3 ms·

OP's take on this resonated with me deeply. Throughout my life I've held the belief that, "I generally choose the right path." That's helped me in five decades

by 300bps 3y ago

OP's take on this resonated with me deeply. Throughout my life I've held the belief that, "I generally choose the right path." That's helped me in five decades of life to never be overweight, never smoke cigarettes, never do an illicit drug, etc. Your take on this topic does not come across as helpful or beneficial to me: First, in the moment, be conscious of what the risks are, and if they are worth it. If they aren't, take pride in settling for less at the moment so you can safeguard your future. I think it's important to forgive ourselves when we don't choose the right path. Shame isn't good for anyone. But to take pride in it? I don't believe that's helpful at all. Calling those meals "failures" now would be saying that it was a mistake to enjoy that time with my family and friends This really sounds like a rationalization. You could enjoy a healthful meal with family and friends. But you're likely addicted to sugar, fat and salt like most people are. So you need a bunch of sugar, fat and salt to be satisfied by a meal. A decade ago I had slightly high triglycerides. I stopped all obvious sugar cold turkey for a year. It was brutal for two weeks - craving soda and all kinds of other sugar. Then an amazing thing happened... I stopped craving sugar. Fruit and other food started to taste amazing! Imagine getting as excited about eating a clementine as you used to get eating chocolate cheesecake. I reframed the topic in my mind to, "I just don't eat those things." which was successful. Thoughts of, "I won't eat those things for the next two weeks and then I'll do what I want" just exhausts your will power and leads to a roller coaster of weight gain and loss.

crdrost 3y ago
That's awesome! I don't really know anything about physiology or nutrition, but when you learn physics you do have to learn about the difference between simple linear systems and complex feedback networks, and then you see the Metabolic Pathways chart[1] and that proves that we are the latter, a complex feedback network. One lesson about complex systems is that you don't change them by finding something “wrong” and “fixing it”, in the traditional sense. The problem is that there was a feedback loop keeping it that way and whatever you did just enabled that feedback loop to work harder at fighting your change. The weight-loss interpretation of this would be the failure of fad diets, I guess? What you do instead is that you find a way to pin the output out of its range and then work backwards, or disconnect an input or so. “I need to live a life without sweets,” sounds like it was your disconnected input. A second lesson about the complex system is that for the one thing to change, everything must change. All of the feedback loops that kept the system in state 1 need to reconfigure and reorganize themselves to accept state 2. Which means there's a period of breakage, one could even call “mourning,” where the system has not yet managed to reconfigure itself and limps along trying to get the new thing going. You just wanted a cleaner house, but in order to get it done it turned out to not require haphazard two hours cleaning sessions, no. Instead you needed to start waking up at 7 AM to have the time to empty the dishwasher before you go to work so that your spouse, who will forget about the dishwasher if it is not left open and inviting, can put the kids’ dishes in it, this causes a chain reaction where the kitchen countertops are not covered with dirty dishes so that becomes the natural room for the kids to draw in when they come home from school, which leads to them choosing to do their own homework, which leads to them having time at the end of the day to clean up, which allows everybody to go to bed early in a clean house... which is the ONLY reason you can, night owl though you are, get up at 7AM to empty the damn dishwasher. Everything had to reorganize to accomplish the goal and that took chaos and difficulty. 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Metabolism_-_Pathways.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Metabolism_-_P...

by 300bps 3y ago

crdrost 3y ago

That's awesome! I don't really know anything about physiology or nutrition, but when you learn physics you do have to learn about the difference between simple linear systems and complex feedback networks, and then you see the Metabolic Pathways chart[1] and that proves that we are the latter, a complex feedback network. One lesson about complex systems is that you don't change them by finding something “wrong” and “fixing it”, in the traditional sense. The problem is that there was a feedback loop keeping it that way and whatever you did just enabled that feedback loop to work harder at fighting your change. The weight-loss interpretation of this would be the failure of fad diets, I guess? What you do instead is that you find a way to pin the output out of its range and then work backwards, or disconnect an input or so. “I need to live a life without sweets,” sounds like it was your disconnected input. A second lesson about the complex system is that for the one thing to change, everything must change. All of the feedback loops that kept the system in state 1 need to reconfigure and reorganize themselves to accept state 2. Which means there's a period of breakage, one could even call “mourning,” where the system has not yet managed to reconfigure itself and limps along trying to get the new thing going. You just wanted a cleaner house, but in order to get it done it turned out to not require haphazard two hours cleaning sessions, no. Instead you needed to start waking up at 7 AM to have the time to empty the dishwasher before you go to work so that your spouse, who will forget about the dishwasher if it is not left open and inviting, can put the kids’ dishes in it, this causes a chain reaction where the kitchen countertops are not covered with dirty dishes so that becomes the natural room for the kids to draw in when they come home from school, which leads to them choosing to do their own homework, which leads to them having time at the end of the day to clean up, which allows everybody to go to bed early in a clean house... which is the ONLY reason you can, night owl though you are, get up at 7AM to empty the damn dishwasher. Everything had to reorganize to accomplish the goal and that took chaos and difficulty. 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Metabolism_-_Pathways.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Metabolism_-_P...