Full-Throttle Highway

I broke down this past weekend, sat down to a buffet of crow, and joined Weight Watchers. Yes, Weight Watchers. Freakin WW. And why you might ask, did I, a science-cloaked granolahead, join this mass mecca for the middle class who bows to both the gods of supersized portions and the need for celebrity sparkle? Because I need someone else to help me carry my fat ass for a while. And one of my buds from my internship joined and I knew it would be easier if I had a friend going with me. And because in spite of the fact that I am halfway to a degree in naturopathic medicine, and taught weight loss to over 2000 women, and trainings in almost a hundred different gyms, I simply cannot stop the current spate of weight gain in my own little body. Why? Well, it's complicated, as those of you who are dealing with your own hefty overload can attest to. In many ways, I see that all of the holistic work I've done, all of the naturopathic medicine, psychology, and now public health knowledge I've pursued has been about trying to understand why I am so f*ucking nuts. I mean, really, how the heck can I know so much, have done so much with my living, overcome so much, and yet still be so f*cking bonkers? Okay, sure, there's the changing residences some twenty times by the time I went out on my own at 18 to New York, the seven total marriages my parents embarked upon between the two of them, the family drug problems including crack, cocaine, uppers, downers, alcohol, LSD, and ganga, and the unfair multi-year incarceration of someone I loved a lot. Let's not forget the usual All Hail The Damage physical abuse/emotional abuse/rape trifecta of my childhood and teen years. And there is the Serious Mental Illness that swings buck nekkid on several branches of my family tree. But you know what I think is the real reason? Well, first, I should backtrack a bit. As I have gone through this some twenty-five-year odyssey of the mind, this self-education in How and Why I am like I am, I've picked up Universal Human Club breadcrumbs of truth along the way. A few highlights pertinent to this post: * Refined carbs are a drug and they make people some variation of angry, depressed, and/or anxious. * Neural migration that occurs in utero pretty much maps out our personality, organizing our brains according to heredity, gender, and maternal nutrition/state of health. * There is something in the brain called The Pleasure Pathway, and if you have the genetic predisposition for it to become a superhighway, and you rev your engines down it screaming with the power and the glory of the YeeFreakinHaw, you're pretty much gonna want to ride that hog til you die. The thing that I have discovered from my past couple of years learning the language of science is that every year we realize how we have made major mistakes in how we thought things operated in terms of health. (Lobotomy? Pangenesis? The Four Humors?) Just a decade ago, it was popular belief that cancer was at least partially brought on by low self-esteem. In other words, if you got cancer, it was partially your own fault for being such a pussy, and wow, can you imagine how much it helped your cancer treatment to be told that? Now we know it's bullsh*t, that cancer is more than likely initiated by a virus, or class of viruses, and that 'mistakes' in the genome predisposes a person to ultimately be unable to fight off the attack. And guess what? Obesity is much the same, but instead of a virus, the attackers are stress and pollution and the proliference of cheap sugary-fatty snacks. Right now, sitting in a lab somewhere is a seriously fat mouse. That fatboy is a famous mouse, eventually to perhaps even surpass Mickey. Why? Because he has shown us the leptin link, leptin being a peptide hormone that deals with regulating body weight, stimulating the hypothalamus for appetite suppression and the burning of stored fat. From that fatboy we learned that a great deal of the fat humans who say they just can't keep their mouths shut are actually telling the truth. Their brain chemistry is telling them to eat, much as your autonomic nervous system tells you to breathe. Try a little experiment. Hold your breath. For as long as you can. Then hold it a bit more. And a bit more. What makes you finally take a breath? It is the knowledge that you need to freakin take a breath, but even more powerfully, something Inside of Your BodyMind takes that freakin breath for you. This is brain chemistry in action. And more brain chemistry: Can you make a headache stop? Can you shrink the tumor? Can you stop being a bitch when PMS is riding you like a $2 pony? Can you stop the testosterone from making you preen and puff up when in the presence of a seriously hot mamacita? Of course the answer is yes if you are a Master Metaphysical Mystic Badass, but as those are in short supply these days, the answer, except for a rare event here and there, the genuine answer for you and me and really, c'mon, everyone we know is: No, I can't do much of any of that, even if I tried really, really hard. Because our BodyMind is wired to do its thing pretty much independently of our WeaselMind which, considering what boneheads most of are pretty much most of the time, is a deeply thoughtful thing for Life to provide us with. And so back to what I believe the real reason for the positive status of my own personal insanity: it is simply my row to hoe this go around in the game of Being Alive. This is my genetic lot. It is my deal. My family tree is so crammed with crazy because crazy is the genus of our tree. Crazy zooms down our neural pathways, animates our energy with drama and color and verve. It makes us communicate with aliens and draw portraits and craft jewelry and play guitar and dance the jig and invent things and fight pirates and write this here blog. It makes us amass fortunes, and then piss them away. We may be perplexing and vexing to our fellow man, but we make for interesting stories, and when we are in the Up portion of our programming, a dang good time. In the past ten years of my life I have kicked cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and waking up in strange beds. This has been no small accomplishment, as some of you who have known me all these years can attest to. In the past decade I have also gone through periods when the material and emotional built environment of my living is calm and steady and I have also kicked sugar, other refined carbs, caffeine, and crankiness. And I have lost weight. But over the past couple of years for various reasons to do with men and school and lack of feelings of safety, I have again faced the Deep Jones, and I am like a heroin addict chewing on the methadone bone, anything, anything, to make the pain go away. I'd have much preferred to smoke some chronic and get nekkid and drop some X and run dancing in the middle of a thunderstorm, la la la, but instead I have sat in quiet desperation in front of my television with a carby snack and another one after that, doing my best to stay in school and get good grades and not Go Poof in a cloud of negativity. And I don't say any of this stuff to opt out of personal responsibility for how fat my ass has gotten. I, verily, have lifted every slab of cinnamon toast to my lips, and of my own volition, and readily admit that I have not been force-fed as if preparing for life as pate. I chose to go back to school, to open myself up to mental stress and pressure such as I have never known before. I chose to date a high-maintenance, weaselly man. Chose this life, this lifestyle, this way of Being. Or did I? Did I? Did I really choose or did my brain choose for me? Is there a difference? But tonight? Is this the pain of withdrawal? Sure. This post is testament to the pain of chemical rebalancing tapdancing in my brain. But mostly: this is the pain of what it is like to have this raw brain chemistry, made even more raw from years of trying to outfox the programming with chemical brain-bathing substances like sugar and anger and psilocybin and theraflu and human love. Sometimes it is hard to be me. And I know that it can be hard to be you, too. Except when it isn't. And I believe that we can both hit that open field beyond Mind where we remember the joke and the breathing is easier. Yeah. Okay, I need to stop now. I seriously need a snack and I have another two points on my Weight Watchers diet to shoot through before I go to bed. So, to close this post neatly, that is why I joined WW. Because my brain chemistry is the devil, and I need a little help with the exorcism. Science, magic, religion- it's all the same thing. Right on.