Everyday Systems

I was persuing Kathleen's "The Blessings of Simplicity" this morning when I realized how simple No S truly is. So simple that I know people who can't do ot because they can't believe something so elementary can work so well.

One of them, an obese male, in his early 30's will walk up and say, "Dude, you look really fit for your age..." and I tell him time and again how to do it. Just before Christmas he was putting food into his "calorie app" to see how many calories head already downed. He wants to know if I run (which is funny, I must carry my weight well since I am still in the 187-190 range...), I tell him no, I usually lift weights, use my Schwinn Airdyne, or Diamond Dallas Page Yoga. There is no magic involved.

The "herd" (as Plato so fondly alluded to us humans) needs to a guru to tell them what to do. I remember an old Arthur Jones analogy (the developer of Nautilus weight machines) about a man exploring through the desert when he comes upon an old prospector trying to dig for gold with his hands and a stick. The man who finds him offers him his shovel. The old prospector takes the shovel from him, looks at it and tosses it away, and then goes back to digging for gold his way.

Maybe a crude analogy in some ways, but think about it...

I agree. I've had a few people ask my "secret" and when I tell them I get mostly polite (or less polite) disbelief, or an assertion that it is only working because I'm a breastfeeding mother.

Simple, however, doesn't necessarily mean easy.

What gets me is that people spend so much time paying attention to studies that in the end examine only a fraction of people, while nearly the whole population of two countries basically follow No S.

Find me a slim culture (that has access to food consistently and is not just poverty-stricken) that eats randomly.

I don't love stuff - physical or mental. My goal in life is to have the bare minimum to be comfortable. I do exceed this more often than I would like but it's my defining paradigm. No S manages my food life simply and elegantly. Anything else food wise has to seamlessly integrate with No S.

oolala53 wrote:Find me a slim culture (that has access to food consistently and is not just poverty-stricken) that eats randomly.

Good point. I don't know about other cultures (just American) but ours is fat. It's an industry. Too many people would be out of a job if there were no more diets, diet studies, gurus or stories.

I know what you mean, but let's hope we could grow another, more useful and successful industry, or expand other ones we already have. We might spend more on better quality food and on other interests.

If our culture did that, can you imagine a grocery store with no snack aisles... the entire middle would be gone.