and I was picking nettles for my green smoothie, sometimes able to go outside unbundled. 

There are still patches of snow in the shade even on our place though, and higher up and farther from the ocean, it's still deep.


I finished up and sent in my eight and final packet of the MFA year. The final for my course is live. Many people I know moved house; several got married. 
Turn and turn and turn.
And through every day of it, I wrote a blog post, faithfully but not always cheerfully following the prompts.

The Challenge, Response

There was more emphasis on the visual and pictorial in the prompts than I ordinarily go for, and I think that was a good challenge for me, pushing beyond my comfort zone. The whole thirty days was an invitation to exceed my comfort zone in a more general way, to write about "health" on this blog not just through sharing allergy-friendly recipes, but also through talking frankly about my own "issues." 
I've feared judgment, feared triggering loved ones or worrying other loved ones, feared that self revelation might be taken against me on a professional level, feared being perceived as courting the wrong kind of attention. I've been accused or warned of several of those things. But this challenge introduced me to bloggers whose whole focus is to write about the experience of having a stigmatized health condition from the inside. Some of my most powerful creative writing recently has come from that same place--writing that I haven't been able not to write. 
These posts have helped me gain some perspective on those more private, intense pieces of writing. And while I've shared those intense pieces of writing with a very few trusted friends, mentors and writing group colleagues, the blog posts are out there for anyone who chooses to read them. The responses to my writing, both private and public, writing, both private and public responses, consistently humble me. I've received frank, personal feedback, constructive criticism, some essential leavening of praise, and, best gift of all, the news that I've moved people or struck chords of resonance and recognition within them.


I've strengthened connections with a couple bloggers I followed before this challenge, and connected strongly with a couple new-to-me voices. A small regret I have is not having spent more time reading other challenge participants and getting to know everyone better--but then I didn't write a poem a day in April either, and consoled myself with the reflection that all the wonderful prompts flying around the blogosphere would still be there in May--as will the treasure trove of posts written in response to this challenge. Which brings me to...

What Next?

Well, as you can see, there's a band of fog on the horizon. "What's next" is not entirely clear to me.

It's hasn't been my regular habit to write a post every day: I've generally been on a four posts per week schedule. Although I enjoyed the daily blog posting, I suspect I'll step back to four per week once again.
With all the changing and falling and ending, it's hard not to see this as a more cosmic end. Right now, I'd feel quite content to ring down my curtain, call it quits--it's been a great show. But after I've caught up on some sleep, perhaps the desire to shape more words and share more experiences and sensations, will surpass the fascination with disintegration, with separating into my several elements and floating, washing, sinking away.
I owe you guys some recipe posts too. I hope it's not off-putting to the foodie readers that other topics are here to stay in addition.


What would YOU like to see more of on here in May and beyond?

HAWMC #4: Why I Write About Health; Dichotic Listening

Today's prompt is to free write for fifteen minutes on why I write about health.
First of all, I want you to try an experiment. This is something I'm having my Linguistics class do next week as part of our Psycholinguistics unit. Bear with me--I'll explain why this is relevant in a moment, and it's really interesting.
Go to this site: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Dichotic/dichotic.html and get yourself a pair of stereo headphones. Click to play the test. Ten pairs of words will be played, one word into each ear. For each, you should type in the numbered box what word you hear. When you've done all ten, you can click through to see what the pairs of words were. Why are you doing this? Because our brain/body wiring is contralateral, which means that stimuli on the left side of the body (including the head and ears) get processed on the right side of the brain, and vice versa. For most people, the areas responsible for language processing are located in the left hemisphere of the brain, so most people will hear the word played into their right ear, because stimuli to the right ear are processed directly in the left hemisphere, whereas stimuli to the left ear will go to the right hemisphere, and then need to be sent to the language areas in the left hemisphere for processing--slower than the right ear's direct path.


That's the theory. Now, why am I talking about this and what does it have to do with writing about health? Well, as I shared a month or two ago, I'm left-handed, but have some hearing loss in my left ear. I can never tell where a sound is coming from: it always sounds like it's on the right! So I thought that I wouldn't be a good tester for brain hemispheres because inevitably I'd only hear the word in the right ear. Well, I took the test. It turned out I slightly misheard some words, but that every single word I wrote down was (sometimes a slightly misheard version of) the input to the left ear! In other words, even with a hearing impairment, I still process linguistic input more quickly from the left side than from the right, which indicates that unlike 90% of the population, my language centers are in the Right hemisphere of my brain!


