A friend of mine refuses to pee when she really needs to. We’re talking about a bladder on the brink of explosion is flat out ignored. On the reg–even when perfectly clean toilets abound. This odd habit of hers got me thinking about how often we ignore our bodies.

For some of us, this refusal to listen to our bodies is as simple as denying our need for sleep or pretending that we aren’t hungry. Maybe it is thirst that some of us don’t register until we’re gasping for breath as we finish guzzling a 1L bottle of water. This tendency to ignore signals from our own bodies, designed to help us thrive, is frightening but not surprising. In the hectic context of our modern world, when we’re up to our necks in a social(ly) media(ted) world, being pulled in twenty different directions at any given instant (emails, texts, phone calls that excite, stress, disappoint and confuse us almost simultaneously), taking a piss can feel like an inconvenience. But how ridiculous is that? Almost as insane as our justifications for eating “fast” food or chemically altered, “hyper-palatable” food instead of quality (nutrient-dense) food that will more effectively fuel our fast-paced lives.

I’m guilty too. Probably most obvious is my relationship with sugar-free foods. I consume sugar-free-chemically-dense gum and beverages at the expense of my digestive tract on a daily basis-DESPITE the fact that my stomach has pointedly expressed its disgust for the unnatural ingredients in these drinks and candy.

My stomach literally lurches, bubbles and bloats upon the consumption of sugar-free gum and diet soda. Yet, without fail, I subject my poor body to this crap day after day.

Before I tell my friend that she ought to piss when she needs to piss. Maybe I should listen to my own body and stop consuming chemicals that make it perfectly uncomfortable (except for the initial ultra-sweet rush of flavor).

Maybe the hard part about listening to our bodies is that we get mixed messages. The physiological (swollen bladder, bubbling, bloated stomach) often conflicts with the “mental” (prioritizing getting shit done over pissing or craving super sweet foods to fill an undefined emotional void).

The challenge, then, comes down to one word. Respect. In spite of the complicated emotional motives behind much of our self-destructive behavior, I think we ought to challenge ourselves to respect the  intricate and delicate mechanisms working together to keep these exquisitely soft and beautiful machines going. So for now, listen carefully. Let me know how it goes for you.

Just ate the most delicious tartare. The rest of the meal? Various other cuts and degrees of rawness. Yes. A meal composed entirely of meat. So primal. 

1. Eating paleo simplifies your eating decisions. (Although… there are plenty of interesting recipes and potential combinations waiting for the more curious, adventuresome, thrill-seeking paleo newbies)

2. You’ll rediscover natural hunger signaling once the unnatural insulin peaks and nose-dives from sugar and grains have subsided. (In other words, you won’t turn into a monster if you don’t eat every two hours. And you’ll know you’ve made the complete conversion to paleo when you find yourself reaching for a hard-boiled egg instead of a bowl of cereal when late night hunger strikes).

3. You’ll rediscover the joy of food as you stop fighting it and yourself, newly armed with a healthy, restored digestive system…In other words, you’ll be a fat-burning beast. Counting calories will be a thing of your chronic-cardio, sugar-slave past.

4. Therefore…you can safely step off the treadmill. Because eating a grain/sugar free paleo diet helps restore natural satiety signaling, you won’t need to spend hours “purging” excessive calories. You won’t feel compelled to overeat (as frequently–and the foods you might over-consume will have less of a detrimental impact on your overall health, i.e., it won’t be poisonous grains/sugar) in the first place.

4. Abdominal bloating and water retention will subside. (I wouldn’t have believed this. I guess you’ll just have to try it yourself.)

5. Your skin and body composition will change (for the better) as you start feeding yourself what humans are designed to use for fuel (instead of engaging in cycles of restriction and compensatory over-feeding of carbohydrates and sugar). Personally, replacing dairy with paleo alternatives such as coconut and almond products helped reduce my acne and improved my skin dramatically.

For the record, avocados > apples. For one thing, these perfect orbs of fatty green fruit can be eaten as easily as (and more sensuously than) apples when traveling. I discovered this today on a cramped megabus. My stomach grumbled as we inched through traffic and my neck started to prickle with a cold sweat induced by motion-sickness from the merciless stop-and-go of the bus.  As we lurched backwards in the “stop” phase of this dreadful pattern, it suddenly occurred to me that I had the perfect snack in my purse. So I reached into my purse, felt around for the fishnet bag that held a perfect pair of avocados, and took one out. I proceeded to gently nudge the skin from the fruit’s crown and peel it back, nibbling at the rich flesh as I revealed it. I couldn’t have enjoyed a more perfect or satiating snack. Unlike apples which normally leave me unsatisfied and reaching for something else to eat, my megabus avocado kept me sated until I arrived in New Hampshire five hours later. Next time you hear yourself reciting the mantra, “An apple a day…” catch yourself and reach for an avocado instead.

Or is it the other way around? 

The problem isn’t that we mistreat the elderly. Or at least not necessarily. I think the root of ageism (if that is what we’re calling it), lies in our nature as born “cognitive misers.” Categorization makes functioning in the world possible. If we didn’t categorize, we’d be overwhelmed by basic instructions or become paralyzed in the face of a simple decision. We say “I’m going to buy milk.” We don’t specify or even think about whether it is going to be seven-eleven brand milk, 1% or 2% or whole milk or Trader Joe’s Brand or the Target brand. We’re thirsty for milk so we put on our hat and go out to get some.

Something similar is happening in the intergenerational static. We categorize the old as such because they are, for the most part, irrelevant to our daily living. They do not quench a milk-thirst, (if you will). Therefore, they don’t warrant the cognitive burden they might otherwise demand. Instead, they remind us unapologetically of our mortality: a misshapen spine, a tennis-balled walker, wrinkles that permanently express three different emotions all at once. . .The fact that the elderly, by their mere existence, remind us of the impending final stop of life, is just another reason to contain them in a category. We carefully (or not so carefully?) toss the aged into a tidy, well sealed, euthanasia-friendly box. Instead of acknowledging the elderly, we often ignore them as we convince ourselves convincingly of their mutual preference for being “left alone.” Old people are incompetent, sick, disruptively slow and hard of hearing. All old people are the same.

What I find so tragic about this natural tendency to categorize or ignore the aged, is that we cannot even muster the brain space to consider them in terms of the messy, long, glorious, unfortunate human days they’ve lived and suffered. A magnitude of experience that is often four or even five times as vast as our own. To imagine that is hard to begin with and then, to think, “seniors” are as diverse as our peers.

Yes, I am stating the obvious but if you really think about it, the prevailing notion that aging turns you into a generic “old person” is utterly absurd. But that sentiment is the reality of our present relationship to generations twice or sometimes only once removed from our own. It is easier to call milk, milk. And in the end, milk is really just milk. But people. Now that is a different story.