In this blog, I usually try to dispense some vaguely helpful piece of advice based on a lesson learned from a borderline disastrous, self-inflicted episode from my life. Today, however I’m fighting back. Or, rather, I guess I’m just venting. See, for some time, one of the greatest incentives for me for completing grueling workouts has been the meal afterward. My life of extremes is far from an anarchical miscellany of unpredictable behaviors. No, my life of extremes is governed by a few unwavering principles that have evolved through the gradual harmonization of the few needs that govern my neo-caveman existence: food, sleep, exercise, etc. For example, I work out hard so I feel entitled to eat large quantities of food, and I eat large quantities of food so I’m motivated to work out hard. By no means am I suggesting that this pattern of behavior is advisable, prudent or even condonable for everyone, but it’s what gets me by.
And I know I’m not alone. There are others like me whose existences our calorie-counting, fast food-ostracizing, leafy-green-obsessed society has shoved smugly and condescendingly to the hidden aisles and back alleys of grocery stores and dining districts. I will never believe that eating sparingly equates to optimized health. To me, the Ironman Triathlon is a challenge; the Special K Challenge is an exercise in self-loathing. The point is that eating large quantities of food seems to have an almost omnipresent, yet unwarranted stigma within middle-to-upper class America, and society needs to stop condemning to culinary damnation those of us to whom the term “recommended daily allowance” is nothing more than a signal that’s it’s time to take out the calculator and multiply by three.
It is for two reasons that I’m not going to illustrate my point with clear examples: first, I don’t believe entirely that I actually have a point; and second, even if I had one, I’m not so sure I could prove it. Instead, I’m just going to throw out a couple of complaints. So grab your family-size basket of cheese curds (oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?) or your side salad and prepare to regurgitate either one.
1. I am convinced that whole, specialty and organic food grocery stores are the food shopping equivalent of waiting outside in the rain for six hours for Guns N’ Roses tickets (now, not before Slash and everyone except Axel Rose left). Everyone’s in a sour mood, the tickets are over-priced, and you know that the show is going to be a catastrophic letdown. The produce section in a specialty foods store is like a museum’s taxonomical exhibit on rare and endangered plant species. If your produce shopping list doesn’t include family, genus and species names, plus grocery item descriptors that can’t be found in an English dictionary, then you might as well be hunting for quail with a cannon ball. And may God have mercy on your soul if you ask where one might find lettuce (I recently perused the online produce offerings of a local organic grocery and came across 17 varieties of leafy greens but nary a single mention of the word “lettuce”). Like that ticket line, most of the shoppers are ornery, pushy and competitive. Well, of course they are, they’re always hungry! And they know, if even subconsciously, that soon they are going to pay way too much for an invariably unsatisfying amount of food. I could continue (don’t get me started on meat and poultry – in my next life, I want to be a chicken destined for a natural foods store), but I’ll move on.
And I know I’m not alone. There are others like me whose existences our calorie-counting, fast food-ostracizing, leafy-green-obsessed society has shoved smugly and condescendingly to the hidden aisles and back alleys of grocery stores and dining districts. I will never believe that eating sparingly equates to optimized health. To me, the Ironman Triathlon is a challenge; the Special K Challenge is an exercise in self-loathing. The point is that eating large quantities of food seems to have an almost omnipresent, yet unwarranted stigma within middle-to-upper class America, and society needs to stop condemning to culinary damnation those of us to whom the term “recommended daily allowance” is nothing more than a signal that’s it’s time to take out the calculator and multiply by three.
It is for two reasons that I’m not going to illustrate my point with clear examples: first, I don’t believe entirely that I actually have a point; and second, even if I had one, I’m not so sure I could prove it. Instead, I’m just going to throw out a couple of complaints. So grab your family-size basket of cheese curds (oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?) or your side salad and prepare to regurgitate either one.
1. I am convinced that whole, specialty and organic food grocery stores are the food shopping equivalent of waiting outside in the rain for six hours for Guns N’ Roses tickets (now, not before Slash and everyone except Axel Rose left). Everyone’s in a sour mood, the tickets are over-priced, and you know that the show is going to be a catastrophic letdown. The produce section in a specialty foods store is like a museum’s taxonomical exhibit on rare and endangered plant species. If your produce shopping list doesn’t include family, genus and species names, plus grocery item descriptors that can’t be found in an English dictionary, then you might as well be hunting for quail with a cannon ball. And may God have mercy on your soul if you ask where one might find lettuce (I recently perused the online produce offerings of a local organic grocery and came across 17 varieties of leafy greens but nary a single mention of the word “lettuce”). Like that ticket line, most of the shoppers are ornery, pushy and competitive. Well, of course they are, they’re always hungry! And they know, if even subconsciously, that soon they are going to pay way too much for an invariably unsatisfying amount of food. I could continue (don’t get me started on meat and poultry – in my next life, I want to be a chicken destined for a natural foods store), but I’ll move on.
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Performance Anxiety - Is It Really a Syndrome?
