A reason why it’s hard to eat well…..

A friend of mine sent me this article from the New York Times: Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind.

I think that this can also explain why eating well can be so frustrating. Have you just eaten that donut because you’ve read about all the other foods that are “bad for you” and, feeling overwhelmed, you decide that since we’re all going to go at one time or another you might as well enjoy that donut? I know that’s happened to me — at least it did before I found out I was gluten intolerant!

There is a lot of nutritional information out there, much of it conflicting, and it can be overwhelming. You shouldn’t need to cart around a guidebook the size of the dictionary in order to be healthy.

That’s why I think it’s much better to focus on doing positive things for yourself and to spend less time resisting things. Instead of wrestling over whether or not you should have those fries, why don’t you just spend the extra few bucks and order a salad or some other vegetable to go with them? According to the article,we have a limited amount of willpower, and so it might be better used to focus on doing something that you know will benefit you (like taking a twenty minute walk a day) instead of depriving yourself.

Why we over-schedule

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages, but perhaps it is a fitting post from my return from a brief vacation/conference in South Beach, Miami….

At last, proof that we don’t really understand why we over-schedule/overbook ourselves (and some of us, our children) — it doesn’t make us happier or healthier, but it does help us avoid the pain of loss. It seems that we will bear almost anything – stress, fatigue, no time for ourselves – if it means that a door doesn’t have to close.

Here’s the New York Times Article, “The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors.”

It’s inspired me to think about my own life in a different way — and also is helping me get through the pain of decision-making as I build a new Web site for my business…

Mind Food

I was preparing an entry about nuts for today (yes, they are great for you!) when a friend sent me this article from The New York Times – Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?.

I’m sure the above doesn’t apply to anyone reading this blog, but one of the article’s featured authors Susan Jacoby (“The Age of American Unreason”) mentions how she tried to turn off the TV for a week and how difficult it was for her to do so.

Food is more than just what we put in our mouths to nourish our bodies. It can also be what we put in our minds and hearts. Spring is coming up, and so there will be lots of chatting about “spring cleanses” in the nutrition world, but a “media” cleanse can be a good thing to do for a week.

A media cleanse can be mild or more strict, whatever you feel up to tackling. You could simply take a week off from the morning paper, internet news surfing, and the nightly news. Observe yourself. How do you feel after a week of no disasters, disease, body counts, etc. Or you can go wild and try a week without TV. For those of you who like to live life on the edge, push the envelope a little bit further and see what life is like without TV, books, newspapers, and internet surfing. The important part of the process is to notice what happens and how you feel. Perhaps you will feel more energetic and creative after a rest from all the bad news of the world, or perhaps you never really understood the role that entertainment plays in your life.

If at some point you feel that you are ready to start peeling paint off the walls, remind yourself that this is an experiment and that it is temporary. In our modern world, it isn’t as easy to go off into the wilderness as it used to be, and a “media” cleanse can be a way to explore our inner wilderness for a brief period of time. When you come back to civilization, you’ll see it with new eyes — and won’t that be interesting?