Lies…It’s All Lies

Waking up is like peeling an onion. You get red pilled in one area of life and then start questioning others. For me, it was Gary Taubes “Good Calories, Bad Calories”. In 2011 I read it and went from the recommended low fat healthy standard American diet, which left me 60 lbs overweight, to a radical low carb diet that was going to kill me. Except I’m now slim and fit.

Now my LDL cholesterol is high, but my triglycerides are low and my hbA1C is very good. The doctor thinks I should be on a statin. Why? Everyone around me is prediabetic, whatever that means. What is usually means is that Big Pharma gets to reap the benefit of Big Food. It’s all brought to you by Big Media.

Then I found Dave Feldman and the Lean Mass Hyper-Responder group of people. People from all over the world who went low carb and have numbers just like me. What if everyone around us is eating the so-called “food” that is now available but ultra-processed crap and they are the “normal” values that I fail to match. But I’m the one that needs medication. Then how can I be in the best shape of my life?

I then look around me at the “news”. COVID vaccines are safe. Masks work. Science is settled. Your doctor is acting in your best interest. Your financial planner is there to help you. Go ahead, trust the outcome of our elections.

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
― Richard Feynman

My Word for 2014: Prioritize

Instead of a New Year’s resolution, I tried to find a single word to inspire me this year.  After a few good runner’s up, I have chosen the word prioritize.

I want to use my new-found time, free from the cubicle, and now with my husband free too.  But how?  A quote from Mahatma Gandhi got me thinking about it.  “A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

At the same time, I really do enjoy the advice from improv, to say yes to everything.  Don’t you love it when there are two great philosophies that contradict themselves?  Still, I think the essence of the happiness I’m looking for is to say yes when an invitation is exciting, new, possibly taking me out of my comfort zone, offering a discovery or adventure, an idea that opens new avenues and possibilities.

But saying no is also important.  How easy it is to get sidetracked, interrupted, signed up for some event that is just another obligation.  Watching television comes to mind as an item to subtract from life unless the show or movie is really worthy.  What about suggestions from friends and family?  So many times people buy me a book, insist I watch a movie, follow an internet link and so on.  These suggestions are all intriguing, but many provide tangents that take me off-task.  The next thing I know, the day is nearly gone.  It is important to me to try to seize the day, the hour, the minute, as Kipling says “with 60 seconds of distance run”.

Word of the Year

As we head into the new year, I was inspired by a friend to brainstorm and select one word to describe the next year.  I have begun this task by trying out a few words.  So far, I’ve got:

happy, carefree, humor, alive, today, play

A few days later, I added:

spark, courage, exciting, invigorating, adventure, mobility

But what about…subtract?