In the NYTimes today, an article about diet restrictions read,
Ms. Yayanos first dropped gluten, sugar and carbs on a friend’s advice after being mugged at gunpoint, a trauma that left her fending off panic attacks and depression. “Within 48 hours, it felt like a thick layer of gauze had been pulled off my brain,” she recalled. Now Ms. Yayanos revisits that diet whenever her mood drops. She’s noticed her friends experimenting with food, too, essentially “hacking” their bodies, tinkering with different fuels to reap feelings of clarity and energy.
"Hacking" your body? What a clever turn of phrase.... but I would call it simply making a change and then paying attention to how I feel, noticing the results of change and keeping, modifying or abandoning the adjustment. The metaphor of the hacker (the mind) vs the object being hacked (the body) has useful and not-so-useful imagery embedded in it. Hacking seems (to me) to imply forcing your will onto an inanimate, complicated, mysterious, and inscrutable object. At the sime time, I like the image of the patient, clever, quirky hacker determined to figure out how to feel vital and well. Vitality and wellness is not as complicated as we make it out to be! You try something and then pay attention to how you feel. Keep what you like, jettison what you don't. And try to keep it fun, don't suck all the energy out of the room.
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