24 hours since I've eaten. I'm learning.
It's been a long time since I've gone a day without eating, and this isn't what I expected. I woke up this morning, and immediately thought of breakfast - until I saw the reminder I had written on my hand :) Now it's evening - and nothing has changed. Same subtle craving - mildly uncomfortable, but tolerable. Observations:
1) "eating when I'm hungry" may not be a reliable plan. . . back to the drawing board for that. . .
2) activities change: often times, I'll get home, make some food, and sit down to watch an episode of Lost. Today, I didn't sit down to eat, and I didn't watch Lost. Maybe I was more "productive" - but not sure if that's necessarily a good thing. . .
3) the expectation of eating is a major factor. the fact that several times today I've found myself planning out what I'll be eating tomorrow has made me consider the possibility of waiting until sunday. again, not looking to starve myself or anything, but part of the objective is to prevent the thought of food and eating from taking up most of my daily thought. . .
4) on the subject of dieting though, today has reminded me how little will power we often care to extend in the realm of eating. everyone talks about how hard it is to lose weight - and although this is by no means a ground-breaking conclusion - these things (anything that is a matter of will power) simply aren't that difficult if we REALLY want to do them.
Went to the library today, intending to get a copy of Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." They didn't have a copy, so I reserved it, and picked up his more recent "In Defense of Food." A few chapters in, here are some passages that struck me as relevant:
1) "that eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, think, destructive idea - destructive not just of the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well"
-this served as a good reminder to myself that I'm not interested in questioning the pleasure of eating - in no way do I have any ascetic-type plans for this experiment. If I'm not enjoying whatever minimalist diet I end up settling on, I'll consider that a level 1 failure.
2) "this is the burden of the third and last section of in defense of food: to propose a couple dozen personal rules of eating that are conducive not only to better health but also to greater pleasure in eating, two goals that turn out to be mutually reinforcing
-looking forward to getting to these. Don't know if they'll reflect what I have in mind, but I'm interested in anything that represents a different way of viewing how and what we eat.