So, did you stuff yourself at the Thanksgiving table yesterday?  Did you watch Al Roker in his battle with butter?  Great!  Let’s talk about diets!

To get rid of the Thanksgiving calories, you should go Paleo.  No, go Vegan.  No, fast a bit.  Go for a run.  Go low carb, slow carb, no carb, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, South Beach, Bulletproof… whew – way too many choices.

Really, there are some good choices in there, but that’s not where I’m headed.

We are getting bombarded with food-related information.  Between all the “breaking” information in our news feeds, healthy magazines at the Whole Foods checkout, and late night commercials for every chain restaurant under the sun, we are obsessed with food.

We’re also flooded with information on getting the perfect body.  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you all about that.

Full disclosure before we go on: I’ve never been skinny.  I’ve always had some degree of extra padding, and it’s been a sore spot.  I’m currently 50 pounds lighter than my peak weight (ok, maybe 40 after last night, but who’s counting…), but by any metric (BMI, body fat %, inches), I’m still overweight.  So, I’m highly interested in this area.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading, podcast-listening, research on weight, metabolism, and overall health  Let’s talk about some important aspects of weight loss.

First, about exercise.  More and more research is indicating that the “calories in, calories out” formula just isn’t correct.  Further, weight loss – or rather fat loss or body composition change – isn’t primarily from exercise.  Don’t get me wrong here – exercise is healthy for the heart, brain, and many other aspects of our bodies.  It’s just not the primary mechanism for fat reduction.

Speaking of mechanisms, researchers and practitioners are uncovering a bunch of factors affecting fat loss.  The bad news?  It’s complicated.  The good news (for those who’ve tried all the diets and not gotten great results)?  It’s complicated.  Inflammation, hormone imbalance, gut microbiome, chemical and metal toxicity, mold exposure, brain trauma (even minor), previous illness – all can have an impact on body composition.  I highly recommend the route of functional medicine (google it) to uncover your unique situation related to these things.

But here’s one big factor: the Standard American Diet.  Even if you’ve never heard this phrase, I bet you already know what it is: Fried foods, highly-processed “stuff”, sugary sweets, and so on.

Over the last century, we’ve shifted from eating foods grown in our garden, meats cut in front of you at the butcher shop, and the occasional sweet to “food” that comes in boxes from a factory.

Go into a chain restaurant and look at the menu.  Those chains are now required to publish the calorie count of each meal.  Some of those meals are over 2,000 calories!  On a normal day, my body needs about 1800 – for the whole day!  And they’re full of sugars, simple carbohydrates, unhealthy oils for frying, and more.

I can’t connect all the dots on all the problems with the Standard American Diet in one blog post.  It’d be far too long.

But somewhere along the road, a few things happened:

• Corn, wheat, and other commodity crop growers started lobbying Congress for “support” in the form of subsidies, legislation, and incentives to grow and sell more.
• The US government published the “food pyramid” and other diet guidelines that put carbs (breads, cereals, etc.) as the biggest part of our food intake.
• Restaurant chains decided they can increase profitability by increasing plate and helping size, while using cheap, processed ingredients.
• Food producers set up “taste labs” where they minimize “sensory-specific satiety” and maximize “vanishing caloric density” to make you crave more junk food.  Also in the name of market share and profitability.

If you haven’t noticed, this is a topic that gets me fired up.  It takes everything I have to keep me from going on to all the other ways we’re practically forced into unhealthy lifestyles…  But I’ll save all that for other posts.

The diets I mentioned above?  Those, and other healthy choices, tend to have some commonalities: Low/no sugar, low/no simple carbs (wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, etc.), organic produce, low dairy, “natural” meats.  The main difference tends to be proportion.  Oh, and many of them don’t talk about tracking calories.

So, how can you avoid the Standard American Diet and get a start on a more healthy you?

• At the grocery store, work your way around the perimeter.  Produce, meats, etc.
• Avoid “food” from factories.  If you can’t avoid them altogether, read the ingredients and look for sugars, flours, etc.
• If eating out, choose restaurants that focus on the positives above, and just make good choices – onion rings aren’t really a vegetable choice…

You and I? We’re on this journey together – let’s “starve” the food producers and be healthy.

Happy Thanksgiving 2019, everyone!  I thought today would be a great time to look at the latest trend of gratitude.

