Abnormally Normal

Have you ever found yourself sizing up another person's grocery selection at the grocery store?

Sure you have. We stand in line like cattle on a farm, waiting our turn at the end of the stall to have our purchases processed. While there, we have little to do but stand and look around, and occasionally flick our hair (those that have flickable hair, or any hair at all for that matter). We gaze around at the lights and sights. Sometimes we graze, sorting through the subliminally-planted, spontaneous purchase type foods marketed by deliberately and maliciously placing last in the store that come in the form of high calorie snack foods that taste fantastic.

And we size up other people and their purchases.

Hypothetical scenario. A cart loaded up with vegetables, fruits, and other non-processed items, primarily organic or otherwise "natural". What's the first thing we think of when we see that?

My money is on one word: "healthnut"

That, or "whackjob".

Normal people don't eat only fruits and vegetables. After all, how can they live if they don't get their protein? How do they expect to maintain muscle mass and over all health if they aren't eating protein? How "abnormal" of them to abstain from eating animal proteins and packaged, processed foods!

That gut check is still present weeks after my dietary switch to a plant-based lifestyle commenced. Why do I know this? Two words: "Raw Lasagna".

The Italian food lover in me reeled with disgust, appalled at the food travesty. Until recently, I'd never even heard of such a culinary fiasco! How on earth could one say that this was "lasagna"? The audacity! Absurd! How abnormal!

Everyone knows that real lasagna is pound-upon-pound of meat and dairy layered over white-flour noodles! I am sure that's been exactly how it's made, as handed-down generation after generation from the very first, and surely thoroughly-cooked, lasagna in ancient Italy or where ever the first lasagna dates back to.

In fact, it most certainly needs to come in a glass or tinfoil pan, and be cooked on high heat in the oven until the cheese bubbles and the top noodles become almost crispy from over-baking. That's what a normal lasagna is.

Hotdogs and hamburgers, the good old American food, are the same thing. Treated fairly, the animal meat and by-products that are ground up, formed into patties or tubes and char-grilled for all to enjoy were never meant to be fashioned out of brown rice, soy or mushroom blends! Preposterous! They're meant to have mooed, (or perhaps, as more recent news shows, at least even whinnied) at some point. Everyone knows that! My Uncle Rick knew that!

Uncle Rick was a die-hard red meat lover who proved to me that Man can live on a diet of red meat, no veggies and be cool. He drove a Corvette. He always had the latest electronic gadgets. He gave all of his nieces and nephews the best Christmas gifts, treated us all equally; he was the epitome of the cool uncle. The 70's bachelor living his life in the fast lane and without a care in the world.

Ironically, I related to Rick. I felt very akin to him, with similar personality characteristics as well as physical traits. I envied his record collection, his cars, his toys. I also related to his struggles. Whenever I started to exercise, I would think of the story he told me about the first time he took up running.

Rick had bought himself all the gear, as usual. He had the expensive matching two piece Adidas jogging suit. He had brand new white runners. I think he even got a fancy water bottle before water bottles were even a mainstream accessory. He was so cool he set trends.

He went out for a morning jog, made it a record breaking number of kilometers away and but then realized there was no way to make it home alive. He was so beaten, exhausted and sore he called my grandmother for a ride home.

Rick is the reason I prefer the treadmill.

I remember asking Rick one time why he didn't eat vegetables. He said he didn't like them, they made him sick to his stomach. Instead, he ate one of two things:

A) Two burgers, made of ground beef and hand-pressed into patties, grilled on a gas barbeque, or broiled in the oven, then served up on two fresh-from-the-bakery white flour kaiser buns.

or

B) Sirloin steak, grilled medium well and served with two indulgent slices of fresh, white bread slathered in butter or sweet dinner rolls dressed the same.

Either meal was accompanied with a Morton salt shaker and usually ended with brownies, cake or another sweet desert. Whichever Rick had for lunch was alternated for dinner. Every single day.

There was no variance. There was no interruption or hiatus. I don't think I ever saw Rick even eat a piece of fruit or so much as a vegetable by way of pizza. He simply didn't eat anything else. He was just that cool, like James Dean and his cigarette.

Rick was overweight, diabetic and unhealthy. But man, he was cool.

Much like James Dean, he also died way before his time should have run out, passing away from heart failure in his 50's. No surprise. Yet, we mourned him.

"How could such a sweet young man pass away so young?", the old aunties would weep.

