Choose Your Induction

Read the comfort zone first.

My wife and I just finished watching The Pharmacist on Netflix, which I highly recommend. It got me thinking about addiction. With comfort in mind, what is the difference between drug use and exercise?

If our comfort is a subjective experience, which we know it is, what does exercise do to it? Essentially exercise is pain. To exercise with any sort of effort causes pain. So if you compare the time you are exercising to the time you are not exercising, the time you are not exercising is more pleasurable.

In the same way, if you are on opiates, your experience is changed. Compared to your high, everything is more painful off drugs. So the baseline human experience when compared to drug impairment is pain.

So you see, these two devices could work in reverse ways. One induces pain to make the rest of the day more pleasurable. And the other induces pleasure to make the rest of the day more painful.

So what will you induce, pleasure or pain?

Finding Right Now

Alternate Title: The Caffeine/Exercise Time Shift

I don’t think anyone wants to argue about the health benefits of caffeine or exercise. The big question is why are they so beneficial? Everyone seems to have a theory, but the jury is still out.

Here’s my theory on it. I call it time-shifting.

By increasing the stress in the current moment, these two stressors force the subject to be more present right now.

If you’re a worrier like me, your mind may automatically wander to the next big event, the next crucial moment in your life. Basically, I’ll find something to worry about. And you will too.

For example, there is no reason to worry about something that may or may not happen in a month, when you’ve made right now an important situation chemically or physically. You’ve essentially tricked yourself into being present.

The question naturally becomes, can we be this present without either of these external stressors. I think the answer is yes, although I’m not sure how. For better understanding, we need to ask the people who are happy and healthy, and don’t drink coffee or workout. These people have the ability to focus on the present moment without any assistance. Because we always want to be present, but the next run or espresso shot may be hours away. 

Sources:

1. https://www.caffeineinformer.com/top-10-caffeine-health-benefits
2. https://medlineplus.gov/benefitsofexercise.html

Food is fuel

This is what you should be thinking on your diet, nothing else. It’s the mindset of athletes, and it will give you a new lease on life. 

We all need food. It is literally energy. A calorie in physics is a unit of energy.

All food is essentially the same. There are fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. You need all of these. You can debate the ratio, but if you don’t get enough of any, you will not perform or function at your best. I tend to agree that there are vary levels of health of different food, but I’d rather you eat a donut than not eat.

Your body needs it to perform. You are an engine that runs on food. Think critically about what you put in it, but don’t starve yourself and expect improved results.

Your body needs it to recover. Just because you ran today doesn’t mean you can’t eat a decent supper.

Your brain needs food. It just does. Sure, healthier choices help it perform better. But it needs something to function. Low/no carb diets may impair memory. 

Top athletes don’t starve themselves. Eat like an athlete, not a model. If you’re like me, getting in the exercise is not the problem. That’s the fun part. The diet is the painful part. There are successful athletes in almost every subclass of diet.

It’s not difficult. Your body is programmed to tell you when to eat and what to eat. Don’t ignore it. It knows better than you do what’s good for it. There’s a reason we’re all carbohydrate addicts.

Your body is perfectly designed for your lifestyle. If you’re trying to make a change, change your lifestyle, not your diet.

Think about how a kid eats. Sometimes you have to force them sit down and do it. Eventually they do it, even if they may just eat a plate of Oreo’s and strawberries. Then they are straight back out playing. As they should be. And as we should be too. 

How to age like white people

If you don’t like sarcasm, go read anything else I’ve written.

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. We’re really on to something. For those on the outside looking in, here’s what you need to do to catch up.

Starve Yourself. Just eat less. Or don’t eat at all. Who care’s if you were born to be 250 pounds? Humans have survived worse. Just as long as you can stand on the scale and feel good about yourself.

Drink Coffee. This is super helpful when you’re trying to starve yourself. It really kills the appetite and gives you that burst of energy that you used to have all the time when you were whole.

Get glasses. In the stress of starving yourself, you’re going to start to feel different. Your vision may start to blur. Glasses can help alleviate this annoyance and get you back to what’s important: getting as thin as humanly possible.

Workout when you don’t feel like it. Earn your gold stars. Outwork your friends. That’s what it’s all about. Looking good naked. Win the race to the grave.

Ignore your body. Don’t worry about how sore you are, or how much your stomach is growling after that big salad you just ate. Just keep plugging away. Maybe your headache will go away. You can always just go get coffee in a couple hours.

Get depressed. As you starve yourself with the aid of glasses and exercise, this should be easy. Just go with it. You’ll hate every minute of every day.

Take Meds. Since you can’t figure out what went wrong, and you can’t go five minutes without flipping someone off, go talk to someone. Get them to give you pills. That’s what you need: one more variable to sort out.

That should be enough to get you started. If you don’t start seeing results in 30 days, you’re doing something wrong.