I have been careful about the things I eat since I was admitted to Navy medical for malnutrition in 1995. I was told the amazing news that Man actually cannot live on bread alone, 'condiments' is not a food group, milk is toxic, and vitamins are a waste of money, among other things. I have read literally hundreds of thousands of words concerning health and diet. While no expert, I feel I have come to certain conclusions that will be helpful for people to lose unwanted weight, keep it off, and attain a state of health that will be satisfactory, or at least non-debilitating. Read further for the exciting findings of the Flintastic Think-tank (Members: John Flint).

The Flint Diet

1) Eat stuff
2) Try to eat plant stuff
3) Eat more plant stuff than meat stuff
4) Eat when you are hungry
5) Stop eating before you are full
6) Drink water often
7) Digest your food
8) Make turds. "Never look back"
9) Exercise
10) That means to move your body around
11) Playing video games or watching TV do not count as exercise
12) Listening to music or downloading things on a computer don't either
13) Repeat as necessary

You as a person are created in four minds. Physical Mind (body), Intellectual Mind (intelligence), Emotional Mind (passions), and Spiritual Mind (soul). All four minds are interconnected and together they make a whole person. All four parts of you must be exercised and maintained in good health for your overall self to be healthy.
Overall health is an essential to proper functioning. If you eat properly and get exercise on a regular basis, you probably have a healthy body. If you are prone to fits of depression, you have an unhealthy emotional mind. When one of your four becomes unhealthy, it creates an imbalance that can and will eventually affect the other parts of you. So if you are depressed, as an example, it will not take long for you to develop physical illnesses. Not only that, but also your intellectual and spiritual minds will suffer as well.
I will mention balance while I am on the subject of minds. You will never achieve a perfect balance in your life. If you spend your life trying to balance your emotional, physical, spiritual and physical health then you are wasting your life. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, highs and lows. Some people are better runners than swimmers, some are better at mathematics than at languages. It is also true that as an individual you will have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others.
Tides move in and out, the seasons follow each other around the year, so too will you notice days when you are more emotional or spiritual than others. Some days your body cries out to be used and others you just want to sit and read or do crossword puzzles.
All four of your minds are inextricably interwoven and interdependent. The combined minds form the gestalt you, a sum of greater than its parts.

Emotional Mind (Passions)
Your emotional mind is the seat of, obviously, your emotions. The stronger you feel each emotion the stronger is your emotional mind. There is a broad spectrum of emotions from apathy to ebullience, despondency to rage. You feel emotions for the same way you have the sense of touch, to tell you what's going on in the world and in you. When you feel content or happy, then things are going well. When you are depressed, there is something unsatisfactory in your life. When you are afraid, there is something you need to face or remove. When you are angry, you are either frustrated or afraid.
When you are feeling emotional, embrace it. Cry if you need to, feel exultation, get pissed or whatever you need to do to demonstrate your passions. While exercising the emotions, try to stay intellectually present enough to keep from harming others or yourself. Have you ever noticed, when you are demonstrating your passions, how there are changes in your physical body, how your think about reason, and your spiritual connection?

Physical Mind (Body)
When your body wants exercise, give in to it in an appropriate manner. There will be times when you are experiencing an urge you cannot give in to. If you are at wok and feeling lustful, it's not a good idea to embrace (no pun intended) that particular form of physical and emotional exercise. You may want to try hitting the stairs on a break, or even finding an excuse to go outside and get some fresh air if that's an option.
Your body also needs touch in varying degrees. Some of what your body needs is soft touches and caresses. Sometimes sharp taps and light blows are required. Your physical body was designed to survive in a forest. Without certain input from the physical senses, your body starts to be starved for the sensation of touch. If you are hungry, you eat. If tired, you sleep. Often when your body is developing an appetite for touch, it is misinterpreted. Some people enjoy getting into fist-fights; some become promiscuous in the extreme. These are both symptoms of touch starvation. Very few people enjoy pain, but it is a necessary sensation. If you avoid pain to too great an extent, then you will eventually experience a desire for it. This is unhealthy.
Sex is a great way to exercise your four minds simultaneously. Like anything else, it shouldn't be overdone. At the same time, it shouldn't be ignored either. If you desire sex, then you should probably try to engage in it. However, if you lie to have sex, hurt someone having sex, or act irresponsibly while having sex, then you should repair your behavior or abstain as much as you are able until you are able to maintain control over yourself. Sex is a body appetite like any other. If you are hungry for something, 'eat' it. Again, though, exercise restraint if you need to. Remember, "All things in moderation, including moderation." There is a time to gorge yourself, but that time is infrequent. All other times, moderation.

