When in Bangalore . . .

Except when it smells like dung or rot or rotting dung, all of Bangalore smells like a campfire, something I’m usually willing to tolerate only when armed with marshmallows and the appropriate stick. Here, given the mayhem, I assume I’m always downwind of some riotous tribal gathering meant to affect fertility. Not farfetched when the heat and the humidity inspire a sticky sort of sweat like I’m feverish, slightly over-caffeinated or sensing potential calamity that has my amygdale at attention. I’m frequently all three. It’s a simmering discomfort accentuated by the fear of being run over at any minute even when walking on crumbled sidewalks which are barely off limits to harried drivers whose considerations have more to do with the potential damage curb jumping inflicts on compact cars and less to do with the damage to lives that are clinging to the street’s margins.

The traffic looks more like a salmon migration, weaving at high speeds with limited hesitation. There is no noticeable recognition of lanes even when painted lines are meant to separate traffic heading in opposite directions. Vehicles spill out in any direction providing the pavement allows. The bulging cars suck themselves back into the flow in time to miss oncoming traffic, buildings and debris but grudgingly and only at the last second. Turn signals and rearview mirrors have been replaced by beeping horns as if the road exists only in front out the windshield and every thing else is navigated by ear. In the mornings as I wake I can hear the commuter’s startled chirping and squawking horns like a predator is running amok in a colony of exotic birds.

If nature allowed, the auto-rikshaw, or auto drivers would join the migration not as salmon but as angry swarming hornets with the insistent dangerous hum and darting movements that leaves the pedestrian feeling hunted. It’s an understandable yippy-dog attitude from people steering popsicle-stick projects with lawn-mower engines built by grade school children in science class. After my first ‘auto’ ride through narrow lanes directly into oncoming headlights that were dim and erratic, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was whispered a code word right before an inconspicuous package was thrust under my arm. It’s all very Jackie Chan with the same sort of energy except for the pedestrians who look drained and asphyxiated.

I crossed the street at the Queen’s Road rotary at what could have been a walk signal if such a thing exists and found myself faced by approximately 40 motorcycles ready to cross the intersection like I wandered into a motocross race at an unfortunate moment. Of the few pedestrians who crossed with me, I was the only one that seemed to notice the impromptu brotherhood bearing down. All two wheeled vehicles seem to travel like deep vein thrombosis mid-city. Of course it’s the only time I’ve seen 50cc mopeds revving next to vintage street bikes where nobody gets laughed at or pushed over and where ladies all brightly saree’d and sidesaddled sit primly decorating motor bikes in the midst of all the nonsense. They look fragile and bad-ass all at once.

My host Chandana’s driver, Shiva, navigates the roads looking alert but not concerned and only sometimes mildly annoyed. For the most part he’s at home with the weaving, noisy navigation. He only looks truly concerned when I get out of the car. It seems keeping an American from doing something stupid proves the greater challenge but then most locals have gathered that simply by watching the news. He stands in range and assesses the situation as I continually charge through security posts by accident. He shoves money back in my hand at the market and tries not to look baffled by my pointless changes in direction which take us through the dirtiest and sometimes bloodiest parts of the market.

A wrong turn had us both trudging through the Muslim meat stalls as if it was perfectly reasonable for a tourist to pause and watch livestock hacked to pieces like it was a puppet show. Perpetually in pink flip flops, which I’ve noted are not an all-terrain shoe, I return home each night with dirty, leathery feet. Chandana tries not to be appalled even as she slips an industrial grade pumice stone into my bathroom but my Yoga-guru sister who wears each prehensile toe like jewelry and could make them each dance like Bollywood extras would be truly ashamed.

The moment I finish drinking the water from a tender coconut and eating the jelly-like meat, Shiva whose standing nearby attentively inquires “another?” as If I could knock back half a dozen without raising an eyebrow. I considered for a moment wiping me mouth on my arm, making some impatient gesture and saying, “Hit me!” but I was already full and he wouldn’t have gotten the joke. Literally he probably would have hit me just because I asked and because ‘madam’ is very strange like that. He has the habit of calling me ‘madam’ which took some adjusting to until I remembered the reputation American women have and then I realized he probably thinks I run a brothel back in the States. That put me at ease.

Though he’s clearly interested in keeping me alive, he did fail to mention that straws at the market are usually reused and therefore I shared mine with dozens of natives. It sounds oh-so friendly unless you’re a ferenge with fragile digestion. Chandana told me about the straws later when a hollow gesture of “pit-tooey” was pointless. I distinctly remember my mother walking around when I was young explaining that this or that was “Teh!” which was meant to mimic a spitting noise and was used to indicate that something was dirty or shouldn’t be put in my mouth. India, it turns out, is “Teh!”

I like tagging along with Shiva when he goes to the market though it automatically ensures that Chandana will pay double for guavas at the fruit stand. Even she has a hard time when she wears capris and looks too ‘western’. Shiva will explain that she paid the ‘three-quarter pant price’ even though she speaks the language and sports all the right shades of brown. I think a few extra rupees are worth it when I scoop up the bags and try to carry them to the car for Shiva before he can make a move. It’s clear by the looks of horror on the faces of people who were staring at me anyway that ‘madam’ doesn’t carry bags. Secretly I’m sure he’s amused and he plays a game of ‘stunt driver’ on the way home aiming at a few more busses than usual just to entertain me. Perhaps mimicking the Masai system of tongue-clicks, Shiva beeps six times in rapid order as a way of demanding to be let back in to the proper lane before we’re run down. It’s worked so far.

I discovered on these outings that, at least in Shiva’s case, a head wobble means that he has no idea what I’m talking about and it occurs almost like a system error or an overloaded circuit. Luckily he reboots himself because frankly with all the processes and Gerry-rigging procedures I’ve learned for things as simple as making a cup of tea, it would be beyond me at this point to remember how it’s done. And I’d wobble back but years of fending off chokes in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and protecting my face in Muay Thai do not allow for neck muscles with that kind of suppleness. I can shrug and duck quickly enough but sideways wobbling in my world would only be used for baiting and taunting. My body operates like I’m in a Pink Panther movie and Kato is going to jump me from behind at any moment.

My neck as well as the rest of me will just have to adjust and that’s kind of the point. I’ve lived in my carnivorous world going ninety miles an hour for so long that I either have to learn a different way or manhandle all of India until it keeps pace. I have no idea which one of us will compromise and I’ve been so busy being right about fitness all of these years that I’ve lost touch with what the rest of the world is doing. So call this a recon mission and like any well planned special ops assignment, I’m minimally provisioned and adaptable.

One wonders if it was completely necessary to up and move but as George Carlin pointed out, where you live is just the place where you keep your stuff. I got rid of my stuff and now technically I live nowhere and everywhere. This makes the Post Office, or maybe ‘Homeland Security’, really uncomfortable and when I tried to tell them I live nowhere and everywhere they insisted I attach a street address to that. If you’d like to know why the cost of postage stamps is continually on the rise, it’s because the post office insisted on forwarding my junk mail to India. That Value Pack coupon is going to come in real handy.

Now, only a few days into my mission however and I’ve blinked. I’ve abandoned two local traditions in favor of my own: Screw tea with breakfast and sleeves on my shirts.

Damn the British and they’re tea. If I had a three-cornered hat and a few inebriated ‘Sons of Liberty’ I’d find a harbor to dump their Tetley in on a double-dog dare and then I’d go out for coffee. Days after landing and with the excuse of exploring the city, I jumped up from the table in the middle of reading “The Hindu” daily and threw on a well worn black sleeveless t-shirt – my first bare arms in Bangalore - to join Shiva who was leaving to buy eggs for breakfast. On the way back from the market I confided, “Shiva, Chandana makes terrible coffee. Can you take me someplace where I can get espresso?” I’d endured three days of syrupy, thick brews simmered South Indian style with a heavy percentage of chicory and limp milk that turned the mixture a disappointing grey. He looked at me gravely, wobbled his head and took me straight home.

I’ve since trudged around a bit looking for alternative brews. I have, after all, gone from the coffee capital of the United States to the coffee capital of India and though I’ve made some significant headway regarding south India’s unique taste in coffee, it’s been at the expense of my head. The pollution has turned my hair lank in some places and frizzy in others while my cheeks burn for hours after I’m safely indoors. The adapter for my hair straightener isn’t working and so I’m au natural with the most hideously unnatural result. I’ve begun to rely less on my footwork and more on my fingertips, searching the web for coffee feedback and maps of the city while my hair is slicked together with the local remedy of coconut oil. Now I have a clearer understanding of Bangalore’s coffee tradition, hair painted to my head like a Weeble and a hankering for macaroons.

In my first sampling of street vendors, I paid 10 rupees for a cup of coffee and I assumed the price was in dollars given that I frequented Starbucks in a past life but even for coffee that turns out to be damn-near free – A little more than 20 cents in the U.S. - it took some getting used to. Most street vendors sell tea and coffee in what looks like a DayQuil dosage cup which measures a dose of ‘swig’ but it’s scalding hot and I was quickly faced with the choice of burning off my fingers or my uvula. 3-2-1-burn digits burn. No longer can I be fingered by my fingerprints and it explains why every officiating body in India requires identifying photos instead. EVERY officiating body and in duplicate, by the way.

