Jack not Jared

I'm fasting at the moment.  Well not really "fasting"  because I'm doing a cleansing juice fast and still taking in about 800 calories/day but for an American? Especially a doughy middle class white southern American?  Not eating food is fasting.  Now 5 days in I'm starting to feel the grip of Food loosening.  I'm obsessed with food, the getting, storing, prepping, preparing consuming.... its a huge part of my day, and my life. 


We joke that in New Orleans we go to lunch to plan what to have for dinner, and its true.  Food and eating is so very important to me. I love to cook, to shop, I look up recipes on the internet, I watch cooking shows.   I actually know how to make 2000 calories a day taste amazing.  So why do I eat so much crap?  I eat just awful crap so much of the time.   
I eat those breaded cheese filled tubes cooked on motorized steel rollers at the truck stop, Tornados!  I can put a hurt on some damn Tornados! I eat potato chips and onion dip a bag/tub at a time.  I eat the previously mentioned ramen noodles with velveta because its faster to make than mac n cheese.  I eat crap, garbage, junk.  And now that I've stopped eating anything it really see that it doesn't matter why I do it; I'm just not going to do it anymore.
I want to be healthy, I really do.  I want to wake up feeling good and stay that way all day long.  Here's the dirty secret of health problems in America, most major health issues can be CURED with diet exercise and hydration.  But that's cheating, right? 
"Humans live on one-quarter of what they eat; on the other three-quarters lives their doctor."  Egypt 3800BC. I love that quote. Funny, deep and painfully, obviously true.
Here's a question. Why are people who choose to really care about what they eat freaks?  You know the guy I mean, 50"s ,gray hair, rail thin, strong heart pounding away like a trip hammer, no health issues, the granola eating, whole foods, macrame  "bleeding ponytail". (Where's that from, bleeding ponytail? Tom Wolfe maybe?) he's a freak because he does it because its sane.  We hate that guy because he's doing what we can't.  He has self mastery not driven by vanity which is really fear.  He does it because its sane.
Its tolerable when a body builder obsesses over food and "health" because at least he has the sense to involve supplements and steroids.  Lots of plastic containers and foil packs. And the driving force is vanity/fear not health and balance. 
Here's my health care plan.  Health care for self inflected illness is a privilege not a right.  I believe that if you are obese your insurance company shouldn't have to pay for your diabetes, or your your hypertension, or your cholesterol.   I hate to say it but its wrong that I take no responsibility for stopping behavior that is killing me.  Rather I demand that my doctor assume I'll do nothing and give me drugs that allow me to continue the self destructive behavior.
That's how it all works.  We assume no one will be sane, until they have too. Then if its not too late they're the hero. 
Its late and this is becoming a rant and before I go all "dairy hormone government conspiracy" let me close with a thought from my favorite sane person, Doug Stanhope.  I'm paraphrasing here but Stanhope noticed how much our values have changed in our fitness heros.  It used to be Jack Lalanne, health proponent, exercise guru and ripped strong man who was performing public feats of strength and endurance into his 70's, like swimming 3 miles in open water, handcuffed, towing 70 rowboats by a rope clenched in his teeth. 
Now who is Americas fitness hero? Jared, a guy who used to be really fat and is now just kinda of fat.  Who performed the feat of walking to a sandwich shop....every day.   I wanna be Jack not Jared. 
To that end I've put down the foot long and picked up the juicer, it even bears Jack's name.