Or: The Art of Moderation
Or: I Am Living the Edge of Radical and I Am Scared Shitless
Posted by Erin
I have things to discuss today. A week of rawness has passed, it seems like only yesterday Beck and I were perching on the edge of an inbetween, pondering the morality of eating lemon bars at 12:07am, and I have since had many thoughts on this diet. Actually, the only thoughts I’ve had this week have been about my diet. How it was before, how it is currently at this very moment, and what I would very much like it to be. Going in, I had much excitement about the experimental purposes of this diet (and still do). My thoughts were mostly focused on my curiosity of how it would affect my energies, the bonding that would occur between all us rawhides, and aspirations about the diversity and richness of our blog. I wasn’t really prepared for the intense mental aspect of it (or the monetary aspect of it, for that matter). I was going to collect my thoughts for a midway blog, but I think I will be forthright with my thoughts, as per our decree.
Thoughts, in no particular order (but will be numbered as if they have order):
- Lara bars are yum. I have been eating 2 or 3 a day. This is not a sustainable system. I’m cutting myself back to 1 a day. Moderation is an art, Lara bars are not meals.
- When I was telling people about raw diet, everyone had a really laid back, amused reaction. “Oh, you’re crazy!” or “Oh, you’re hilarious!” or “Oh, you’re crazy hilarious!” or some sort of laid back approval or laid back apathy. Everyone but my best friend. My best friend is a vegetarian, and her husband is a vegan and has been for a crazy long time. She lives in Kansas City and has known plenty of raw foodists in her life. She had a much harsher negative reaction to raw diet, and didn’t want me to do it. At the time I was kind of pissed because I thought it was really not a big deal. A week in, I kind of see what she was getting at. This, my friends, is the edge of radical eating (well, you can find edges closer to THE edge, but this is pretty close), this is obsession and sacrifice and deprivation and hardcore hardcoreness and borderline disorder, and I am very scared of it. Scared because it is a chore to eat the foods I love, scared because I find myself watching my calories, scared because I woke up yesterday morning and was frustrated that I gained 0.6lbs, scared because I see my co-workers getting piddily caloric intake, and most of all scared because they are observing the same things as I am. Like obsessively thinking about it, and the feeling that this is empty and cold. I guess I am realizing that this is a thing that people do for realz, and it lacks this whole other element to eating: warmth, control, creamy things, joy, community, passion. Things that I love and cherish and miss. I applaud Leiana. Run for the hills.
- There are good things about raw diet too. I am thinking about food differently. Sometimes you have to do things like this to realize what’s what. Because we can get lost the other way too. My friend codename: Morbo was inspired by our experiment, so is going vegetarian for the month. We had a food diet digestion (har har) tonight, and she is noticing this postive thing about changing her eating habits in just a week. That she too often just eats her kid’s leftovers, or eats just bologna and cheese on bread with no condiments on the fly. That this extreme of NOT thinking about what you’re eating lacks the same things: warmth, control, joy, community, passion. There is a balance, there is moderation, the nice warm center is there for a reason, and I want to be closer to it.
- I still have the better part of a month to mull on it, but when January is over I shall be returning to the world as a moderation conscious vegetarian. I value and cherished and loved my year spent as a vegan, but there is just too much out there. Being a vegan has given me a different view of food, and since I love eating that way, my guess would be that I’ll operate more as a vegan who occasionally eats vegetarian (or pescitarian as it were) than a vegetarian who occasionally eats vegan. I want to make better decisions about my food–why I’m eating what I’m eating, where it’s coming from, how much I’m eating. I’ve always given the cop-out that I cannot do moderation, and that’s just not true, not at all. Cutting things out of your diet cold turkey is a decision, it’s a decision you make everyday, and if I can do that, then I can certainly moderate what I eat.
- All this is to say: trying new things, radical things, weird things, hilariously crazy things has its purpose, its value, its merit. We learn things, we stretch ourselves, we open our minds. It’s just so important not to lose yourself. I will not lose myself in this. I know that I am eating like a crazy person. I am aware of this.
Otherwise, feeling really really good today. Getting used to it. Not even a thing.
this is so beautifully written. i’m impressed with your introspection and your honesty.
This posting is why Erin Brown the Magnificent, is my bestest, most fabulousest friend in the whole freaking universe, even though her parents had sex 15 years and four months AFTER my parents. Miss Erin, your maturity and rate of growth is astounding. I wait for your arrival in Kansas City with baited breath. Love, Pickles
I really love this post and am completely impressed by what you and your cohorts are accomplishing here. Your honesty about your feelings about food are inspriring and remind me that I take a lot of the foods that I eat for granted. When I was veganinig w/you, I loved everyday/bit of it… and believe that I am heading in that direction again, for realz!!
I tried to search the archives in the local papers for this article I read two or three years ago. It was about a man who practiced some kind of philosophy that basically compelled him to eat as little as possible and gather all of his energy from the sun: which he hoped (if he could stop failing by sometimes eating) would eventually be his only source of nutrition/energy. Apparently he would stand in sunlight for hours recharging.
That article really bugged me and I should have kept it. Just to confirm: that edge gets sharper and sharper. A whole spectrum of supposedly-justified-eating-disorderliness.
Ive enjoyed catching up on the posts and reading about everyones adventures in the raw. As an outsider I really am intrigued at how this has become just as much of a mind bender as anything else.
My question from all of this is: besides those who do use it as a weight control/ diet method, why do people choose a raw diet? Philisophically there must be some principle that justifies it , that makes it a way of life. I became a vegetarian 16 years ago and people thought that was crazy. But over the years I have been able to really clarify why.
forgive this lenghty post! I once saw this episode of ‘wife swap’ (forgive me again! oh, the feminist movement is not lost on me i sware! or just the case against bad television) in which there was a family that ate EVERYTHING raw. Everything. Meat, eggs….
oh, and Lara bars ARE amazing. Especially pistachio and cashew cookie.
Back in the late 90′s jazz musician Sabir Mateen told me that he only ate raw food for a year, because he heard that it was a more natural, healthy way to live. He said that he hated it, but he didn’t get sick that whole year. He also told me about his recent discovery of the power of vitamins, though, so I figured that already knowing about vitamins I was a step ahead.
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