The Coffee Board which functions under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is located around the corner from where I live and was set up in 1942 under an Act of the Parliament to control research, quality and promotion of Indian coffee in India and around the world. According to their website, “The Coffee Board conducts basic and applied research on coffee and can boast of 75 glorious years in coffee research. The Central Coffee Research Institute in the Chickmagalur district, Karnataka State has been in the forefront of coffee research over the years and continues to remain one of the premier institutes of the world as far as coffee research is concerned.” Cheers.

But just because they can study the brew and isolate its chemical compounds doesn’t mean they don’t simmer swill. I needed to investigate so Chandana and I walked into their shop after some impressive street-crossing reminiscent of a ‘Frogger’ high score attempt and I was greeted by official looking representatives sporting Raj mustaches and modified turbans with folded napkin swans swimming serenely atop their heads. Some turbans had seen better days and their swans flopped sloppily as if whoever folded them in 1942 promptly forgot how it was done and they’ve had to make do ever since.

The coffee was milky, sweet and bitter from the added chicory which is said to add body to the flavor but also has medicinal qualities. To me, it was better than what the vendors offered but it still didn’t taste like the coffee I have known. Again, according the coffee board, “The Board runs two quality control laboratories in Bangalore and Hassan, which control and advise the industry on quality issues. The labs are equipped with the best roasting and brewing machines. The best cup- tasters and quality evaluators keep a strict vigil on the pre and post harvest processes with a view to ensure that the quality of Indian coffee is maintained.”

I spent most of my Saturday morning waiting for the leisurely opening of Blossom Used Books and reading at a Coffee Day off of MG Road – Here Mahatma Gandhi is casually referred to as ‘MG’ like he’s MC Enlightened or something – because Coffee World’s day starts way later than my coffee day. The manager explained that they grow and roast their own beans nearby and he served me a free espresso for the sake of analysis since I was from Seattle and therefore an expert by way of zip code. After downing it to the nod and grin of the manager I realized that the confounding issue may not be the espresso here which was actually quite good but the scalded, questionably sourced buffalo milk heated to the temperature of a neutron star.

Though the coffee itself may be premium coffee, the chicory in traditional coffee is the variable that changes the flavor. Most Indian spices and additives inevitably turn out to be a digestive aid, an anti-inflammatory or both. The reasons are startlingly clear. In the case of Chicory, it’s both. The interesting thing is that chicory is also a sedative meant to blunt the effects of caffeine. After two days of impossible jet lag and several days of erratic sleep patterns, I wasn’t necessarily trying to defuse the dose of caffeine I was getting. Again, however, I marvel at how Indians seem to instinctively find organic remedies to various afflictions. It’s then I remember that this is an inhospitable place with a long history and an endless supply of both lethal threats and people impacted by them. Tradition is shaped by the trial and error of generations that leaves a staggering and yet virtually unnoticed body count in a country of over a billion people.

It brings into focus my most pressing question of whether or not the population can thrive on so little protein which of course is the question that is most pressing for me since I’m living in a household full of vegetarians. The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is 63 grams a day for men and 50 grams for women and for me it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to eat enough yogurt and lentils to make that happen even if we hired another cook and a staff of locals to rub my belly afterwards.

In fact, on the first day I tried eating lots of yogurt on the suggestion of a friend who said that eating a ton of the local culture would help my digestion adjust, I went to the fridge and dished up a big bowl of the fizzy, chunky ferment and almost passed in favor of a crippling stomach virus. Realizing that it’s rude to be so finicky and knowing that I couldn’t possibly fend off another meal with a handful of cashews which had thus far been my strategy, I slurped it down while reading the paper for distraction. Later I was told that the fridge, a more obscure brand with a manic thermostat that nobody can find parts for, had lost power and that the yogurt hadn’t ‘set right’. Again, too late for a ‘pit-tooey!’ and please pass the cashews. I’ve been buying yogurt at the store ever since but as you can imagine it’s always more carbohydrate than protein.

The loudest voice in the pro-plant protein camp these days is T. Colin Campbell, PhD, who authored ‘The China Study’ as a result of a 20-year project studying nutrition and health for the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project of which he is the project director. His argument as a result of his research is "...Only 5-6 percent of dietary protein is required to replace the protein regularly excreted by the body (as amino acids). About 9-10 percent protein, however, is the amount that has been recommended for the past fifty years...The relatively few people consuming more than 21 percent protein mostly are those who "pump iron," recently joined by those on high protein diets." Given his credentials, I’d be inclined to listen more intently to his argument if only he would start supplying scientific data when answering his detractors instead of attacking their education and intellect. Like Dr. Atkins before him, he may have legitimate findings that get lost when he insists on being an ass.

Arguing the other direction, Dr. Loren Cordain – a researcher and a gentleman – makes the case that pre-agricultural diets suit our physiology proven again and again through his research. In ‘Implications of Studies of Early Hominin Diets,’ he states, “Although all available data point to increasing animal food consumption following the arrival of lithic technology, the precise contribution of either animal or plant food energy to Plio-Pleistocene hominin diets is not known. Obviously, then as now, no single (animal/plant) subsistence ratio would have been necessarily representative of all populations or species of hominins. However, there are a number of lines of evidence which suggest more than half (50%) of the average daily energy intake for most Paleolithic hominin species and populations of species was obtained from animal foods.” In further study of indigenous diets leaving out the most extreme climates where no plant matter is available he notes, “For all 229 hunter-gatherer societies, the median subsistence dependence on animal foods was 56 percent to 65 percent. In contrast, the median subsistence dependence on gathered plant foods was 26 percent to 35 percent (Cordain et al., 2000).

In the end and after exhaustive research on the health implications of high-carbohydrate intake, he makes the recommendation that endurance athletes, a segment of the population that demands the highest carbohydrate intake should consume 0.8 - 0.9 grams of protein/lb/day. That yeilds a percentage of the total daily caloric intake that still works out to be substantially higher than Campbell’s percentages even though it’s the low-end recommendation for Cordain.

Surrounded by vegetarians, it’s no question that they survive on a low-protein/High-carbohydrate diet like the one described by Campbell but there’s no real evidence that they consume enough of the essential Amino Acid Lysine from pulses rather than rich animal sources. This is the key deficiency that experts discuss when considering the vegetarian diet. According to Wikipedia, “The human nutritional requirement is 1–1.5 g daily. It is the limiting amino acid (the essential amino acid found in the smallest quantity in the particular foodstuff) in all cereal grains, but is plentiful in all pulses (legumes).” Listed among the foods rich in lysine are soy bean, Kidney bean, Lentil in sprout, Lentil in seed, black cumin and roman coriander. All of these are eaten here regularly but whether or not consumption yields the necessary one gram daily is a good question. One for which I have found no answer.

In the May 2004 issue of Public Health Nutrition D. Millward of the Centre for Nutrition and Food Safety, School of Biological Sciences, University of Surrey, published his opinion, “The lysine limitation of the cereal-based Indian diets is dependent on the choice of lysine requirement values from the published range. We consider that the value selected is too high, because of uncertainties and inconsistencies in the approaches used. A more appropriate choice from the lower end of the range would remove the lysine limitation of cereal-based diets, and reduce some of the perceived risk of deficiency.” And here I thought lowering the bar was a distinctly American approach. He continues, “We conclude that the choice of values for adult lysine requirement should be re-evaluated and that serious consideration should be given to the extent to which adaptive mechanisms might enable the metabolic requirement for protein to be met from current intakes. This will entail a better understanding of the relationships between dietary protein and health.”

In every case of indigenous consumption patterns there is talk of adaptation and an evolutionary process that takes place allowing the local population to tolerate local fare. Though I’ve seen discussions in which experts argue an adaptation to plant matter that accommodates, I’ve seen no actual science about how this is so. Also, if the residents of Bangalore stuck to local foods the argument for evolutionary adaptations might be plausible but like every emerging country influenced by western practices, the foods found readily available are predominantly made from white flour and do not reflect the diet consumed even ten years ago. Think Pizza Hut in the form of Tikka Deep Dish.

I went to the Kebab stand the other day for lunch after trudging through the heat and dust to find that it was closed for reasons anyone who speaks Kanada would understand. Thwarted, I went to the nearest coffee shop hoping to find something with enough meat to tide me over. I tried to explain ‘most chicken’ to the waitress while pointing at the chicken section. “Ah, most chicken, Madame!” Crap, she’s spoken to Shiva and she’s heard I own a brothel. She brought me a ‘Chicken Puff,’ a sandwich that I can only describe as a thin layer of a Chicken Masala marmalade in a genetically modified monster croissant. I shuffled back out into the heat only to pass a McDonalds where I read the take-out menu and realized that for the first time in my life I could have gotten a healthier lunch in a happy meal. Later, when I started looking at coffee shop menus to get a better idea of what people were eating, I saw that for the most part, local breads have been abandoned for American bulky rolls and bulky waistlines.