Yet, it should have been no surprise to any of us. In fact, one could argue we were all guilty of murder, or at least manslaughter, for knowingly allowing a man to inflict hazardous damage upon his own health to his detriment. After all, everyone knows you need to get a well balanced meal. If Rick had been been a coke-head, alcoholic or even anorexic, there most certainly would have been an intervention. So why wasn't there?

Because it's normal, right? Mainstream media features men huddled around barbeques, gripping beers and telling war stories, anticipating the luxury of cooked flesh that was about to be served. How many of those commercials feature a man taking a big bite of a brown-rice-and-mushroom vegetarian burger?

Veggie burgers don't sell out stadiums at half-time for the Superbowl. They're for weird people. They're abnormal.

The question is, according to who?

As I journey into the land of Healthy Living, I find myself asking that question alot, and yet it seems to become more and more apparent to me that it's a matter of who you ask. Naturally, big businesses want you to buy more. Hence, they make everything look better, and shiny and new and exciting. Marketing 101. I find myself trusting the opinions of raw food, whole food and vegan diet experts that seem to become more and more frequently featured in the documentaries I find on food.


According to most of them, and by "them" I mean the experts on Food Matters, Hungry for Change, Fat Sick & Nearly Dead, Vegucated, Fresh, Farmageddon, Food Inc, it simply isn't healthy to ingest the majority of the packaged, processed foods that are put on shelves and heavily marketed to us.

But the biggest proof, for me, has been my own body.

Six full weeks into non-dairy, non-animal food consumption, with roughly 60% raw, and 40% cooked, I feel incredible. Everything I was led to believe about switching to organic, wholesome foods has come true. Now, I certainly don't have superpowers. I'm not getting younger. I don't look like The Rock, yet, but I'm healthy(ier).

My body chemistry has changed. I can tell a difference in my own sweat and, subsequently, body odour, at the end of the day or post-workout. I don't have near the stink that I would have had prior when I was consuming meat and dairy. There is definitely a difference in me post-vegan.

My skin is different. Fewer pimples, not nearly the oily sensation around my nose, chin and forehead that I noticed before, and acne that I had on my upper arms my entire life is clearing up.

I have more energy. Less lethargic, and less prone to desiring sleep, and I'm functioning on less and less coffee than ever before in my adult life.

I feel sharper. I don't feel as groggy, and don't have that haze or fog I need to lift or clear each morning. I don't need my afternoon jolt of coffee or sugar to get around the 3PM wall, and my mental state feels more alert.

My breathing has changed. I am no longer perpetually stuffed up. I don't have to clear my throat. I don't have inexplicable phlegm, no post nasal drip, zero mucus-y feeling in my ears, throat or sinuses. I feel like when I take a deep breath, I can feel the air in every pocket of my lungs. There is no fight to get oxygenated.

I recover faster. Previously, the days following a workout were intense. Muscles ached. That's how I knew I'd worked out hard. I'm now pushing my body farther than I've ever expected I could. And the next day, I'm back in the gym, with minimal familiar pain.

According to mainstream media, all of the above are abnormal symptoms and to feel normal, I could have headed to a drugstore and found something to take care of it.

According to the experts on aforementioned documentaries, I just need to eat responsibly and healthy.

So who is right? Who is telling the truth? The truth lies in reality.

The reality is, now I know what it is to feel healthy; I feel normal. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I am a well-oiled machine and in tip top shape right off the factory line. Agreeably, I certainly have a long way to go. I'm know I've not actually plateaued yet, but that is the best part. To think that in just six weeks I have achieved more in healing and self-preservation through simply changing my food sources than years of medication and off-the-shelf-over-the-counter prescriptions could ever, or have ever, done. Simply by eating right; by eating abnormally. According to the commercials they blast us with it's not normal to desire kale, but I do. It's not normal to want salad for dinner or vegetables for a snack or prunes and dates instead of candy bars. But I do.

I wish I could have helped my Uncle Rick embrace abnormal eating. I wish I could have helped him feel as normal as the mainstream diet he was led to believe should have made him feel. His chest pain leading up to his final hospital visit wasn't normal.


What is normal is to feel alive. To feel as healthy as nature intended. And if eating right, and honoring my own health by staying away from heavily marketed, tasty-but-deadly normal foods is the only way for me to stay this way, then I'm ok with it. I'll stick to being abnormally normal.


Abnormally yours,
FatGuy