Paleo no more! (Pt. II)

Quick follow-up to last week's catharsis. First, a clarification:

Lest there by any misunderstandings, my feelings about what is healthy and what is unhealthy remain unchanged.  What has changed is my approach to life and my relationships with other people.

I would like to share a quote from C. S. Lewis.  It comes from Mere Christianity, a book which I think everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, should read before trying to express an opinion on Christianity with anything like authority.  I have Mere Christianity on my iPhone as an audiobook, and I listened to it last week while driving to Daphne, Alabama to pick up a BOSU ball that I bought for a record-setting low price on Craigslist.  After spending last year frivolously haranguing people for consuming everything from gluten to seed oils, this passage came like a punch to the face when I heard it over the speaker:

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

As previously stated, I lost track of my original goal, which was to lose weight, and wasted seven months being a pedant and a food nazi.  In my defense, my experience and research allowed me to help several friends lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I have come to the conclusion that I could have helped many more people if I had been less vindictive and more relaxed in my approach.  I denied indulgences to myself, and in the spirit of misery loving company, I wanted everyone else to do the same thing.

Which brings me to the fun part...

I want to burn through the last bit of body fat that is hiding my abs.  As such, I'm giving the Slow-Carb Diet (SCD) a try.  Followed to the letter, it is billed as a sure-fire method to reach sub-12% bodyfat.  Based on my prior experience and a year of personal study on the subject, the science looks sound.  Nothing else has worked so far in my goal to eliminate stubborn fat, so I have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.  In addition to a specific exercise protocol (in my case, kettlebell swings and a couple of unique core exercises), the SCD eliminates dairy, sugar, starch and fruit from daily intake for six days.  The seventh day, however, is a dedicated cheat day, also known as "reverse Lent."  Anything goes.  The purposes behind devoting 12-24 hours to eating any and all "forbidden foods" are both biological and psychological:

• Physically, "planned overfeeding" spikes the metabolism and actually results in a net fat loss over the following 48 hours.  Doing this once every five to seven days after strictly adhering to the rules of the diet is important to keep the metabolism from falling into a rhythm and downshifting.
• Psychologically, it is healthy to take a day to enjoy all your favorite foods.  The routine of "just a little bit" of fruit/sugar and dairy every day over the course of a week, always left me with the nagging fear that my sugar and starch consumption was growing insidiously each week, and I find that my mind is much more at ease on the new schedule.

My first cheat day was truly a personal coup.  For the past year, I was so caught up in the fantasy of living a "perfectly healthy" lifestyle that I neglected to enjoy some of the foods that make life...well, fun.  The prescribed system of reserving any and all treats (even fruit) for consumption only once a week makes them even more special.  After eating a steady diet of vegetables, lentils and animal protein for six days, the shock and awe of tasting something sweet really blew me away.

Unlike most people, my cheat days do not and will not include wheat products like pizza, pasta or pastries.  Gluten gives me cramps, and I've learned a little too much about the other properties of wheat for me to ever incorporate it back into my lifestyle.  However, I made up for this by having some ice cream quite a bit of ice cream.  I used Sunday as my day to sample some green tea ice cream at a local sushi restaurant after lunch, and at the end of the day, I made myself an enormous sundae.

Do you want to know how long it's been since I made or ate a sundae?

A year.

I used to be "the sundae guy" at my house, dipping up masterpieces every Friday night.  Then I became "the health guy" and stopped.  For my return to form, I made sure my first sundae was a good one: dipping up vanilla ice cream onto a bed of shredded coconut and covering it with chocolate chips, Heath bar crumbles and chocolate sauce.  After not tasting such a concoction for a year, the experience was transcendent.

For yuks and giggles, I logged everything I ate on my cheat day, and if you want to see proof that I still no how to have a good time, you can see the full set here.

If all you want are the visual CliffsNotes, enjoy these "best of" photos:

As either Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde (I can't find a consensus on the source) famously said:

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I understand that now.  For whatever it's worth, I can do full compliance with a whole foods, paleolithic diet.  But without a "day of rest" here and there, my social life and quality of life in general go down the drain.

Sunday was fun.  But, as prescribed, I turned a one-eighty on Monday morning and went back to my regularly-scheduled diet of meat, eggs, lentils and vegetables.  This "clean" diet, which leaves my blood sugar comfortably level, will continue unbroken until next Sunday, at which time I will partake once more in the fun stuff.  Ben and Jerry's, anyone?

Paleo no more!

A brief interlude from my India recap.  I'm editing photos like crazy to get them ready for the blog, but I wanted to get this entry off my chest before going any further with the travelogues.

Backstory:

A little over a year ago, I was about 230 pounds.  The stress of college and multiple moves exploited all of my weaknesses for food, especially "comfort" foods like pasta and sweets.  And I had no sense of portion control.  Lasagna in the house?  Two bricks please.  M&Ms?  I would fill a soup bowl full of them after every lunch.  By my senior year of college, at the less than remarkable height of 5' 10", my neck and my chin were becoming a little too similar.  It was time for a change.