“With regard to diet and health, food staples and food-processing procedures introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial era have fundamentally altered seven crucial nutritional characteristics of ancestral hominin diets: (1) glycemic load, (2) fatty acid composition, (3) macronutrient composition, (4) micronutrient density, (5) acid/base loads, (6) sodium/potassium ratio, and (7) fiber content,” said Cordain in the aforementioned study, “Each of these nutritional factors either alone or combined with some, or all, of the remaining factors underlie the pathogenesis of a wide variety of chronic diseases and maladies that almost universally afflict people living in western, industrialized societies. “ The fact that wherever American food chains pop up, waistlines pop out doesn’t seem to catch the eye of the affluent who can buy this kind of food. Then they are left looking to the very people who are losing the battle to obesity for help.

I went back to the apartment, laid on the bed and watched the ceiling fan for twenty minutes while I waited for the lethargy to subside. I spent most of my twenties in a coma caused by wheat flour and even now I can’t escape the impact. Even Chandana, after a controlled weight-loss program in which she limited refined carbohydrates can now feel the difference that refined carbohydrates make when her energy is drained after consumption. Like me, she wasn’t able to tell the difference until she controlled her intake for a period of time. Until then the lethargy was just business as usual. When it comes to adaptation, we are two people who clearly missed that bus.

But even the carnivores argue for adaptations to explain the positive impact of higher protein diets even as they claim the only adaptation to cereal grains is metabolic derangement. In Cordain’s research he states, “Carnivorous diets reduce evolutionary selective pressures that act to maintain certain anatomical and physiological characteristics needed to process and metabolize high amounts of plant foods. In this regard, hominins, like felines, have experienced a reduction in gut size and metabolic activity along with a concurrent expansion of brain size and metabolic activity as they included more energetically dense animal food into their diets (Leonard and Robertson, 1994; Aiello and Wheeler, 1995; Cordain, Watkins, and Mann, 2001).”

Whatever the percentage, there’s no question of proteins importance. The immune system functions properly when sufficient protein ensures an adequate supply of white blood cells and antibodies. Robert Heaney, M.D., a bone researcher at Creighton University in Nebraska studies the way that protein helps maintain and improves bone density especially after fracture when adequate supplies slow bone loss and assist recovery. His research supports 70 to 100 grams of protein for older adults to maintain lean muscle mass. And even here trainer’s supplement with whey protein to help gain muscle mass. Of course, when they talk about taking ‘medicine’ to increase size they are only sometimes talking about whey protein.

“In reality, the difference between a diet that is one hundred percent animal products and one that is two percent animal products is merely one of quantity, while the difference between a diet that is two percent animal products and one that is zero percent animal products is one of quality,” sites Chris Masterjohn in his review of ‘The China Study’ for the Weston A. Price Foundation, “A diet low in animal products and a diet devoid of animal products are simply two fundamentally different things.”

One quick cruise of most bodybuilding websites will contain endless discussions about the bioavailability of various proteins. Quality and nutrient density are topics that can’t be avoided. Nor can they avoid the topic of boobs and body hair removal but that’s a completely different post.

“Not all animal products are equal. Putting aside all differences in quality such as soil composition, pasture feeding and so on, there are certain animal products that are by their nature vastly richer than most others in important animal-based nutrients,” Masterjohn discusses in cholesterol-and-health.com where he posts a rebuttal of Campbell’s remarks on VegSource.com in which Campbell insisted on being an ass, much like he did in the protein debate with Cordain hosted by performancemenu.com some time ago. He goes on to say, “This is particularly true of shellfish. It would take just over a quarter pound of beef per day to fulfill the minimum requirement for zinc, yet a single serving of oysters per week fulfills the same requirement. One would have to eat two servings of salmon per week to meet the minimum requirement for vitamin B12, but would only have to eat clams once per month to meet the same requirement. “

So when we’re talking about low protein/high carbohydrate diets, is the meager percentage recommended by Campbell misleading because of the nutrient density of the protein consumed? “The China Study's questionnaire had no questions specific to the consumption of shellfish. How, then, could anyone possibly draw a conclusion from it about what the optimal amount of animal products are, if the amount needed is so different when the nutrition is supplied by shellfish than when it is supplied by meat?” asks Masterjohn. Either way, it poses more questions than it answers in a time when I’m embarking on a study of my own with a single test-subject – me. Please pass the cashews.

Next Chapter

Thirteen years ago I moved from New Hampshire to Seattle with a back-pack full of flannel shirts in a pick-up truck stocked with household goods. I was Elly May Clampett without the boobs or the investment capital which in retrospect makes it all kind of sad. The loot included an old-even-then television set and a Jan Sport backpack that my father bought me for the trip because all the students at the University of Vermont were carrying them and they seemed pretty durable.

It was almost poetic that on my last day in Seattle, I was carrying the backpack after 4,745 consecutive days of use – unwashed, some will insist I mention – and sneaking down the block with my older-still television that I was depositing on the lawn of a neighbor who creates sculpture from an assortment of household junk. The Salvation Army won’t take TVs made before 2000 which I found rather snooty and the garbage man would have had to don a HazMat suit and file an incident report if I even considered placing it near the dumpster. I had few options. Leaving alms to the artist seemed a suitable solution.

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting curbside in my neighborhood on a 1960s turquoise Naugahyde chair with wooden arms and stainless steel legs – the last of my impressive collection – as I waited for my friend who would drive me to the airport. He had agreed only the day before to stash the chair in his basement all because of a last minute attack of nostalgia that had me wailing over the phone, “I should be able to keep ONE chair, MY FAVORITE ONE, Why not ONE!” as if this had been somebody else’s decision and they were prying my furniture from my desperate grasp. He’s a bachelor and has absolutely no equipment to deal with irrational girly episodes. I counted on that.

A man on his bike with the guitar on his back took a moment to stare at me as he sped past. It was, after all, 3:30 a.m... Shortly after I had settled comfortably in my chair outside, it had crossed my mind that some undead thing might creep down from the adjoining park right out of the Thriller video to eat my brains. That would be suitably tragic for sensational local news coverage given that I was moments away from an amazing journey when the aforementioned spooky thing chose me as its victim. I was just creating the proper ambiance by crooning, “It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark . . .” when the bike rider whizzed by.

Since we can only guess that the grim reaper wears black and carries a sickle rather than rides a bike and wields a guitar, I held my breath for a second, which technically, would not discourage said reaper in any way since his job would be easier if I ceased respiration first. “You try to scream . . . .”

The man on the bike looked a little frightened which instead had me wonder if this was really just some dude in a band who thinks there’s nothing scarier than a woman perched on a throne of Naugahyde, singing ‘Thriller’ in strained tones with no range (for those of you who have seen my YouTube contribution, you know what I mean). In fact, that’s grim reaper kind of frightening.

I was still singing in spite of the audience simply because I wanted to get to the part where I punctuated the line, “. . . but ‘terra’ takes the sound before you make it” because I find that particular pronunciation of ‘terror’ so darn amusing that it needs to be belted out regardless of who’s within earshot.

Moments later my friend arrived in the Subaru that would take me out of my neighborhood for the last time. I would have cried one last sentimental cry but I’d exhausted my tears over the last couple of weeks and, again, reminded myself that I was sitting next to an ill-equipped bachelor. The sappy behavior had already culminated anyway in a mid-afternoon sobbing call to an ex-boyfriend after I had sifted through every sweet card he’d ever sent me. It ended up sounding like a 2am drunk-dial with a lot of drippy I–love-you-man’s. Mortifying in retrospect. Sorry, Taha – I love you, man.

Three weeks earlier I had decided to move to India. After the initial surprise wore off, my Dad made one of his 6 a.m. phone calls – I stopped mentioning the three-hour time difference to him awhile ago – to voice concern about inoculations because someone had a cousin whose friend’s sister’s boyfriend got really sick there. I assured him that I’d get shots and wear saran wrap over my head and hands whenever I went outside. As well as guarding me from contact, it should keep the locals farther than sneezing distance from the weirdo wrapped in plastic.

What’s particularly funny about this call is that my father lives all summer at a camp in Vermont near Lake Champlain with no running water, no electricity, questionable refrigeration and an out-house. Whatever power he needs runs off his truck battery so that his entire life requires less juice than my smart phone. With meager culinary prep, my father and his like-minded friends sustain themselves with meat-loaf sized hamburgers and vegetables plucked from the garden. Sometimes the only obvious attempt at sanitation appears to be a quick glance upward and a plea to God. One of my Dad’s famous ‘camp burgers’ could take out his entire little commune if it wasn’t for the liberal use of an antiseptic called Gin in it’s most economical form. Apparently, Jesus and Gin trumps e-coli.

Most of my friends smiled and nodded when I told them I was moving to India but I don’t think they believed I’d do it even after I set about breaking camp like a nomad packing up the yurt. Probably because they knew any nomad would have known better than to accumulate that much stuff. With my 1950s and 60s collectors kitsch – it could either be considered a $300 find on Craig’s list or a $5 this’ll-work-cut-it’s-cheap compromise at the Salvation Army. It was love-it or hate-it stuff and we’d been growing old together, my Naugahyde and me so it was tough to be objective.

This would also be one of the few occasions in which I could honestly blame my mother. Most of the baggage I’d like to assign to her is actually my own but the boxes of yard-sale finds can actually be blamed on her since she did indeed ship them across country. Her motto, “if it’s ugly, it must be worth money” combined with “heck, it’s only a quarter” culminated in a collection of artifacts that I could only now sift through because she passed away. I wouldn’t have dreamed of getting rid of a single item while she lived and I still had to call my sister for her blessings at least a couple of times in the process.

