| in which i am prejudiced against new age detox diets, and obama is awesome (the latter is a given) |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|10:43 pm] |
my playlist has degenerated into 'love you anyway' by boyzone and 'womanizer' by britney. or should i say EVOLVED????
OBAMA! i am so happy! but less so by the no gay marriage amendments that got through. stop playing with my heart, america! i so hope obama and k.rudd are friends though. my favourite part of the australian coverage was the filler pieces they had of people speculating on whether they'd be friends and when the first time ruddy and bammy will meet. and they described dubya's and john howard's friendship as a 'vulcan mindmeld', which honestly, will never, ever get old.
statistics are awesome: isa told me today that only 5 african americans have been in the american senate. that means that 20% of all african american senators have gone on to be elected president of the united states of america! OBAMARAMA GUYS!!!
on to less erratic ranting: for the last few years my sisters have been obsessed with this 'personal development' blogger called steve pavlina, who is actually a pretty awesome guy - 10 reasons you should never get a job is just one of his many awesome articles that are intelligent and do motivate you to get off your arse and make your life what you want it to be.
now, even though i do think he's well worth reading, i don't read him regularly, but my sisters do. and they've been telling me that even though they love him, they can't help questioning his sanity recently. This mostly because of his recent obsession with raw food and now 'juice feasting', which involves going on a 90 day fast of drinking vast amounts of juice and no solid food at all.
i don't think being a vegan/raw foodist is bad necessarily, and i do commend anyone who adopts the lifestyle sensibly, whether it's for moral, ecological or health reasons. but i think you may just have a problem when you start talking about your 'addiction' to solid and cooked foods, as steve pavlina does, or how you're proud that you've weaned yourself off food so well that you can get to the early afternoon without eating anything and not feeling hungry, as other raw foodists have claimed proudly.
trying to be generally healthier and detox a bit is good to do, but sometimes i just look at these fads and the extreme things people do to their body and can't help but think it's just an eating disorder manifesting itself under the guise of 'educated' and 'healthy' eating. i've read that a lot of anorexia is about anxiety and control, and some of these extreme eating things might give give a similar feeling of control. not that i think all people who juice feast have eating disorders, just that i think it might attract those disposed to it. and following a restrictive diet and regularly detoxing is a whole lot better than just not eating, i must admit.
but i just can't help thinking about anyone who regularly does extreme detoxes, why are they restricting their eating like this, and to what end? what is the ultimate goal? what people they admire have done this for extended periods of time and improved their lives? where is the evidence that this is actually good for you, or can improve your life more than just normal healthy living? i mean, 3 months not eating anything for your 'health', come on. i've only heard about the mountains of evidence that restricted/ irregular eating screws your body and your metabolism up, sometimes pretty bad. though he is road-testing it for his website, if i was as smart a guy as steve pavlina, i would personally wait for scientific evidence backing the validity of something like juice-feasting (instead of relying on the claims of the couple selling the program) before i started espoused its benefits on my blog. (or at least finish the program first! i prefer my personal development blogging without bias plz.)
maybe i'm just a narrow minded nay-saying party-pooping nancy-pansy who's missing out on the health and spiritual benefits of eating (or not eating) crazy shit. maybe you can detox yourself with juices - though i do want to ask, if it's taking out all your toxins, what other, possibly beneficial minerals could it be forcibly expelling from your body? however, if it is working for people, far be it from me to tell them to stop - just maybe get regular medical check ups.
that said, even of the science of detox is proven to be valid, if faced with the choice of drinking a litre of lemon juice and oil over a few hours so that later i can poop out hundreds of weird gooey green marbles which are purportedly pre-gall stones, or, say, just eating sensibly and exercising regularly, and still expect to live a long and healthy life, don't worry about me losing sleep over it.
but hey, the one thing i rely on in this life is my never-ending capacity for hypocrisy. i'll probably be excreting my own gall-stones next week. excuse me while i book my colonic irrigation. |
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