Several factors pushed me toward a decision to reverse the unhealthy trend and lose some weight:

First, I had practiced karate for five years.  It was getting harder and harder to keep up.  And my uniform size had gone up; a tangible reminder that my gut had expanded considerably.  I was teaching kids how to be healthy, but I wasn't living it out.  I felt like a hypocrite (I was).

As a further kick in the pants, a very specific quote from a teacher inspired me to action.  While on a school trip, I heard that the professor leading the trip had lost forty pounds.  One of my classmates asked him if he had more energy, and his reply stuck with me.  "Um, YES I have more energy.  My kid weighs forty pounds, it was like carrying him on my back all the time."

In that same year, I made my first mission trip to India.  There, I saw real poverty and want for the first time in my life.  Long story short, after I arrived home, my lifestyle of excess felt very ill-deserved.  I knew that if I was going to make any enduring improvements to my health and body, it would require just that: long-term lifestyle modification.

I began with a series of incremental changes in late June of 2011.  First, I stopped drinking soda, limiting myself to one or two per month when I would order a frozen Coke at a movie theater.  Second, I cultivated self control over my portion sizes.  I also quit partaking in massive desserts after every meal, and when I did have dessert, it was a glass of Ovaltine.  For fitness, I started swimming once or twice a week, in addition to my usual regimen of karate and kickboxing.  These common sense changes were easy, and startlingly effective.  The weight came off fast, and the success drove me to make more changes.  Like a skateboarder on a smooth grade, I had momentum, and I wanted to increase it.

By September, I had drastically reduced my carbohydrate and grain intake, and I had lost forty pounds.  I didn't eat chips or potatoes any more, my rice intake was limited to sushi on the weekends, and I only ate grain products when I had my weekly Subway veggie delite or a baked dessert on a special occasion.  With so much already cut out of my diet, the extremist in my decided to make one more change.

I had read Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint, and I knew the strong case against grain products.  Gluten, gliadin, empty carbs, systemic inflammation--there was a laundry list of grievances to be laid at the feet of wheat, and I was finally ready to accept them and act accordingly.  The Primal Blueprint advocates a return to "ancestral health," a diet based on whole foods (meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds), no legumes and absolutely zero grain products.

I went completely grainless as a thirty-day experiment, going a month entirely without bread, pasta or flour-based desserts.

The results?  I lost ten more pounds and made it through October without encountering my yearly seasonal allergies.

I was sold.  T'was a primal life for me!  Mine became a life sans wheat products, legumes and most forms of sugar.  I based my diet on animal protein, healthy fats, an absolutely irresponsible quantity of vegetables, some fruit and dark chocolate (90% cacao content or higher) as an indulgence.  Then I drifted toward a more hardcore, strict paleo point of view, cutting back on dairy and sourcing grass-fed meats.  None of these things were wrong in and of themselves, but in pursuing this lifestyle, I made a huge mistake.

Today.

Originally, I just wanted to lose some weight to look and feel better.  But I turned my diet into an obsession.  I made being "the healthy guy" my identity instead of just something I did.  I became a food nazi to the point where people apologized to me for eating sandwiches in my presence, without my having spoken at all.  I gloried in what I perceived as enlightenment and superiority.  While everyone around me continued to eat their "healthy whole grains," they were sick all winter and I wasn't.  While others yo-yoed up and down the scale on their low fat diets and bemoaned inevitable weight gain over the holidays, I lost another ten pounds over my Christmas break.

All the while, I expected some kind of social return on my obsession.  I don't know what I expected.  Applause?  A mass conversion of Pop-Tart-popping college students into svelte Crossfitters?  I don't know what kind of castle in the air kept me going, but it never materialized.  And now, the whole experience has left me hollow.

Over a year later, I'm fifty-something pounds lighter and look a lot better in a tshirt, but I still don't have a six-pack.  I don't have the bodyfat percentage I desire.  But far worse than these cosmetic details, I realized the other day that I have severely alienated people.  I made them uncomfortable with my constant yapping about how all their favorite foods were going to kill them.  I lost track of my original goal.  Instead of sticking to my original plan of getting in good shape, I drifted into pedantry and demagoguery.

Lately, several things have brought me back down to earth.

First, I started to notice how many headlines get recycled on Mark's Daily Apple.  The information is always sound, and MDA is one of the best searchable resources on the web for good nutrition information, but after a year of reading every article, it is apparent to me that there is only so much information that Mark or any other guru can give for the first time, and beyond that, any and all articles will be declarations of theory confirmation with the end goal of selling more books.  Speaking of the "paleo blogosphere," it has turned into a nasty place.  As the "paleo movement" becomes less of an underground health movement and more of an established faction among the various fitness dynasties, all the blogs look increasingly alike, and I think the authors are aware of this fact.  They all have the same interviews, they all have ebooks for sale, and the in-fighting and pettiness gets ridiculous.  As a community, I never sense support as much as judgment from the paleo crowd if my beef isn't grass-fed or my vegetables organic.