As I would explain later, my mother was a shyster. This isn’t the time to explain how she passed off Duncan Hines brownies as her own at all the bake sales or how she convinced me that the Pillsbury Pie Crust was homemade after she rolled out the fold and floured the counter liberally, but I discovered it wasn’t the last of her capers. I agonized over the ‘Depression-era, hand-blown glass’ vase she sent me trying to decide if I should keep it simply because to her it was a valuable find even though to me it was cranberry, a color I would never decorate with. After electing to save it with the few meager items I was keeping, I turned it over to slide the candle out and I noticed the ‘HD’ sticker on the bottom which I would recognize as a Target brand household good but she would not since she seldom went to department stores. I’ll never know why she attempted to pull that one over on me since this is a woman who knew her depression-era glass but it’s yet another of the complicated reasons why I loved her so dearly.

I also elected to paint a house before I left. As I settled all my clients elsewhere, I needed something to do other than keep myself company and cry over old birthday cards. I walked into the project blind, had no concept how much work it would be and longed to be done with it because it was stressing me out. File “house painting” next to “marriage” in a pile called, ‘Things to try only once.’

I’ve been known to do experiments in manual labor and this was what I thought would be another lab to determine if my functional conditioning is actually functional. Most importantly what I learned is that men who shop in upscale supermarkets only flirt with me when I’m dirty and covered in paint which is weird and worthy of further study. Had I known this, I could have changed the face of my dating history simply by rolling around in the parking lot on the way in.
I also learned that paint is really hard to get out of your hair, that people who climb to the top wrung of ladders positioned on uneven ground have brass balls or no understanding of physics, gravity or medical coverage, and that what little sanity I maintain can be preserved in trying situation only as long as I have access to podcasts of ‘This American Life’. Physically painting was no problem but if it hadn’t been for Ira Glass the mental game would have beaten me. If this had been the Navy Seals of monotonous labor, I might have wrung the bell.

I had hoped this project would be reminiscent of my drywall experiment of 2002. Then however, I got to work with a crew of Romanians who where all a lot of fun with the exception of the plumber. Since apparently the Romanian wives would not be happy to discover that their husbands worked on a coed crew, I was scooted out the back door whenever the plumber arrived. Of all the men in this little congregation, the plumber talked when he drank. Oh, and he drank a lot. As Sam, the dapper young family man I worked with frequently would say sternly as he shook his head, “this no good.”

Their wives had no reason for concern. They were not attracted to me as they would continue to attest that Romanian women were the most beautiful women on the planet but rather, as devout Christians, they were fascinated to be in such close proximity to any human being that in their minds would be fed-exed straight to hell upon expiration. Sam found the blasphemous lifestyles of Americans almost as offensive as their ungodly preference for drywall over stucco. He also couldn’t understand why we weren’t smart enough or considerate enough to learn any other language fluently and he thought my divorce was a tragic mistake because it would leave me with few prospects. So far I’ve done little to disprove his theories.

His mudslinging always began during the literal slinging of mud. Sam would fling trowels of mud at all the wall’s seams while complaining nonstop about how this was a stupid American invention and far inferior to the genius that is stucco. I still preferred taking a browbeating for my fellow citizens to standing on saw horses propping sheets of drywall in place while he screwed them in. The vibration of the screw gun made it hard to see how much my muscles were quivering at the effort.

What I learned from that job was that any task performed at full range of motion for greater than twenty reps was outside of my training and challenging for me to do. All the training I did in the gym up to that point did not prepare me at all for the demands of real labor. That particular epiphany about the dysfunction of conventional training turned me towards CrossFit and I never looked back. I had hoped for a breakthrough of equal magnitude with my little paint project but other than it’s Zen-like moments which could have been attributed to the wax-on/wax-off sort of focus or the combination of dehydration, sun stroke and paint fumes, I can only be sure I met my RDA of Vitamin-D out in the rare Seattle sun.

Wolfeboro, NH, where I’m now staying with my sister, docks on Lake Winnipesaukee. Visitors rent boats, splash about in the lake and probably fish for trout. It’s a lake. So when the tourists swagger up to Dockside - what would look like your typical Oceanside seafood and burger joint if you were hours south at Hampton Beach - and ask if the clams are fresh, the teenagers working the window try not to be too sarcastic. Did I mention it’s a lake? You’d better hope the clams are previously frozen ‘cause anything caught in the gulp of water that’s Winnipesaukee, ain’t a quahog.

My nephew Dustin works at Dockside washing dishes while my nephew Gunnar works at Garwood’s doing ‘cold-side’ prep and I am spending the month flipping crepes at a crepery a few doors down. I haven’t asked what they’re making per hour and not because I haven’t considered comparing wages. Though you can imagine that after ten full years of fighting obesity with no downward trend, I’ve thrown up my hands and joined ‘Team Diabetes’ just to play on the winning side for once, there is no nutritional angle to this. In fact, I only grimaced internally when a father ordered Strawberry, Nutella, Candy, Syrup, Honey-smothered Crepes for his two scrawny offspring for dinner and then explained proudly that his children are vegetarian. He then looked at his robust niece when she asked if she could please have chicken in hers and said, “Fine. You’re mother’s paying – she can kill animals.” “Coming right up, sir,” I said grinning.

Yes, I have the pleasure of working at ‘Crepes Ooh La La!’ where I walk past the phone quickly before it rings so I can avoid saying it. It could force me to acknowledge the midlife crisis I’m pretending not to notice. I stand on display and prepare crepes to order and in spite of my wheat sensitivity, spend most of my day smelling like pancakes. Instead of paint in my hair I now have to contend with Nutella which, unlike paint, can be removed by licking though I wouldn’t advise it. If I hadn’t been spending my evening making runs to 7-11 for tacos in a car full of teenaged boys going 70 m.p.h, I’d walk through a bar just to see if men buy drinks for girls that smell like breakfast. (Disclaimer: It was not Gunnar driving and they may not have noticed an adult in the car because I was the shortest one there. Oh, and I didn’t eat tacos and it wasn’t my idea).

As for the rest of the teenagers in town, I think I work with all of them. My favorite is a budding Einstein dressed all Abecrombie. I'm sure he'd display his natural brilliance if it wasn't for an unfortunate roominess between synapse. When we're all operating on DSL, he's dial-up. It's odd to be moving at the pace of crepe only to have you're rhythym disrupted by the slow ardious shuffle of untied sneakers moving at the pace of a dimwitted knuckledragger. He was country when country wasn't cool.

I’m willing to consider the job at the crepery an inventive way to mingle with the locals while I spend time with my family and learn yoga before heading off to India. So far I took three or four of my sister’s classes and so far my mind is more open than my joints. I promised myself I’d chase away whatever thoughts I had like, “this isn’t functional,” “this movement is dangerous”, “I can’t do this,” or, “holy Krishna it’s only been five minutes!” and give this thing a chance for the sake of sisterhood. Stacey told us in soothing tones at the beginning of class to pick a spot to ‘work-on’ and after spending the first couple of classes trying to ‘breath through my shoulder,’ I decided to shift my spot from my shoulder to my attitude. I think I hit the spot. In spite of my inability to wear my own limbs as a straightjacket, I remained composed and open to the possibility of one day swaddling myself and at the same moment realizing why you'd want to.

Stacey’s been to Gordo’s gym with me, too, which I joined moments after stepping foot inside the city limits. After we spent 30 minutes rearranging a jungle of benches and elaborate machines designed to test whether pullies work, we were set up to do a ten minute workout. I started showing Stacey how to do dumbbell cleans and I believe within the first five minutes she said, “This movement is dangerous,” “I can’t do this,” and “Holy Krishna, It’s only been five minutes!” She hasn’t been back yet but I think she should hurry. My show at Gordo’s might be a limited engagement after I horrified the locals with a little Push-Jerk Squat medley that turned me three shades of red. Historically, they’ve burned witches nearby with less tangible evidence of demonic possession. Or maybe they were just peeved because I smelled like pancakes.

Ten Times More Excited

I started a seven-month leadership program that I expected would hone my skills as a trainer. When I signed up, I was promised that my life would be unrecognizable by the time the program was complete. I think I might have said, “cool” without even considering the old ‘be careful what you wish for’ adage that my mother would have quoted without missing a beat and that would have annoyed me at almost the very same second she said it. Unrecognizable sounded inspiring not horrifying like the kind of unrecognizable I’d be if a semi hit me in the Sentra. Maybe I should’ve been tipped off by the monkey paw that came with the introductory binder.

By month four, my business was dissolved I was unemployed and certain people were responding to me as if I had all the charm of poison sumac. This included my on-again/off-again boyfriend who informed me I was annoying, a sentiment apparently shared by the other girl he was secretly sleeping with. Clearly that makes us ‘off’.

It took a couple of weeks of practice but I can now successfully answer the ‘what happened’ question with the ‘he wanted to see other people’ spin and not be tempted to end the sentence with ‘. . . naked and drunk and then lie about it.’ Can’t people just break up with a handshake instead of going all ‘country song’ with it? Not that I’m bitter, but if Karma hasn’t caught up to them yet it’s simply stuck in traffic with the wrong Google map.

