One Saturday when I was sixteen our family was driving home from my Dad's office buildings doing janitorial work where we earned extra money instead of having normal summer jobs. I was staring out the window like a proper brooding teenager, dreaming of all the ways life could be better than it was while my five siblings, tired from the day’s janitorial effort were silent and nodding off in the back.

Candy. Sugar. Fruit. America's downfall. Siren of the dieter. Linchpin of the obesity epidemic. But who actually eats that much sugar? Most people who whine about sugar addiction actually avoid sugar on a consistent basis.

My thirties were going to be full of adult realizations and reaching my human potential, finally getting out of life what I expected. Alas, that was not to be as I soon found out.  

I grew up in a house with eight family members, and though my parents produced a mountain of food to keep us fed there was always a rush at dinnertime. The first to finish were the ones to get seconds, and we all wanted seconds.

Nothing makes me more irritated than seeing memes, articles, and blog posts which marginalize depression with attitude adjustment advice. Depression is not an attitude problem. If it were, depression would vanish when we changed our attitude. 

One thing about my gluten allergy that had always interested me is that it doesn't act like a true allergy at all. The symptoms take 4 to 12 hours to onset, only after the food reaches the intestines, dependent on amount, and even then it is unpredictable in severity.

Toward the end of Fourth-grade, on a particularly warm day in late spring, I was swinging across the monkey bars during recess. My hands were a little sweaty. I thought of dropping off early, but I was nearly to the end of the rungs. As my toes touched the Lincoln-log-ish landing, about two feet above the ground, my hands slipped. I hadn't thought about my feet being on the platform, so high off the ground. 

Are you craving a hot, charred and juicy chicken breast fresh off an outdoor grill? How about now? I LOVE charred food. It's more than just savory. Umami. So one of my biggest consternations from the last few years was the "firestorm" caused by this study: Pancreatic Cancer Risk:

At work we have a wall of food. It is literally an entire side of a kitchen, shelves stocked with all kinds of unhealthy snacks. I often find lost souls standing before this wall, as if after a long journey across parched sands have finally discovered the resting place of the Holy Grail,

One of my favorite things growing up was playing video games. No matter what else was going on—parents fighting, pressure at school, catching the flu—picking up the controller to the Super Nintendo system, hearing the boot up and seeing those gloriously rough pixels flooded my brain with an inexplicable sense that life was going to be great. 

When I was 32 I faithfully executed a low-carb diet. People had been talking about the benefits of low carb, and a nurse practitioner friend who specialized in weight loss promised I would lose weight fast if I followed a specific program of no and low carb dieting. 

The word gluttony means to eat in excess while others go hungry. It does not mean, as we tend to use it, that someone eats too much and gains weight. Gluttony is a Santa-Claus-type guilt trip about food inequality, yet many people still go hungry while those more fortunate actually give up food in an attempt to lose weight.

I spend eight to ten hours a day sitting at a computer. Off work I am usually on my bed or my couch, or sitting at a cafe. I do go on walks, especially to fill up on coffee. I get to the gym once a week on average and get an odd hike in here and there.

"Don't spoil your dinner," said every American mother since the pilgrim immigrants first set their tables. Maybe that's naive, but I doubt it's said in places where scraps of food promise just a little more life.

My story is something like those miracle transformations. I did wake up one day—after being left by my fiancé, my life fallen apart. A psychic change helped reorient my life. I took control by letting go of control. Certain truths about the human condition finally gave me the life I always desired. The kind that was always out of reach.