Hovering Between the Old and the New

I've been neither trying to lose weight nor trying to gain weight. I've been eating like I did ... actually, I've been eating like I did about three years ago - each meal containing a meat entree.

I can feel a ball of something moving it's way very slowly through my intestines. If I massage that area of my lower belly, it's sensitive. It feels like a brick about the size of those little pink bouncy balls. I'm not sure if it's a hunk of cheese or meat or bread or what, but I distinctly feel it and can mark it's progress as it winds it's way through my intestines.

Yesterday I had lower back pain, my right ankle has an intermittent shooting pain, my skin is dry and I've been having migraine headaches again. I googled "signs of dehydration," and every single one of my ailments, according to this site, went back to not drinking enough water. My vertebrae do not have enough water to cushion the joints, my brain and eyes are not getting enough water and creating a headache to let me know. My ankle is under-hydrated. My organs are leeching water from my skin in order to function.

I drank the water, and sure enough, everything cleared up. So, riddle solved. However, I am just plain so bored with drinking water! I know I sound whiny and complainy, but seriously - yesterday I went and looked up how much water I need to be drinking to effectively water my body. The easiest calculation is to take your weight, divide it in half and that's how many ounces you need a day.

This morning the scale read 223. I've been hovering between 224 and 221 for the last week. That means, I need about 112 ounces of water a day.

FUCK! That's a lot of water! That's just shy of a gallon a day.

I found this totally depressing. I calculated how much I would need if I weighed 117 pounds. That's 59 ounces, or 5 12-oz containers a day.

The recommendations are all 8-10 8 ounce glasses a day. I just found it depressing that this action of having to conciously water myself every day will continue - no matter how much or little I weigh. I am the epitome of lazy - I'd really rather just be able to hook up to an IV and inject the water in me. Once a day, done. Like putting fuel in a car.

Last night I went out for dinner. Had steak fajitas. I was grossed out by the blood dripping on my plate. Then, when I would bite in to them, I got a little nauseous when I hit a vein of fat, and had to tug to get the piece pulled apart so I could chew it. The friend I had dinner with knows I've been primarily vegetarian the last two years, and was a little surprised that I was eating meat. I've been trying to figure this out myself - why the meat binge of late? Maybe, I don't like being locked in to a label. And "vegetarian" has such a self-righteous tone to it. I don't want to be self-righteous. I just want to be healthy.

I do get self-righteous about how we are marketed to believe we need so much meat. I get angry, actually. People get all tough talking about how yummy it is to eat veal, or pork chops, or steak. When I say something that it's a baby or teenaged cow or pig they are eating, they cover they're ears and say, "Oh, I don't want to know that!" That enfuriates me. You talk to me like I can't handle eating the fucking meat, like I'm just too sensitive to do what everybody else is tough enough to do. REally. You are tough enough to ingest dead animal flesh? Dead animals that we kill in horrible deaths, just so we can slap some bacon on our second cheeseburger of the day? It pisses me off that there is more and more evidence that a meat-heavy diet is detrimental to our health; however, it seems to me that when I don't eat meat with other people, it makes them tense. They seem to scold me - "Where are you getting your protein?!" Like I'm some kid who won't eat what Mom is telling her she needs to eat. I think Mom is wrong. Or they think, well, she's a vegetarian, I know someone who's a vegetarian, so that somehow makes me healthier by association. Like how people who believe in Jesus do - Jesus is a good guy, I believe in Jesus; therefore, I get to be a big sloppy asshole, cuz Jesus makes up for all the shit I don't make an effort to do myself.

I want people to do their own work. I want to share my experiences so people know there's a difference in how the body works and feels when it operates on different foods, because until I started experimenting, I didn't know. I thought smelly shits and coughing up pleghm was just a part of life. It's not. The more I experiment with fasting and raw foods, the less I see a need to eat animal protein.

I think I feel like I don't fit in because of this diet, and sometimes want to eat meat just so I'm not different. Oh, poor me! Another benefit of this blog - I've been very unclear about what makes me want to eat meat with others. I now know that this is my stance - I have eaten meat. Plenty of it. I am tough enough to eat meat. I am even tougher than most - I have pet the very pig that wound up as a pork chop on the table. I have seen first-hand the conditions the cows and pigs are living in before they die, and if you fucking steak-eating fucks knew that the steak you are rolling around in your mouth was standing ankle deep in it's own shit a week-prior, you'd reconsider how yummy that hunk of meat is. Or, maybe you are tough enough to eat shit, too. Who knows.

Wow. I have a lot of anger about this. I guess I just get angry when people blindly do what they are told. And to me, the meat industry just has really good advertising and marketing, and people buy into it. Dieticians say we need animal protein. That's all well and good - have they themselves tested whether or not we do? Or are they just reiterating what someone else told them. It's not always bad to do what someone else did, because I think everything has a reason. But it's like the old joke about the kid asking the mom why we cut the ends off the ham before we cook it. The mom responds, Because we need to. The mom goes and asks her mom why we cut the ends off the ham. The grandma responds, because we need to. The grandma goes back and asks the great grandma, why do we cut the ends off the ham before we cook it? The great grandma says, because it didn't fit in the pan.

All I'm saying is to know what you are eating, and why you are eating it. I am learning myself. I think now that I know I go back to eating meat out of a desire to fit in and hopefully be liked more, that I will be able to stand on my own knowledge the next time. Now that I've expressed my rage to my non-existent audience here, I won't need to the next time I'm confronted with a self-righteous meat eater. Oh, well, we're all figuring it out as we go. Until next time.