by J. R. Practix

Abdomen: n. the part of the body of a vertebrate containing the digestive organs–the belly. It is bounded by the diaphragm and the pelvis.

I can certainly see why it didn’t catch on. There is something too bizarre about “trust your abdomen.” I think that’s why we ended up with “gut.”

But you see, I’ve always found trust your gut to be VERY poor advice. My abdomen–or if you want to be “street-talkin'” in your ways–gut–is often misleading to my own good. My gut tells me to continue in fantasies and prejudices that were ingrained in me before I had a chance to be more discretionary about what was allowed in my abdomen.

My gut is my predictable. And truthfully, friends, my predictable is not my best. My best mingles what I know with what I need to know with how dumb I am and how willing I am to get smarter. Abdomen logic rarely factors in our own depravity.

I also don’t trust my abdomen–or gut–to lead me in the paths of righteousness concerning good nutrition, health and longevity. For instance, last night my abdomen desired a piece of cake. I haven’t had a piece of cake for a long time, so I was a little surprised when my gut hatched the whim. My abdomen, with its appetite, joined in cooperation with my gut instinct, with ITS great ability to rationalize my faults, and tempted me to not only eat a small sliver of cake but to also pursue a much more humongous hunk of the gunk.

So you see, my gut has too many opinions and too big of an appetite to be trusted or allowed to run much of anything in my pursuit of sanity.

So here’s to the abdomen–with a caveat: make sure that your gut digests all the information available AND that it does not decide exactly what and how much you’re going to eat.

Otherwise, your abdomen will too soon make you belly up.