I was hosting my husband’s 40th birthday party last month when the gf of one of my oldest high school friends told me that said old friend was not drinking that night. He was intermittent fasting to prepare for what I think is now his third marathon.
Intermittent fasting had come across my radar recently in my search for a diet that would help me to shed pounds without feeling like I was starving myself or giving up something I love to eat forever. So I was intrigued to learn that someone I knew was already doing it. It motivated me to learn more about it. There’s quite a bit of really useful simple info about it on the internet. And simplicity is what I think has allowed me to stick with it for almost two weeks straight now.
So I read a little something online today about how some fans were annoyed that Beyonce’s big announcement on GMA recently was about the choice to change to a vegan diet rather than dropping another album and all I have to say is:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT BEYONCE IS REALLY GIVING US SOMETHING WE CAN ALL BENEFIT FROM?
I was raised vegan so I know first had what the benefits of a plant based diet is. For years I was raised eating nothing specially prepared dishes made with raw fruits, and vegetables, grains, nuts, no sugar, salt dairy or meat. I didn’t know what it was to eat any other way. I didn’t taste my first piece of white bread until i was like 11. The first time I tasted cooked string beans I felt like I had just ingested a drug. I’m not lying. I’ve been strung out in one way or another on salt, dairy and sugar ever since I emerged from being home schooled to being enrolled at the public charter high school from which I graduated.
Strung out.
Because I looooooove food and i always have. I suspect I always will. And I also love Beyonce’s last album. And i know I always will!
But when Beyonce made the announcement that she was converting to veganism on GMA Monday morning, regardless of what anyone thinks, she was imparting a gift that keeps on giving back, and one that I feel personally inspired by. I know how hard it was for my parents who both used to eat meat before my brother I were born to convert just to being vegetarians, let alone veganism which is a term that did not even exist when they started doing it. I know that it can’t have been easy for Beyonce either. Heck, I know it’s not always easy for any of the women I know to maintain a healthy lifestyle but ummm, I know what veganism can do. And it’s worth it.
So thank you Beyonce! Thank you for promoting something beautiful that we can all do for our insides. As a woman of color, loving ourselves from within is so key. And I can see the love Beyonce puts inside of herself beaming and glowing around her whenever and wherever she appears. I feel like she’s just saying, you can be flawless too!
‘Thanks for the numbers Josh but are you getting it in at all man?”
You’re going to get sick of my “West Wing’ revelations, but watching some of the very last episodes of the last season when hot ass Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) takes office, it becomes obvious suddenly that some of our favorite characters are not having nearly enough sex. And more than that, that they should be.
Just before they call the vote count that makes Santos as the winner, he gets so stressed out that his wife tells him he should sleep. Of course he says he can’t. She takes him up their bedroom and makes sure he rests. We never see sex on West Wing really but we know when it happens because it hardly ever does. “The West Wing” is about people so maniacally dedicated to serving in the White House that they barley notice they have no life at all outside of it. It’s one of the major issues I’ve always had with the show. I need fun and sexuality in life as well as in art. But this is just a testament to how good I think “The West Wing” is. I have never watched entire seasons of any other show repeatedly that had so little demonstration of physical and emotional affection….ever.
In the last season Josh Lyman, Santos’ campaign manager and new Chief of Staff becomes so tightly wound up and stressed out that Santos asks his aid, Donna if she knows whether or not Josh is getting any at all. It’s pretty obvious that Santos has a good work, life, sex balance and you just know it will continue even after he becomes the leader of the free world. Even President Bartlett whom he will succeed has more sex than anyone else on the show.
Josh is all work all the time and though he dates and has relationships on an off, nothing ever lasts. His life is not about lasting relationships. And he is the character I love most until the last season when he stubbornly refuses to power down, take a break, let Donna love him, and let himself love. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand most people who don’t know how to be happy. It’s not a judgement but a fact. It’s hard for me to relate but I know there are many of us who find it difficult to be happy or to think of happiness as something that can last or that there are people for whom happiness is a soul purpose. I’m not going to pretend I’m an eternal optimist. But I could never live for work. I could never live without the promise of love and happiness. And I think sex is an incredibly important part of our health, emotionally, spiritually and otherwise. I think it’s wonderful when people are passionate about their work, when they love what they do for a living. I have never had the experience except for when I create so perhaps if I did I might have a different opinion. But here’s what i do know.
A kiss can save a life.
And good sex can save many lives.
Stay tuned for my next entry about being raised in a naked house like Rainbow Johnson played by Tracee Elis Ross on”Black-ish” Thank you Rainbow for validating my childhood experience. LOL!
Urban Eve 