Ok, first off, it feels very strange to me that something like gratitude could be considered a trend…  Shouldn’t it be a character trait or normal reaction to the good things in our lives?  One would think…

The interesting thing here is that gratitude has indeed wound up in the same bucket as yoga and paleo.

How could we have gotten so far off track?  Using a bit of introspective magic, I see a few reasons in my own life.

We are constantly bombarded with messages reminding us of what we don’t have (yet, they hope…), and what we need and are incomplete without.  Everything from billboards to ads to social media posts.  Even as a kid, I remember getting catalogs from various department stores and mail-order houses (I know, I’m aging myself…), spending hours browsing the wonderful cornucopia (nice Thanksgiving-y word, don’t you think?) of things I could buy if I only had the money.  So, I was always focused on what I didn’t have rather than being grateful for what I had.

Most things came easy for me earlier in life.  Whether we’re talking about passing a test in school or having the things I wanted or needed provided without a lot of effort on my part, I didn’t recognize the huge value in those things.  Easy to skip gratitude for that which is easily obtained…

Frankly, though I don’t think I come off this way to others, I have a pretty huge (yet fragile) ego.  Being so focused on self, gratitude gets shoved out or ignored.

Enough about me.  Let’s talk about why gratitude is important.  (Hint: It’s not just because someone told you you should be grateful.)

Reframing – This psychological technique simply means using another way of thinking about a situation or circumstance to reduce anxiety or alleviate depression.  Gratitude is a great way to do that.

Relationships – When you show gratitude to others, you are simply more likable, and others feel more appreciated.  You’ll strengthen your relationships.

Reprioritizing – Spending time thinking about what you are grateful for can make you reflect on your values, and help you think about what’s really important to you.

That’s a lot of “re’s”…

I could get all “sciency” and discuss the studies showing the improvement in cytokines and other inflammatory biomarkers when gratitude journaling is used. But I won’t…

I did find a decent Forbes article putting the benefits in lay terms for the rest of us, though.

So, on this Thanksgiving, let’s remember it’s about more than just turkey, football, arguing about politics with family, or any other symbolic traditions you may have.  Take time today (and every day) to think about all the amazing things in your life.  Family and friends, the beauty of creation, all the times you’ve had a roof over your head and food in your belly, or just the satisfaction of listening to Holst’s “The Planets” as you write.

I’ve observed a few different types of people, when it comes to work, career, avocation, and the like:

• Some just seem to inherently know they were born for a certain thing, and continue doing it to this day with passion.
• Others seem to choose something – perhaps dispassionately – and then go down the path with contentment.
• A third camp chooses or falls into a career, ultimately disliking it but grinding their way to retirement.
• One last group seems to always be searching for that passion.

Also, from what I’ve observed, and from a bunch of articles I’ve read (not sure I trust the media’s take on it, but…), it seems the majority of people I’m around tend to fall into the bottom two groups.

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned some of the writing will be uncomfortable, particularly for myself.  This is one of those times:  I fall squarely in the last group.

The things I do for work?  Not passionate about them.  Mind you, I do them well, and out of integrity, I make sure my employers/clients/anyone I’ve committed to gets more value than they were expecting.  But not passionate, not content, and not prepared to grind to retirement.

So, what do I think is the source of my confusion?  I’m not sure about everyone else in that last group, but I just think I’m weird.  I’m not just saying that flippantly.  Let me prove it.  Read on.

First off, what am I passionate about?  Here are a few things:

• I’m passionate about exposing a disconnect between what we are fed in society versus what’s actually beneficial, real, good, and so on.  Example:  Sugar has almost zero human benefit, but food producers add it to nearly everything – even things that aren’t supposed to be sweet.  (I have a litany of similar examples – I’ll probably post about some in the near future.)
• I’m passionate about playing good music.  By that, I mean music that has its own soul, that evokes passion, that took actual thought and creativity to write.
• I’m passionate about travel and exploring.  Read about that here.
• I’m passionate about quality goods, and “less is more” when it comes to possessions.  If I could get away with it, I’d much prefer to have a single, finely hand-crafted hardwood table than an entire house furnished with Ikea.

Interesting, right?  I don’t think anything there is strange in its own right.  The three don’t necessarily dovetail perfectly into an obvious path, but you can probably see some possible paths with part of the above, and if I dug deeper, I could find others to talk about.

What about my strengths?

