Carbless Happiness

What? What did they say? Health costs of the healthy are the highest? How ironic. This reminds me of a passage from a book I’m writing about being fat:

But, fatness or the medical term for really damn fat, obesity, is another excuse for assholes to discriminate.

Short, concise, and true. In a sad way, this study supports my conclusion. Over the last few years, it has been fun to watch the Skinnies try to come up with reasons why they should be able to hold on to their distaste, dislike, and societal disapproval for Fatties. One of the main weapons was “cost”. It became this mantra: look how much fat people are going to cost us, this country, our world! People on the street, when interviewed, would say they didn’t want to have to pay for another’s disease, especially something so preventable as being Fat. While Obesity is something I think is important to discuss, most of these people are not well intentioned. Deep down inside most people find disfiguration so repulsive, it is difficult, if not impossible, not to be biased against it. I wrote something along these lines in my book, but have since removed it…but for your reading pleasure, I was able to resurrect it:

Besides African Americans, Latinos, Arabs, Indians, and those with some mental handicap, the obese are the most discriminated group of human beings. At least in native countries, most of the other groups mentioned above find acceptance. As a whole, while fatness used to be something historians tell us was culturally admirable (the fat ones were the rich and powerful, they had to be admired by their populace!), it is ridiculous to suggest at any time that being fat is something good and admirable. Similar to other functions of the body, obesity is a dysfunction; it is too much of a good thing, and terribly disfiguring. Maybe it is the disfiguration of the human body that is so repulsive. Similar to the clubbed foot, disfiguration of the body outside of what each of us considers normal is grounds for cultural shunning, and the occasional biting joke from comedians who are, in many cases, obese themselves. But wait, you think, handicaps happen, but my fat friends should just stop eating two Big Macs with Biggie Fries and a Biggie Coke seven days a week and they wouldn’t be so grossly humungous and I wouldn’t have to think such terrible things about them. This thought, of course, is your way of justifying your discrimination, because, after all, they do it to themselves! The nerve, our fellow human beings disfiguring their own bodies by their own free will and choice, without even asking for permission, we protest!

While science has helped make myth and prejudice take a back seat over the last few hundred years, I never imagined it would help the obese like this. My great thanks goes out to all of my fellow human beings that spent time on this study. Who would have thought we could lower healthcare costs by all becoming obese and smoking…

Teri said something the other day that is quite profound, something that went like this: Matt and I don’t like each other much these last few weeks, but we’ve never stopped loving each other. As I contemplate Happiness and our society’s obsession with creating a day of relationships celebration, I’ve discovered that as I look for the happy things in life, I'm doing just fine. I’ve tried to explain to myself what I’m looking for these last weeks, and I think Teri just gave my search new meaning.

Let me explain:

It's not about learning to love my life or the finding of happiness being an end. Simply, I want to like my life a little more from day to day...it's cliche-ish: find the silver lining, improving my quality of life, making the best of it, living in the moment, smelling the roses...ugh. I feel like the last man in a marathon, attempting to sip the final drops of water from the smashed paper cups littering the asphalt.

I guess I'm searching for the day to day things that put me out of sync with what I know is real. Take the Atkins diet. I know it changes how I think about my life day to day. It affects how much I like my life. It makes abnormal out of normal. My weight does the same. My need to be right. A surprise love note on my car seat at 6am does too. Happiness and sadness will come and go. Big things will happen. But it's life in between those moment, life in the cracks that means the most to me, and making those small, forgotten moments happy ones seems very possible to me. It's funny, when you think about it, you are reading straight from a crack in my life.

Is dieting something happy people do? I read this study done in 1996, by David Lykken and Auke Tellegen, from the University of Minnesota Psychology department on Happiness. They came to a somewhat perplexing conclusion:

If the transitory variations of well-being are largely due to fortune's favors, whereas the midpoint of these variations is determined by the great genetic lottery that occurs at conception, then we are led to conclude that individual differences in human happiness - how one feels at the moment and also how one feels on average over time - are primarily a matter of chance.

This was another key summary of their study:

Myers and Diener suggested that people who enjoy close personal relationships, who become absorbed in their work, and who set themselves achievable goals and move toward them with determination are happier on the whole than people who do not. We agree, but we question the direction of the causal arrow. We know that when people with bipolar mood disored are depressed, they tend to avoid intimate encounters or new experiences and tend to brood upon depressing thoughts rather than concentrating on their work. Then, when their moods swings toward elation, these same people tend to do the things that happy people do. This is undoubtedly a James-Lange feedback effect: Dysfunctional behavior exacerbates depression, whereas the things happy people do enhance their happiness. We argue, however, that the impetus is greater from mood to behavior than in the reverse direction. It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore is counterproductive.

A happy mood leads to behaviors that encourage a continued sense of elation? It makes a sick kind of sense. When I'm in a good mood, I start dieting and begin to lose weight, and I will choose healthier foods and activities (like working out, or getting in contact with a friend). Whereas, when I'm in a negative mood, I insist on not dieting and tend to gain weight, and I will choose more unhealthy food and unhealthy activities (like watching t.v. all day). Mood affects and feeds behaviors, which then support the mood.

So, has anything been solved? How does the switch happen? Is it just a cycle, partially based in genetics? I'm happy, making good choices. Then something happens. I become upset, negative, and begin making poor choices. Then something happens. I become happy, and make more good choices. Is there a way to avoid the switch? Is there a way to minimize the depression?

It's interesting, we fat people try to "switch" by overwhelming the negative mood with food, which interestingly enough provides some elation...but then leads to more negative behavior. Hmm! This would "seem" to support our initial hypothesis that carbs lead to a false sense of elation...elation, but an elation that tricks us into a false sense of happiness.

Okay - now that I'm back at the beginning...

Coma: it is an accurate description. I can remember when it happened, but I can't remember much of the last ten days while I fed my body an steady diet of sweet, simple carbs. It happens, and then I'm back where I started. It's like Chutes and Ladders and that slide down the ladder is a bitch. It all begins with the decision to put something before physical well being. But, I can say, I wasn't as non-emotional as I had been while I pursued a low carb diet. The connection seems like it must be a product of my mind. However, I read this the other day which made me wonder if our journey for happiness without carbs, really is a difficult one. Here's a quote from the webpage:

"The MIT researchers found that the brain only seemed to make serotonin after a person ate carbohydrates.[199] By starving the brain of this essential mood elevator, the researchers fear that the Atkins Diet may make people restless, irritable or depressed. They noted that women, people under stress, and those taking anti-depressants might be most at risk.[200]"

Now, scientific research that comes to a conclusion that states "seems to make", is suspect to me to make any conclusive arguments. Although, from my personal experience, I would say my mood seems to support the conclusion that serotonin levels are affected by Carbohydrates. However, as the research states, "seems" is the operative word. I know that my sertotonin levels also seem to be affected by how I perceive myself. In other words, I have been on the Atkins diet and lost lots of weight, and felt quite wonderful. I agree it isn't wise to simply load up on fats, nor to stay on Atkins for a prolonged period of time. However, a half gallon of ice cream, no matter what other food you are eating, is not good for you.

So, it's back to eating better, keeping my carb intake and calorie intake low, along with exercising...how depressing. :)