Things to remember, definitely:
Bingeing on peanut butter or any nut butter will make you feel very, very sick, very, very fast, and it’s a long lasting sickness (over a week).
Protein powders, even those that purport to be the best tasting protein on the planet, taste disgusting, except for…
Show Me the Whey! – but every time you eat that, you generally feel guilt, because of the artificial ingredients. Although, for some reason, this brand does not taste as artificial as others.
Supreme Protein bars actually taste pretty good (like a cheap candy bar), but you obsess over them and binge on them. (Four in an hour? I mean, come on. No way that’s a good idea.) Same goes for nuts, especially if they are roasted and salted. Raw macadamia nuts might be okay.
Dieting is like playing video games. You can get some good flow going, but it’s a rat race kind of flow. Every milestone is met with relief, not actual happiness. Plus, if you ever reach your goal body fat percentage, it is not really meaningful to you. You are angry that this is what the world would seem to dictate that you be, because of the obsession/compulsions/pain/time sunk in the pursuit of something that doesn’t serve to make you happy.
Martial arts got to be a rat race at the end as well, because I couldn’t keep believing in it. Ditto cognitive science. It felt like the dopamine pathways just fell out of my brain.
How does one keep the faith?