...and here I am in Day 3.

I suspect getting through these initial handful of days is a lot like fasting: the body counters against the adjustments—or perhaps, more specifically, the emotions—there is a transition to an "anything goes" approach of food selection to one that is determined and hand-selected with a purpose.

I don't know if the tension lies in the lack of freedom, the shift of expectations, an appetite that is being downsized or something else entirely. I'm basically returning to discipline after a wild west six weeks in the fridge. I've paid my dues for it: felt miserable, lost levels of capability, and blasted away from my goals. Instead of an explosion of exuberance from cutting weight and feeling great, my vitality slowly drained away from choices that led not to a triumphant battlecry, but to a despondent anti-dyn-o-mite.

If food was exactly what it is, we all should look great in the United States. We are able—but are we willing? And hence why we put food in places it has no place:

• Gazing upon it as art to admire;
• Sitting upon a pedestal as a speech covered by First Amendment rights;
• Connecting people as interpersonal relationship glue;
• Defining people as a shibboleth;
• Comforting as a teddy bear to hug when we're feeling blue;
• Receiving worship and trust as a god;
• Amusing us as a multimedia entertainment center.

I don't think I understand how food has reached this place where it is more than just a vehicle of nutrition. I have questions:

1. What is the chief purpose of food?
2. What do we do when food fails to provide nutrition?
3. Can we return food to what should be its function and find better alternatives for the other things we use it for?
4. If we ONLY viewed food in terms of its nutrition for our bodies, what would our relationship be with it?
5. If we viewed food in terms of nutrition-per-dollar, how might we approach grocery shopping?
6. Is Coca-Cola now not only EXORBITANTLY expensive in the long-term with it as a lifestyle in terms of health, but is it the same in the short-term under a nutrient-per-dollar construct?

Oh, the opportunity costs! I gotta pay more just to cover what soft drinks fail to do in the first place and spend more on fixing what they impose on my body! How many months must I train to specifically work off its sugar-turned-fat that is on my body? Along with the initial dollar costs of what I could have bought instead of the initial purchase price of Coke, what do I miss in having to train that specific fat off?

Clearly, it's not just Coke; I use it as an example because I feel warm-and-fuzzies for it that I don't feel for Pepsi or off-brand selections. I have to ask myself, what's really going on here?