From Macrobiotics to “MY Biotics”
In my early twenties, I saw an advertisement for a macrobiotic seminar in Lisieux, France. Something about it caught my attention, and I decided to sign up.
So I drove to France and spent a week in a fermette—a small farmhouse—with ten other participants and two teachers. We learned how to prepare healthy food, explored a holistic approach to living, and discussed natural health.
It was a week that stayed with me for much longer than seven days.
A remarkable week
The biggest surprise was the change on the scales. As I remember it, I lost ten kilograms that week!
That is my recollection, not a result I would promise anyone else. I cannot now say how much of that change was water, digestive contents or body tissue, and losing weight that rapidly is not a goal I recommend.
At the time, though, the experience made a strong impression on me. Food had become something I wanted to understand and take seriously.
I returned home and became a strict follower of macrobiotics.
Following the teachers
For a time, I took the teachings very seriously. The books and ideas associated with George Ohsawa, Michio Kushi and Aveline Kushi influenced the way I thought about food and health.
But living with a philosophy is different from reading about it. Over the years, I became more flexible. My choices increasingly reflected my own experience, rather than a desire to follow every rule in a teacher’s book.
I still valued what I had learned. I simply stopped treating it as the final answer.
The prominent teachers whose work had influenced me have all since died. Their deaths disappointed me and made me question the expectations I had attached to their teachings. I had hoped for more from a philosophy so closely associated with health and longevity.
That disappointment is personal. A person’s lifespan alone cannot prove whether their dietary ideas were right or wrong. But it was part of my journey towards thinking more independently.
Introducing “MY Biotics”
These days, I have a name for my own approach:
MY Biotics. :D
It is my little joke about the distance I have travelled from strict macrobiotics. I can appreciate the teachers without handing them the last word on every meal.
My experience matters to me. So does being willing to learn something new and change my mind. Personal experience does not tell us everything about what is happening inside the body, but it can give us useful questions to investigate.
I want room for both curiosity and enjoyment. After all, food is something we live with every day.
“Traditional Chinese Medicine for Dummies”
Today, I sometimes jokingly describe macrobiotics as “Traditional Chinese Medicine for Dummies.”
That is my shorthand for how I experienced it: an introduction to thinking about food and life through ideas of balance. It is not a literal definition, and macrobiotics and Traditional Chinese Medicine are different traditions.
The seminar in Lisieux gave me a starting point. The years that followed taught me to adapt it.
I went to France to learn from two teachers. I came home with an interest in food and health that is still with me, decades later. The strict rules gradually loosened, but the curiosity remained.
And that is how macrobiotics became MY Biotics.
This is a personal account, not a dietary prescription. Before making substantial changes to your diet based on this website, consult your health practitioner.