Health, Food and Life

Health and What passes Between the Lips

A quarter of the world consumes three-quarters of the world’s resources. Three-quarters of the world consume less than one quarter of the world’s resources.
I live in that first group.

Members of that first group die largely because of what they puts between the lips. Suicide by knife and fork (and glass). Heart disease and diabetes have long been acknowledged as lifestyle diseases: they are completely preventable. There are, of course, instances of these diseases in third-world countries, but to a much, much lesser degree, and certainly not among the poor. Not that the economically-disadvantaged are much healthier — so many suffer from malnutrition and related issues — but generally they are not succumbing to diseases related to what they eat or drink.

Identifying the fact that lifestyle is adversely affecting one’s health as one gets older and the consequences of excess start to surface is step one in arriving at a solution. Then, it’s time to be consequential: it is never too late to make the changes needed to avert issues. Even those who have had to suffer the ultimate consequences and have procedures to fix the problem can prevent the problem from recurring with a change in lifestyle.

Which is why, some time ago, I started with raw.

When you spend all day indoors, under fluorescent lights and surrounded with sickness and stale air, you need to give yourself as much advantage as you possibly can. Raw food (fruits and vegetables) has the highest concentration of nutrients of anything you can consume, and in the best proportions. Proportion is crucial, at least, for me it is: for a while we were juicing and later, smoothies and gaining all sorts of weight because of injudicious use of fruit and not a proportionately higher output of energy: no exercise. And so, gained weight.

Now, I am having raw vegetables for morning tea, and with lunch or dinner (depending on the shift) a salad. Almost all raw goes into the salad, with the exception of the corn.

You would think that consuming all this raw food, I’d be losing weight and feeling great. Well, there were obstacles to that, in my case: grog. Not during the week, generally: I had to stay sharp for work. But, on the weekend: well, that was another matter.

At a given point, I tend to go ‘dry’. Meaning: I give up fermented beverages of any sort for weeks on end. And that’s where I am now, third weekend dry. What has happened over those weeks — besides the very slow but steady weight loss — is an emerging awareness of not just what I am like to be with now, but what I was most likely like to be around then, when I’d had some alcohol.

Food for Thought.

Will I drink alcoholic beverages at some point in the future? Certainly. But the pattern I had established — the “wiping the blackboard of life” on Friday nights — that has had to change. What seemed like a fairly moderate amount consumed over the weekend was leading to significant, constant weight increase. If for no other reason, that’s enough to say: enough.