the sugar mill

J and I have have been talking about MMA and weight class, making weight.

This WWE fighter, C M Punk, he’s now doing his first MMA fight and he weighed about 200lbs and he had to make weight at 170lbs. Some 10 days out from the fight he was still 200lbs and he didn’t start cutting until 5 days before the fight.

5 days!

Like, what, the, fuck.

Guess what?

He weighed in today, 170lbs. Exact.

He will gain that 30lbs back in the next 24 hours.

He didn’t “lose weight” he just “cut weight” (I say this like I fucking know what the hell any of this means!) The moment he steps off the scales there is a person there with a big bottle of water to rehydrate the poor bastard!

It made me think, seriously, 30lbs is more weight than would be appropriate for me to lose in a few years at this stage! I mean, here I am pissing in the wind with my last 10lbs, that mythical last 10lbs that every woman seems to think it important but really, if you put it in perspective, its fucking worthless.

I know so many women, and men, who are struggling with their knife and fork and even if they are winning the battle, they get dejected because the battle is so fucking long and so fucking hard!

And you think, hey, how about this tablet or this shake or this bar, and well, I just did a simple check of the amount of sugar in my meal replacement shake. I got the scales out, I measured out the serving amount…and I was fucking shocked.

I skip sugar in my coffee coz, yeah, no mas, and then I am sucking down a diet shake that has almost a full tablespoon of sugar per serve.

Its been a weird time, what with my knee surgery and feeling very vulnerable, and before that with the liver thing, which by the way, hasn’t gone away, I have been through one large course of antibiotics after another, opiate pain killers, NSAID’s, more supplements to try to deal with pain so that I am not taking previous liver damage contributors…and then I end up with a pretty severe sore throat and upper respiratory infection, which, by the way still hasn’t gotten more than a fraction better despite me coming to my last day or the current round of antibiotics…and I am scared about this shit, man.

You might ask me if I am scared about this shit when I have my glass of wine in hand, and I would have to say, nope. You know why? At least I fucking KNOW I am doing that to myself and it does make me feel chipper. Do I drink anywhere near most people who know me think I would. Sure, I make it count when I do, but I will tell you this, the gaps in time between when I do drink and the periods of drought…they get bigger.

In my 20’s I enjoyed the typical Hong Kong life of partying on Wednesday through to Saturday and sometimes Sunday became an all day brunch at my home, every friend who could walk into it would be there, and there would be mimosas, vodka orange made with fresh squeezed OJ and the best damn bloody mary’s ever.

Those were the days.

Those were also the days I probably was all over the fucking place with my depression, up and down and all around.

Once I got put on ADD meds I kinda stopped drinking, the first time around, I mean, back when I was 27, I was put on Ritalin, that shit made me so damn jumpy and alcohol just didn’t work anymore. But then I got put on anti-depressants, and here is the thing no one tells you, many people who are on anti-depressants, drink. They drink a fair bit.

You wanna know about the toxic load that has on your liver?

You may just think its making you enjoy your drink twice as much, but its a heavy load. The chemtrail from that shit, its lethal.

I bet you, if I asked all my friends to get their liver checked, a full on MRI, any friends who have ever taken hard drugs in their life, or had a large domino dose of antibiotics, taken anti-depressants, taken anti-anxiety meds, any fucking over the counter pain relief too often, apparently taking Ibuprofen once a month for period pain is considered “chronic use”, they would be shocked at whats in there. I bet you didn’t know that about the ibuprofen, eh! I know for a fact my parents didn’t! Not that they have collective period pains, but my Dad uses Ibuprofen to deal with the pain of gout. Yes, you read me right, he thinks that shit is a “magic pill” when dealing with a problem caused by uric acid crystals forming in his joints because his fucking kidney isn’t functioning properly!

You get the picture.

I guess what I am coming to is an understanding that this damage that is ongoing in my liver is just a cumulative par for the course for the life I once lived. It may not be the life I still live, but, as they say about so many things, the damage is done.

I don’t think I am angry anymore.

I was all “Why me?” initially, and then I remembered those episodes of House where he’d always say, wholly unsympathetic like, “Why not you?”

Yeah, why not me?

I get that there is a 10 step program to assimilation of bad news.

I went through the denial, the anger, the fear or whatever…we were, for a little while, really fucking trying to be brave about a possible cancer diagnosis. Heck, we aren’t fully in the clear because I don’t know what will have happened by the time I go for my next scheduled MRI in a few months.

Have I changed my life drastically?

Not really.

