I have recently heard more and more people going Paleo. Also known as the Caveman Diet, eating Paleo involves only eating foods that are consistent with those thought to have been eaten during the Paleolithic period. Naturally, the plants and wildlife that are accessible to people today are not the same as those that were around 2.6 million years ago, but the idea remains the same. People who eat Paleo concentrate on natural fruits, vegetables, nuts, and organic meat and fish. They are not allowed dairy, processed foods, grains, or sugar.
I am intrigued by the Paleo Diet not for health reasons but because of one of the worst books ever written, which is also the one book that I can state without a doubt totally changed the way I think I about the world: Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael." I am truly embarrassed by how this book changed my life. It's bad. It's poorly written, the philosophy is grade school level at best, and the whole thing is just garbage. And if you haven't read it, you totally should. The basic premise, or what I took from it, is that people should not farm. It leads to overpopulation, a false sense of power, and the destruction of the planet.
I think I was 23 when I first read "Ishmael," and I was very much reaching a turning point in my life. I was confused about my future, my place in the world, where I was headed, and whether I should focus more on what I wanted or what was expected of me. Somehow, in some way, when I read this book, everything was put into perspective. I began to think about how insignificant I am and how my choices matter so little in the grand scheme of things. More importantly, I truly realized, for the first time, that it wasn't my decisions or my actions that were making me feel unhappy and dissatisfied, and it also wasn't the people around me. Rather, it was my thoughts - my internal voice that was causing all of the conflict. Should I listen to my parents, my friends, my professors? Should I be looking for a husband and putting down roots? Or should I be exploring the world? What I wanted, what I was told to want, and what I thought I was supposed to want were three very different things. "Ishmael" gave me the chance to explore alternatives that I hadn't let myself explore before. Then I read the followups, "My Ishmael" and "The Story of B" and they were even more terrible, then I reread "Ishmael" and was just devastated by how lost I was that I could get so much out of a book that really could have been written by the gorilla who is the main character. But you know, I was young and dumb.
Now I'm old and dumb but at least I'm not confused about my place in the world anymore. I was reading yesterday from Tosca Reno's "Your Best Body Now," which I think has a lot of good information in it, but the whole first chapter is really about how women can focus so much on their families in their 20s and 30s that they forget to focus on themselves. They then become dissatisfied, even empty inside, until they can discover how to take care of themselves first. I can relate to this to a point - I definitely put my family first and sometimes forget about me. This is never more evident than dinner time when I make food for my husband and kids and then realize, once I'm putting plates on the table, that I forgot to make a main dish for myself. Before I started eating clean and really began focusing on food, this happened almost every night. However, I am not dissatisfied and certainly not empty, and I think that is because I did go through a period of self-discovery in my 20s. So many women marry so young, and they can be happily married, no doubt about it, but they find themselves 40 or 50 and realize that they never got to know themselves. This is what Tosca Reno was writing about, and this is something I can only laterally relate to. Because I was in my late 20s when I married and I didn't have my first child until I was 30, I had a decade to find the me part of me before I turned the majority of my thoughts and energy to my family.
Yes, the Paleo Diet takes me back to those early days of the real me. This is a food plan that shuns agrarian civilization, which totally would have rocked my world lo those many years ago. Now, I understand most people who follow the plan do so for health reasons, mostly because of allergies. I know a dear friend and a couple of acquaintances who have severe corn allergies and must go Paleo lest they end up in the hospital. Corn is in everything, which is a totally different subject (not that I mind going tangential, obvs). But I am going Paleo this week and this week only, really just to jump start my weight loss for the big challenge, but as a bonus I have a constant reminder of the life I once led, the questions I once had, and the great life I have now.
No comments:
Post a Comment