I have been called many things in my life. Some of my favorite jibes and insults have been the most helpful for future growth.
I made up this title from words I invented. Macroneurotic implies a person who applies a diet principle to a severe degree. Carbo implies a plant based food that is a root or a grain. Flexitarian implies a person who fiddles with rules and figures out ways to evade strict regulations. Anti Food Fascism - Antiff. Aha! Yet another invention.
My first husband called me a fatso and then took me out for root beer floats. I took that as an opportunity to learn more about the food that made me into a fatso and thus found the Macrobiotic community in Manitou Springs, Colorado, circa 1971. I discovered yin and yang. I learned to stir the food in a left spiral and then a right spiral, alternating directions for an undisclosed purpose, which I took to heart in my usual “care hard” fashion. Yes, when I get into a thing, I hang on until every bit of purpose and meaning is squeezed from its earthly and etheric bicameral tube.
My second husband called me a Macroneurotic. He also teased me for nail biting. So I shaved my head, lost fifty pounds, let my nails grow and worked like a field hand. Actually, the field hand work made my hands to dirty to put into my mouth. His reward for losing the squishy womun he married was several good beatings before I had the sense to realize that I was not welcome there any more.
My third husband was a rageoholic, cheese addict who called me various names having little to do with the food, except for this one, “Jewell, you are not a vegetarian, you are a carbotarian!” And he was correct, because I had figured out how to eat gluten free cookies that contained no carcass remnants. I wasn’t so big on the celery as I was on the giant gluten free cookies.
I cooked, I ate crap, I ate natural, I starved, I binged, I barfed and weighed and measured. I huffed powders, and baked critters. I fermented, stewed, baked and brewed. And then I stopped all that and ate TV dinners and donuts.
The original epithet, macro-neurotic, was exact, prophetic and in the long run, quite helpful to me. Between my dietary insanities, I always remembered the first lessons in Macrobiotic theory…
Balance your diet with these practices and you will fit into your environment and be in true health and vitality.
Eat
Local, Seasonal and Proportional
I was vegan, then pagan, then Atkins, which was the original Paleo, then I wore a plastic body suit to lose weight, and then, and then, and then. There was never a fad that got away from my infernal need to test everything in my quest to get healthy. Come to find out, the word “healthy” no longer has any meaning, because it has been coopted by mega-food corporations. It’s just one more bullshit word that has so many interpretations that it has now reached the low bar of meaning, rendering it a bullshit word.
Becoming Macroneurotic
Ask yourself if your food is in season. Dairy is in season during the summer, when mothers nurse their young. Eggs are in season in summer, when birds lay eggs. Greens are in season in spring through summer and into fall, depending upon where you live. Canned goods are in season in winter, when nothing grows. Meat is in season in winter, when men go out and kill a deer. Jerky, root vegetables and preserved foods are winter foods.
Ask yourself if your food is local. Did it fly in on an airplane? Did it roll into town on a truck? Was it grown in your state or the state next to you? Did it grow in a similar climate to the one where you live? Because if you live on tropical fruit and you live in Canada, you will be cold! But if you live in the cold and eat buckwheat, you will be warm! Buckwheat grows near you in the cold. Just a few simple questions can guide us to the proper diet, the healthy diet for your region and season.
Ask yourself if your food is toxic because of the environment in which it was created. It is toxic to raise animals in captive, cramped ammonia laden environments. If you eat grass fed meats, you are avoiding the toxicity and cruelty of the modern agribiz practices. But if you eat carcasses every day, every meal, you are overloading your system with too much protein.
Eskimos existed on fat and meat for months at a time. They didn’t gorge on the stuff, no. They ate small amounts because meat and fat are filling. Overeating anything is toxic, but the regular ingestion of carcass is out of season. Think of it this way. The men killed a carcass, dragged it back and everyone got together processing the thing. The bones, the skin, meat and entrails were all processed and used, with gratitude. Now a days, you eat one select piece. You eat that select piece every day. How many hunting days would have been involved for you to get that special piece of rump every day for your entire life? That’s a lot of hunting.
Becoming a plant based eater, Carbotarian
Macrobiotics taught me to use meat as a condiment, and if you look at traditional meals from many cultures, that is true. The main foods are the roots and grains, with some broth made from a carcass for extra umami, flavor. Most peoples do not regularly chow down on lumps of roasted carcass every day, and the few who do have been the royals, and guess what they have! Gout, heart disease, cancer.
The royal diet is the American diet. We have transported it all over the world, and wherever it goes, it brings the royal diseases.
We all want to “feed the beast inside”. That’s the child who went from milk to cookies and still wants those drugs as an adult. I am one of those addicted kids, as are we all. We indulge in the adult forms of milk and cookies; alcohol, sugar and meat, the western diet. I am not making this up. Evidently our forbears from Europe were all drunk all the time. The water was so toxic that fermentation was the only way to survive.
Becoming Flexitarian
So here it is. Be a Macroneurotic Carbo Flexitarian, like me! Eat your local, seasonal diet and make it mostly plant based. And when a donut crosses your path, indulge if you wish, without remorse, because the worst thing you can do to a jonesing, inner toddler beast is tell her no.
Follow the 90% rule… 90% plant based and 10% beast approved! And don’t let anybody give you shit about eating a piece of candy, least of all, yourself.
One more thing. Potato is an excellent sugar substitute. When craving sweets, mash a potato. Potato is yin, Sweets are yin, and cold is yin. Drink a glass of cold water and say a prayer to the god-Ess of sweetness. Be kind to your Toddler Beast.
And…
Above all, Be Flexitarian!
Great essay I learned some new ideas including being aware of what season i am eating in and that western culture eats like the Royals. I already knew a little about the beast within. Hope reading this essay increases my Eating Awareness.