I had a brief but meaningful fling with Haagen Dazs Fleur De Sel Caramel Ice Cream but then remembered it won’t erase an ass from my life only add one. Ultimately it had little impact – I cried out all the bloat over ‘P.S. I Love You’ which I think gave me swimmer’s ear from crying sideways into a puddle I continued to lay in. I rented an embarrassing stack of cheesy romantic comedies until I feared Hollywood Video would sell their database and I’d get a mailbox full of flyers for suicide hotlines and Match.com as well as a suspicious number of coupons for psychotherapy in my MoneySaver pack.

Eventually I was able to reboot myself with enough romance to spike my blood sugar and convince me to at least put on deodorant and chapstick before I left the apartment just in case Gerard Butler or James Marsden was in line behind me buying Fleur De Sel Carmel Ice Cream to match the dried stain on the wrinkled t-shirt that I was clearly intending to be buried in. But it’s amazing what a few clever movie lines can do considering that finding a suitable breeder in my neighborhood is as likely statistically as a semi hitting me in the Sentra.

I played over 3100 games of bubble breaker on my phone which it turns out serves as a sort of screen saver for my overworked melon. Whenever my mind started whirring along I clicked it into energy conservation mode by bursting little colored bubbles until I drooled or my thumb hurt and I couldn’t hold up my arm anymore. Finally, I started meditating which I think happens naturally when you’ve maxed out rheuminating. I started with guided meditation on CDs which I napped through rather successfully so I’m not sure if giving myself a pedicure with the ex’s toothbrush after I woke up was a sacred Tibetan practice on the path to enlightenment as suggested by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso or whether my mind was making a funny. The toothbrush, by the way, was not bad Karma unless I allowed him to brush his teeth with it should the opportunity present itself and I wouldn’t do that. Well, I’m pretty sure but I think that’s mostly because he’s never getting within fifty yards of it.

Between the search for an enlightened path and detours in my career path, I’ve weathered my fair share of stress for the first time in forever. My life was not complicated before and that was by design so my only experience with adrenal overload was thanks to my unholy love of coffee. But as I’ve been recently educated on both impermanence and attachment, so goes it. Sigh.

So if my mind joined the maniacal march of the unconscious thanks to the ceaseless jumping from past suffering to future uncertainty at least until I finishing crying my last ugly, snuffling heartfelt cry you’ve got to wonder what toll that takes. I’ll tell you it didn’t feel all that healthy. Anthony Colpo in ‘the Great Cholesterol Con, Why everything you’ve been told about cholesterol, diet and heart disease is wrong!’ summed it up rather nicely:

“When we become acutely stressed, our internal environments undergo a striking transformation: our bodies, in effect, go into red alert. Blood is diverted away from organs and tissues participating in ‘non-essential’ activities – such as digestion, immune function, growth and repair – and re-routed towards those involved in dealing with imminent danger, such as the muscles and heart. Our reflexes sharpen, our muscles tighten and our hearts start beating faster in anticipation of intense physical effort. This is the famous ‘fight-or-flight’ response, which is triggered when the body releases substances known as catecholamines. The two most abundant catecholamines released during stressful times are norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline). Stressful situations also cause the body to secrete abundant amount of the catabolic hormone cortisol.”

“Norepinephrine and epinephrine exert pronounced effects on the cardiovascular system: they increase heart rate and dilate blood vessels in muscles, allowing for increased blood flow to support muscular effort. High levels of catcholamines also increase blood viscosity and encourage blood clotting, a development that serves to minimize blood loss from any injury that may occur while frantically fighting or fleeing danger. Meanwhile, cortisol raises our blood sugar levels, ensuring a ready supply of fuel for the brain. In order to achieve these elevated blood sugar levels, cortisol overrides the action of insulin. In other words, during brief periods of stress we become temporarily insulin resistant.”

Prior to my present series of plot twists, I was only able to achieve that level of stress through sleep deprivation. This, as I’ve mentioned before, has the same impact. Larry McCleary, M.D. makes it clear In The Brain Trust Program. The noted neurosurgeon said, “Studies done in young healthy male volunteers have shown that even a few days of sleep loss (on average sleeping about four hours a night) can disturb the metabolic systems that regulate blood sugar. This produces transient glucose intolerance to the degree seen in diabetes. When these young subject resumed sleeping for nine hours each night, the metabolic changes resolved.”

But a sleep debt doesn’t get resolved the way most people attempt it in one lazy weekend lolling in bed. In fact, in a study by the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Köln, Germany studied thirteen helicopter-based emergency medical service pilots (mean age 38 yr) who operate from sunrise to sunset, requiring up to 15.5 hours of continuous duty in the summer months for 2 days before, 7 days during, and 2 days after their duty cycle. Over the 7-day duty period, mean sleep duration decreased from 7.8 hours to 6 hours or less. Results showed that, “Mean levels of excreted adrenalin, noradrenalin, and cortisol increased significantly by 50 to 80% and remained elevated for the two post-duty days. Although the actual flights did not cause critical physiological responses, the acute and accumulated sleep deficit led to incomplete recuperation between duty hours and induced elevated stress indicators.” Again, the recovery period tested was two days.

McCleary also pointed out that the increase in cortisol “makes brain cells more vulnerable to the physical toxic insults of the environment.” How vulnerable? John Hopkins University researchers injected mice with ‘known chemical carcinogens’ after altering their natural sleep patterns as reported in ‘Lights Out – Sleep, Sugar and Survival’ by T.S. Wiley and Bent Formby, Ph.D. As a result, the short-night mice developed tumors so quickly that researcher couldn’t tell which substance caused the cancer. And, by the way, said substances were as simple as household cleaners, plastic from water bottles and components of antiperspirant. The long night mice didn’t get as much as a hangover from their carcinogen cocktails.

What I find interesting is that spikes in cortisol levels associated with sleep deprivation coincide with the most common sugar cravings. After ten years of training, I can easily say that most people suffer from the munchies mid-afternoon and evening. If you look at the cortisol profile in the study, ‘Impact of Sleep Debt on Physiological Rhythms’ by Centre d'Etude des Rythmes Biologiques, Laboratoire de Physiologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, the results show, ‘If the overall 24-hour cortisol profile was preserved, sleep restriction was associated with increased cortisol levels in late afternoon and evening hours and the duration of the quiescent period was reduced.”

Just because I traded my sleep debt for garden-variety stress, doesn’t mean I escape the ravages of cortisol. Colpo makes that clear in ‘Cholesterol Con’ when he says, “In controlled experiments, infusion of stress hormones produces an immediate but temporary insulin resistant state in healthy human subjects. If excessive catecholamine and cortisol levels occur during the post-meal period as a result of psychosocial stresses, then even greater rises in blood glucose and insulin release can be expected.”

He goes even further though because he makes the connection to the arterial clogging I could’ve looked forward to if I had insisted on being a victim of circumstances. “Dr. Malcolm Kendrick is by no means the first cardiovascular researcher to focus on the postprandial period, but he is the first to hypothesize the potentially atherogenic connection between the post-meal period and psychological stress. According the Kendrick, the presence of psychological stress in the postprandial period – a phenomenon that can significantly amplify the usual post-meal rise insulin and blood glucose – may dramatically accelerate the progression of heart disease.”

I obviously had no real interest in suffering from heart disease even if it was almost poetic that it would have been caused by heartache. And that would also be great raw material for a country song if you can find a word that rhymes with infarction. I instead elected to meditate and I’d be inclined to share my experience about that if I didn’t fear it would sound like ‘Eat, Pray, Love’- a book that made me want to ear-flick an Air Marshal so they’d turn the plane around and I could get my money back at the Bookstore near N-Gates.

I also dug out an old CD of tribal drumming designed to align my Chakras. Taha and I bought it years ago to listen to while making pancakes smeared with Peanut Butter long before I knew how far out of whack either ingestible was going to throw me. I only listen to it occasionally because each track corresponds to a Chakra and I never listen to the whole thing which makes me fear further imbalance. I'm not sure if it actually works but I do know you can time a nervous tick to it quite nicely.

My sister, who’s way more grounded than I, responded to the loss of her entire Anna Forest Yoga training homework by dropping to her knees in a flurry of expletives – a way of expression refined by my people and passed to us at an early age - and vigorously flipping the bird to whatever celestial being paused to take notice. As reported, this lasted for a minute or two and then she collected herself and moved on. This may have been another sacred practice on my CD that I slept through. I might try it next making sure to notice my breathing.

I'm Flossed

It never crossed my mind that twenty minutes of 45K Overhead squats followed by 100 pull-ups for time arranged as some sort of scenic-overlook/rest-stop on the way to the airport was in any way a bad, bad plan. But when the adrenaline wore off and I gathered my pink flip flops as well as a collection of uncomfortably heavy bags spit out of the conveyor belt in security, I realized how closely ‘carry on’ sounded like carrion. I was now going to be separated from the herd on the way to N Gates. Had it been the Serengeti, I’d have been lunch.

As the tragically unfit scurried past me rolling over my toes with oxygen tanks and wheely luggage on the way from sedentary jobs to inert vacations, I was left vulnerable to whatever lurks in the dark corners behind the regional art displays nobody ever looks at. And though clever considering security procedures, flip flops are not a load-bearing shoe and in fact enforce speeds not to exceed a stroll. I had visions of walking up to the nearest security guard, throwing my arms up over my head, and pleading, “Up!” which I’ve seen work rather successfully with small children in supermarkets.

