The Soul of the Artist

Disconnect and Damage

Mark Brown

July 21, 2022

Something has happened with my eating habits over the last year or so. I know the source of the change. Strength training took over my lift mid-2020 and has absurdly hard grip on me. It’s fair to say that everything I revolves around gym work. Food and cooking aren’t exceptions to this. I understand how necessary it is make good choices in food that that I eat and when to do it, but I have noticed my desire to care about what I eat and cooking in general is at an all time low. What’s most interesting about that fact is that I got very good at cooking and would consider it an important step in understanding what discipline is. The only way to describe my relationship with both food and cooking is damaged. The soul of the artist has been suppressed by both strength training and the challenge the economy has given in 2022. It is there but the disconnect between it and the rest of what makes me whole.

If I was to rank where activities that would fall under the hobby category in 2017, golfing would be number 1, cooking number 2 and strength training number 3. There was a point where cooking was clearly at the top of that list. That would have been about 2010-13. I was putting in the work to become a better cook from that time frame that I am now to strength training. I was following all the steps I outlined in the The Road to Discipline. I began letting out my “inner french chef” and cooked food from different cuisines. That led to learning yeast breads, canning, barbecue, deli style meats and candy. My smoker, a barrel grill with side firebox, has about 13 years of smoke accrued on the inside of it. I would never claim mastery of baking, canned jams and salsas or smoked meats, but I made significant strides in cooking skill in that time. That gave me a high level of pride in being able to make food from scratch that was available mass produced. It made me want to make everything I could from scratch as a point of pride. As a result, I haven’t eaten a lot of food items are are commonplace in American tables in awhile. I know I am very capable of producing high quality scratch food because I do it now, just not as often.

It was around 2013 that I reached my highest bodyweight that I know of. I was somewhere around 330 pounds. I owe that to my letting out my inner french chef. French cuisine can be very high calorie by nature because of the importance of sauces on the plate. They are the central food item on the plate or in the bowl. This alone doesn’t differentiate this type of cooking from Mexican, Tex-Mex, Chinese, Italian, Caribbean or any of cuisines deemed American. What does is that a lot of the sauces involve relatively high fat content from dairy products, which have added sugar, and wheat flour, which is central for the creation of gluten. There are numerous ways of getting around those 2 central sauce making ingredients now but in in 2010-13 what I used for sauces was heavy whipping cream or half and half for cream based sauces in addition to the butter needed to make the rues for them. I did that kind of cooking 3-4 times a week. I ate well and and banked a lot of skills I still have to this day but the cost to my enjoying it was weight gain.

My starting to lift at Aspen in June 2013 didn’t change my eating patterns that much. I was still doing vendor shows selling canned jams, jellies, sauces and whatever else I thought would be interesting to people. That took me down very deep rabbit hole. The kind that people who are both good and creative can get into a lot of trouble if they aren’t careful. Some of my worst culinary fails are hilarious successes that sound like bullshit but are true. The best one is when I tried miserably to make fudge and ended up making fudge flavored taffy. Seriously amazing. It tasted so good. To this day, I don’t know how I made it and couldn’t repeat it. I expanded what I sold to meats every now and again. By this time I was doing 8-10 briskets a year, some cured and some not. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but 1 whole smoked brisket is enough to feed one person for 2 or so weeks if they are eating it everyday. I had most aspects of barbecue down. What ended this phase of my culinary development was not being allowed at a vendor show because of a lack of proper paperwork and such to sell to the public. I believe this was around 2015. I was very bitter about that at the time because I saw cooking something to be really passionate about. Canning is a very long process and doesn’t let up once it’s started. Vendor shows competed with golf for time. Looking back now, my selling food at vendor shows wouldn’t have lasted much longer than it did. What the person who reported that I didn’t have proper documentation for that vendor show in Ankeny, Iowa that day in 2015 did was put the bullet in my culinary dream’s head.

By 2015, my weight had gone down significantly. It is owed to my lifting serious, the massive amount of cardio I was doing at work and gym and a diet change. Working 10-12 hour days and lifting for more after that makes finding time to cook challenging. I reached my lowest weight in January of 2016 when I took the month off from lifting and put in at least 140 miles jogging or running on a treadmill. I distinctly remember eating only chicken and fish or seafood as protein for that month and realizing that it was too expensive to keep up. I firmly believe there are only 2 motivations for eating: eating for enjoyment and eating because it’s necessary. The latter has become more dominant in my life since I moved into my house in July 2016. That’s an important date because I got a lot more serious about strength training after that. Time got a little shorter to really get into the enjoyment side of cooking and eating, but the pride remained.

