What I've Learned From Not Eating

Ten thousand years ago, if you weren’t considering the source of your next meal, you were already dead.  Nowadays, you could roll out of bed and slip on a Subway footlong. In a society where abundance has caused the average human attention span to be no greater than that of a rodent’s, the ability to suppress a wandering mind has become a distinct biological advantage.  I learned this during the five days I spent on a water-only fast—here is what else:

My issues with health and nutrition stem from my days as a high school wrestler.  As one, I spent much of ages 14-18 contemplating how much I could eat and drink while still maintaining a certain competing weight.  I celebrated every successful weigh-in with a binge: devouring whatever I could get my hands on due to an uncertainty of when, again, I would be able to enjoy the feeling of satiety.  Thus at an impressionable age, I began fostering a relationship with food like that of a binge-eating anorexic.  

Given these flaws, I am not qualified to preach.   What follows is the opinion of a man who one time in Italy, had his actions dubbed by friends: The Great Gelato Binge of 2017—27 scoops in three days to be exact(don’t act like you’re not impressed).  Yet, despite a never-ending weakness in the presence of frozen treats, I hope you will take my word seriously because  while fasting for 120 hours, I overcame a reliance on eating for pleasure and developed the power to eat intuitively—the way human beings were designed.

When it comes to health, getting and staying fit is hard—that’s why 40 percent of the country is obese.  Those who are fit and those who are not were born the same; differences arose when those in shape started using the gift of human consciousness to delay gratification, while those overweight may still be unaware that this gift even exists.  

The understanding of something implicit is required to cultivate this gift: you are you—not everyone else.  As a human, your genetic makeup entails something so unique, the world has never seen the likes of you before, nor will it, ever again.  And yet, we have begun churning out generations who forfeit their individuality in an effort to fit in. The individual who isn’t curious enough to question whether the status quo is aligned with their best interests, shows contentment being just another member of the herd.

And what is the current status of this herd?  Well, they’re grazing on everything in sight, that much is clear.  Somehow, we have transitioned into a society that uses food as a plaything to fill our time and drown our sorrows, rather than what it is—fuel.  Our ancestors did not have the luxury of waking up and saying, “I think I’m feeling waffles today!”  In spite of this, we know that the occasional indulgence will not destroy us physically, so what is making us so unhealthy?  

It’s complacency.  Appeasing an upset child with junk-food doesn’t make them fat overnight, but the fallacy it purports will make them fat over time.  Next time your child is upset, try giving them a head of broccoli—no dressing—this seems a more fitting way to depict reality.  Does this make me a nihilist? It’s possible—but I can guarantee you that my future kids will come to love undressed broccoli and will be better off for it.  Simply put, by taking the easy way out as parents, we teach our progeny to do the same.  How can we prepare our children to embrace struggles and make sacrifices when shutting them up with sugar exemplifies the exact opposite?  They will not explore their individuality when conventional parenting methods encourage a loss of our own. Rather than expose them to the inevitable hardships of life, we expose them to food—and urge them to use it whenever life gets tough.   

Bad parenting is the reason diets don’t work.  Eating healthy requires willpower, and those in need of a diet have never been taught the true nature of sacrifice.  When you’ve been instructed to handle life’s problems with food, what do you do when food is the problem?  That’s right: you keep eating.  Allowing our kids to solve their problems with food creates a dependency on it.  In other words, we breed our kids into food-addicts(still speaking from experience).  The suspect in need of a diet is a food-addict who lacks the fortitude to go any significant stretch of time without their junk-food(drug) of choice.  Now, we take that individual and deprive them of the only source of happiness they’ve ever known, until they lose weight…

 

By associating food with pleasure, we create a harmful anticipation trap for ourselves.  Equating food to happiness provides us with a tool that we use to superficially escape the natural difficulties of existence at minimum, three times a day.  The first detection of “suffering,” defined as the onset of hunger, triggers a subconscious urge to fast-forward time to our next, built-in break from reality.  Rather than continuing to give attention to our present task, daydreams of a frolic through a field of (insert junk-food of choice here) render us useless. At the expense of our productivity, these junk-food-based fantasies amass, and so do our waistlines.  Opting to be absent from the moment hunger is discovered—usually just boredom disguised as hunger—up until that hunger(or boredom) is gratified, is the definition of killing time.  

Killing time through anticipation is why diets fail.  This became clear on day two of my fast, when I found myself attempting to eliminate the 90 hours between me and my next feeding.  Under normal circumstances, a food-addict has to “kill” a mere couple of hours or less before finding refuge at the bottom of an ice-cream carton.  Yet when forced to go on a diet; told that they must abstain from the things they have come to rely on for joy, the air of an inescapable and infinite misery begins to creep in.  With no pleasure-breaks forthcoming, the food-addict no longer needs to worry about killing time because time has flipped the script—and has begun killing them.  When they finally break, a severe food-addict is no different than a hungry dog—just with car keys and money.  Any guess what a hungry dog will do with access to an Audi and a supermarket? Clean-up—aisle six. 