When I say it never crossed my mind however, I’m assuming that’s a lie. Lots of reasons, excuses and justifications run ticker-style behind my eyeballs but it’s about as significant to me as the S&P 500. In fact, as far as my mind is concerned this whole ‘get-off-your-ass and step away from the cupcakes’ lifestyle has always been a bad idea and an experiment destined to fail. That’s why I stopped paying any attention to it because as much as I adore my brain, it doesn’t seem to have my best interests at heart. It turns out there’s really just a fat girlfriend living in my head who’s trying to sabotage me so she doesn’t have to eat alone.

So I’d guess that at some point the words, ‘but you’ll be sitting on the plane all sweaty’, ‘but won’t that kick the snot out of you’ and ‘that could make this a very, very long day’ passed unheeded along with ‘pack appropriate underwear – you’ll be wearing skirts’ which, as it turns out, I didn’t take note of either. I realized that many people think the incessant internal debate will at some point go away ‘when they’re fit.’ Hmmm, let me know when you get there – I haven’t seen it yet.

The only difference with me is how unwilling I am to engage in any conversation with my brain about exercise because it’s clear that it’s a two-year old in the candy isle who skipped her nap. One measly twenty minute workout could consume four hours of foot-stomping internal misery while I whine ‘why!’ along with a bunch of silly reasons I’m not even buying. But that’s if I’m willing to pay any attention greater than the slightest note I make of elevator musak.

“No, I’m good. I’m flossed,” Aaron Hendon said at the ILP Weekend I was attending simply to point out how silly it is that we operate like something is ‘handled’ when it’s clearly a maintenance issue. In the world of wellness, there’s a meal to eat and a workout to do and right now that’s what your fitness looks like. Keep it up, and you can see a trajectory but no guarantees. So it comes down to a series of decisions that you make that are either consistent or inconsistent with you’re goals.

What’s funny to me is when clients argue that they should see results anyway because they’re ‘trying.’ That’s like going to a college graduation and handing out the diplomas followed by a bunch of ‘honorable mentions’ of equal merit because these are people who had unique circumstances that the rest of as couldn’t possibly understand. Good to know, but you either do the work or you don’t.

What’s even funnier is that I understand this so clearly in the gym and yet I’ve been unwilling to see the rest of my life the same way. Doesn’t everything start at a ‘Point A’ where you set out to get to ‘Point B’ and there’s a bunch of stuff that has to get done to get there. If you don’t do the stuff, you don’t see results no matter how much you whine that it’s not fair and that so-and-so didn’t have to do as much stuff and that this shouldn’t be so.

I see clients struggle through similar conversations in the middle of workouts and I say – thanks to the advice of Michael Street – shut up and work. It’s all very fascinating and yet nothing other than a muscle contraction will make the weight move. And since I was hired to help get weight to move and not to facilitate a support group of one, you can see where the conflict begins.

So I was in San Francisco in a leadership training program engaging myself in a non-stop whine-along about how I couldn’t do the homework while the coach side of me rolled her eyeballs and said, shut up and work. “But . . .” my mind would whine. Honestly, I was ready to break up with me. “Please, I’d like to see other cerebrums,” I’d say and then excuse myself to the restroom so I could ditch me. Can you lobotomize yourself with a coffee stirrer and expect a reasonable amount of accuracy, I wonder? Somebody please Google that. In the meantime, I got my own coaching right back at me yet again.

So what have I learned? I’ll never stop whining. So what. It’s never a good reason to stop what I'm doing. And when people whine to me, I’ll nod sympathetically but it’s all still a bunch of noise that isn’t going to make me budge because I'm familiar with all the unpleasant consequences either way.

For me, that’s evident with nutrition more than exercise. I spent the whole time in San Francisco eating at Whole Foods yet walking into every bakery, caressing display cases, smelling the sultry smells, reading the names and ingredients of all the baked goods and then walking out. It was neither heartbreaking nor brave that I chose not to eat anything – it was just the overwhelming desire to not feel like ass even as my mind whined about being ‘on vacation’. 98% of the time, the choices I made were consistent with my goals simply because one urge outweighed another.

What’s insane is when a client tells me how yucky they feel and still tries to debate with me why they should be able to eat crap anyway. Um, ok. I promise not to interfere with your efforts to lesson the quality of your life even though, inevitably, you paid me to do so. Please make all payments in advance.

Yes, you will always want to eat crap and believe me, I know what that feels like. Stop worrying about the wanting, choose the results you’d like to see and then do the stuff that gets you there. Feel free to be as neurotic as you’d like along the way, however. For instance, I once knew a bodybuilder who looked as spectacular as one could look while training that way and she always answered the question, ‘how are you?’ with a list of what she ate that day. That might be the answer to ‘what are you?’ and for those of you who are curious she was a lot of canned tuna. Though reflexive, I stopped asking after awhile and would just smile and nod hello whenever I saw her leaving the meal plan for someone else to sign off on.

As for me, I can see myself placing an ad in the ‘Seeking other’ section of ‘The Stranger’ that reads, “Please eat powdered sugar donuts for me while I watch . . .” and I’d only get a little weird about how they’d have to smear powdered sugar all over their face but not really creepy like they couldn’t have milk or something. It would be next to the ad asking for someone to throw luncheon meat at them. No, really. I actually saw that ad and I wondered if they meant Boar’s Head or Oscar Mayer. Thin sliced Boar’s Head in some classy Italian meat that’s cured or smoked and ends in ‘della is one thing but steamy Glad-bagged Wonder Bread sandwiches adhered with warm processed cheese foods and perspiring bologna is clearly twisted. On the other hand, it earns props if it’s unsliced and serves as a new dodge ball inspired game with Honey Hams. That would require skill, an ability to tolerate blunt force trauma and the courage to face down high glycemic glazes.

I probably had that entire conversation in my head while refueling from a brown Whole Foods box filled with a chunk of uninspiring hormone free meat from the hot bar. Well, at least it was keeping the fat girl in my head occupied while I was busy not listening.

More input on output

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Seattle and in my neighborhood, that’s a lot like flicking on the fluorescents in a bar after last call. You know the moment when you realize that what might have looked like the romantic dancing of shadows are clearly a smattering of stains that are nothing short of miraculous so high on a wall and in patterns reminiscent of a crime scene. It’s also the first time you wonder too that a stray cigarette didn’t torch the place once you’ve calculating how much alcohol has soaked into the floor. You could cook a steak over the flames of the welcome mat alone but only after pausing first to thank God for shoes. Nobody needs to mention the startling way that bright-eyed charmers with porcelain complexions who converse lucidly turn into pasty-faced drunks with a crazy inability to focus once floodlit. Bartenders really should just flick on the lights throughout the night whenever someone tries to stumble out the door with anyone whose name they didn’t already know when they arrived. Consider it an intervention. Yes, it’s interesting that here on the Hill crazy people look crazier in bright sunlight but maybe that’s because those of us suddenly absorbed in the awkward and labored effort of a rusty Vitamin-D production are a starker contrast.

In the glare of summer sun, the infestation of bugs on a curbside rat* carcass outside one of Craig’s favorite Mexican restaurants looked more like a little beach party which made me wonder if I should rain down a cloud of spray-on sunscreen to keep the little buggers from sunburn. In light of that and every other now-evident dingy detail, I couldn’t help but wonder if this whole neighborhood could use a pressure washing in spite of it’s nearly constant dousing of rain. Can you imagine a whole street of people shivering and clinging to their fluffy hotel towels handed to them like Red Cross supplies after getting a hearty pressure-wash and a scrub from concerned soccer moms who carpooled over from their orderly cul de sacs on an emergency mission? I think Eastside moms would be happy to don pink lapel pins and do it as a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. They’d get sponsored by other soccer moms with slightly busier schedules or allergic reactions to the mandatory latex gloves. Though it would be fun to watch, I’m reminded of my 1940’s bathroom fixtures with their shiny, slick coats long scoured away and realize that pressure washing wouldn’t bring back the luster. Personally, for the sake of the visual environment and knowing that I couldn’t blame the rain today, I wouldn’t have minded if one crisply dressed mom sorted out my bed head while I waited in line for coffee. I suspect they’d lob off the last four scraggly inches at the direction of my friend Josh who’d seize the opportunity to right a wrong. (I think it bothers him more than he’d say though what he said was, “you should cut this off” as he wagged a chunk of it at me distastefully. Maybe that actually does capture his level of 'bother'.)

I was instead distracted by a text message that read, “HA HA I JUST DID THE ON THE TOILET SQUAT POOP.” All-caps courtesy of the author. My reply was “Cleanly? Props either way but extra points for accuracy. Your descending colon is in love with you right now.” As I’ve mentioned, most people wander away from me at parties almost immediately in hopes of finding less horrifying conversation and a little nosh, what’s left is an assortment of characters that send text messages like the one above. This one in particular might require a little background:
I once dated a man who routinely stood on the toilet seat while making deposits because, as he said, modern toilets are designed for a deconditioned population who can’t squat fully. As a result, our colons are straining at awkward angles that don’t accommodate our mechanics. Fascinating. You can see why I was smitten. I may have shared this fact with a number of people and at some point many of them lost my number and stopped returning calls. The few that are left obviously have the kind of social schedules that allow time for excremental experimentation and the sharing of results.

