Month: August 2006

  • Cravings Signal Detoxification

    Whataburger sounds really good right about now. So does fettucine alfredo. And chips with queso. Mmmm… Okay, okay, I’m going to do permanent damage if i don’t stop. August 6th marked day one of the Dessinger live food diet. That was seventeen days ago. Cravings are popping up out of the woodwork. I was warned about just such a possibility. I was told that after a while of burning off excess fat, the body begins to detoxify itself. As the toxins are flushed from their places of residence (fat cells), they often affect a person with cravings for the very foods he or she is trying to avoid. Then again, if you’re addicted to the hormone and chemical releasing properties of junk food, you may just be feeling the cravings of an addict. I fit into one of the two categories… just not sure which one.

    The first sounds more positive and productive: “I’m flushing toxins from my system!” Then again, I was told that a majority of the fat has to be burned off before this detoxifying begins. Sadly, I have not yet attained such nirvana. Seventeen days in, and life really isn’t bad. My number one problem is driving by dozens of fast food restaurants I used to visit like old friends. Then there’s the good old lunch meeting institution which is sometimes unavoidable as I watch someone eat a hamburger or steak or God knows what else. It truly is a ying-yang kind of experience. I can focus on the goal and feel nothing but positive energy and attitude. I can focus on what everyone else is eating and feel deprived, neglected, abused, and needy. All of that changes with a simple shift of focus. That’ll preach. Pressing on, I reach toward the prize… what is this prize?

    For me, the prize is the end of joint pain, sudden mood swings, attention deficit disorder, back pain, and sluggishness. For me, the prize is waking up and feeling more consistent and calm than I ever have before in my life. The prize is actually having a chance at living this “Christian life” with endurance, patience, and humility. There is nothing quite so humbling as denying your flesh its greedy little desires.


  • Live Foods = Live Body

    My wife and I discovered live foods on my birthday. Not something I would have hoped or planned for in advance, but a welcome solution to many a problem. I give credit to Heather and her mom. Both have faithfully pursued health with a zeal unmatched by anyone else I know. Sure, Mrs. Nevland has managed to earn areputation for quirky and healthy things like Barley Green, but the presentation just didn’t do it for me. So we’re at a friend’s house on my birthday to learn how to prepare some excellent raw food dishes.

    Sounds harmless enough, right? It is unless you’re married to a woman so passionate about health that she goes out and buys herself a food processor the same day she discovers the Live Food lifestyle. I can’t argue with the logic: live food = live body and dead food = dead body. Before some of you totally freak on me, let me put you at ease by saying that ‘live foods’ are not those which still crawl, walk, fly, or swim. Far from it.

    Live food refers to the enzymes and good bacteria naturally living in foods that are not processed or irradiated. It refers to food as God intended – at least pre-Fall. Why God told people to eat meat after the Flood is an unsolved mystery – thogh some postulate this is due to the changing climate and need to draw some nutrients previously found in plants from the only present available source – animals. More later