If you havn't read reality-is-consistent-so-is-health-then please do, it is crutial as it covers some concepts that will be discussed in this blog.
This topic is so important to many people, including me. Which is a good thing, if you care about your life and the quality of it, then you also care about your diet. Your body is made of cells, these cells need certain things to grow and thrive, this is why you care. If you can say out loud to your self that you do not care about your life and the quality of it then something else entirely is going on, and you are probably not reading this blog anyway :) .
I said all of that so I could explain one of the reason's why there is so much diet advice out there, to a rational person the idea of following a healthy diet is important to them. Another reason why there is so much diet advice out there is because its something we all do everyday. The concept of health and diet CAN have as many shades of gray as grains of sand in the sea. Anything that is important and something we do everyday will be similar to this, there will be many opinions on the best way to do it. With so much opinion, how can one walk away feeling like they have any good idea on what to believe? The concept of a healthy diet can seem like too much, too difficult to figureout, and therefore people just eat what ever is infront of them...AKA they don't have a good idea of what their diet is, or what it should be, or what they want it to be. When that happens humans will just do whatever is most convienent. They equate tasing good with feeling good. Doing what ever is most convient is not evil, it does have a place in a good life, but it is not entirely rational on its own. So what is a method to come to a conclusion on this topic.
I did two things. I adopted a method for seeking what I know and finding what I don't. You could call it think for your self, question authority, especially if you are that authority. You could call it a good sense of healthy skepticism. I like to wrap all of that up into its daily helpful form called self honesty, and I'll describe it here as it can relate to diet ideals. I started with the knowledge that I had, and began to seek more knowledge. That action will always improve any action in your life in the longrun, provided that as you move from one conclusion to the next, from one concept to the next, from one belief to the next, that it is a healthy move (as I defined in the previous post). Start where you are, meaning, start to look at what you believe in, today, right now. Why do you believe in it? Is it working for you? Do you like your diet? How do you feel about food? How do you ussually try to solve this problem, does that work in a healthy (as pervisouly defined) way? Do you feel healthy? Do you enjoy your body? If you do not like your body and the way it feels, but do like your diet, are you being irrational? If the answer is yes, can you accept that and begin to do the second thing; Which is to seek more knowledge. Can you allow your self to change? Pain exists to help you change course in thought and action, do your self a favor and be aware of it, and lean in. Pain can teach just as much a pleasure. When you learn from pain it goes from being the bain of your existence to being one of your best teachers. Most importantly I'm talking about the pain of realizing that how you feel physically, and how you feel about your diet might not be compatible feelings, meaning you may feel gross and sick physically, but feel that the diet you are following the the best diet. You may find that you feel gross and sick and keep trying to follow a certain way of eating because you believe this certain diet is your solution, but everytime you try you stop doing what you think is best and do soemthing different... they might not be consistant and therefore not healthy. This might mean you are incorrect in someway and that might be painful to accept. I will tell you that if you focus on seeking truth its ok to be wrong, because your loyalty is to truth not what you believe. Yes, when following what you believe and being loyal to truth and you discover that you believe what you are loyal to, your life gains peace, it is healthy. You can be mentaly peacful, lean, and satisfied. If you are not those three things ask your self how do you think you need to go about gaining them, perhaps what you think you should be doing and what you are doing are not consistent and therefore not healthy. Why are you doing that?
I tried following what I thought was a healthy diet for a year and found that where my body was, was not consistent with how I felt about my diet. I thought my diet was spot on, but my body was not spot on. I was not losing any fat. but no matter how I tried to change my diet, my body didn't respond accordingly, in the way the diet said it should. Sometimes humans can be stubborn and believe that MORE effort is necessary, If something is not working we believe we just have to try harder, push harder, sacrifice more. Maybe, just maybe...the current plan is actually wrong, and that is why its not working, and we're failing because its wrong, its not wrong because we're failing. So I had to look at what I was doing. What was i doing?
In short, I was eating a calore restricted, low fat, and therefore high carb diet. I excercised every other day, doing circuit training. I was suposed to be losing 2lbs of fat a week, but I wasn't. I was hungry. I read lots online about what to eat and when and how much. I bought a digital scale. I paid a monthly fee for a calorie counting website. I ate high fiber. I drank lots of water. I ate 3 meals and 3 snacks. My goal was to be healthy and I was doing what I thought that was. I wasn't seeing any change though. I was still 6' 2" and 260 lbs, and dealing with too much anxiety and depression. I was having a hard time completely following my diet as well. I thought that was becuase I didn't have a lot of self control. Maybe what I was doing was incorrect. Could I see and admit that, yes, because fortunate for me I was, and still am ultimately loyal to "the truth" and seeking it, not to what I believe. Sometimes those things are aligned, but generally I recognize that truth is independant of me and what i think. So I started to seek another way.
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