Sometimes when something I used to eat comes across my face I remember that delicious taste and consider cashing in my morals and just eating the damn thing. It happened when after not a week back in the US my grandfather bought the family a half dozen of those awesome muffins from Perkins – yeah THOSE ones…

Almost always, as quick as the thought enters my head it leaves the same way it came in, usually getting bumped in the ass on the way out. I have realized I’ve become quite Buddhist in my food choices lately.

You eat, and its over. That fleeting moment of anti-nutrition is always full of flavor bliss, but it is always over too soon, and all you are left with is a stomach full of high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, and a defeated mentality. No thanks. If I am going to cave into my sweet tooth, I like to do it with at least some milk or dark chocolate, sometimes even encasing yummy nuts like almonds.

Your body and brain are nothing but the building blocks you give them. The old adage, “you are what you eat,” still holds true. I’ll pass fleeting fragments of tantalizing taste bud memories for a properly functioning brain any day.

Then I began to think about why I kick myself in the ass trying to make sure I eat as perfect as I’m willing to eat. It is no myth that eating has positive mental benefits, serotonin etc, but at the end of the day, I would rather take an entire day bursting with vigor and positive energy than eating like a pig loafing around all day. I’d rather look into the mirror and like what I see and strive for the next level than be mad at myself and go back to playing xbox360.

There are many scientific benefits to eating properly and healthy including improved insulin sensitivity, increased brain function including but not limited to learning and focus, reduced stress do to the settlement of the human sympathetic nervous system, and best of all – a properly detoxed system devoid of poisons and most importantly – body fat.

The question of health to me reflects highly on the Buddhist quest for enlightenment in macro form. Do you want to be satisfied right now, while you eat that ice cream, and go back to being a fat-ass, or do you want to be satisfied for life, every moment you are awake or asleep – alive and out in the world strong and confident rather than fat and lazy?