I haven’t had much time to, really, to think about it all, swallow it and to be honest, I am already a changed person. I am not the me I was 2 decades ago, a me that thought Methamphetamines washed in jetfuel was “so cool”!

I think back to all the friends I have had, “friends” being a loose term when you are young and in a sea of wastedness, some disappeared, literally, from fat to skinny, not coz of a diet of choice, but meth. Some ended up in prison for trafficking, some ended up in prison for shorter times, some for longer for something worse than trafficking.

Man, I had forgotten about the friend who ended up at Levenworth prison because of trying to “attempt to distribute” while knee deep in Hells Angels and his customer was his higher up in the chain of command. Totally forgot about that! The front door was broken down, mid trade, by the motherfucking DEA.

Yep, I counted myself lucky I made it out of that time in my life in one piece.

But then again, I have a few friends from that time, we all count ourselves lucky how we made it out unscathed.

Pure fucking luck.

I am still in touch with the friends that mattered from that time in my life. The silver lining of the behemoth that is facebook. I cherish this small sliver of a connection because it matters. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young, isn’t that the line in that song about sunscreen?

Its like looking at yourself in a mirror where your reflection is always fading, one pixel at a time, as you drag yourself into the future that is forever expanding and swallowing your life whole, faster and faster with every year towards the eventual blackhole of death.

The connections you make, in life, they matter. They may only matter to you, but when you die, they will matter to others, but you won’t be there to milk it for what its worth, so maybe in your lifetime, while you still have the chance to tell people who matter that…you know, they matter, do it.

This is part of what I discovered very early on, about what it means to be human, in that sense, I am frikken grateful for hallucinogenics! It would have been somewhere mid Rabbit-in-the-Moon rave, the laser show was off the hook, that guy, Bunny, was wearing a suit covered in tiny mirrors, his crazy dreads flowing like a fountain of wonder…and a chord was struck.

Literally.

A chord.

And everyone in the crowd “felt” as one.

We all responded in the same way.

Lasers, hallucinogenics, EDM, the most stupendous live show mixed with Dj’s…yeah man, I really feel like those oldschool raver days taught me everything I know about being human, being connected, being part of a greater ONE. I used to harp on back then, before I knew I was an atheist, about how we were all part of one great soul, that we were all proof of the existence of God, that God was not a thing, a person, an entity, but us, God was within each of us, God was the breath we took, the heartbeat that came without prompting, God was the silence within that kept each and everything in the world in motion, in rhythm, in harmony…

Lol, I know, right?

It feels good to go back over these memories though, really does.

Anyway, I guess I have just been thinking about a lot of things and a lot of nothings.

I woke today after having eaten a lot of great, whole foods yesterday, but somewhere in there was ONE sugar donut.

Shoot me.

Marks & Spencers had a special on this box of 6 mixed donuts for 50HKD. Thats just too good to skip, man. And well, after my effort at the physiotherapist, 28 days post ACL reconstruction surgery, whoop whoop! And after the effort I put in at the gym, I felt certain it was exactly what I deserved.

Mmm.

I woke today and I was like, fuck, I need to cut calories today. The guilt of all the “not being careful enough” had caught up with me.

Quite a few people we know, J and myself, have gotten cancer recently.

Up until this point, its been the odd person getting in an accident or something, coz, you know, age wise, we weren’t in that age bracket where people start getting sick and dying. That shit is the kind of shit our parents have had to contend with.

But as the 40’s hit us, suddenly friends drop dead from a sudden failure of the heart…or someone has part of a kidney removed…or someone gets a knee replaced…or someone gets cancer.

Skin cancer that turns into all over the place cancer.

*shrug*

You root for them, you try not to impose, you know friends who are only just having their babies, bringing life into the world, and you hope to fuck your friend, or maybe even you, doesn’t die coz, well, all around you is proof of life, all around you is the palpable potential of it, what can be, and what has yet to come.

And that brings me back to sugar.

Sugar, this thing we all try to avoid.

Sugar that is a whole tablespoon worth in my meal replacement shake.

Sugar that is the ultimate feeder for cancer.

Study after study shows people fighting cancer by cutting out sugar completely.

That and taking oils derived from Cannabis.

If you think they are all out there getting high while fighting cancer, think again, its not that kind of derivative, no THC, no components to get you high.

CBD oil has been known to reduce tumors, attacks cancer cells but doesn’t attack healthy cells in the body.

I said to J that if my next test results come back showing that the cysts and lesions in my liver have grown, I will take a round of this stuff, its available in Holland, they deliver within the country, its legal, and well, I am not going to sit around waiting for this shit to take over my liver and become confirmed cancer.

