We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Or do we live in our own worlds, constructed from various presuppositions, superstitions, traditions, and preferred fantasies about ourselves, about others, and the world?
I have come to believe that everybody including me lives in some degree of a fantasy world, ranging from a little crazy (a few fantasies about self and others) to totally nuts (with minimal reality-testing especially with emotional issues). The further one is from consensual reality, the less effective in life one becomes. And to make it all more complex, consensual "real" is cultural and sub-cultural.
Not asserting that there is no "real," but that that experience is highly subjective and frequently distant from regular "real," in ordinary people. 35% of Americans believe the earth is flat, and God knows how many believe in UFOs. Yes, people are crazy.
TS Eliot: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."
This topic came up over dinner last night. I became the devil's advocate, of course, because everybody tends to think that their reality is the real one. People will defend their own reality to the point of war because so much of what they think about themselves depends on it.
When that is challenged or threatened, people can go berserk. Happens with sports teams, and politics, too. With religion, it's just too much.
People tend to write about grief in the context of a death, but there are many sources of grief. We see grief reactions in all sorts of losses: loss of physical or mental capacities, losses of a relationship, disappointments and failures in dreams or careers, financial losses, loss of a home, and so forth.
It is inevitable in life that we accumulate scars. Most griefs scar over in time. New adaptations are achieved. Sometimes, grief does not relent.
A cup of seawater contains 100 million cells, which are preyed upon by billions of viruses. Fifty million tons of fungal spores are released into the atmosphere every year. And the human gut is home to somewhere between 500 and 1,000 species of bacteria. The more we learn about microbial biodiversity, the clearer it becomes that the vast majority of life has long gone unseen, and unobserved. The flowering of microbial science is revolutionizing biology and medicine in ways unimagined only a few years ago, and is inspiring a new view of what it means to be alive...
Americans do not exercise enough according to government CDC recommendations, and they need more help.
"More help"? Does anybody want or need government for elementary life advice? This is the sort of thing that annoys the heck out of me. Hey, let's start a government program to determine your nutrition plan (how did that work out?), your exercise regimen, your heart health (is it now recommending 1-2 glasses of red wine/day? Technically, it should). Anyway, overweight and sedentary is the new normal.
Everybody in America knows what they "should" do for physical fitness. Most do not want to bother. I think fitness is mainly a class/subcultural-related thing. It's a free country. Government should just leave them alone. For anybody who wants to be in good shape regardless of age, Maggie's has written volumes on the topics of nutrition and fitness for anyone to read, for free, and it is smarter and better-informed than any government advice.
As with government nagging, many of our readers are just annoyed by those topics. We post them for the few who find them of interest.
The word "myth" seems to have two meanings in English: first, ancient and enduring tales containing deep meanings about human nature and existence itself, and, second, common but mistaken out-dated beliefs. For examples, "myths about nutrition" vs "so-and-so is mythic in depth, scale and scope." Moby Dick is mythic.
Freud's one-time colleague in depth psychology had many interests but among them was a study of myths and the representations of archetypes embedded in them. In a way, Jung viewed myths as related to humanity as dreams are related to an individual. I suppose that seems obvious now.
My libertarian self is in favor, but my medical self is opposed. However, it remains a fact that more Americans die from overeating than from drug abuse, and food can not be illegalized. I tend to feel that government has little role in peoples' doing self-destructive things as long as we others do not have to pay their bills. Let reality rule. AA and NA cost nothing.
In my experience, males are just as emotionally-vulnerable as any other gender. Without male emotional vulnerability there would be no country music.
What the people promoting this notion miss is that most males spend years trying to be, or trying to at least act or appear, emotionally strong, brave, and tough. There are many good reasons for that, not the least being because these are things that appeal to women.
It's not just cultural, though. There's a biological substrate to it, obvious to anyone who has raised kids. Guys work to be emotionally strong in the same way they work to be physically strong, and to be tough in their effectiveness in the world. It's their job. Might be womens' job too, but that's another subject.
So enough of this baby-talk, Princeton, unless you wish to become a high-end kindergarten..
"Vita brevis, ars longa, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile."
That is the Latin translation of Hippocrate's first sentence in his medical text, "ars" - art - meaning the craft of medicine, is slow to learn given the brevity of life. I think the quote has been often misunderstood and misapplied.
It has always been interesting to me that the etymology of our use of "art" refers to "craft."
English: "Life is short, and (mastering a) craft slow, opportunity fleeting, experimentation perilous, and judgment difficult."
Those test levels are quite modest for active people. Everybody can aspire to better, but the doctors have learned to be modest in their expectations of us.
My only objection is to their including BMI on the list, which is a bad index for excess body fat. Is your waist size an ok measure of your body fat? Yes it is. Your waist size is not your belt size or jeans size, especially if you wear them on your hips which most people do these days. Your waist is above your belly button, the narrow space below your rib cage and above your hips (if you have a narrow space there).
How to Measure Your Waist
How do you measure your waist? Sounds simple enough, but it’s not always obvious where your waist is. Posture and other variables can affect the reading, so here are some basic guidelines to follow:
Position a tape measure at the narrowest point between your lower rib and the top of your hip bone, or at the midpoint in between. It should be snug but not compress the skin. If you can’t find the narrowest point (it may be difficult if you’re very overweight), measure just above your belly button.
Stand straight and breathe out normally; don’t suck in your belly.
Measure your waist first thing in the morning, before breakfast.
Though there’s no magic cutoff point, values over 37 inches for men and 32 inches for women indicate increased health risks, according to the World Health Organization; values over 40 for men and 35 for women represent substantially increased risk.