When the public place lockdowns took effect in April of 2020, the first signs of what is happening now were noticed. I’ve written about the crazy long days at work in 2020 enough so I won’t repeat it in full. One of the main effects it had on me was it destroyed all of my eating habits and replaced it with what was happening, which was eating far too much bad food on the run. It likely aided in my body weight getting to at least 304 pounds by the end of August. I know that is accurate because I remember seeing it on the scale at the gym. The same pattern followed into 2021. It calmed a bit down towards the fall of 2021 but my current line of training kicked in at the same time. I have maintained 280-285 since the start of 2021. I know for sure strength training was the major force behind my change to a more simplified cooking and eating strategy. No use of more than 2 pans except on a weekday to make food for work because it caused too many dishes. Sauces like the ones used in a Chinese dishes, which is what I tend to make, cause a lot of dishes to pile up. It’s just another thing a single person doesn’t need to deal with. So I let it drive my cooking habits. The chef in me would be disappointed by that but the lifter in me just calls it the cost of doing business.

I am lifting heavier than I ever have before and more consistently week-to-week than in any previous year. What hasn’t been as consistent has been the hours at which I have been lifting. I have spent time going to the garage or the gym directly after work without stopping at home. Other times I have stopped at home and posted a blog entry to simply get it out earlier because I know it will be 8-9 pm before the entry goes live if it’s not done that way. In that way, I have also prioritized the blog above cooking or eating. I know if I don’t get to the garage before 4 and 5 pm I won’t be eating till probably 7-8 pm. It’s just too late to cook anything at that point. The 4 am alarm doesn’t help, either. It puts me back in the boat I was rowing in 2020/21. I have noticed my body weight trending heavier over the last couple months. It’s not by a lot but it’s enough to take note of. I last weighed myself at 288.6 pounds a couple Saturdays ago. I just have to make a concentrated effort to get my training sessions in right after work so I can actually give myself a chance to make some kind of dinner at a reasonable time. That will also give me a bigger window of opportunity to write before getting to bed at a responsible time. It also means blog posts will come out in the evening or I just have to plan ahead and release them truly on a set schedule. I know what I need to do in this phase.

The other part of the disconnect with cooking is the effect the inflation is having on, well, everything. I’m not sure what the ratio is of strength training and disposable income on my desire to cook. I still do make sure I eat mostly well but my diet does wander quite a bit within those constraints. There’s one central truth rearing its head in that conflict. I have already paid for my stuff in the garage. I have very little to add to it currently so strength training isn’t costing me anything to do it daily. Cooking and eating is an everyday expense that has to be calculated and accounted for. That is why I cook quality food in higher quantities on Saturday or Sunday to prepare lunches for the week and maybe a single one off dinner. The latter really does feel weird to me. I know a few ways around eating fairly well without the cooking and the mess it entails. Getting in on a pre-made meal program would be the most logical way to do it. That idea has a significant mountain to climb over before I buy into it. I’ve given it away multiple times already in this entry. My pride as a cook is extremely high because I have shown the ability to be relatively self sufficient in culinary needs. The cook in me would have to be completely broken in me to choose that as an option. The lifter may be dominant psychologically but I learned the discipline of cooking before I learned the discipline of strength training. The soul of the cook has just been subjugated to the role of support.

The other option satisfies my pride as a cook but is probably more expensive on the whole. That is to meal prep fully. I have the skills to do it but have lacked the motivation because it is quite a large commitment. The plan would be to use my smoker to cook an inordinate amount of various proteins on a Saturday or Sunday and seal them in vacuum bags. It would hardly be the first time I’ve smoked a lot meats at once. In that way, I’d have my proteins already paid for making them “free” in the way that strength training is “free” for me. The rice, potatoes and vegetables would be a recurring cost until I need to smoke more meat. The day-to-day eating would come done a bit in cost and put a dent in any variety I have, which I have never minded. The initial cost on the meat would be fairly expensive because of increased prices. Odds are it would be either pork, chicken or turkey. Beef and I don’t get along too well these days, but a brisket would go a very long way. My writing this shows I have thought about it, but not acted on it yet. It’s probably time to just do the logical thing.

The soul of the artist within me has become disconnected from the “rest” of me primarily because of increasing economic constraints and strength training’s time sapping nature. That has damaged my relationship with food, cooking and eating. Pete told me I wasn’t eating enough when we got on the topic of food last week and that raised my awareness a bit. He knows that that it’s on when I’m at work. I do have a heavy tendency to barely eat while at work. It is something I need to work on. Eating and food is central to health and growth, especially muscular development, so I know this is a disconnect that happens everywhere. It is especially so when the pride in the soul of the artist is an almost insurmountable opponent. Being able to produce high quality food on command definitely gives me a tremendous sense of pride. That also makes it a potent enemy if I let it be that.