...and here I am in Day 3.

I suspect getting through these initial handful of days is a lot like fasting: the body counters against the adjustments—or perhaps, more specifically, the emotions—there is a transition to an "anything goes" approach of food selection to one that is determined and hand-selected with a purpose.

I don't know if the tension lies in the lack of freedom, the shift of expectations, an appetite that is being downsized or something else entirely. I'm basically returning to discipline after a wild west six weeks in the fridge. I've paid my dues for it: felt miserable, lost levels of capability, and blasted away from my goals. Instead of an explosion of exuberance from cutting weight and feeling great, my vitality slowly drained away from choices that led not to a triumphant battlecry, but to a despondent anti-dyn-o-mite.

If food was exactly what it is, we all should look great in the United States. We are able—but are we willing? And hence why we put food in places it has no place:

• Gazing upon it as art to admire;
• Sitting upon a pedestal as a speech covered by First Amendment rights;
• Connecting people as interpersonal relationship glue;
• Defining people as a shibboleth;
• Comforting as a teddy bear to hug when we're feeling blue;
• Receiving worship and trust as a god;
• Amusing us as a multimedia entertainment center.

I don't think I understand how food has reached this place where it is more than just a vehicle of nutrition. I have questions:

1. What is the chief purpose of food?
2. What do we do when food fails to provide nutrition?
3. Can we return food to what should be its function and find better alternatives for the other things we use it for?
4. If we ONLY viewed food in terms of its nutrition for our bodies, what would our relationship be with it?
5. If we viewed food in terms of nutrition-per-dollar, how might we approach grocery shopping?
6. Is Coca-Cola now not only EXORBITANTLY expensive in the long-term with it as a lifestyle in terms of health, but is it the same in the short-term under a nutrient-per-dollar construct?

Oh, the opportunity costs! I gotta pay more just to cover what soft drinks fail to do in the first place and spend more on fixing what they impose on my body! How many months must I train to specifically work off its sugar-turned-fat that is on my body? Along with the initial dollar costs of what I could have bought instead of the initial purchase price of Coke, what do I miss in having to train that specific fat off?

Clearly, it's not just Coke; I use it as an example because I feel warm-and-fuzzies for it that I don't feel for Pepsi or off-brand selections. I have to ask myself, what's really going on here?

I've made it into Day 2. It's not quite the...ballyhoo...the ruckus...the ELATION of entering a Day 2 of a water fast, but it's the absolutely critical, first step down this revitalized path. I feel energized—I don't know if it is from all the nutrients that I'm integrating into my system or just some sort of psychosomatic brouhaha. Yet, I do view food as drugs—far more than just my food-meth metaphor. This isn't mind-blowing; we basically treat food like something we can take to feel good, whether we use it as a beer or as an aspirin...and it's why a 4+ week water fast is a compelling journey...

...but I'm not focusing on fasting, lest that I get pulled down that solitary-but-beautiful path again...

...thus, I return with the food-drug construct. Or, you might prefer the fluffier word, prescriptions, basically, something that someone tells you to eat to make you...change. Now, when it comes to these things, the change isn't organic: it pushes one direction, pulls on another. And to correct THAT issue, there's more prescriptions, which in turn—yes, you got it, requires more prescriptions, until you're now a 4th-grade science project Chewbacca with matted hair and a 1000-yard stare as the vinegar and baking soda reaction causes you to emotionally vomit on anyone unable to jump to hyperspace away from your incendiary Mustafar.

Yet, there are some cases when we've gotta visit the urgent care shaman. In my own story, years ago at 17, I splattered my chin open on a Bellevue Baptist Church basketball court and I just had to be rejected for a date to prom later that night. As no cornucopia is gonna stitch a chin up, I had to go. Then there was that time at a Harley-Davidson...CLEARLY, we need someone for emergencies. And a midwife. Because, yeah.

But, I don't know if a M.D. is the way to go for system maintenance. The testing is good, like, "Iceberg ahead!" But, it's an industry that is hard for me to trust with wealth as its core incentive, that, and keeping the patient mostly-alive to maintain wealth extraction, golden goose and all. If I need to correct a behavior, oh, let's say OBESITY and any current and future ramifications that come from a life of poor decisions, should I really pop a pill for correction? Honestly, can I have with any reasonable expectations believe that it would resolve things any more than giving a pill to a drowning man? C'mon, now!

