Less Comfortable: Week 3
“I knew people had cravings, but I didn’t know know it.”
Content Warning: A lot of talk of dieting
This one I really didn’t think would be very hard.
Last week’s challenge was to eat a strict keto diet for a week. (I would have done vegan or something else harder, then Yada probably wouldn’t have cooked with me. She tried this challenge too, in part just to learn some more healthy recipes.)
There’s some disagreement on what a keto diet is, but the idea is that you have at few carbs as humanly possible to force your body into ketosis, in which your body relies on its own fat reserves for energy. Although this diet was originally used to treat epilepsy, some people have more recently been going on keto diets to lose fat and improve body composition. I’m usually pretty strongly opposed to strict “dieting” as its usually defined, as it can cause health problems, and at the absolute best tends to have benefits last only until you can’t sustain it any longer.
But, if you’re already pretty healthy, I highly recommend doing something like this, and here’s why.
See, I knew already that overcoming any addiction is really difficult. Addictive chemicals literally reconfigure your brain. If it were easy, no one would be addicted to drugs. No one would be obese. No one would smoke cigarettes. Everyone who’s experienced in that situation says overcoming addiction is harder than anything you or I can imagine. But despite having heard all that, it just didn’t feel true. As much as I tried to suppress the thought, a part of me felt that it really couldn’t be that bad. Why don’t they just, like, not do it? If you don’t want to smoke, stop smoking! If you start to crave a cigarette, just think about something else!
I really thought this challenge would be easy; after all, I ate a pretty good diet to start with, full of fruits, vegetables, and meat, with at most one meal of refined carbs per day. But after a few days, I felt something fully unfamiliar, and it was only then that I realized I had never actually craved anything before. I was daydreaming constantly about what I couldn’t have; a banana, a bowl of white rice, even cookies and ice cream, which I didn’t even eat much to start with. The thoughts would intrude when I was working, or when I was settling in to go to sleep. I could barely finish the week, and when it was over I ate way more non-keto food than I did beforehand. I’d always secretly imagined, despite all the scientific evidence, that if I ever seriously needed lose weight, I could just do it quickly and easily by eating a restrictive diet and never rebounding. Judging by how I felt this week, I would fail miserably.
Sometimes doing uncomfortable things helps us train our self-discipline, or shocks us out of our routine. But sometimes, it also teaches us empathy. I you have a friend or family member who’s working to overcome obesity, smoking, or drug addiction, understand that it’s really fucking hard, and they’re probably thinking about it all the damn time. Or better yet; try something like I did for just a week or two and you’ll see for yourself.
P.S.
1. I feel compelled to explicitly say what I touched on before; if you’re worried about your weight, please don’t just naïvely go on a super restrictive diet. At best, you’ll end up yo-yoing, and at worst you can seriously damage your body. Follow the advice of a doctor/nutritionist, not some guy doing challenges because he read a book about a navy seal.
2. That being said, it’s never a bad thing to incorporate some of these recipes! If you’re interested in more of what I ate, or any of the recipes, let me know and I can dig them up. Breakfast was pretty much always eggs, and here are some photos of lunches and dinners I had:
