My Body, My Avatar

I’ve never meditated with the archetype of my body. I once did my right leg. The arch was stunning and glorious, in iridescent colors, literally seemed angelic to me, and I passed out, my normal response to energy I’m not really ready to deal with. But I’ve never focused on my whole body.

My body and I have a love-hate relationship. It loves to stay fat, and I hate it for doing so. All the endless science and research and hormones and more aside, it all comes down to my body’s metabolism, and the impact that my ridiculously large body has on my life in so many ways.

Maybe most people would be considering the medical issues. But me, that I can eat what someone 1/3 my size does and stay fat (or, if it’s high in carbs, get fatter) — I take it pretty personally.

Long ago, right around the time I gained about 200# in a bit less than 2 years, my body suddenly decided that my fat cells were precious and it was not letting go. No amount of undereating, exercising, did anything but make me feel horrible in a dozen ways.  It ruined the career I’d planned my whole life.  And it severely screwed up my social life, sex life, and even business life (to a lesser degree, from the social-reasons) across the board.

There are genetic animal models of this metabolic behavior. Rats or mice that fed the same food as other rats, will predictably get hugely fat, while the others are normal. And guess what happens if you put these animals on a low-calorie diet? They lose weight. They lose fat?  No, not much. They lose lean body mass. That means bones and organs and muscle and tissues.

Eventually, since unlike people their body can’t drive them to just eat more because they’re in a cage being fed measured amounts, they die of starvation. And when the scientists autopsy them, guess what they find? All their fat. They were “emaciated obese”. They literally died of starvation and their body protected their fat while breaking down their vital organs.

For at least some degree of morbidly obese people, this is pretty much the same scenario. Every time they ‘diet’ they lose more LBM, get weaker, sicker, and make their metabolic problem worse. The rest of the world, that thinks it’s about ‘gluttony and sloth’ — as opposed to reaction to modern ‘civilized’ malnutrition, cellular starvation, and messed up energy partititioning — is totally ignorant.

The real scientists know. But you seldom see that in the magazines and papers — the ones funded by all the advertising and corps vested in grain-agriculture, crappy food made from that agri, and pharma drugs for disease caused by that crappy food — the self-perpetuating cycle of health-corporatism.

So you may wonder why I’m talking about that here rather than on my health blog. Well, because a week ago I just really broke down and had a massive rant at my body. I believe firmly that my body and I are essentially “symbiote”, that we merged for this shared life experience, and there have been times when we have been friendly and communicated at least a little.

Not too many. Not too often. But enough to make me believe that my body could hear me.

So I finally reached some breaking point and I “had it out”, in my head, with my body, which I sometimes call Avatar, since it fits in the model of “this amazing game” we call reality (“every time I wake up here, it seems so real!”).

Now, Body seemed to think that I was being injust and harsh. She seemed to think that I was alive thanks to her, and that the stuff I was complaining about was in fact her self defense and survival from things I myself did.

Well ok, there is that. If you don’t know that lactose is heroin for you, and gluten proteins are like little vikings sacking your intestines and then letting the hordes in to chew on various vital systems, then you don’t know to avoid eating these at nearly every meal one to three times a day every day of your entire life, because it turns out that is your culture’s primary definition of ‘food’.

Might be after eating food that is essentially mildly poisonous to you daily for decades, that it might have some side effects. And that doesn’t start on junk food and bad fats and constant major stress and decades of terrible sleep deprivation and more.

She also seemed grieving that I was so angry at her. That for that moment I kind of hated her. I had the sense that she loved me and depended on my appreciation and high value of her for her own well-being on some level. (Ironically, my BF read me a passage from Seth later that said something very like this. Clearly I was meant to understand that.) So it hurt her, when I threw out bolts of anger.

I’ve been talking to IG every day and asking her to be part of everything, every interaction, experience, to help me with insight and intuition and more. So perhaps it was her help. But by Tuesday morning, I was greatly mellowed, and I felt more affection toward my body than I had in a long time.

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Monday in my rage I ate nothing but plain meat (montreal spices) and water. Tuesday the same, but not out of the same emotions. Wednesday the same. And  I actually did what normal people do and what I did the first year+ of eating this way: I believe I shifted into ketosis.

This isn’t unusual; except for me. For over 3 years my body has refused to go into ketosis. Although on some LC cycles it would lose weight — very slowly — usually it wouldn’t, no matter what I ate or didn’t. It often wouldn’t even lose the water weight it should have from the shift in carb intake, as if it wouldn’t let go of anything at all.  It was so ridiculous my friends begged me to have a thyroid exam.

Now suddenly my body has done what it should.

Recently, I spent a few months off and on doing what I called “hyper-nutrient.” This was all the supplements I collected for nearly a year, every imaginable substance that sounded like it might be helpful. I did this deliberate overdose of nutrients, not daily but sometimes, to see if showering my body with stuff would help it deal with deep levels of deficiencies or long-term malnutrition, IF those might be some factor in my life, who really knows.

