Michael Burns
MDI Contributor
I just got motivating kudos from my writing “agent” Legacy editor Jim Ellis, who submits my articles to MDI’s Legacy Magazine. Ellis receives articles from a multitude of contributors, chooses which edition the articles belong in, then turns them over to Justin LaBarge who designs and publishes them.
The theme of this edition is Relationship With Food. Jim’s hook for me to write an article for this edition was “Hey bud, no pressure, you’ve contributed so much. I just see your physique and I wanna ask “what the heck are you doing? Maybe it’s the biking? 😊”. Indeed Jim, biking, swimming, and the food!. How could I not write about what I know so well; ME, my health, my body, and what I eat?
I don’t have an answer for what others ought to eat, or not eat, and I don’t think that anyone else knows either for someone. I believe that, like most things in our lives, we each have to experiment and learn what foods and eating habits will serve us best. Like “snowflakes,” we are each unique, and what is the right diet for one probably isn’t for another.
The purpose I have for studying, experimenting, then taking care of my diet, is to attain a good weight, a high level of fitness, sound health and the wellbeing of body, mind, and soul. This calls for a change in context around food.
I had a very stable, secure home life and upbringing, with good meals. Mom did all the shopping for the meals, plus all the extras that we didn’t need but feasted upon (sugars). My habits and patterns around food and eating were birthed in my home.
I went away from home to attend college, and at the end of college, in 1970, I graduated as a Pot Head. This degree opened new doors of perception to many aspects of life, and got me to experiment and experience different eating styles, like brown rice, sprouts, sunflower seeds, vegetarianism, etc. Along with this eating style came a different context for diet that included feeding the mind and soul, not just the body.
My second of three wives led me to be nearly “all in” with incorporating eating “right” into my lifestyle. (I continued to occasionally have a hot dog, donut, or soda). Laura had a sickly youth and young adult life. Her mom sent her a subscription to the health magazine Prevention, which she devoured, then put the suggestions for an alternative lifestyle into practice.
Nutritional orientation, supplements, natural foods, NO refined sugar, alternative medicine, on and on. In order to provide for and feed this lifestyle, we bought a health food store in Long Island, NY. The store was called The Venus Health Scene, which we quickly changed, along with most of the inventory, to the Mung Bean Natural Foods and Juice Bar.
Forty four years later, I am still experimenting to learn how to fine tune my diet. The biggest challenge I’m having is to forgive myself when I don’t follow the self-made rules I set for myself around what, when, why, and how much I eat.
Self Made Rules
- Eat when I’m hungry.
- Stop when I’m not.
- Minimize ingesting what I know my body doesn’t want or need.
- Emphasize ingesting what I know my body wants or needs.
- Use activity, especially exercise and making love to Sweetie, to put the ingested energy to work.
- Forgive myself when I don’t follow the self-made rules.
The best to ya’ll in finding the inspiration to give your best to yourself, so that you give your best to the world around you.