Mood, Food and the Fucking Mainstream!

Summer holiday at Oakura (North) past Whananaki.

I said I would be eliminating or reducing carbs. Who cares? Aren't we all so sick of white looking women who obsess about themselves? It turns out that it's hard not to get sucked into the mainstream from time to time. It might be because it's the MAIN stream and the current is pretty fucking powerful.

If you think of this stream as being more like a wide river, then we can understand how it carries people away. It's a river we are born looking into and drinking from, only some are born into the mansions along the best parts of the bank.

The people in the mansions may or may not have much understanding or knowledge of those who are not born right into the Mainstream. We are all told that this is the best place to be. We are told that we are only of value if we can prove it by looking and acting more like people in mansions. 

So if you're anything like me, you'll be conflicted. As a child, I was always fascinated by wealth (and extreme poverty) and spent many hours drawing cartoons of rich women hitting poor women, or handsome men making fools of 'ugly' women. I also liked to draw 'future fashions' and 'Ugly Competitions' where the beautiful girl was a loser. In my childish way I was trying to work out where I would fit in. I also believed in magic fervently, hoping that I would be somehow transformed into someone beautiful (and therefore lovable) as I got older. The pretty girls at school were mostly cruel, something I never understood. Perhaps having mainstream good looks wasn't as great from the inside as it seemed from the outside? 

When I was 21 I read 'The Beauty Myth' by Naomi Wolf and it changed my life. Some kind of switch inside me was thrown, and I was ready to love who I was as best I could. I embraced my white skin, auburn hair and the 90's 'grunge era' with delight. I rode my pushbike everywhere wearing a petticoat, blundstones and bike shorts. I lived on tuna, toast and cups of tea. I thought I had found a rivulet off the mainstream, a place where being feminist, fun-loving, creatively-obsessed and expressive was actually okay. In many ways it really was. I met other people who also rejected the expected 'ideals' of the mainstream. What I didn't consider that most of them came from middle or upper class white families and when they tired of the 'alternative' they could always slip back up the river and into a 'mansion'. It was exactly like that song by Pulp - 'Common People'.

So what does this have to do with food and mood? Well, I guess it's wise to consider how the mainstream is affecting almost every decision we make. It's spray touches nearly everything. Overly simplistic answers or outright rejection of the mainstream may not be the solution either. Sometimes I'll look at a magazine (there are a few better ones available now) and could almost laugh at the mixed messages. You'll see page after page of thin women, advertisements for ugly, overpriced shit, and then there will be some piece where the writer will say 'go ahead, have that cake!' as if she's a sugar rebel with a cause.

As I said at the start, I'm reducing carbs and who cares? Well it's a matter of where you are standing in relation to the mainstream, the information available, your health and your ability to filter out what you don't need. 

I have worked out that reducing carbs does have a significant effect on my well-being. I wish it didn't. I wish I could tell you that Gluten Intolerance is just a bourgeois invention for the self-obsessed. The thing is, a lot of stuff aimed at the GF end of the spectrum is so overpriced, it makes your eyes water. Over the last week I have taken out whatever the 'obvious shit carb' is for most of my meals, and slowly I can feel my health improving. I am not on a diet (otherwise I won't stick to it).  I made a hamburger with LETTUCE for the 'bun' and it was delicious! I would never have believed it if I hadn't tried it. 

I have reduced carbs to good effect in the past. In the past I was probably a bit too 'good' and so couldn't sustain it. This time, I'm more aware of why I'm doing it. I have shared a little bit about how trauma can result in 'brain fog'. Apparently carbohydrates (we're talking the obvious ones like rice, bread, potatoes) have a different effect on people who have gone through trauma. I got this information from a youtuber called 'The Crappy Childhood Fairy'. She recommended a no sugar/no carb way of eating. I am not ready to go that hard out yet as I'm addicted to sugar! Slowly slowly lettuce monkey.

I would be lying if I said I had absolutely no interest in losing weight, that I only care about reducing brain fog and pain. Pain was my great motivator last week. Every single thing in my body was hurting, all the joints, particularly my neck. I lay on the bed with my head hanging off the edge and cried. I was just so sick of it. We had 'treated' ourselves to pizza for dinner the night before, then I finished the rest of it for breakfast. Mmm. Rob thinks it's a bit extreme to blame that level of pain on one pizza, but I couldn't help but notice the intensity of the pain directly after eating it.

And so the great carb reduction began. I'm doing okay. I am still eating one piece of GF bread a day, and I had a fair bit of sugar yesterday (got my Moontime, that makes me crave sugar). If the pain and brain fog were heavily reduced, then it will be worth making these changes. If I do also lose weight, that will be a bonus. I don't want to fulfil a mainstream ideal of being thin enough to snap, but I do want to move with ease. 

A documentary I watched recently really helped. It was called 'Embrace'. It's the story of a white, blonde Aussie woman who enters a bikini competition, looks conventionally 'hot' and realizes it was way too much work. She embarks on a mission of embracing the body you have. That's cool, but I realized that she was still very fit and energetic even when she went back to having her 'normal' body. That is what I aspire to. To be energetic and able to live another 40 years with vibrance. To emanate kindness. To feel good in this incredible body. And yes, I will sometime have the fucking cake! Gluten Free?