In the meantime, everything I look up about liver problems has such an insane amount of scientific information mixed in with some serious tree hugging nonsense. You may think the CBD oil is “alternative therapy” but its out there, its just this crazy place where governments and corporations need to still figure out how they can make money off it. And the reality of it is, its cheap, its not like chemo.

I am a long way from having to consider any sort of reality of cancer, but when people around you, essentially people you look at as having a way healthier lifestyle than you, are getting cancer, you kinda have to take a moments pause and go, maybe I am next?

And if I were, what would the big deal be?

Somethings got to give, somewhere in this life of extremes, I have to find my happy medium.

My middle ground.

Make my peace with whats was, what is, and what has yet to come.

My weight, those last 10lbs…for all I seem to think its worth, its not.

I am not going to start eating a dozen sugar donuts a day coz somehow I have had an epiphany, if anything, I will avoid sugar because I can no longer ignore the reality that sugar is more addictive than cocaine, and if you really read the labels, its in everything! Unless you cooked that meal yourself, seasoned it only with salt, pepper and herbs, any sauce you use has sugar in it. Fruit has shitloads of sugar in it.

I read this one recommendation of a diet that would help prevent diabetes and cancer…and I kid you not, NO fruit.

Zero.

Avoid fruit like the plague, apparently.

I was like, whaaaaaaaaat? Fuck that shit! That can’t be for real!

Totally for real. You know the number of people I know who have struggled to lose weight and their downfall is really the fruit salad in the morning? Pregnant friend of mine, she looks slim and the only thing sticking out is her belly, but she has been reduced to checking her blood sugar every meal and she was told to cut out her fruit salad, coz really, she doesn’t eat crap, despite being pregnant, she’s eating very healthy, just the love of fruit that was her downfall.

None of this matters to me right this moment because, well, I don’t eat much fruit here in Hong Kong, I tend to make up for my fruit deficit when I get to Japan or to Holland where they actually have decent fruit I can trust. I go crazy on the berries in Holland and I enjoy pretty much anything I can get my hands on in Japan…but mostly peaches, oranges and other strange fruit  you simply can’t get in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is so hot and the quality of fruit so unpredictable, its just not worth the hassle, plus I get more than enough calories from everything else I consume.

*shrug*

Sugar.

*sigh*

I know. I think too much.

But its a necessary evil, coz if I didn’t, I would just blindly keep doing something bad for me without thinking about it, and trust me, at this point in time, I am thinking long and hard about that once or twice a month that I drink alcohol.

Believe it or not, the doctor said not to change anything I was doing, I didn’t need to, I didn’t need to worry, it was just age, like getting moles on your skin, these spots on the liver, can’t be helped. Sure.

But I can’t believe everything a doctor says or doesn’t say.

Like for instance, the guy who did my knee surgery, he said “no heavy lifting until 6 months” and my physio is like, “Pffft, surgeons go in there and cut and fix things, they actually do fuck all for the rehabilitation of a patient after the surgery”.

Its true. They just think, yep, done. And the truth is, say, for example with my knee, there is another year of work to be done! But the physio said, “You are not broken, just know you can lift heavy weights etc, and you don’t have to wait 6 months, maybe you shouldn’t do anything about that now, this moment, but it certainly won’t be 6 months, it will be much less than that.”

So yeah, so much for what the doctor orders.

Seriously, many doctors are just running on the knowledge they acquired when they went to Med School…that could have been 3 decades prior! Sure they do their best to keep up on the latest research findings etc, but if that was true, less doctors would still be prescribing statins! More doctors would give you advise on preventative medicine than waiting for you to get sick and need pharmaceuticals.

But that is why there is a whole industry based on selling health, and if you look beneath that surface of “I want to lose weight and I want to lose it through proven means” you will find they are not that much different than the doctors, there is a lot they don’t tell you, there is a lot they don’t know and unless you ask those questions yourself and find those answers too, you are never gonna be any wiser about it.

If an MMA fighter can cut weight, 30lbs, in 5 days, and be ready to fight 24 hours later with all 30lbs back on, doesn’t it make you question what the big fuss is about these numbers to begin with? If you lost 5lbs real fast, how much of that is just water and how much of that is real fat? Unless you did an actual scan, you would never know. The same as me going for a full body check up and finding out about my liver by chance!

A lot of questions need to be asked, a lot of corners need to be probed, a lot of details need a light shined on them.

I guess that is all that I have in me today.

Off to go watch a movie with my family, bit of morning escapism, “War Dogs”. 😀

Be well and have a good weekend. xoxo