This mostly acted like Aversion Training for swallowing pills.

I spent 3 years of not being able to eat <30 carbs a day without an energy crisis that ended my effort and made me eat energy-food immediately. I don’t mean that I craved carbs or felt weak, typical induction symptoms, nothing like that. A medical-level gut-fear and understanding that your battery is totally out and you will immediately plug in or die.

So for the last few years, aside from occasional VLC attempts ending in the above, I also had a variety of attempts to eat a higher-carb diet. Apples and pears, blueberries, black and pinto beans, gluten and non-gluten breads, all were good efforts but I ended up face-down in whatever carbs I was using to raise mine. (Except beans. But they seemed to drive over-eating and I didn’t lose any weight at all.) So for three years I’ve done nothing but re-re-re-re-re-restart lowcarb.

During the ‘hyper-nutrient’ experiment, although I didn’t really feel ‘good’ or have energy, I felt “nearly ok” while eating that way–I did not have the energy crisis experience — which was the best that had happened in 3 years, and a was a huge, giant breakthrough for me.

And then last Monday I went back not only to <30 but more like <10 carbs. And then seemed to legitimately shift into K in a way I hadn’t in 3 years. I find this utterly amazing. I lost the water weight like I’m supposed to, at the speed I used to. There is a rare but possible chance that I might actually lose some weight this cycle. That’s so ridiculously encouraging. I hope so.

Is it talking to Body? Is it finally re-nutrient-ing my body for awhile (especially trace minerals)? I have no idea.

All I know is that this week, I’ve been talking to my body a lot more. Constantly visualizing fat cells dumping their content for energy. Asking her how she feels about me eating this, or that, or how much. And to my astonishment — she answers.

At least, she answers pretty much as well as any guide, aeon, or archetype does. Maybe the unpredictability of this is on my part, not theirs.

Sometimes I get no response, or it’s more a feeling than words, and it’s usually more a funky ‘idea of geometry’ that I have to unfurl inside and then put together in some way and then walk through as I say it to myself or write it down, to get what was in that.

She said she is dealing with a lot of toxins and to not drink diet soda at least for right now, so I stopped.

When I didn’t ask her about my food quantity, she volunteered I’d had enough. I negotiated for a few more bites and the rest of my fresh chili pepper. When I did ask, I didn’t get an answer but felt I needed to sort of measure it out. So I cut my big burger patty into 4 pieces and said, 1? yes. 2? yes. 3? ok. 4? too much.  Alrighty then.

She reminded me to drink water before I started cooking that, so by the time the food hits my digestive system is ready and doesn’t have to pull it from other systems that need it.

About two weeks ago, I was making something in my oversized crockpot, which was on but open as I was filling it over time. I didn’t realize it was hot at all, let alone very, and I was trying to get behind and beside it, to the glass spices jar of peppercorns, when the jar slipped and I caught it but laid my whole inner arm on the right side against the side of the crockpot near the top, as I did. Burned the hell out of myself.

I stood there crying as I tried to run cold water on it. The burn was deep, deep red and about four inches across and about eight inches long and raised. In addition to the severely raised-flesh-welt, right down the middle, about as thick as my little finger, was a solid line of whitish that when I looked more closely I realized was a solid line of interlocking blisters.  Ouch.

I stood at the sink with the water and I begged IG and my body to tell me what this meant. Why did I do this? What symbol was this accident and its result, what energy was such a problem that it had to get my attention like that?

I apologized over and over to my arm, for doing that to it. I felt so sorry about it. I went to my room and had some ice in a bag that I would occasionally put against it, until the cold kinda hurt before long as I tried to type. It looked really horrible. It felt really horrible.

I thought that it was sure to keep me awake that night. I’ve had a lot of burns and even little ones, even those that are a tiny fraction as serious as that one, hurt insanely.

But I slept well, and the next morning I didn’t even think about it until I’d been working for some time, and I looked, in confusion when I suddenly realized I’d felt no pain whatever — and it was basically gone. I mean, there was a thin line where the blisters had been, but about 1/3 the size (thinner) and shorter, and it was kind of like weird-skin, almost scab but not quite, and I felt nothing. Nothing AT ALL. No pain, not even slightly, nowhere.

Were it not for that tiny remaining line, that looked like the remnants of some wound that was eons ago and healed already, I might have thought I dreamed the entire burn experience. This is a major ‘anomaly’ in the physical world. Maybe my real re-connection with body began then, and just took awhile for me to finally open up to her and start venting.

I don’t know how this cycle of eating plan will go. I don’t know if that serious burn ‘magically’ healed because of my real attention to my body and arm and asking to know the reason and asking IG to help me deal with the energy. I only know that I have been making at least a daily effort to “talk to Body” as an identity, and she’s been talking back.

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