First Book Draft : Certainty is the Enemy of Change

I was born in early February 1952 which officially labels me as a “baby boomer”. I came into the world with a huge desire to understand what life was all about but had to wait another 10 years before I knew how to start asking the questions that would set me on the path that would lead me to where I am in my life today.

I’m the sort of person who deals in extremes. If I decide to get healthy I go full tilt and conversely if I go in the other direction I put my foot down on the accelerator.

I spent my teenage years in the late 1960s and into the early 70s working as a visual merchandiser during the day and playing in bands in the evenings and weekends. Drinking and drug taking were not part of my life during this the earlier part of my life. I can’t even remember food being such a big deal either back then. You ate your simple meals at a similar time each day with very little snacking.

I became a vegetarian when I was 20. Not for scientifically verified reasons, I hadn’t spent hours doing research into the benefits or outcomes. It was simply based on a gut feeling. This new lifestyle seemed to fit with the hippy viewpoints that I was beginning to adopt as part of my life. Back then I knew nothing of carbs, proteins, fats, micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals or my metabolism and immune system. It just seemed like the right thing to do to not eat meat.

I remember my first vegetarian meal in 1972 at a new inner city restaurant called Shakahari. 

Shakahari (the name is a Sanskrit word that means one following a vegetarian diet) was founded by the followers of an Indian guru, Muktananda. It was a time when young Australians were following the hippy trail across Asia and becoming interested in yoga, mediation and alternative lifestyles. 

I remained a vegetarian for most of my life. Every now and again I guiltily transgressed and ate some bacon or some other forbidden fleshy delicacy. And yes, I did feel guilty as I had violated my own moral code.

My eating habits were based on a moral code as opposed to a decision based on the available scientific research (of which there was not much). To put it bluntly, I had no idea about the workings of the body, knew nothing of metabolism and thought that by not eating meat that I would remain naturally healthier. It was in the days of low fat “everything”.

My Dad and his Dad before him were both alcoholics. Apart from a few teenage binge sessions I pretty much stayed away from alcohol but in the early 70s I discovered marijuana. This substance seemed to fit with my personality, beliefs and lifestyle and deep down I really did enjoy those endless “munchie” sessions.

The drug years ended in 1975 when my life took me down a spiritual path that led me towards a philosophy that was fiercely anti-drug but not overtly anti-alcohol, even though it did not condone alcohol use.

My involvement in this philosophical group kept me away from drugs although I did still smoke cigarettes. My ciggie addiction became so bad that I  smoked filterless Camels in the mid 70s and went on to Indonesian clove cigarettes called kreteks  in the late 80s and early 90s. Kreteks were made with a blend of tobacco, cloves, and other flavors. The word “kretek” itself is a term for the crackling sound of burning cloves. I had started smoking around 1965, back in the days when it was considered to be cool and rebellious and there were no limits to where and when you could smoke.

The word carcinogenic was not part of anyones vocabulary back then and the idea that smoking could be harmful to one’s health was inconceivable. Even The Beatles had a fag hanging out of their mouths or clenched between their fingers in almost every photograph that was published of them.

During the late 1970s I started experimenting with detoxification. This led to having saunas in 1980. I purchased my first home sauna around 1988 and have been using them ever since. I suspect that my love of saunas has kept me alive by counteracting some of the toxic substances that I have ingested over the years.

In late 1983 I experienced a personal crisis. I remember the moment well when I purchased my first personal cardboard flagon of cheap white wine. We had just moved into a stone cottage in the hills and I had 2 very young children, my marriage wasn’t going great. A few glasses of this putrid stuff took the edge off. I had discovered a panacea. 

My “own personal Jesus”.

Over the next couple of years I discovered sweet fortified wines like port. Full of sugar and delicious, leaving you with a false glow of well being. This eventually evolved into a love of Southern Comfort Bourbon Whiskey.

Needless to say I was slowly but surely activating the paternal gene that had laid dormant for the first 30 years of my life.

There it is in a nutshell. Sugar, fructose, alcohol and a good dose of tasty vegetarian carbohydrates defined my life on and off for the next 30 years. And all that time I had no idea of the havoc that this cocktail of sweetness was wreaking upon my body and my life.

Looking back I hardly ate any protein and very little fat. The lack of the latter probably leading me to developing gallstones.

Overall I have had my own businesses since the late 1970s.

My personal habits were just that. Personal. I didn’t share my problems with others. To be quite frank I was simply embarrassed to talk about drinking. It was my secret.

Most people looked at me as a relatively healthy food and fitness freak who occasionally went over the top and became an extremist.

By the mid 90s I was running 10 kms almost every day, spending hours in the sauna, doing regular colonics and eating what was essentially a raw food diet. I weighed 75 kgs and looked fit and healthy. 

It wasn’t until 2000 that I started going downhill physically. I stopped exercising and started gradually putting on weight. Slowly but surely. There were definitely other stressful factors in my life that contributed to my gradual dwindling health and overall fitness. My eldest son suffered as a Type 1 Diabetic. This had it’s own set of challenges and stresses and ended badly.

All of the above factors culminated in me weighing 108 kgs by the end of 2018, my belly protruded so much that I couldn’t see my feet easily and I hated the person I saw when I looked in the mirror. I was pre-diabetic. I had dangerously high blood pressure. I had a fatty liver. I had developed peripheral neuropathy in my feet.

Throughout these years I ran my own businesses. Eventually in the early 2000s I set up and art gallery with my wife. This had been a long term goal, ever since I was about 16 years old.

I was also an alcoholic, on the way to a sedentary life of pain and illness and probably an early grave.