Health

I have always had tremendous respect for Oprah Winfrey. To me she represents everything that is wonderful about being an American. She is a beacon of hope for anyone who has survived a difficult childhood. One of my dreams is to appear on her show promoting my first book, and I know someday it will come true. The question is, how much will Oprah and I weight when that day comes?

Pretty much everyone in America has noticed that over the past couple of years Oprah has begun to lose her battle of the bulge once again. For a while she really seemed to have gained control through her work with Dr. Bob Greene of The Best Life Diet.  Together with Dr. Greene, she co-authored the best seller Make the Connection outlining how she was finally able to make the connection between diet, exercise and her emotional eating.  I really believed she had gained control of the issue, but then she seemed to lose her way once again and the weight returned.

Today I came across an article, which will appear in the next issue of O Magazine, which was provided  early to the Associated Press.  In it Oprah confesses that she now weighs 200 pounds and that she is “embarrassed” by her weight gain.  Here’s a snippet from the article:

Winfrey also writes that her goal is no longer to be thin; instead, she wants to be strong, healthy and fit. She hopes to get started with her upcoming “Best Life Week,” starting Jan. 5 with an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” during which she is expected to talk candidly about her weight.

As I read this I mused on my recent gaining of four pounds of the eleven that I had lost.  There is no mystery at all as to why I regained this weight.  While I have remained gluten and dairy free, and mostly diet coke free, I have added potatoes and corn, particularly hot buttered popcorn, back into my diet.  My portion sizes have increased again, while my exercise regimen has fizzled out.  Why does this happen?  Why is it so hard for me to be successful in this one area of life?

I love food way too much.  I love to eat.  Food makes me so happy.  It is so hard to find that same kind of euphoric happiness from any other thing in my life.  Basically, I am addicted to food. I believe Oprah is too. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as going cold turkey, pardon the pun.  We have to eat to live.  Perhaps the remedy is to go cold turkey on the trigger foods.  For me that would be popcorn and potato chips.  If I just say no to them for the rest of my life, as an alcoholic would say not to liquor or an addict would say no to heroin, then maybe I can get control.

Gosh, I have to admit that even thinking of never having popcorn or potato chips again makes me feel immediately sad.  It just seems like I cannot eat them in any kind of moderation, and they act like a gateway drug.  Once I have eaten them I move on to other less than healthy foods and a binge soon follows.

For those of you who have lost weight and kept it off, what worked for you?  Did you find that you too had trigger foods?  Oprah and I could really use your advice right about now!  When we meet in a few years and sit across from each other in her studio I want us to both look awesome and even more importantly I want us both to have conquered the demon once and for all!

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What happens to us when we die?  I don’t know. Do you?  I don’t think anyone knows.  I think we all have ideas about it and many people have very strong beliefs on the subject, but no one really knows for sure.  Sometimes that really freaks me out.

Do you believe in reincarnation?  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  It seems reasonable enough, but so does the opposing view.

What seems really kind of far fetched is that we continue to exist in any way at all, yet I believe that we do.

A recent article by Jesse Bering in Scientific American Mind (my new favorite magazine) freaked me out even further.  The article entitled “Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death” basically says that we believe in existence after death because our minds are incapable of imagining a state of non-existence. It’s not an emotional problem, it’s a software issue!

This particular statement made my blood run cold:

Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce.

Really makes some sense, huh?

So I am sitting here wondering if we really do continue on in some form after we die or is consciousness just some kind of evolutionary trait, and we do not have souls of any kind.  In a recent meditation I asked my Dad.  He’s dead, and I like to imagine talking to him.  I’ll write about that bit of weirdness some other time.  Basically my dad had two near death experiences that convinced him that there was something after life.  So I asked Dad what he was he said, “I am merely an echo of who I once was.”

Not encouraging at all.  Maybe all that lives on after death is what others remember of us.  Hmmmm….

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with your religious beliefs or do you have some of your own?  Are you as undecided as I am?  Does the whole idea freak you out?

Here’s a link to that article in Scientific American Mind.  Do NOT read this before you go to bed.  I did and I sincerely regret that!!!

Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death

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