Stop aging…from within!

A Beginning

Warning:

Fasting equates to “restricting” which leads to “binging” for some people.
If that is honestly true for you, then don’t use the following ideas.
Take responsibility for yourself and find professional help or a 12 step program that shares your vision for yourself around food, body image and exercise.

The two best spiritual sources that I know of, around fasting, are Gandhi and the ancient Jewish texts.

From Gandhi I took “Fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet.”

And, “Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on them.”

From the ancient Jews I took:

“Declare a holy fast”
Joel 1:14


“I humbled myself with fasting”
 Psalm 35:10

“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
 Daniel 1:8-17


“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals. 
Ezekiel 4:10

 From the Twelve-Steppers I took:

  1. Most of us have been unwilling to admit we really had an eating disorder.
  2. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
  3. Therefore, it is not surprising that our eating careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could eat like other people.
  4. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his eating is the great obsession of every disordered eater.
  5. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
  6. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
  7. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we had an eating disorder.
  8. This is the first step in recovery.
  9. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
  10. We eating disordered are men and women who have lost the ability to control our eating.
  11. We know that no disordered eater ever recovers control.
  12. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals – usually brief – were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
  13. We are convinced to a man that eating disordered people of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.

And finally I threw in a grouchy old saint:
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts”
Saint Jerome (347-420AD)

My philosophy of life is based on the second oldest joke in the world:
A man walks into a doctor’s office, holds up his arm, and says “It hurts when I do this “.
The doctor says “Then…don’t do that“.

According to Wikipedia, in 1927, a physicist named Werner Heisenberg was attributed with discovering that if you begin to observe an experiment, you actually change the results of the experiment.

More simply, if you start observing your food…your food starts to change.
So, the very first thing to do is to start journaling your food…Just write down what you eat.
When I weighed 60 pounds more, I lied to myself about how much I was eating. How I could I weigh so much while eating so little?

Now, if you are now saying “I’m not going to do any such thing”…then don’t
On the other hand, if you are willing to try something different:

  1. Weigh yourself now and write the number down
  2. Write down everything you eat for one week
  3. Weigh yourself after the one week
  4. See if Werner Heisenberg was right.
  5. If he is wrong…just stop doing this

There are many other things you can do to be thin and healthy, but this is a pretty good litmus test to see whether the effort is really worth it.

If you can just write down your food for week, I feel sure you will have noticed a small, but real weight loss.

The second week buy your self a digital, not analog scale, and begin to weigh your food. Not all of it. Not all the time. Just try you get familiar with the rhythm of weighing your food.
It’s actually kind of fun…Remember 8th grade Science Fair projects. Don’t be perfect…just check it out as a possible way to express self-care.

Also, may want to do a BMI calculation to see where you truly are.

Week Three: Keep weighing your food but try to notice if your meals are affected by the presence of others: your wife, children, extended family, neighbors, fellow workers, faith community and dating partners.

Week Four: Instead of just observationally “eyeballing” your chosen food and then measuring it on the digital scale, this week, raise or lower the quantities so that there are no fractions of ounces: Instead of 5.8 ounces, add .2 ounces to make 6.0 ounces. Instead of 4.2 ounces, reduce to 4.0 ounces. This keeps you from looking obsessive

Week Five: This week we are going to move from just observing the food to planning for the meal…in advance …Uh oh ! Control !!!! DANGER WILL ROBINSON