Me vs. My Body

In thinking about my body and all the physical goals I hold for it, I cannot help but separate us, my body and I, it’s just easier for me to think in these terms, “my body,” vs strictly thinking as “me.”

I guess this is partially because I think of my body as an unthinking machine, that I, have to pressure to get it to perform in the way that I want it to. This machine is incredibly high tech, but basically pretty dumb. And this machine left to its own devices will not carry out my arbitrary goals, it doesn’t seem to have the same goals as I do. 

In that I am neither advocating for a soul or a strict biological explanation, I can only think in terms of a separation here, and when I really dig around, the separation is far more fractured than just me and my body, for I am quite often quarreling with myself. 

When I really try and figure out what my body’s goals are, because they seem so totally in opposition to MY goals, I think it’s only goal is survival. This may seem confusing, because of course my own goals aren’t in opposition to this. I’ve had to parcel out my own understanding of what it is to survive. I have a general idea of what this is, and I believe my body’s idea is quite different.

If we think of this in evolutionary terms, starving will kill us much faster than obesity. If we look at the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis and the Dutch Hunger Winter, there is evidence that our bodies can immediately adapt to more efficient fat storage. If I was a very high-tech, yet unthinking machine, I would certainly be more inclined to store energy, than live believing that there could be no major shortage that could quickly ruin my goal of survival. I can see this machine developing a warning light, that tells us we are nearing a time to refuel. But how would this sign be seen today? Certainly not when there is a constant omnipresent cornucopia of food. More realistically when we had to go out and hunt or forage for food, hunger existed only as a really early warning sign to eat. 

Why is it that if I do some exercise when hungry, I crave different foods than if I simply walk to my refrigerator? Have you had that?

I can be responsible for my body’s larger actions, stand up/sit down and beyond, but the smaller functions of digestion, endocrinology, cardiovascular, pulmonary etc., I can only influence. Yet my body can influence how I control it’s larger actions too! Why does my body send signals to eat desert? I do not want desert, it is in conflict with my physical goals… BECAUSE my body WANTS to store fat! It’s scared shitless that someone/thing is going to take all the food away and we’re (lol, me and my body) are going to starve! I ate recently, why is my body demanding more more more? IT WANTS TO BE FAT! That fat/stored energy is like a battery pack that will kick famine in the teeth. My body has no idea that there’s a cache of cheap calories on literally every corner of America, and when it gets a sense of this, it says to me “Hey dummy! Go eat that shit RIGHT NOW!” 

OBESITY may take decades to kill a person, that’s more than enough time to procreate, my body doesn’t recognize that as a risk to survival, so it’s not a factor my body takes into consideration. EAT, EAT, EAT! My body screams at me, the next famine is around the corner and we want to beat it. Try as I might, my body doesn’t believe that 7/11’s are here to stay. 

Further, when I restrict energy intake to my body, it rages against me, and the first thing it looks to do is mitigate this restriction by using muscle as a fuel source. This way it has lessened it’s energy need and gotten some free energy that I’d been withholding from it. 

How to trick it, how do I make it think that muscle is necessary to survive? Well… it’s a really dumb smart machine, it has no idea what a gym is, whatever I do with my body, it believes I have to be able to do to survive… So if I don’t use my muscles in a way that it can’t adapt to, it has to keep the muscle, it believes that basically everything we’re doing with it, is designed to survive, it literally thinks I’m out hunting and foraging. 

My body and I are constantly trying to game each other… But I’m just a touch smarter, and I will win.

Sincerely,