A Day of Silence

Of late, I've been eating mostly organic, mostly raw or in the event I eat non-raw, I eat organic vegan. The diet is devised primarily by Aajonus Vonderplanitz, but Marcus has made a few variations based on his own experience, taste buds, and work with clients.

Those who know me say I look better than ever. I've been working out pretty lustfully too - usually 30-40 minutes of hard cardio (the 600 calorie per hour variety of cardio), and body-builder/fitness-model inspired weight-lifting every day or as my muscles recover (sometimes a 2-3 day cycle of weight-lifting). 

So, the combination of super-healthy eating and working out like Arnold's younger sister has put me on a path toward feeling and potentially looking better than ever.

But four days ago, I ate some non-organic, who-the-fuck-knows-how-it-was prepared food. Now it wasn't prepared via a cart downtown, and it was technically vegetarian, and at a decent restaurant, but it did not do me well. In the past I'd do this once or twice a week, but of late I'll sometimes go a month without ingesting non-organic food.

The next day I felt a little off, by two days passed, I felt as if my body were detoxifying and my inflammation (immune responses) had kicked in almost fully. Achy, swollen/sore throat, and generally feeling yucky.

If I'm living so healthy, why would I feel this awful after only one semi-bad meal?

Part of me thinks this is complete bullocks - I have formatted my daily life around healthy living! My body should be able to handle one bad meal!

But as I check in about it with my higher wisdom, I know that my body is just taking care of me.

No longer am I a practical, economy car. I'm an indy-car, and bad-fuel in an indy car is much more noticeable than low-grade fuel in a Honda accord.

It leads me to another thought, however. If this had happened in the past, my body was probably more occupied with other, more toxic exposures than one little meal. Alcohol, negative thoughts, an over-all less healthy and high-cylinder life-style.

Are we all just functioning at a lower-level than we're meant to? Have we all just grown accustomed to a low-grade level of feeling shitty all the time?!?

I read a book years ago called "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." In the book, author Thom Hartmann talks about how our predecessors, the nomadic, living-in-harmony-with-the-earth peoples as having more leisure time - up to 80% - because they lived in harmony with the earth, had few possessions, and worked together for what food and shelter they did require. He contrasted that with modern humans, who work up to 80% of our waking hours - all the while attempting to gain more leisure time.

The diet I currently eat is actually most similar to the way people lived and dined when we were nomadic. I eat foods closest to their natural state - organic, raw, or gently cooked and never highly-processed. Natives didn't eat this way based on some philosophy; humans evolved eating this way, it was natural and not given a second thought. And of course, organic used to be just food. Pesticides back in the day were natural peppermint or other clever tribal movement or crop rotations - also not based on philosophy, just based upon tried and true methods of sustainability.

So why the sore throat and aches? Truly I don't know for certain, but in honor of my body telling me I should be gentle with myself, I'm taking a day of silence today - not using and saving my voice for another day when I feel well again. No phone calls, no speaking with my love Marcus, no chatting with the check-out girl at the market. I'm not working today, so it'll be easier, though I must admit, using my voice is such an automatic, default way of communicating, the days not even half through and I've slipped 4 words already. I recommit myself, and trust my body to heal.

Maybe that's why the immune response to the bad food - to remind me of my body's ability to heal; my body's inherent intelligence with releasing unfamiliar and toxic substances...because when you think about it, all of our processed foods are toxic. Our bodies haven't yet evolved to eating hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, or genetically modified foods. How could they? These things have only been around 20-80 years. The human body takes 12,000 years to evolve. Minimum! If scientists don't know for sure how long it takes, I won't pretend to know, but most agree it takes a minimum of 12,000, most likely 50,000 or more.

So today, I'm silent. Don't try to call me. You can text or email, but talking I will be refraining from. I suppose I could also go sit on some moss and smoke some Ayahuasca too if I were really going native.