Knowledge is the reset button

This post is about how knowledge and research can change your life.  A while back I made a simple internal pact with myself.  If I hit 200 LB I’ll just stop eating.  Funny thing is, that worked for three or more years.  I should mention there was a prior limit set at 195 LB.  Before that, I was not really watching.  Weight gain was depressing and all, but not getting in the way as far as I could tell (my doctor had been saying otherwise, but it fell on deaf ears).  When I started to mull over setting the limit to 205 LB I had to put my mental foot down and say no.  At that point, it came to starve a few extra hours a week to force the 200 LB limit into remaining valid.  That was probably going to be the rest of my days – fighting the 200 LB limit.  In fact, I had already resigned to it.

Diets for me are transient.  I’ll start on one once in awhile.  Never with true intent.  Never with passion.  Never with any successes.  Sure a few pounds at the start – yippie!

The 200 LB limit sat at the back of my brain taking up undeserved space while injecting the fear of getting set higher and higher over time.  I did not want another diet, I did not want to exercise a ton, I wanted to make sustainable healthy changes that put my weight on a downward slope, however slight, just point it down.

Then I learned something.  In one hour.  I was lead down the simple path of well-presented information to the knowledge that reset the way I look at everything.  I’ve recently “let my weight drop” and put it on that downward slope.  What a crazy sentence. It seems to imply I have control over the angle of the slope.  I do.  Today, for instance, I woke up to a 175 LB me. Nice!

What worked for me was simply adding quality knowledge about the human body to my brain. What is a protein, a fat, a carb, a sugar, a ketone?  What of these do I eat or process?  Knowing more about these; what simple changes can I make to effect the changes I have long desired?

It is difficult to find something that’s posted in/on the Internet without agenda.  I’ll try not to lie.  I want you to go out and learn how to learn.  How to filter the noise.  How to know when you don’t know.  I am not teaching these things, they are milestones on your way to finding the reset buttons in your life.

All I can share is what got me excited about learning to learn and to carve through the noise to find the pure notes of relevant research.

I listen to a security-related podcast every week.  By Steve Gibson.  Called “Security Now”.  If you are in IT or a geek like me you’ll find it wonderful.  Regardless, what happened out of the blue one day was; Steve did a health-related podcast about vitamin D.  Why?  I didn’t care, I got to listen to a very capable explainer explain all about vitamin D.  He consistently applies significant time and energy to each topic he presents on the podcast, this health episode was no different.  He even presented data he had collected from his own blood tests and experiments in sunbathing to collect vitamin D.

Fast forward a bit in time and there was another unexpected health-related podcast – this time Steve had been experimenting on himself as it pertained to diet.  As like any security related podcast he taught you the basics and built upon them (over two podcasts this time).  By the end, I knew I had started my next chapter in life.  I have since played the podcasts a few more times, bought and read two of the books Steve recommended, initiated simple changes in my daily food types, and lost 25 LB since May this year (4 months).  I have also since learned (as yet another chapter of life unfolds) that without quality data and research you are courting a mundane and manipulated life.

Question everything.  Question this blog post.  Research and return.  Question more.