Dieting

I’m embarked on new plunge into mindful eating. And it’s prompted me to recall my previous adventures with dieting and dietary rules. It all begins with my mother. Mom was always dieting, always cutting edge, always ahead of her time. She was an early adopter of No-Cal soda and mega dose Vitamin C. She was early into Weight Watchers, going for weekly weigh-ins while Jean Nidetch was still giving the pep talks personally. When I was in elementary school, Mom realized I was chubby and started me on skimmed milk. It didn’t help with chubby but became a lifelong habit. I hated clothes shopping in the “husky” section. It doesn’t matter if some people now think I’m thin. My brain still says “chubby.”

In my early 20’s, I stopped eating mammals. It wasn’t for health reasons. It was about drawing lines and realizing the arbitrariness of the lines we draw. I love Claude Levi-Strauss’s suggestion that dietary rules don’t tell us what’s good to eat; they tell us what’s good to think. We’re horrified by those who draw the taboo line around members of their clan or tribe rather than around the human species. We call them “cannibals.” There’s an arbitrariness to our dietary restrictions. For some forgotten reason, I expanded my boundary, drew my taboo line around mammals.

I was pretty strict with myself. I used Bacos, a plant-based bacon substitute for so many years that, when I went back to real bacon, I was shocked by how delicious my spinach salad was.

But I'm not a fanatic. Don’t be crazy, Ken. There are exceptions to every rule. I was teaching at Finch College, a posh, almost-all-girls school on the upper east side. The chef from the posh Carlyle Hotel came in mornings to cook for the students. One of the perks: faculty got to eat free, and about once a month, the Carlyle chef made the most outrageous Quiche Lorraine. I indulged but otherwise stayed clear of mammals for a couple of years. I don’t remember why or when I went back to eating mammals – still not very often, mostly lamb.

Years later, I heard a story from Bernie which caught my spirit. One of Bernie’s dharma brothers was a bit of health nut, very into martial arts and a vegetarian. After his transmission ceremony, Maezumi Roshi took him to a Chinese restaurant for a celebratory lunch. “I’ll order for both of us,” Maezumi insisted. “It’s my treat.” He ordered a vegetarian dish and a chicken dish and a beef dish and a pork dish. When the waiter brought the dishes, Maezumi, insisting on serving, began heaping food onto his new successor’s plate, rice and vegetables and chicken and beef and pork.

“You know I’m a vegetarian.”

“Eat everything. Don’t get attached to fixed ideas, especially fixed ideas about yourself.”

I love that teaching. Diving again into mindful eating, I’m curbing my enthusiasm. More about this next week.