Upon discovering that they are the gatekeeper to their own suffering, the addict will blissfully call the operation off.  In a way, they have become aware of their consciousness, but rather than using it to sacrifice for their future self, they use it to wave the white flag—as they have been conditioned.  With comfort restored and aware that they never again must be subject to such torment, the addict will gain more weight upon exiting the diet than they ever did before.  Why be skinny and miserable when I can be fat and happy? 

Implicitly, opposing a culture’s central dogma is an uphill battle—but settling for convenience is not an alternative solution.  What if, rather than challenging those who said it was impossible, our forefathers at NASA had said, “Oh, the moon? You’re right, that’s gonna be a little too far for us.”  Instead, they employed the two-letter word that has been the driving force for our race since we discovered its power to do so; the same two-letter word most of us are never taught to use, yet is essential for the development of a successful individual: No.  

Prioritizing your health is not an option—it’s mandatory.  Abstaining from this understanding is delusional.  Voluntary failure to sacrifice in the present doesn’t make the problem go away, it transfers it to someone—probably future-you—in the future.  You don’t have to make the healthy choice 100 percent of the time, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  We have allowed subpar health to become the rule, rather than the exception. Those herd members who have allowed this to happen will say, “It is what it is.”  Yet, “It” has led us into a health crisis; one that is costing our country billions of dollars. When do we realize that “It” must be wrong?

So, what does this have to do with me not eating for five days?

Well, everything really.

If we fail to understand the importance of self-reflection, our society will continue to falter.  How can we be expected to overcome the allure of tasty junk-food, when we can’t even control our sense of time?  How can we sacrifice for the long-term, when we’re unable to provide our undivided attention for more than a few seconds?  More difficult than overcoming physical limitations, is crafting the mindset necessary to do so.  If you don’t learn to take control of your conscious mind, it will learn to take control of you.

This has been made clear by entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss, who has made a career of interviewing the world’s elite.  From chess prodigies to billionaire investors, 90 percent of the people he speaks with share one thing in common: a mindfulness practice.  However, they are not successful because they are mindful, they are successful because their mindfulness has given them each a unique way of slowing down time long enough to discover their individual desires, and act in accordance with them.  Being mindful is indicative that your success in life is not predicated on luck. It is a show of control; an ability to delay gratification so well, that making choices against one’s desired identity isn’t even an option.  What sets people apart is not their IQ, their brawn, or their tact—it’s their efficiency.  The successful mind is never lost amidst the infinite list of things that yearn to distract it.  The only time the successful mind wanders is when the successful thinker has commanded it to do so; then it is immediately commanded to cease whenever that daydream has stopped serving its purpose.  The successful person is the opposite of the addict because they don’t kill time, in fact—they rarely feel time at all.  

Lastly, it should be clear that going on a diet is not a real option.  The term “going” implies that there will be an eventual return, yet when embarking on the journey for improved health—there is no coming back.  Life is a marathon, not a series of sprints.  The successful marathoner combats the mental hurdles of the long race by learning to attend solely to their next stride.  The successful human must overcome the invariable difficulties of life by learning to focus solely on their next breath—not on what is for dessert.  And since everyone is running through an inconceivably different course, success in the great race of life is not predicated on how long it takes to cross the finish line, but rather how well one navigates the obstacles that present themselves during their unique race.  As such, comparing your progress against someone else’s is just about the least useful thing you can do. Quite simply, discover what you want from your short time on this planet; find a way to provide yourself the feedback that will allow you to stay aligned with your core principles, and alter your path as you see fit so that you can stay in the race for as long as you want.

None of this should be confused as a message not to enjoy your life.  The beauty of learning to be mindful is that you can consciously indulge in the foods you love, rather than scarfing down 27 scoops of gelato before you can whisper amore.  Having the presence of mind to know that you are actively rewarding yourself with a treat, is the treat.

And since recovery is an ongoing process, I would like to close with an admission:  

 

Hello, my name is Guy and I am addicted to eating.

 

You respond (all together):

 

Hello Guy!

Be honest with yourself: who wears the pants in your relationship with food?  Overly anticipating meals makes us no better than predatory animals by robbing us of the two things that make us uniquely human:  our individuality and our minds.  Not eating for five days displayed that my dependence on food had led to an involuntary compartmentalization of my time—one that was driving me to act with the crowd while preventing me from reaching my full potential.  If you wish to control your own destiny, you can begin by adopting the most important word in the English language—no.  If you are content being like everyone else—just continue saying yes.  

 

So, I am not asking you to stop eating—although air is gluten free—but I will leave you with this: If you own a Maserati and it keeps breaking down, the first thing you will check is the engine.  If the mechanic tells you that low-grade fuel is responsible for the problem, you would be foolish to not upgrade to the unleaded. When it comes to your body, stop ignoring the check-engine light just because you see other cars on the road.  You only get one car—treat it that way.