Falling
Two months before the date of my Alcatraz swim, I gave up eating meat and dairy. If you know me, you know I’m a big meat eater. I’m not here to convince anyone to go veggie. Make your own decisions. But I want to share how I got from there to here.
But first. My Meat-Eating-Resume.
My appetite is legendary. Over the years, it’s resulted in many gross feats of consumption.
In college, I’d regularly eat 6 Spicy Chicken Sandwiches from Carls Jr (because … hey … they were $1/each and I could … and I was staying up all night to work … and it was a comfort). Similar deal with In ‘n Out. I’d eat 2 double doubles, animal style, with 2 fries, and a beer.
After college, I matured a bit. Just a bit though.
At a steak house, I would polish off 2 whole racks of ribs. I knew to order 2 entrees at once, otherwise I’d be too full to finish the second one by the time it came.
Once … I still can’t believe I did this … for thanksgiving at a friends house, they had a scale in the kitchen. So we decided to weigh in before and after the meal. I outflanked my friend (who weighed 1 pound more than me), with a delta of 6 lbs over the course of the meal. Then I felt terribly sick, and laid down until I fell asleep.
Leading up to my diagnosis, as my health declined, I reached for comfort food again and again. I’d regularly eat double Super Duper Burgers, which I think weigh in at 2/3 lbs … after they cook it.
So. Back to the swim.
I’d been training for a few months, and was trying to make sure to feed myself properly. I was actually pretty conscious about caloric restriction, but tried to make sure I got enough protein after a workout.
As a treat, sometimes my girlfriend and I would get out of town and stop by
a favorite burger joint. At some point, I noticed I was feeling really crappy
the next day (headache, lethargic, etc), and mentioned this. This seemed odd.
Whenever we did this, we were in idyllic surroundings, and I should have been minimally stressed. My girlfriend pointed out that this had happened the last few times we’d eaten at the burger place the night before.
“Fuck.
Really? Sigh. Ok. Well then I’m going to cut out meat and dairy this week.“
And after just a handful of days I noticed:
“I feel great!
Fuck!
I guess I have to keep doing this…“
It’s been 5 months now. I’ve made some exceptions, but I’m still only doing
fish/eggs/honey in terms of animal products.
There’s actually a very old MS study that suggest avoiding animal fats (specifically non fish animal fats) is an aggressive defense against progression of the disease. This study was done in 1952. It’s not that often talked about … because changing your diet radically is hard. I’d known about these studies for a while, and actually even tried going veggie before without noticing much change. I think there was too much noise in my system at that time.
Again. I’m not here to convince anyone to go veggie. Do what you want. Listen to your body. To me the more interesting point here is how I’m navigating the world.
Life, especially with MS, is a series of puzzles.
And they’re puzzles you haven’t solved yet, so they seem opaque. Quite often they seem self contradictory, or “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of traps.
Some examples that came up just during my swim training:
- If I eat more calories …
- I gain more weight …
- which helps w the cold tolerance
- but higher calorie consumption is bad for me
Or …
- The cold seems to be good for me …
- but if I swim in the cold …
- it’s easy to get too cold …
- then I need to take a hot sauna …
- which isn’t good for me
Or …
- I get light headed if I don’t get enough protein after a workout,
- but if I eat protein, I feel shitty
Baked into these dance moves are a bunch of assumptions. Some of them are well researched, some are not. Some come from a wealth of experience, some from a hunch. And some are from experiences that come from a long time ago and haven’t been tested for a while.
And that’s ok. You can’t research all the options. You can’t do everything perfectly. What you can do is work on how you navigate your choices and your world.
And there’s a simple way to do that well. Dancing.
And you know what dancing is good for? Finding joy. Finding space. Flourishing. Finding a sense of play.
What I like about these ‘puzzles’ is the sense of motion. Each step leads to the next.
Or does it?
That last one (the I need protein / protein makes me feel shitty) feels obvious
in retrospect. The problem wasn’t the protein, the problem was animal fat and
animal proteins.
And you know what? I only figured that out by fucking it up. I only learned that dance move by falling at that step. And I only fell at that step, because I was doing these steps over and over again, until something budged. And because I ‘fell’ at that step, I learned a whole new dance move. I start to see the patterns. I found the right question to ask that reframed the whole problem. And I learned.
And by learning, I will fucking conquer this thing.
Isn’t that a saying? Walking is just controlled falling? Well dancing is just falling over and over again, but making it look good.
I’ve realized I dance like this all day long. At home. At work. Whenever there’s
a hurdle, there’s a way. Just enjoy your moment within your understanding and keep wiggling. Don’t worry, you’ll ‘fall’ soon enough and figure it out. I promise.
I will say something about changing my diet feels supremely liberating.
My diet has been a source of familiarity, ritual, comfort, and community. And it has something to do with self identity. I’ve been a huge meat eater my whole life. I love meat. I think that meat is healthy for you in many ways and in the right amounts. But maybe it’s not for me. But to try on a ‘vegan’ identity feels really weird. And liberating. I’m not vegan. I’m probably going to keep doing fish and eggs for a while at least. But just knowing that I’m capable of making a change that seemed so … impenetrable … impossible … difficult … stripping of happiness … and that I can do it with relative ease? I’m proud of that.
And these days, I’m surprised to find that I miss meat less and less. When I have made exceptions, I’m not tempted to have seconds or thirds. I’ve found I value feeling good in my body and in life much much more than any short term temptation. It’s been a long road here.
And that makes me really proud. That makes me realize how far I’ve come developing my self discipline muscle. But more importantly, how much I’ve honed my sense of play, and my desire and capacity for joy. I’ve come far in developing my dance moves. Turns out, I might even be good at dancing.