• Music – Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been making music since I was a kid.  I’m rusty currently, but a bit of effort gets me where I need to be.
• Strategy and vision – Whether business or philosophy or (fill in the blank), I can grasp the subject, craft a big-picture vision, and then in the next sentence, start diving in to put together a functional roadmap to get to that vision.
• Writing – I’m not Maya Angelou, Shakespeare, or even Robert Ludlum, but I do a decent job stringing together words into sentences into paragraphs to get a point across.
• There are others, but this isn’t meant to be an inventory.

So, what’s the problem?  How am I actually weird in this way?  Well, there are a few hitches where I basically get in my own way:

I’m weird when it comes to relationships with people.  I have an intense need to feel accepted by them, which makes things like self-promotion, marketing, and sales very difficult.  Even posting the things I write is very difficult, because I worry so much about perception.  (In case you’re wondering, this is very different from being concerned about effectiveness with writing.  Effectiveness just means it’s clear enough to communicate your intent, and styled in a way that keeps the reader going.)  Will people like my writing (or me, for that matter)?  Will anyone care or read it?

Speaking of people, I see myself as horrible in social settings.  Put me at an event where I don’t know anyone, and I’m lucky to talk to 2 or 3 people.  I honestly feel it’s only the grace of other people, the grace of God, luck that’s gotten me as far as I am socially.

Long-term execution can be a slog for me.  You know that strategy and vision thing from above?  I’m stellar at figuring those things out and getting them going, but have no interest in maintaining them.  I’m not sure if this is a psychological defect or just a yin/yang aspect of my INFJ personality.

I’m not independently wealthy.  I don’t have the resources to hire promoters or others to fill my weakness gaps.  I don’t have the runway to sustain myself while pursuing a music career.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  OK, that’s probably not entirely true, and many people have hit their strides on the back half of life, but changing the wiring in our brains is easier at age 2 or 22 than where I am today (age not disclosed…).

What now?

First off, I know I’m weird.  I’ll bet there are a bunch of other people out there who are weird in their own way, and have their unique version of a similar struggle.  If that’s you, I’d love for you to comment.  Share your story.

Second, I’m not giving up.  Not to say I’ve figured it out, but I’m going to keep pulling on various threads to see where they go.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find that magical spot where passion, talent and skill, and societal need overlap for me…

I’m changing it up.  I used to blog about motorcycles and work and urban planning and other things I thought people might be interested in.  It was fun, and I had some passion for it, but just went off the rails eventually, quietly…

What I’m figuring out, though, is that, as I near the start of another decade for me, is that I’ve been living my life according to a set of fabricated rules.  I get that it’s important to follow the laws of the land, to not steal, kill, or lie, the usual.  But there is another set of rules I’ve been living by:

• Societal pressure to do or don’t do certain things, and
• Behaviors I somehow subconsciously decided were rules for myself

When I add up all those rules, I ultimately haven’t been myself.  I’ve been just another nondescript person in the world, just another fleck in the static of life.

There are a very select few people I’ve let in beyond that set of rules.  And even then, I hold back to some extent, seeking to personify perfection against that fabricated set of rules.

It’s amazing how little sense that makes when laid out “on paper”.

But I bet I’m not alone.  Billions of other flecks in the static.

I’d be willing to bet that, instead of static, humanity is supposed to look like a carefully-woven tapestry – all because each of us is choosing to express the true self.

If you’ve ever looked closely at a tapestry, you’ll notice that, where solid colors appeared at a distance, up close there is a wide variation in color and texture.  Doesn’t that sound like humanity?  Meyers-Briggs has 16 different personality types, but endless variations on how those personalities are expressed.  There are millions of color shades, heights, weights, opinions, backgrounds, genetic and epigenetic combinations, just to name a few.

Now, I’m not going to go down the “Everyone needs to accept everyone else no matter what” path – although I believe that.  Instead, we all need to accept our true self and be willing to bravely let it out to the world.  If more of us do that, I think there will be more acceptance of others as a result.

I don’t know where I will eventually go with writing and creativity in the future, but here’s what I do know:

• I am going to betray and expose some of those “rules” and lies I, and many others, believe.
• I am going to do my best to create (and share that creation) many times each week – whether anyone reads it or not.
• I am probably going to say some uncomfortable things – they’re probably going to be more uncomfortable for me than for those reading.
• I am going to write about what matters to me, not what will give me good metrics.  I can do that elsewhere…