Fasting has deep roots in human culture, one that predates the selling of trendy "diet" books like we have today by many years. How do I know? Surely, you jest. As a publishing executive, it's part of my job, though not always to my liking, like when I worked in the past for other people's houses* and not mine. You don't have to be as gifted as me to succeed in business without even trying. Sometimes, you just need a rich white daddy who wants a tax shelter and a continued stake in the game, know what I'm sayin'? Sure, you do. We've all worked for people who are much less than talented than us because they had access to money that large sections of the populace do not, historically being women and minorities, and I am indeed both of those.
Which takes me back a few years to a gig at some broke unknown indie house, manned by the spoiled rich kid put in place by his daddy, with not much particular interest in the business itself, leaving about ten doors wide open for me to just stride on through, because I've always had to know my business better than anybody around, lest I feel the wrath for their continued incompetency, and I know you women out there can all feel me on this one. We do not have the luxury to not tend to our flock, not unless we want to dig holes to bury our children in, and I wouldn't recommend that for your continued peace of mind.
It was in this benign spirit of living that a complete piece of crap crossed my desk inaptly titled "The Starvation Diet", or some such crap that seems to exist only in New York City, Colorado, and SoCal (notoriously anorexic, ahem, "skinny" cities all of them). First, I took a good calm look at the rather bland and unusually thick (for the tri-state area) young girl who made the mistake of handing me that particularly unsavory turd. Oh, dear...you don't belong in New York City if you think this is what it takes to survive. Because I can make grown men cry (yes, even delusional rich white ones) I considered the best option, and that was to school this kid out loud and clearly in front of the whole office about the complete and utter condescension behind the titling of this piece of crap, especially since I was toggling homelessness in addition to hunger during the time of my employ.
I got the book back with (oh, my!) a much better title, because of my continued excellent use of office acoustics in open spaces (because they can't afford a really good and really expensive traditional office layout), instead choosing to cram cheap assistants into one big room (which was billed to me by the head sales guy as "fresh", that brilliant keyword for the inexperienced and stupid English Lit grads who flood NYC into a false sense of gentrification with their out-of-state trust funds), installed with a crazy series of bookshelves that make no sense in demarcating space, because unlike the fly fishing father who worked a respectable press many years ago, this bullshit son of his had first published his own harrowing tales of illness and insanity by purposefully choosing to breed even more crazy into his family line through another generation of ADHD/BPD-afflicted children (I caught one of his little blond girls staring blankly at a dead computer screen in the cubit next to mine; when I asked her where her shoes were, she gave me a blank stare and ran away), and that's hard, yo.
Starvation is most certainly not the same as the concept I introduce to you here today called "Intermittent Fasting" (yenta in fashion, I mean you), which does a lot of good things for the human body, that's why the most successful religious acolytes have it built into their disciplines: because it works. I've done it with great success. I do not eat breakfast every day, unlike that old motto, because I may not be hungry, or I'm busy, or coffee with milk will do until my next full meal.
I've restricted calories for training purposes and cosmetic ones, and so there is absolutely no mystery whatsoever to me about either. Less food=less calories. But that is not an avocation to starve, like someone with a serious mental disorder effecting tremendous hurt on the body.
I know, because at the last "house" I worked for (they let me go right before the six month mark that would have granted me full health insurance benefits that they can't actually afford to pay), I was clustered next to a cadre of skinny and really nervous out-of-towners that included two generic white girls and one very gay white boy, all of whom spoke to one another in whispers about their secretive (and vomitous) bulimia that had to be done on the sly amongst them, because we only had one or two bathrooms to go around, and the sharp tang of puke wafts through a common-area office the same way gossip does: I could sense it right through the thin partition walls that barely separated us. Stranger still, they all worked compulsively repetitive jobs in production, like copy-editing and trafficking, low-end jobs that are more-or-less the same, day after soul-crushing day. Coincidence, right?
Right. And so, today's snap back to reality for all of you office workers out there in Readerland after yesterday's gluttony is not a call to starve oneself, but a "Call to Action", and that is this: why not be mindful about food all year long? What exactly do you have to lose? Heart disease? A mental illness or two? What exactly are you waiting for? Oh...I see. You want me to do it for you.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing
