Distractions you can safely ignore
I’ll just be over here avoiding distractions.
Image: The Temptation of St Anthony, Jheronimus Bosch (manner of), c. 1550 - c. 1600. Rijksmuseum. Used with permission.
So the other day I was on YouTube, just seeing what the youth are up to, and watched a video about restrictive d*ets from a financial vlogger I like. Yes I know. But I am not one to tell anybody Stay in your lane! She can care about more than one thing.
The thing is, she was freaking out about Whole 30, which unlike the majority of d*ets is honest about being temporary and designed for the purpose of IDing food intolerances. This YouTuber gets pretty heated about how "extreme" the Whole 30 protocol is, and how extreme restriction like this only leads to disordered eating.
Which: agree! No one's confused that extreme restriction does indeed lead to disordered eating, especially if we jump on that merry-go-round and follow a survival-instinct-driven binge with more severe restriction. You can ride that circus pony for decades.
However, Whole 30—which I NEITHER ENDORSE NOR CONDEMN—is...pretty innocuous?? It's four weeks of fruits, vegetables, oils, meat, fish, poultry, tea and coffee?? In other words, FOOD? Like, I think I could do it. I could also live exclusively on Camembert for a few weeks, if I had to.
But if you were to tell me, yeah, just eat meat and vegetables, 86 the Kit-Kats for the next couple weeks, I don't think I could persuade myself that this is a set of restrictions so extreme as to guarantee an eating disorder result.
Last week I said I wanted to talk about the ways I've completely fucked up my brain and body around eating. And how much help I got from the world in doing it. And yes, vicious beauty standards, by which we almost always mean we*ght maximums above all, play a big part in messing up our eating. An influential and amoral d*et industry plays a big part too.
But the 180° reactions to d*et culture, which I will also call extreme, also contributed to my eating problems. We seem to live in a world now where somehow you're ceding sovereignty if you're avoiding gluten or sugar? You're kind of a dupe of d*et culture if you discriminate at all, if you don't just "eat everything in moderation"? <— JFC there are not enough scare quotes in the world for that phrase.
This world really is full of lab-engineered appetite-disrupting foodstuffs and I don't know if you're all like me, but those are my VERY FAVORITE FOODS. The more I have them, the more I want them (eventually, if not immediately). Cheap, ubiquitous, highly processed, hyperpalatable, habit-forming-by-design foods are what I LOVE and CRAVE and they are BAD for me. There is no other conclusion to draw.
Those foods are bad in and of themselves and they are so compelling—again, by intent—that they crowd out things like vegetables and fish and other whole foods. So I don't find it restrictive to avoid most of these industrial foodthings altogether. I find it liberating—when I can do it. I'm doing it right now, and I hope to be able to continue indefinitely.
Because just like you can't repair a knee injury by training for next week's triathlon, you can't repair broken eating by continuing to pump powdered gas-station donuts into the system. At least I can't. Sure, some ppl can moderate. I have found that me and my inner moderator are no match for the billion-dollar motive attached to our industrial food supply. THEY ARE SMARTER AND MORE RESOURCED.
My best option: walk away. Ignore. Don't engage. CHALLENGE NOT ACCEPTED. Can't win that fight.
And listen, when I say "repair" I don't mean what some sweet summer Tendergrammer means. Repair to me is not a spiritual, devotional, virtuous project, or any kind of precious hi-concept / lo-effect shit like that. When I say repair I mean BACK TO FUNCTIONALITY. I mean my appetite is in GOOD WORKING ORDER again.
Therefore it is best for me to consider "moderation" as a distraction from what I know, pragmatically, to be true: If a substance is engineered to provoke an immoderate response, like Kit-Kats are more compelling to my brain than, say, my child's bid for attention—and you may think, Christ! That is appalling, I would never be like that, and you may be right? But I have learnt that while people vary, they don't vary THAT much, and I'm not THAT much of an outlier, and my brain isn't THAT unusual.
Those foods work on your brain just like they're built to do: Get in there and deliver an experience that the brain flags as "do this again, ASAP". Like cordyceps in an ant, I'm down at the gas station again buying that shit, obeying orders from an external entity.
Or what USED to be an external entity, before my brain got colonized. Now the call is coming from inside the house. Strangely more compelling that the voices of my children.
Wow, if that's not extreme I don't know what is. But not exactly uncommon.
If you recognize yourself in this at all, maybe consider that arguments about how you "should" be able to "moderate" and if you don't you're just a servant of d*et culture, maybe those arguments are just a distraction to be avoided.
For me, avoiding the distraction of "moderation" was a critical component of rebuilding my brain—project still underway—for freedom.
Other things are...
READING
A More Intimate Encounter: The Devil in Tarot and Astrology, Jessa Crispin. Really one of my favorite living writers. You can get this zine on her website.
No One Will Miss Her, Kat Rosenfield. This one is for Freddie deBoer's book club. It may or may not be one of that genre that includes Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, etc. It takes place in rural Maine, in a town without pity. Or so it seems. Themes: Marriage! Hair! Patriarchy! Class war!
WATCHING
Itaewon Class. It just gets better and better.
LEARNING
How to make an improvisational quilt from Marlee Grace. I've wanted to take this class for years. There hasn't been a good time. Now is not a good time, either, haha! I am loving this teacher, this material and this honestly amazing group of women. I can't wait to show you my quilt!!!