Since I read Fiber Menace, I’ve been particularly distracted by the end results of my nutrition. My concern for input has been entirely eclipsed by my focus on output. This, as you can see, is something I’ve been sharing with friends of like interest which you’d assume would be nobody. But unlike this particular gentleman with scientific leanings, I’m unwilling to dedicate any of my efforts in the direction of bathroom circus acts given the incident in a Bed and Breakfast outside London when I was six. After a long drive, my sister beat me to the bathroom and neglected to mention that the toilet seat was unanchored. She must have calculated my results with glee knowing that, at my height, my feet would barely touch the floor and she waiting until I started my urgent business to fling the door open and watch my panic as the seat began to slide starboard while I tried to cling to the toilet paper holder. Amid the whir of a rapidly unfurling roll of paper, the result was a mid-stream Sit ‘n Spin experience that left me forever uncertain of toilet seat stability. Is it odd that uncertain footing is the only reason I find the concept of squatting on the toilet seat out of the question?

My efforts have been in other directions. I have been drinking a daily bottle of Kombucha which was a recommendation of Jennifer Adler, my favorite dietician, brewer of bone broths and apparent purveyor of concoctions. Kombucha as defined by Wikipedia is, "the Western name for sweetened tea or tisane that has been fermented using a macroscopic solid mass of microorganisms called a "kombucha colony," usually consisting principally of Acetobacter-species and yeast cultures." When I sent one of my clients, a long-time sufferer of psoriasis, to her she recommended that he drink a bottle a day. I decided that perhaps I could benefit from the good advice.

First it’s important to know that I chew yogurt and could never tolerate pulp in juice. I get confused by viscosity and texture so the floating nonsense in kombucha throws me off. Frankly, I don’t consume anything with that consistency unless I’ve offended a waiter and, in those cases, I’m unaware of the unsolicited contribution. Now, there's not a lot of floaty nonsense but what exists is the kind of thing you're accustomed to spitting out not swallowing. When I notice the content, I suffer a moment of confusion and a desire to choke.

"Each time the kombucha culture goes through the fermentation process, it creates one new "mushroom" layer, or zoogleal mat, which will form atop of the original. After three or four layers have built up, the tea will become sour and taste somewhat like sour cider." Zoogleal mat - I'm not sure I could have made up a word that sounded that gross and it brings me right back to visions of the welcome mat in the aforementioned bar scene. My only contribution would be to change gleal to gleet. Um, sorry - moving on.

When I sipped a bottle disdainfully during an at-home training session with a client, I felt compelled to share about it mainly because she was beginning to take the look on my face personally. She later tried a bottle and described the smell as ‘vile.’ And her pronunciation was so uniquely British. Her inflexion captured a true repugnance that doesn’t translate with an American accent. In fact, I suggest that you go back and read ‘vile’ again with a British accent in order to capture the mood here. In New England, we can generate the same intensity with the expression, “it smells like ass.” We’re a classy bunch. (By the way, using that phrase in the Northwest will make you even less popular. Most Seattleites will at very least claim they lack a frame of reference.)

Wikipedia blames it on the acetic acid. "Acetic acid, which gives Kombucha that 'kick' to its smell and taste" says the post and I say 'kick' is entirely subjective and depends on who's doing the kicking and whether or not you saw it coming.

*Regarding the rat, I’m sure it just paused to peek in the windows and curse the heartburn that keeps it away from enjoying a good burrito before it died from arteries clogged by the General Tsos’s Chicken served next door. But keep in mind, Craig, that Tabasco kills the taste of all things e. coli but sadly not the symptoms. Drink the cheap tequila – the aftermath can be blamed on a hangover

Gut Bomb

There are people who can pour a beer straight down their gullet. They’re popular at Frat parties. My friend Shmi can do that with a Grande, nonfat, 190 degree, two-Splenda latte. Oddly, she’s not that popular at Frat parties. Maybe it’s because she can’t roll a quarter down her nose and bounce it into a cup with any predictability or maybe because Frat parties simply don’t serve up the kind of persnickety coffee order that would allow her to shine. Either way, I always get a kick out of watching her do it on Sunday afternoons while my coffee disappears in slow sips between the play-by-play analyses of both of our lives. What that actually sounds like at the next table is that I describe the blind, hapless stumble I took through my week and she manages to rephrase it as graceful, practiced choreography performed for an approving audience. That takes abundant creativity and most of the afternoon.

By the time we run out of coffee and conversation, our bellies are equally empty. But since I’m the kind of carnivore often caught standing over the sink eating red meat out of the palm of my hand and she’s the kind of vegan whose food is always certifiably soulless, we have a hard time finding a common nosh. After the pretense of internal struggle, I sometimes buckle to her wheaty whims only to find myself with a mouthful of Mighty-O Donut - Local and Vegan - thinking, “Hmmm, these really aren’t very good.” It’s a real shame considering the cost.

From what I can see, my little Indian friend has a iron-clad gut fitted to her fire-proof esophagus but my dainty little system can be leveled by a sugary confection like a blow dart from five paces. The roiling belly usually starts at around midnight and gets incorporated into a bad dream featuring rabid monkeys that spend most of the early hours jumping on my middle while munching donuts and grinding crumbs into my quilt. I awaken as rested as anyone who teases wild monkeys might, with low energy and a sterile gut. Given all the ways to commit crimes against gut flora, you may all be waking to your own sea of stagnation or perhaps just smelling like a monkey’s plaything which, by the way, is a different diagnosis but equally unfortunate.
Most people don’t pause to consider that the antibiotics taken on purpose and the no-so purposeful second-hand dose they get in animal products thanks to the liberal lacing in animal feed to ensure meat and diary makes it to market, continue to kill bacteria including your all-important belly buddies even after you’ve macerated them. And if you think keeping a pet gold fish alive is a challenge, try keeping a gut terrarium flourishing with a food allergy like mine. That midnight rumble in my belly is the sound of an entire population being massacred. The least I could do is erect a memorial monument in my duodenum.

It’s this bacterial infantry that not only forms normal, moist stools (sometimes the word ‘moist’ is just icky) but it also enables the destruction of pathogenic material, manufactures essential vitamins, protects the intestinal walls, and develops and regenerates tissue. Without this teeming environment, you can’t absorb the nutrients in your food and you begin to suffer from the maladies of malnutrition. But no matter how many billions of one-celled soldiers you have in your army, they’re no match for a Mighty-O if you can’t gut it out against an allergen.
In fact, there’s a lot of things that can cause that kind of genocide including protein deficiency, excess dietary fiber, intestinal acidity, diarrhea, heavy metals , silverware, mercury from amalgam fillings, food coloring, environmental pollutants, colonics and, as mentioned before, antibiotics and allergic reactions. Some of the items on the list are easy enough to explain. Intestinal acidity occurs when pancreatic ducts get blocked usually by too much indigestible fiber in the duodenum; diarrhea flushes flora; heavy metals and amalgam fillings are toxic; silverware and food coloring has antibiotic properties; and colonics are silly for obvious reasons. It’s the protein and fiber that require a little explanation courtesy of our good friend Konstantin Monastryrsky, in Fiber Menace:

Protein deficiency – intestinal flora derives its energy and plastic nutrients not from food, but from mucin, which is secreted by healthy mucous membranes. Mucin is a glycoprotein – a molecule that bonds glucose with amino acids. Gastric and intestinal mucus is formed by combining mucin and water. Mucus protects the lining of the stomach and intestines from mechanical damage, enzymes, gastric acid, astringent bile, and food born pathogens. The deficiency of the essential amino acid threonine, for example, curbs the body’s ability to produce mucin, and correspondingly, bacteria’s ability to function and procreate.

Excess dietary fiber – The byproducts of fiber’s bacterial fermentation (short chain fatty acids, ethanol, and lactic acid) destroy bacteria for the same reason ethanol, and lactic acid) destroy bacteria for the same reason acids and alcohols are routinely used to sterilize surgical instruments – they burst bacterial membranes on contact. And that’s how fiber addiction develops; as the fermentation destroys bacteria, you need more and more fiber to form stools. If you suddenly drop all fiber, and no longer have many bacteria left, constipation sets in as soon as the large intestine clears itself of the remaining bulk.

Under other circumstances, the absence of intestinal gasses might be cause for a sense of superiority around your uncouth and noisy friends but, in this case, it’s just a symptom of a sterile gut along with the more obvious constipation. What isn’t so obvious is that frequent respiratory infections, asthma, bronchitis, chronic rhinitis, post nasal drip, nasal voice, sinus congestion and allergies might be a tip off too. Deficiencies in Vitamin K, which is a byproduct of bacterial metabolism, can show up as hard to stop ordinary bleeding and bruising while deficiencies in Vitamin B12 produced by intestinal flora causes numbness and tingling of hands and feet, shortness of breath, chronic fatigue a sore mouth and tongue and mental confusion.