This is why I write about health. Not because my left brain (that everyone needs to get out of, supposedly) is actually my right brain, but because of the unexpected pieces we learn about ourselves, about how our bodies and brains work, if we're constantly engaged and interested in understanding it better. The fact that even a hearing-impaired ear still hears language and sends it to the brain gives me hope that no matter how damaged we are, we can still find ways to make the most important connections.


A dear friend recently said to me that creating art from pain is one of the noblest things a person can do. I love this, as there's definitely a debate within creative writing about how much the writer's personal experience should impinge upon the art of their work. The best art shouldn't be just therapeutic catharsis or woe-is-me breast-beating: it should integrate into the world in a way others can relate to. I have my secrets, like anyone, but I tend to be a very open person--throughout my adult life, various friends have commented that I'm sort of childlike in my willingness to discuss anything and everything.


When it comes to serious health challenges and diagnoses that carry potential stigma, I've been more cautious about "revealing all." However, many of my poems of late have dealt with those issues, including the poem that recently won a prize. The fact that poem had success validates for me that writing about health and health challenges in an artistic way can be a valuable form of art to make. The fact that poem may have inspired someone else in my writers' group to write about her mother's similar issues is even more important. I'm also working on an essay that's more directly dealing with specifics of health challenges, stigma-bearing diagnoses, and the process of coming to terms with them. I've found myself shy of reading the more "personal" aspects at my writers' groups, and yet I am compelled to write the essay, so at some point I'll have to read it aloud too. 


I am compelled to write it, in part, because I have some hope that it may help someone else at some point. I should also acknowledge my dad (whose birthday it is today) for a role in why I write about health. When I was almost dead, at my lowest weight, I went back and stayed with my parents for a few weeks. He said to me at one point, "If you survive this, you will have so much experience and wisdom with which to help other people." I don't know about the "wisdom" part, but I definitely have experience! And the best way I know of to help other people is through my writing.

Why do YOU write about health?

Bargaining for My Autonomy, End of the Chocolate Streak ("50 First Weeks")

A new week, a new opportunity to set intentions for the best. Still snow everywhere, but more thaw than freeze, and some brilliant sunshine. Made it down to the beach for a sunset hike, and there's very little snow down there...but worrying amounts of erosion.  

This week brings a very serious and challenging resolution imperative. I mentioned an ultimatum from my Naturopath in my last post. What's at stake is nothing short of my own autonomy and ability to be out in the world. This is a bald and alarming threat to face. When a person is overextended and under a lot of stress, it's not that abnormal for her to pull several all-nighters consecutively, use a lot of caffeine, and fail to eat adequately or take prescribed medication, is it?


What my ND told me was that my doing so, given my health conditions, is creating a potentially dangerous and life-threatening situation, and I had to admit that he wasn't sensationalizing or exaggerating: it was the simple truth. So, I have a contract with him agreeing to a prescribed bedtime, agreeing to abstain from caffeine, agreeing to take medications. (There's probably something about food on there too, but I don't listen to anyone else when it comes to food.) 
And I still have to get all my work done without staying up all night!


I feel torn between recognition that this agreement is going to save my life and health, and irritation that I have to agree to go to bed like a little kid and not just do as I please! But since I recognize that what's at stake is my autonomy, my ability to live my own life in my own home, and the alternative is so distasteful, I have given up a little of my autonomy in order to preserve the major part of it. And I realize that really, as momentous as all this might sound, it's just like any other part of life. Not one of us is truly autonomous. I write this blog because you will read it. Even my most independent actions, like solo hikes in the wilderness, are having or will have an effect on someone at some time. Most people work at a job that makes demands on their freedom, so that they're free to do what they want with the rest of their lives.
This week I intend to examine the ways in which I am dependent and interdependent with everything and everyone else in my life.


This post is also an explanation of why there probably won't be many more "chocolate" recipes on here for a while. Speaking of which, if you enjoyed the brownie bite recipe I just posted, please check back, because I edited to add an ingredient I'd forgotten from the list! I've written so many times before about not being able to have chocolate, and have posted all kinds of chocolate alternative recipes. But on my recent caffeine kick, I've eased up on the ban, hence the brownie bites recipe; a typical recent lunch has looked like this: 

An apple, a carrot, and a smoothie made out of fresh local snow, spinach, spirulina, stevia, and cacao powder, with cacao nibs on top. My Naturopath says a tiny piece of chocolate occasionally is ok, but throwing cacao powder into smoothies made of nothing else but ice and greens every day is not.


So, time to make some changes here--I love my freedom, so I'll trade a little freedom to keep it, right?

How do you trade your autonomy in order to have your freedom?