Intellectual Mind (Intelligence)
Your intelligence is like a muscle in your body; if you exercise and stretch it, it will remain strong and flexible, but if you don't use it or stretch it, it becomes flaccid and inflexible. In my opinion, too many people are eagerly flocking to television sets with over 100 channels and proclaiming the educational benefits from watching it.
Let me take a moment to decide whether to laugh or retch.
I'm not one who thinks that no one should watch television, or that the watching that should be done be educational or informative only. I'm not even one of those in favor of censorship. I've watched (and enjoyed) my share of B rated slasher movies, pornography, car chases, and poor dialogue. Too much is the issue. To exercise the mind and keep it healthy, you must read regularly, perform mathematics (even if its only rudimentary, such as adding your groceries up before you check out), and solve puzzles or logic problems (such as finding new ways around traffic or organizing the cleaning of your living space).
One of the most common reasons people are unhappy is because they have given in to intellectual laziness. It is aggravating when someone is accustomed to being able to perform some mental feat and is suddenly unable to. Perhaps being able to remember doing basic Trigonometry in high school and finding the length of a hypotenuse using Pythagorean Theorem, and then many years later needing to and being unable even to recall who Pythagorus was*.

* Pythagorus was a mathematician and mystic who lived in Greece about 500 BCE. He developed the theorem that is central to Trigonometry (A²+B²=C². Variables A and B being the measure of the lengths of two adjacent sides of a right triangle, and C being the measure of the hypotenuse, the angle opposite the right angle in the right triangle) and named after him.

Spiritual Mind (Soul)
That there is a soul or a mind is an argument that has been going on for hundreds of years. Your average scientist will tell you if it can't be measured then it doesn't exist. Then again a Catholic priest will tell you that there is a soul, but if you don't do such and such then yours in danger of damnation. The soul is the non-matter part of you that is expressed as energy that is surrounding and superimposed upon your body. Your 'aura' is not only to what I am referring. Calling a certain glow about a person that few can actually observe is not finding and identifying the soul. It is no more accurate or correct than having a doctor tell you that the pain in your chest is angina; such a diagnosis puts a name to the pain, but does not define it.
The body exists in greater than three spatial dimensions. Four dimensions are observed and experienced, those four being length, width, height, and duration. Duration or time is just another direction in the universe. There are other dimensions, directions, which are observed only by theoretical physicists, the energies they postulate, and the part of you that is actually expressed there. I'm not going to get into the greater depths of this theory (M-field theory), except to mention that therein lies the mathematical proof of an eleven dimensional universe.
Suffice it to say that there is a lot more to you than your matter body. There is another part of you, inseparable from yet indistinct and non-matter. This energy-expressed part of you is the soul. It feels what you feel, thinks what you think, and requires its own special kind of exercise to keep it healthy. Though the soul feels passions, it experiences emotion differently from the body. Though the soul thinks, it observes things from a different vantage that the brain, and therefore thinks differently as well.
Thoughts and feelings are experienced in both the body and the soul. Similar to the way having two eyes gives you depth perception. Every thought and emotion you experience is coming to you through two filters.