CLEARLY, to correct a behavior, we gotta correct the behavior: stop going down that path and the let the body step in and fix things before it's too late. Eat things that add nutrition to our system, hit our deficiencies, and avoid things that harm us. When taking a step back, this is obvious, of course. While not as sexy as a talisman-holding harbinger of cures who conjures a laser light show throughout a waterfall of snake oil, a nutritionist holds greater value than some fat quack.

But, we don't really view food as something that fuels us with energy and enhances with vitamins and minerals. It's all about the window dressing; it's all about that briefest interaction on the fork. Yes, we'll have a good or bad relationship with that same food for the next 24 hours—in some cases, the next 24 YEARS—but made forgetful by desire, we are just in a culinary ether, a moment of zing, as we chew for six times before we swallow—at best five seconds of funzies.

So, maybe there's something more here than our failure to recognize the utility nature of food. We've got it in a role that it really shouldn't be in. Further exacerbating the issue, mad food scientists engineer food-like objects that swell the tongue and empty the pocketbooks. With some ratio of salt, sugar, and fat while pavloved by an earworm jingle, I'm convinced I'd eat my own mousepad.

Yes, there's something more going on here, and food is a square peg not fitting in a round soul.

I was wrong...well, partially. It's not that I necessarily disagree with my last post. Performance or fitness or whatever does not have a causal relationship (or casual for that matter), but there is a positive correlation involved—at the least here at this end of the scale where I have set up shop. And while a number in of itself as a weight measurement has little bearing on my appearance, ability or health, it isn't too shocking to say there is a correlation: we don't call 300 lb manbeasts agile, any more than we would talk about the turn-on-a-dime capability of an 18-wheeler or the explosive quickness of a Mac truck. And yes, I'm talking about fat and not a golem of a man. I'm talking about that warehouse club glut of adipose tissue that rams all the internal organs together like a London Tube 8AM commute.

The Bizarro Bill Six-Week Expedition

I'm at 291. The lack of a commitment to a low-carb lifestyle stole a lot of my 71 lb success from the First and Second six-week expeditions. Now, a lot of this is false weight gain; at the same time, I've been a food junkie. I haven't kept tabs on my nutritional intake and have floundered down into a food lifestyle that I'm not proud of...I haven't debased myself down to Hot Pockets, but I've had a Totino Pizza or two. Yes, that is a sad Party Pizza for one. It comes in a bag; you know it's the best!

And while halfway into the Third Expedition, the fire died and I lived in the badlands for six weeks thereafter—yes, a Bizarro six-weeks, like the mirror universe of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or even the upside down in Stranger Things—basically any dystopian pieces. Instead of a six-week Expedition toward the light while moving toward weighing and feeling light, I had a six-week 45 lb weight gain into the dark reaches of the night. I knew nothing of my 4AMs. I did not workout. I did not sustain healthy eating.

I've addressed this overarching failure in a prior journal so there's really no need to wield it in asceticism further. Though it is immediate, I now can push all of that into the past and actualize that though it has been part of my narrative, it's not what I'm doing now. There's freedom in that.

The Return of the Expeditions and the Advancement

I had abandoned the Expeditions construct of a tactical/daily approach for weightloss in lieu of for a 30,000 ft grand stratagem. Yes, my big picture approach IS from New Year's Eve's Morn 2017 to 2018, but that's gotta be broke down to milestones; there's not enough incentive to fire up for today for something that is months in the future for its far too easy to let that future Bill take care of it. And I never recognize in the moment that I'm future Bill—again, all for the lack of 1.21 gigawatts.

So today, BAM, the Day 1 of The 4th Expedition. And as a reminder to the fall of The Third Expedition, my weigh-in is not on a Monday, but on Weigh-in Wednesday, every six-weeks. It's a reminder of how fast one can lose so much progress.

I'll be grabbing what worked in the past and adding a few more ideas that have been rolling around my head.