THE DISCLAIMER: Am I a dietician? No. Did I write this article for you? Maybe. I especially wrote it for me, as a reminder. Should you try this diet at your own risk? Yes. What is not at your own risk? If you feel the need to sue me for any reason related to this writing or otherwise, please do not. I’m merely a grocery cashier and cannot afford lawyers. However, if money is your aim then I will happily oblige you if only you will first ask. Enjoy!
FOR PREFACE: When I’m “seeing the man about a dog,” squat on the crapper and distracting myself from the ugliness of bowel movements, I’m cradling my phone and reading nonsense: headlines which solve our humanity’s worst sensations, “The reason why you’re tired in the morning,” or “Why you still feel lonely.” The answer concludes — after a roundabout rambling — with a pithy, “You’re perfect the way you are.” It’s true, however frustrating.
For instance, when the dog wakes to greet you and her eyes are bleary and joints stiff with sleep, she is not sorry for it. She’s both happy and listless. We respond in puppy-tones, “Awe … has someone got sleepy-eyes from their nap?” We pat her head and life wags on. So with us. Except, when we are groggy from our beds, we refuse our nature and ask ridiculous questions like, “Why am I so tired?” Our vanity resolves to “cure” this fatigue. We inject ourselves with coffee, vigorous exercise, cold water, blaring alarms, “Wake up, wake up, wake up. Why am I so tired?” Have we not invented a problem from a non-problem? Our puppy doesn’t complain of nap-time sleepiness. Yet we evade hurt at every breath, and now our world is one large coffee pot.
And so as I reflect upon my stool’s stool the question arises, “Does this mean coffee is bad?” No. “So avoidance is bad?” No. Simply, you’re tired in the mornings because you’re tired in the mornings. What’s so wrong with this feeling of morning grogginess that we immediately go upon solving for it? Drink coffee or do not. But please, spare me your solutions for “Sleepiness”, along with all other human sensations, lest we devolve to mineral life and feel nothing.
The Fiber Diet
- Eat no food with less than two grams of fiber per serving.
- Eat no food with more added sugar than fiber.
- Drink a full glass of water before each meal.
DID YOU PREFACE this article with an aside against toilet-borne journalism?” Yes, because when proposing a solution it is dutiful to consider common logical flaws, and to ask, “Why does this solution differ from its defunct kin?” While many “self-help” solutions ask us to do more, to drink this drink, take this supplement, try this technique, The Fiber Diet asks us to do less, to simplify. It’s my favorite kind of solution, to reduce our arbitrary selves into a finely focused form.
When answering questions on diet, eastern sages reference animal instincts, nature herself. In nature we find an animal’s teeth and stomach correlate to their diet. Herbivores have flat teeth to grind roughage; carnivores have sharp teeth to tear meat; omnivores have mixed teeth for their apparent need for leaf and flesh. And then the sage will ask, “What then of the human, the monkey, and the animals whose teeth differ from omnivores, carnivores, and herbivores?” There is, in fact, another class of dieter called a frugivore whose consumption is mostly fruits and nuts. Further consideration is given to the length of the digestive tract, proportionate to the length of time a food requires for digestion. Shorter tracts for meat-eaters and longer tracts for roughage-eaters. Again, the human digestive tract aligns with nature’s frugivores. So we deduce ourselves to be frugivores.
What then is the point of food? Sustenance. Give the body energy and efficiently, where greater efficiency yields less waste. In this obese age, however, our foremost problem is not in receiving quick energy from our foods. We’ve mastered instant energy with refined flour, sugar, and simple carbohydrates. So we surmise, “We’ve conquered food!” But a curious problem has emerged: constipation. It seems our refined flours and simple sugars lack fiber, the metaphorical glue which binds and moves our poo, and from our inability to eliminate the foods we eat, we retain our waste and carry it with us as added fat, cholesterol, and ultimately, decreased efficiency. For while modern foods give us fast energy, they inhibit our body’s ability to stay lean, regular, and free of bile. Unable to eliminate as we ought, our body’s unneeded growth competes for our energy and we begin craving more-and-more food to sustain our growing body mass until we’re victims of a vicious cycle.
So we conclude that if we eat fibrous food our body will be better able to eliminate bodily waste. Coincidentally, fibrous foods are naturally healthier. In fact, The Fiber Diet’s first rule produces a vegan result — for no meat, cheese, or animal-borne product has two grams of fiber per serving.
Further, by asking for no food to have more added sugar than fiber, no artificially enriched food is allowed. The result is a healthy diet and a diet whose intent is not rooted in political righteousness, nor a diet riddled with complex prescriptions and prohibitions. Instead, our diet is motivated by answering the question, “What is easiest and healthiest for our person?”
The third suggestion to drink water is a consideration for the body’s natural tendency to conflate dehydration with hunger. Since food is a vital source of hydration, sometimes the body will respond with symptoms of hunger when what it really needs is water. To abate this predicament, The Fiber Diet suggests drinking a full glass of water before eating, also allowing the water to fully digest in the body, taking our time to eat mindfully and without haste nor distraction, all in due respect to the miracle which is life.
As a final note, The Fiber Diet intentionally excludes the quantity and duration for eating. As a metric, sages suggest eating only when “very” hungry. Sometimes, and especially when enraptured in creative projects, or when in love, enthused, frightened, or experiencing any other heightened state of energy, the body seems to sustain itself without cravings for food. Don’t then force feed yourself in the name of habit. Food is a means to an end and not the end itself. Should a day pass when no food is required, celebrate: the body has sustained itself from the source of life within. Then again, should after arduous labors the body produce seemingly insatiable hunger, don’t deprive oneself in the name of “spirituality” or otherwise. Food is good, and eating is better!
Ultimately, The Fiber Diet is no novel formula. It’s merely a novel callout from an already perfect and natural dietary history: “Hey, did you know a human can discern their ideal foods by following just one measurement: fiber?” It’s true. And to quote the sages once more, “fanaticism” is neither the aim. So have your cake and eat it too — even if the occasional treat is “technical poison” to your body, there is still such thing as “soul food”. To return us to the beginning preface, “We’re perfect already.” Food, then, is to help us along the way.
Bottoms up!
