An Intellectual’s Guide to Dieting

From everything I have read and come to believe I should be feeling like a new or reinvented person. Vegetarian eating has all the “stats” in its favor. But, as I lay in the “Camp Granola”, as the guest lovingly referred to it, sick bay area it was anything but a good feeling. I believed my problem was a heart attack brought on by the food. The nurse was struggling to contain a laugh. I reflect back on how this current situation has played out. The goal was honorable. Go to Camp Granola Institute and learn Tai Chi from a Chinese Master who was instructing. To take the big first step toward re-inventing myself for a new life of awareness. A life of meditation, Tai Chi, Vegetarian eating and, “drum roll please” to see life as the “special people” see it. Those people who appear to me to have followed this path. After all, they are all slender, witty, seem to know everything, admired-what’s a reason not to emulate. My vegetarian transition was to take place at the camp. Back then it was the only cuisine they served-forced choice to help a person like me with a life time of failed dieting resolve. Since then they have expanded the eating options. The personal journey to self-improve is deep in all of us. The statistics on how many people who regularly start dieting, quit smoking, and search for the Devine in themselves via a spiritual path or through organized religion yearly is huge. More astounding yet is the number that drop off of their special path to self-improvement. I can raise my hand as to the dieting part. I have followed just about every diet possible-the number of fad diet books I have paid for may well equal the down payment on a nice auto. All succeeded-I did drop the weight. Yet, all failed as I gained all the weight back with a few new pounds added. Research shows my diet induced roller coaster of weight swings to be a possible health hazard in and of itself. A good deal of reading and study confirms that my fad diet approach is not the path with the most success. Ok, what is the correct “path” to join the beautiful people? That’s what the stories in this book are all about with a touch of humor but yet in a helpful manner. The idea I am offering is really more than just that. It has to be a 360 degree strategy with a systematic approach to work on all the key issues at the same time or in some combo, to include each of them. All with the notion of creating and following a “new vision” of ourselves. This means, how and what we eat, exercise, feeling positively about our life, spiritual/religious disciplines, to name just some of the change ingredients. What is offered here is a “single-person culture change.”