 I have been considering the idea of the human soul.  Most of my life I’ve been told things that now only make sense because I’ve been told them so often.  One amongst these silly things is that the soul lives on after the death of the body and goes either to an eternal reward or an eternal punishment.  Which part of this is the silly part?  
Let’s look at the world around us.  Look at the cycles of the tides, seasons, the moon, day and night.  Every autumn the leaves fall from the trees, they biodegrade amongst the dead animals and bio-waste products.  Biodegrade means to be eaten by bacteria and fungus, etc.  These things in turn fertilize new plants, which feed new animals, which feed even more animals, who all poop.  All this adds up to fertilized soil, healthy plants living in the deceased body parts of hundreds of other things in their biosphere.  
Seems to me the most natural thing in the world to have something cycle ‘round.  Why would a supreme creator produce all of this, create everything to work in cycles, constantly changing and refreshing, and then have a single part of one of its creations riven from it upon its physical death and placed, essentially, in a box for the rest of eternity?  Given close observation of the rest of our physical world, doesn’t it make more sense to believe that there are no eternal rewards or punishments?  If not, then what?
Another thing that occurs to me to question is the nature of the soul itself.  I was taught that it is a separate part that comes away after death.  Almost like the driver of a car who stops driving and gets out when he gets home.  Does this make sense?  Why would a god, any god, see some animal going about its business and decide to make some other part, an invisible part, to piggy back on it?  One thing I question is whether the soul is an integral part that makes a person whole, or if it may be a spiritually symbiotic part; similar to mitochondria in our cells that were once differentiated bacteria.
If the soul is an integral part of a person, then it is the part of the person that exists in the spiritual part of our reality and is not separate at all.  If this is the case, why does it survive after our physical death?  Perhaps it is similar to exfoliating dying skin cells or hair.  Perhaps the soul has many such bodies and sloughs them at various parts of its life.  Perhaps with the dying of one body, the non-physical body then grows and develops a new one.  This would, of course, explain reincarnation.
However, if the soul is not integral, but in fact a spiritual symbiote, then I am curious as to how it came to be there.  What spiritual thing decided to piggyback on an animal and raise their consciousness to that higher state?  My guess is dying gods.  What happens to the old gods?  Where do gods come from?  Any spiritual being that is nourished by belief is a god, no matter how insignificant.  The more believers, the greater the god.  A once great god who no longer has believers must therefore perish without sustenance.  Is it possible that these old gods, these forgotten deities found some way to live by obtaining host animals for support?  Homo Sapiens.  This may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.  Think about it.  What makes everyone feel good?  When people believe in you.    When you know that you have support from friends or family, that people believe in you, that you are being acknowledged in that belief, that is when you do you best; feel your best.  Perhaps this is why it is so important to believe in oneself.  The old gods were born in our human bodies and essentially need the belief of one person, its host.  Perhaps this is why so many people spend their lives looking for others to believe in them.  The gods that ride them have old habits to break.  Perhaps, also, this is why the body dies and the god lives on; to keep trying to learn to be free of the belief of others.

Flintasticism


1) There are many gods
2) All gods are spirits
3) All living animals have spirits
4) When a 'lower' animal dies, it's soul becomes non-corporeal
5) When that soul is freed of Earthly bonds, it may gather believers and become a god or goddess depending on the believers
6) All gods need believers or they die
7) If a god dies, it is born as a human
8) If you are human, you are a god
9) Worship yourself
10) Don't overdo it
11) When you die, you go to Lewiston, Maine if you have sinned
12) When you die, you go to Aruba if you have not sinned
13) There's no such thing as sin
14) Except child molesters and sex offenders
15) And people who needlessly and ceaselessly hurt people
16) A lot
17) They suck
18) And people who turn the bass up in their cars waaaaaaaay too loud
19) They suck, too
20) They're going to Lewiston
21) All of them
22) Thou shalt not drink of the fermentation of animal products
23) They taste like ass soup
24) Addendum to #1, yes, even God is a god
25) Don't fuck with me
26) Practice responsible hedonism
27) Practice positive selfishness
28) If you have questions, ask them
29) There IS such thing as a dumb question, so learn how to think a bit
30) Why is corduroy?
31) See?
32) You shall observe no Saviors, you are the Savior
33) Do a good job, now
34) There was something else, I know it
35) It's right on the tip of my mind…
36) Oh, yes.
37) Sex without intention of procreation is not only acceptable, but preferable.
38) Use protection
39) Go play nice with the other kids
40) Disregard this if you want to go to Lewiston…