Eating Without Tears

Everyday abundance in the modern era...Aren't we the fortunate ones?

Almost everyone I have ever known has had a problem with food, including myself at times. Whether it is eating too much, eating too little, or eating food that is not healthy, it is difficult to strike a balance despite modern abundance.

In this age of plenty, often the most difficult feat to accomplish is the habit of gratitude. If nothing else, it is gratitude that is most likely to change your eating habits for the better.

As I have mentioned a few times, once a random entity gifted me with the information that gratitude and generosity sublimate to the power of seven. Whatever you are truly generous with or grateful for will create a multiplication effect of energy across the planes, and everything it touches will receive some benefit. The inverse law is also true: that which we are ungrateful for or stingy with degrades by the power of seven across the planes. I believe this is why so many are trapped in the cycle of obesity and its sister diseases, orthorexia and anorexia: for many, neurosis replaced gratitude and the results were written plainly on the physical level.

I believe if you want to change your body for the better, your first and primary order of business is to be grateful for the mortal vehicle that carries your soul. It is also crucial to be grateful for the fuel you put in your body. Before every meal and potentially before every snack, give heartfelt thanks and blessings to all the forces who brought you the food. (This can be done silently or aloud.) As forces go, I'm not just talking about God, the gods, or vague notions of the universe. I believe it is really important to acknowledge the animals, bugs, birds, and ecosystems (including the animals and ecosystems I accidentally hurt or kill as a vegan), plants, the sun, the dirt, water, wind, farmers, pickers, packagers, drivers, grocery store workers, and cooks. So yes, since I cook a great percentage of my own meals, I am technically thankful to myself and compulsively bless myself every time I eat. However you bless is up to you. I use a prayer I made up that goes like this:

North, East, South, West, may all who brought this food be blessed.

Never Say Diet

Apollo said "All things in moderation". I cannot possibly stress how important the lost art of moderation is when it comes to food. Nobody should ever starve themselves on purpose, a.k.a. diet. Diets are truly heinous wastes of time. Calorie and carb counting is insulting to your soul: poring over the tabloid intrigues of Hollywood stars, weaving coasters out of your own pubes, or twiddling your thumbs until you get arthritis would be far safer and more constructive pastimes.

Often we have to eliminate a food in order to figure out if we are sensitive to it. For me, that's garlic. I love fresh garlic and would eat it 24/7 if it did not tear me apart from the inside out. My suggestion is to replace doubly what you've taken out of your diet. If you eliminate garlic, try two other seasonings over the next few weeks. If you eliminate wheat, try two new types of grain. If you eliminate alcohol, add some fruit smoothies and teas. If you eliminate dairy, try a new plant milk and make sure to eat something a little salty and fatty such as sunflower seeds to make up for the loss of cheese. Always try to make up for the absence of whatever you quit eating.

Ideally, food should be the only medicine in our cabinets. Food is medicine and medicine is food. Homemade soup has far more power to heal than most pharmaceutical concoctions. There are quite a few health nuts who know food is medicine and take it to an extreme that is just as toxic and unhealthy as junk food junkie-ism. When you obsess about food and attempt to perfect it and control it down to the last detail, you rob it of its potential for healing. Food obsessives are orthorexics who discard moderation in favor of the illusion of infinite control. On the other end of the spectrum of imbalance are the stuffers. Stuffers don't know when to stop eating, and when they do have some faint clue of when to stop eating, they ignore it. The point of eating, regardless of your level of under- or overweight, is to eat what your body needs to continue carrying your soul around. If you stop eating long before eating what your body requires or become so picky that you reject foods that you deem not good enough for the likes of you, you are choosing the illusion of control over gratitude. If you glut and gorge because it's oh so good until your body is poisoned and incapacitated, you are choosing to degrade the abundance put before you instead of sublimating it and putting its energy towards good works. Your mouth is not a garbage can. The compost pile will happily eat what you cannot; there is no need to abuse food like cocaine at a beach house bender in 1986. Food is not an escape. It is a necessity.

That Time Logic Made Sense

Whether you need to gain or lose, the material plane requires material logic. If you need to lose weight, you need to eat better quality foods and less of them. What this means is that you need to not fill your plate as much: maybe go for ¾ portions of what you ate in the past. Since American restaurant portions are usually too large for me and because I hate wasting good food, I usually bring my own covered containers and quietly scoop leftovers into the container if there are any. For the reticent, underweight eater, that means eating 125% of what you usually eat and not going to the bathroom to vomit or obsessing over feeling overly full. Grow up, move on, and think about something else once eating has been accomplished. It's not the end of the world to feel over-full or like you ate the wrong thing.

We live in an era of etheric starvation. I have talked about this before and won't go into detail about it here. The main visible side effect of etheric starvation is addiction, and this may serve to explain why so many are addicted to either eating too much or starving themselves. I could grow all my own food, eat greens at nearly every meal, and get more than enough sunlight and still starve on the etheric because etheric starvation is the scourge of our era. For this reason, there are some eating habits you might consider in order to ameliorate etheric starvation besides the usual prescription of basking in the sun, exchanging energy with trees, and generally strolling about in wild and semi wild spaces.

1. Supplementation. In an era of environmental and etheric depletion, Vitamins C and A are a must, along with the entire B spectrum and Zinc. I am at the point where I take a quality multivitamin every day rather than the fistful of pills I used to take. If you are the type who is always fighting off low-grade colds and flus, Zinc is your number one ally, and you should probably consider additional Quercetin and Bromelain to help you absorb it.

2. Flaxseeds and chia. These help digestion. Digestion comprises 70-80 percent of the immune system. Flax and chia have fatty acids you need for proper digestion and elimination.

3. Green tea, preferably matcha, at least 1x a day. Though I love matcha lattes and would guzzle them almost every hour of the day if I could, I am not talking about them here. Matcha is a green tea powder that consists of the dried and ground up leaves of the green Camellia sinensis bush. I believe all forms of tea are magically and etherically potent. I have my hypotheses that they are blessed by both Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Aphrodite, goddess of community and love.

4. Avoiding soda, bottled drinks, non-fresh squeezed juice, and energy drinks. Soda and its co-horts are fine as a once in a while treat, but much like cake, it should be saved for special occasions. Replacing soda with water is good but replacing it with unsweetened herbal tea is better. By drinking unsweetened herbal tea, you get the medicinal and adaptogenic benefits of the herb as well as the hydrating power of water in every sip. Teas/infusions have no calories. They are all superfood (superdrink?) with zero drawbacks.

5. Hot peppers. Hot peppers are superfoods. If you can stand the heat, they are almost universally healthy except in rare cases that act like allergies.

6. Mostly avoiding the microwave. Microwaving strips food of its vital etheric layer and make food taste a bit funny if you are sensitive.

7. Not counting calories or carbs and not dismissing food because it is "unhealthy". All unblessed and under-appreciated food is unhealthy in its own way and all blessed and appreciated food sublimates and becomes better than its parts. Bless your food and you'll understand why soon enough: it will taste better and though it cannot be proven by science (yet) it will be healthy.