Finding a new community to populate your suddenly sterile stomach is a little more complex than my usual advice to lick doorknobs for a routine immune boost. Posting a listing for free room and board to wayward organisms on Craig’s list won’t get the job done either. But you’ve already done your gut an injustice if you don’t habitually smooch livestock on the nose, fling dung for distance, and caress every surface at the Greyhound bus station all without washing your hands. It’s called the hygiene theory and we’re living in a world where our sterile guts match or sterile environments. In fact, aside from our unfortunate lack of incidental contact with bacterial sources, the fact that formula fed children miss their first infestation from breast milk and adults with appendectomies lack a place to store their starter culture to boost their count when their tank is low, doesn’t make things any better.

Water Torture

The Albertson’s in Green Lake finally succumbed to whatever terminal illness was eating it alive. Before it did, I ducked in once or twice on urgent errands only. Its funk felt contagious, and the folks I saw shopping generally looked as if they’d already been infected. I think the entire place was built with asbestos, painted with lead paint and further enhanced by exotic molds growing under the bread isle next to wayward shopping lists on post-its. Yes, it was downright cursed and you always had the ‘I shouldn’t have ducked down this alley’ kind of feeling. Now that it’s closed, I’m not sure where you’d go to buy refreshments that wash away the taste of methadone or that feed the kind of munchies one tends to get after posting bail.

This grocery store was so desperate that you could buy cases of Top Ramen and have nearly enough money left over to treat the inevitable fatty liver at a walk in clinic. On my final errand, I stood in line worrying whether the crazy muttering man ready to check out in front of me would open fire armed with some concealed weapon and a clearly hostile relationship with the rest of humanity. If he did and I ended up being first to ‘check out’, would my friends always wonder if I had some sick bag-a-day Funyun habit that I hid from the world by getting my fix where nobody would ever recognize me. And even if they pried from my hands the emergency box of tampons that cleared my name, that Albertson’s would still be a stain on my obit.

The problem is, the overpopulated promenade that is Greenlake, will inevitably mourn the loss of a last-resort restroom in which to duck. That was likely the only other reason you might find yourself there. Back in the days when I was overhydrated, I loved stores like that where you could rush in and not have to ask for a code or walk around with a key attached to a garden gnome. Mind you, unlocked restrooms require precision hovering especially when you're peeing like a racehorse, but the hyperhydrated have given up the right to be particular.

Thank God I gave up the gallon a day habit many, many years ago. First, most of my water bottles were about as sanitary as sucking up street puddles with a bendy straw; second, my bladder was wussy and cried like a girl and third, leaving water bottles to stew in the car or under my arm so that the heated bottle would brew a carcinogenic tea seemed counterproductive to my whole ‘live long and prosper’ life plan with an ‘Into The Wild’ style retirement. Though I’m not overly religious, I also had a hard time buying the statement that when you’re thirsty it’s already too late. ‘The spiritual being of your choice’ did a fine job of orchestrated endocrine systems as well as all that other complex mush of guts, how the heck would thirst - something key to our survival - be the glaring bug in our operating systems? It was all an evil conspiracy by Evian was all I could figure.

In truth, we can link this right back to the Department of Agriculture who, if you haven’t noticed by now, is clearly trying to kill us. Big strapping corn-fed folks produce big piles of corn-fed poop (pause here until my sister stops laughing and we can move on) and we needed to do something to keep all that fiber moving. That monster bran muffin? Yeah, I’m going to need that with a large coffee – black, a liter of water and perhaps the lifestyle section of the paper.

If you read Omnivore’s Dilemma you know all the grain wreaks havoc on a cow’s digestive system and we’re not fairing much better with our Supersize McTurds. Though I live in a neighborhood where the next comment will start a hearty debate, our colons are not meant to accommodate such girth. Without all that fiber, nobody would be drinking all that water but now we’re being ravaged by both. And the reason there’s no book called ‘Pooping for Dummies’ is that after the urge hits, it all seems pretty straightforward with no powerpoint presentation necessary. Once you’ve flushed away the evidence, there's nobody around to tell you that you’ve been doing it wrong. We’re all pretty much operating under the assumption that all’s well that ends well, so to speak. Let’s all drink to that.

The water issue comes down to the chirping of the sound-byte ‘eight glasses’ without anyone really examining what that looks like. Konstantin Monastyrsky, who explains the issues with hyperhydration in the book Fiber Menace, breaks it down like this:

“A person weighing 70kg [155 lbs] requires at least ca. 1,750 ml [59 oz] per day. Of this amount ca. 650 ml is obtained by drinking, ca. 750 ml is the water contained in solid food, and ca. 350 ml is oxidation water. If more than this amount is consumed by a healthy person it is excreted by the kidneys, but in people with heart and kidney disease it may be retained.

As you can see, only 1,400 ml (47 oz), or about six glasses of water, are required every day from food and drink in almost equal proportion. The rest – the hidden oxidation water – is derived from the body’s internal chemistry.

Also, please note one crucial point: 1,750 ml is equal to about seven and a half glasses of water. This is where the initial round figures of “eight glasses” (1,890 ml) originally came from. What Human Physiology makes plain is that only 650 ml, or about two and a half glasses of water ‘is obtained by drinking’. Not eight, as we have been told to drink. Here’s another excerpt, this time from the Merck Manual of Diagnostic and Therapy, which is considered the gold-standard medical reference source and “must have” manual for any physician and researcher worth his or her salt. The Merck is even more miserly and specific:

. . . a daily intake of 700 to 800 ml is needed to match total water losses and remain in water balance . . .”

So if you’re walking around like Sponge Bob Damp Pants, what’s the impact other than your blunted IQ caused by the habitual reading of public bathroom graffiti and the potential Hantavirus you picked up off the doorknob? Here’s the laundry list provided by Monastyrsky:

Constipation: Potassium is a principal electrolyte, responsible for water retention inside human, bacterial, and plant cells. Overhydration causes the gradual loss of potassium through urine. Potassium deficiency, not shortage of water, is the principal reason behind stool dryness. The dry stool causes constipation because it is hard, abrasive and difficult to eliminate.

Kidney disease: It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand that kidneys pumping two, three, four or five times more water than normal will wear out faster. (The resources of our internal organs was determined by evolution long before Coke, Pepsi, and bud came on the scene.) Kidney stones in particular are associated with calcium deficiencies that may result from either a deficiency in one’s diet or from loss related to overhydration.

Urinary Disorders: Urinary infections are a common side effect of overhydration. With too many carbs and too much water in the system, urine alkalinity drops, acidity goes up, and the bladder and urethra become hospitable to pathogenic bacteria, which have an affinity for an acidic environment. Elevated glucose in the urine from too many dietary carbohydrates greatly stimulates these infections by providing plentiful feed for pathogens – a warm, dark bladder becomes just as hospitable to bacteria as a sweet-and-sour Petri dish.

Digestive disorders: the more you drink right before, during, or within the first few hours after a meal, the more difficult and time-consuming digestion becomes, because it requires correspondingly more hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes to bring their concentration up to the optimal level. The high volume of liquid in the stomach is prone to causing heartburn, which results from the spillage of acidified content into the unprotected esophagus. Indigestion, or delayed digestion (gastroparesis) causes gastritis – an inflammation of the stomach’s mucosa, which may eventually lead to ulcers. Chronic indigestion may also result from a chloride deficiency, especially when excess water consumption is accompanied by reduced or salt-free diet.

Digenerative Bone Disease: a loss of minerals in general, calcium in particular. Leads to bone softening – osteomalacia in adults, scoliosis in young adults, and rickets in children. (Osteoporosis is a bone tissue disease, and not a mineral deficiency condition, as mistakenly thought by most people, including most medical professionals. A loss of bone tissue – collagen that makes up the bone matrix – leads to bone brittleness, not softness, as from the loss of minerals.)

Premature aging: Facial bones determine our overall appearance and create a perception of age that no makeup or plastic surgery can hide. Because of a comparatively low physical load, facial bones experience the fastest loss of bone tissue and minerals.
Muscular disorders: Calcium and magnesium are key regulators of muscle contractions . A deficiency of these two minerals is broadly associated with fibromyalgia, fatigue, cramps, tremors, involuntary flinching, and many other conditions that affect not just body muscles, but also the eyes, blood vessels, intestines, heart, womb, and all other organs that are controlled by the muscles.

Unstable blood Pressure: Hypertension and hypotension naturally follow water binges. First, as the volume of blood plasma increases from absorbed water, blood pressure rises. As long as the kidneys remain healthy, the excess is quickly removed, along with the minerals. As the minerals become depleted, the volume of plasma goes down in order to maintain its chemical stability, and low blood pressure sets in.

Back in the 90's I had an 'incurable' disorder called IBS which this book covers in detail but that had nothing to do with why I read it. I wasn't searching for information about IBS because I completely recovered from the 'incurable' disorder over ten years ago by eliminating grains from my diet and reducing my water consumption. The doctors, on the other hand, had recommended that I eat refined carbohydrates for their 'digestability', drink plenty of water and take prescription drugs for the rest of my life. I wonder now if the drugs where made from corn and manufactured by the Department of Agriculture.

No it's not why I read the book. Frankly, aren't we all just looking just for a compelling page-turner that leaves us peering into toilet bowls for the rest of our days and dumping factoids about feces at dinner parties? Oh, that explains it.