The referring person tells me "She is a 22 year-old cum laude college grad with no goals and no direction. She was just a diligent student. No stem classes. She is living at home, and terrified by the big world. She is shy and not overly-attractive. Self-involved, alternating between self-loathing and mild grandiosity. Very supportive family. Despite her college grades, she seems to lack some basic life skills so her low self-esteem seems justified to me. I think you would be a good fit for her if you can engage her. Self-pitying but not depressed, not psychotic."
OK. I'll do a consultation. This sad story is in my wheelhouse, and I have seen it many times.
IQ was less important in pre-post industrial societies. In personal experience, many people with below-average IQ have excellent common sense, work ethic, wit, and practical knowledge in abundance. Often, less interest in abstractions.
I'll admit that IQ below 80 is a handicap, but I see far more life difficulties produced by character flaws, maladaptive traits, and annoying or unsettling eccentricities than by IQ shortages.
Why Peterson's talks are controversial escapes me. The useful thing he does is to talk about Human Nature 101 and Adult Life 101. Maybe some people do not want to learn about human nature or adult life.
The only thing remarkable to me is that these things need to be said. Basics. A life worth living has to be constructed thoughtfully, in my view. I find it sometimes needs revisions, if not tweaking, because the things that mattered to me at 25 are no longer the most important things to me now. I like to think I have gained a little bit of wisdom.
Almost every advice article I read about fitness makes a big point about fat loss and fat-burning. Perhaps that is what readers are interested in, given that so many people in the Western world are over-nourished but wish to look better and to be lighter on their feet if they can do it easily.
Fitness training is about strength, agility, athleticism, endurance, speed, power. Good things like that. I am a strong believer in maintaining maximum functionality with a fitness program, but mixed and balanced exercises (ie calisthenics, weights, and some cardio) done at a rational level (5-6 hrs/wk, not including walking, sports, hiking, etc) will likely have no effect on your body fat. That's not why you do it.
As the guy in this article notes (and as I have noticed countless times), after a year or two of nothing but daily cardio machines, running, or swimming, most people in the gym are just as pudgy as when they began. Sometimes more. Just putting in their time but ignoring their food intake and their exercise intensity.
To get rid of body fat, you must manage your daily nutrition. Do not rely on exercise or cardio, especially "long, slow cardio" to do it. It will not. (In fact, an excess of cardio exercise, anaerobic or aerobic, might be a bad idea for many people, if not a waste of time.)
Fitness and nutrition are separate but somewhat overlapping topics.
The idea that government knows how we ought to eat is absurd. Many of us assume that government is stupid, but even your Mom doesn't know.
Nobody can say what a "healthy" nutrition plan is because humans and all higher primates are omnivorous. That means humans can thrive on almost anything as long as it contains sufficient calories to support life. I've seen enough kids grow big and strong enough to play varsity football on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread to be convinced of that.
Because of the ambiguity of being omnivorous, everybody has an opinion about what is best. "Clean diet," paleo diet, low-fat diet, high-fat diet, vegetarian diet, vegan diet, Mediterranian diet, bla bla bla. My advice is to eat moderate amounts of everything. Small meals are best for health, fitness, energy, and mental clarity.
With a few comments:
- If overweight and if you do not want to be, cut the carbs and cut the volume. Don't be a pig. If fat and happy, that's fine with me because I am neither your doctor, parent, or spouse. - If you exercise hard daily, especially with heavy weights, keep daily protein up to around 80-90 gms/day for adequate muscle repair, and eat some sugar - Coke, candy, fruit - before the workout. - If you hate vegetables, take a multivit. If you think fruit is "healthy", show me the data. (There is none. Fruit is dessert or a quick sugar fix.) - If you worry about overly-high bad triglycerides, discuss with your doctor. Bear in mind that elevated cholesterol does not appear to correlate with heart disease (except in diabetes and familial hypercholesterolemia). Your doc knows that.
... gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.
I believe that gender surgery is, or is close to, medical malpractice. Psychotherapy is not likely to change these people either. Same with effeminate gays. Like it or not, we must all just accept that there is a lot of variety, strangeness, and discontent in the human species. Blame our hypertrophied cortex.
Since a study came out a few years ago, based on BMI, that heavy people live longer and healthier than thinner people, many heavy people applauded the news.
In fact, it turns out that higher muscle mass correlates with reduced risk of illness and death. (Well, risk of death is 100% but they mean sooner rather than later.)
A meaningful gauge of being overweight for your build and fitness is your Body Fat percentage. The simplest way to do this is to have somebody use the body fat caliper method on you. That does not measure intra-abdominal fat deposits, but it assumes a correlation. Your doctor's nurse knows how to do that. There are other ways too. (An easier way is to study yourself naked in a mirror.)
This site has two charts, one depicting "ideal" fat percentages based on fitness, and the second based on age. As an athletic female, I like to be around 25-30%. Seems disgusting for your body to be 30% lard, doesn't it? It can be fine for a slender lady, though.
Just for fun, no ab exercises will give you 6-pack abs. Killer abs are all about fat. "Good abs" are visible in men at around 8% body fat, and in women around 12%. Those are either highly-athletic (ie well-beyond "fit" percentages) or otherwise verging on anorectic. I will not recommend any %s lower than those, even for models and ballet dancers, and, generally, feel that those %s are too low for regular fit people. 20% is fine for a regular fit male who plays sports and works out.
Below the fold, photos for comparison of men and women with varying body fat percentages.
How to Measure Your Waist
The idea that government knows how we ought to eat is absurd. Many of us assume that government is stupid, but even your Mom doesn't know.
Since a study came out a few years ago, based on BMI, that heavy people live longer and healthier than thinner people, many heavy people applauded the news.