My most intense (and, of course, most fleeting) pleasure is... Coca-Cola. That's an overstatement (and an affront to my wife and our dog at the very least); maybe it just feels that way in the moments when I'm thinking about it. I love to drink far more than I like to eat. A drink can fill your mouth with flavor and intensity in a way that food can't (unless you really overstuff your mouth). I drink twelve, sixteen, twenty ounces at a time--big gulps of ice cold and, often, sweet liquid swallowed as fast as I can. There's no substitute for that, and its apotheosis is a twenty-ounce bottle of freezing cold Coke. Coke is cold, pure, and sweet, with carbonation and an edge (it's not overly sweet like Pepsi, which I'll drink but won't enjoy nearly as much)--it's a thin liquid with a thick, powerful flavor. Perhaps I've seen too many commercials, but, after writing that paragraph, I honestly can't imagine anything more enticing.

And it's impossible, as it is with most intense pleasures, to get enough. The pleasure can't be sustained once the Coke has been swallowed. I need more--I need enough to give me a sense of plenty, of inexhaustible pleasure. Left at the mercy of my own impulses, I wouldn't be stopped from drinking more and more, even by the mild senses of over-caffeination and upset stomach. It's only when the Coke gets warm or flat that I slow down. Thus, the twenty-ounce bottle is just about perfect. After just a few sips, the contents of a can start to warm up and flatten out and the can starts to feel empty. A bottle, on the other hand, feels hefty and its contents stay cold and tingly far longer, sometimes even until I feel full (if not satisfied). And the active sensation of drawing the liquid out of the broader opening of a bottle is more satisfying than the passive sensation of pouring the liquid from the smaller opening of a can into my mouth.

I could go on at length about all of the secondary implications of and associations with the experience of drinking a bottle of Coke (the sense of never having had what I wanted as a child, of always having to settle, of never feeling there was enough; the illicit pleasure of doing something bad that I never explored through casual sex, drugs, smoking, or, for the most part, drinking alcohol; the physical addictions to caffeine and sugar that only reinforce my elemental craving; and so on), but these are as nothing next to that pure, somatic pleasure. In my more rational moments, I can see the empty, illusory nature of this pleasure, I can look down at the bulbousity it has wrought, but there's no way in which those insights can be weighed against that simple, powerful desire--there's no one place in my mind in which those insights and that desire can both exist at the same time, so I'm never able to choose between them. The desire takes over and is fed, and only later is rational reflection possible.

For the longest time, none of this was an issue. I was fit and active. I was a little heavy, but that runs in my father's family. All of my many doctors (whom I began seeing regularly when my father died of his second heart attack at the age of fifty-two) assured me that I was fine. When I started on Celexa two and a half years ago, I put on thirty pounds almost immediately. The scale told me that, but I didn't think much of it. I didn't feel any different, and my pants had to get only slightly larger around the waist. Sure, I heard comments from my mother-in-law, but I'd been hearing those as long as I knew her (she has her own issues regarding weight and appearance), so I didn't pay her any heed. I got a bit more of an inkling that there might be a problem when I would make self-deprecating jokes about my weight and no one would laugh.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I saw my doctor for my first physical in almost two years (I don't know why I skipped a year), and she stopped being quite so reassuring. Though nothing (beyond my weight) has gotten out of hand, things are moving in the wrong direction. My cholesterol level, which had always been bizarrely low, has gone up dramatically (though it's still not "high"), and my blood pressure is inching up to the high end of the normal range. And then there's my liver--there's evidence of irritation in my liver that would be consistent with what's called a fatty liver. My doctor did say that I shouldn't be alarmed, that none of this is especially dangerous--she just wants to be careful given the trend and my family's cardiovascular history. There are a number of tests and exams still to be performed, and I don't know all of the details yet, but it's time for all of the fats and sugars to go.

Now the twenty-ounce bottles of Coke (and the brownies and the french fries and so on) are an undeniable problem. Yes, weight gain is a known side effect of Celexa (and other SSRIs), but that can't account for the changes in my blood chemistry. My wife, having spent years at at women's magazines editing innumerable variations on articles about diets and nutrition, has suggested that I should go about this gradually, but given my impulses and behavior around food, given that I seek in eating and drinking pleasures and compensations that will never be found there, given that I can rationalize and justify just about anything to myself or anyone else who asks, I think a more abrupt approach is called for. Just as the alcoholic must commit to not drinking at all to have any hope of remaining sober, I must commit to not drinking twenty-ounce Cokes (or eating brownies or french fries) to have any hope of getting properly healthy. On the advice of my acupuncturist (following the advice of a naturopath I saw years ago), I'm going to follow the Rambam diet, originally developed by Moses Maimonides (a rabbi and Talmudic writer also known as Rambam) about 800 years ago, as closely as I can.

I followed this diet for about a year fifteen years ago, around the time my father had his first heart attack and my blood pressure looked like it might be a little high. I'd never felt so good before, and I certainly haven't since. As long as I believed that I needed to follow the diet, doing so wasn't that difficult. It was only later, when the need for it became less clear, that I gradually stopped following it, that my less healthy impulses (what the Buddha referred to as "habit-energy") took over. And that seems to be the central theme of all that I'm learning just now: When I concentrate on what I'm doing, when I'm awake and aware, when I'm focused on experiencing the present rather than analyzing it or reliving the past or anticipating the future, I'm my true, best self. It's when I forget and give myself over to habit and dualistic thought that I cause myself to suffer. This is true when I meditate, it's true when I read Finnegans Wake, and it's true when I eat. So whenever I sit down to eat, I'll focus my attention on the experience of eating and on this guidance:

Ideal Rules for Eating

1. Listen: Listen to your needs. Differentiate between needs (true hunger) and desires (false hunger). False hunger, often a response to boredom or nervousness, will fade away in time. True hunger will remain and increase until you have eaten
2. Relax: Relax when you eat--allow your "relaxing nervous system" to take over by chewing slower, praying, breathing, or remembering why you eat. The more relaxed you are when eating, the better your digestion will be.
3. Stop: Stop eating when you are 3/4 full--overeating is a deadly poison.
4. Simplify: If there is digestive trouble, eat fewer types of food per meal.^*
5. Do not drink with meals so that your digestive enzymes are not diluted: Wait about two hours.^*
6. Eat ripe fruits and vegetables: Unripened fruits are like daggers to the system
7. Try to eat foods of the climate and the season.^*
8. Try to eat lighter foods before heavier.^*
9. Try to develop a taste for "sour foods" and less for "sweet foods."
10. Learn the rules of fasting before you fast.
11. Do not exercise right after a meal.
12. Try to get enough exercise, especially stretching, breathing, and endurance--what you don't use, you lose!
13. Change your eating habits slowly and gradually--don't feel guilty if you fail or slip back from your quest for the ideal--just eat properly the next time.

^* Not a hard and fast rule. Some people, depending upon the factors, are not adversely affected by the easement of these rules all or some of the time.

Suggested Sample Diet

Meals may be exchanged for each other depending upon appetite.

First thing in the morning:	Fresh air and movement before eating.
Breakfast:	1 to 2 fruits and 1/2 cup raw nuts and seeds of fruit only.
Mid-morning snack:	1 fresh raw fruit or 1 cup fresh raw vegetable or fruit juice (i.e. carrot or orange) or tea.
Lunch:	Large salad, steamed vegetables, and grain.
Mid-afternoon snack:	Same as mid-morning snack.
Dinner:	Bowl soup, salad, steamed vegetables, and grain.
Evening snack:	Tea or piece of fruit.

Other Permissible Foods:

• Honey: up to 2 teaspoons
• Lean fish: 2 to 3 times per week
• Organ or lean meat: 1 time per week
• Eggs: soft boiled or poached (yolks are preferable, but depends on individual biochemistry)

Start at about 25% raw food and increase to 50% to 75% raw food.

The Top Seven:

1. Vegetables
2. Fruits
3. Seeds/Nuts
4. Whole Grains
5. Beans
6. Sprouts
7. Grasses

Produce in season are usually the least expensive, and thus in tune with the land and the body.

Seeds and Nuts Sunflower Sesame Pumpkin Flax Watermelon Almond Filbert Nut butters	Grains Oat Brown Rice Bulgur Buckwheat Barley Whole Wheat Millet	Beans Lentil Pea Kidney Garbanzo MungBlack Alfalfa
Spices Kelp Oregano Thyme Cumin Bay Leaf Basil Caraway Cayenne Dill Garlic Ginger Cinnamon	Oils (Cold Pressed) Olive Oil Safflower Oil Sesame Oil Soy OilCorn Oil (3 tablespoons per day maximum)	Teas Mint Fennel Anise Althea Chamomile Rose Hip Fenugreek Sage Hibiscus Red Clover Lemon Grass, Etc.
Dairy Yogurt Cottage Cheese Soft Cheese (1/2 to 1 cup up to 4 times per week)

No-No's	Alternatives
No refined sugar	Fruit, honey, molasses, grains
No white flour	Whole wheat and whole grain flour
No processed fats or margarine	Quality oils from raw nuts, seeds, vegetables, etc.
No salt	All herbal spices, kelp
No coffee or black tea	Pero, herbal teas, fresh fruit and vegetable juices
No tobacco	Fresh air, exercise, hobby, herb root
No fried foods	Baked and steamed foods, soups, raw oil on salads
No processed or preserved foods	Fresh, recently cooked, or naturally aged foods
No frozen or overheated foods	Foods closer to body temperature

Disclaimer: I have no medical or nutritional expertise, and I'm not advocating this diet for anyone. People who follow diets they read about on the Internet (or anywhere else) without extensive consultation with appropriate medical experts are idiots who deserve any harm they cause themselves.