Second, I feel like sports nutrition is not taught properly by most paleo writers.  Caught up in the fervor of "defying conventional wisdom," preaching the doctrines of intermittent fasting and "eating fat to lose fat," the importance of protein is neglected.  Eating healthy, natural fats is the best way to lose weight (I'm walking proof of this), but for muscle maintenance, protein should be the highest priority.  It wasn't until I read Timothy Ferriss' book The Four-Hour Body that I was made aware of the full importance of protein--not just as a catalyst for building muscle mass, but for cutting fat instead of just losing weight.  My personal experiments in intermittent fasting suddenly felt like monumental wastes of time, because it hit me like a ton of bricks that when I was fasting sixteen hours a day to increase insulin sensitivity and production of human growth hormone, I wasn't eating enough protein during my "eating window" to obtain the results I desired.

Coming back to my food nazism, my burgeoning epiphany of my relationship ineptitude was further hammered home by J. Stanton's article "Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty," which ranks as one of my favorite pieces of writing that I have ever read on the internet.  As he always does, Stanton put the attitudes within the paleo movement into their proper context in his article, and recognized the fact that eating for health in a serious way, ala the paleo lifestyle, is very hard psychologically.  In the US, we grow up with PB&Js, Snickers bars and birthday cakes, and in breaking ties with these familiar foods we don't just give up the taste, we give up the feelings attached to them.  Stanton's article helped me to be totally honest with myself about the effects of my lifestyle on my relationships with other people.  Who was I trying to kid when I insist that Lindt's gourmet, 99% cacao bar is superior to a Butterfinger?  They are both delicious, simply in different ways to different people.

For those of you who were hoping to see a total recant of my principles and a video of me gnawing on a French loaf, I'm sorry to disappoint you, because despite my new attitude and grievances with the paleo blog culture, I still agree wholeheartedly with the tenets of paleo nutrition.  But I have some modifications to make in my own life.  I used my most recent trip to India to test my body's responses to different foods, and the results were interesting:

• A plate of noodles, given to me by a host who was under the impression that Americans live on pasta and french fries, confirmed my suspicions that I have a gluten sensitivity.  It was the first time I had eaten any wheat product in almost a year, and within minutes of eating what I was given out of politeness, I experienced harsh stomach cramps and diarrhea.  Gluten problems are real, even if you don't have celiac.
• For weight loss and weight management, there is no such thing as a "safe starch."  When consumed on a daily basis, rice and potatoes will increase your waistline as much as any other starch or grain.  I gained a lot of weight eating a rice-based Indian diet for the first few weeks of the trip, and it was very uncomfortable.
• Natural fats and proteins are STILL the best fuel for the human body.  For the above reason (and others, see below) I requested my last host to cook me nothing but eggs and vegetables while I stayed with him.  Most of the photos in this entry are of the delicious egg scrambles he cooked for me.  On that meal plan, I lost four weeks of rice weight inside of four days.  My host even commented on the visible change in my appearance.  I might add that my food was cooked in ghee (clarified butter), and I was always given huge portions--my record was fourteen whole eggs in one day.  I don't recommend that as an everyday practice, but nevertheless the weight still fell off quickly and my muscle tone reappeared.  It is confirmed: low fat diets are, and always will be, the hard and unnatural route to weight loss.
• Counter to what many paleo talking heads will spout, legumes are not all bad.  To avoid rice, I would sometimes fill my bowl with dal (boiled and seasoned lentils or mung beans) instead.  In the primal/paleo world, legumes are often vilified along with wheat as a source of lectins and phytates, which, long story short, can contribute to leaky gut syndrome (feces leaking into the bloodstream) after long-term consumption.  However, in my more recent readings, I have learned that an overnight soak kills 97% of the anti-nutrients in lentils.  That is acceptable.
• Industrially processed vegetable oils are legitimately harmful.  For reasons of cost and availability, most Indian homes cook their food in mustard oil, palmseed oil or soybean oil.  These oils are filled with extremely high volumes of Omega-6 fatty acids.  When your body's ratio of n-6/n-3 are out of balance, the result is interior inflammation, which I felt in spades due to the amount of oil used in most authentic curries.  I will save you the graphic details, but sufficed to say that my nightly "green apple quickstep" was yet another reason I went on a recovery diet of eggs and veg (boiled in water or cooked in clarified butter instead of oil) late in the trip.
• The occasional indulgence will not destroy health or weight maintenance.  On one occasion in India, I consumed somewhere between twenty-four and thirty ounces of sweet lassi (a yogurt drink) combined with fruit juice and chopped banana, inside of an hour.  Contrary to my old fears [paranoia], I did not balloon back to an unhealthy weight.  I'm not saying this was the healthiest thing to do, but at the time, my Indian host and I felt compelled to judge the merits of several competing lassi vendors.

So where does this leave me?  Well, my opinions about what makes up a truly healthy diet remain largely unmoved.  I still believe that some foods are best not consumed by humans (modern wheat, most forms of dairy, anything from McDonalds), but after a year of making myself miserable about it, I have decided to resign my position as the community food nazi.  The following list represents my new paradigm, which, like everything else, is subject to change with new data:

• I will never budge on the subject of wheat.  I saw a shirt once that said "the road to hell is paved with gluten," and I agree wholeheartedly.  Some research has speculated that as many as a third of Americans are gluten sensitive, but are so used to the symptoms (sinus inflammation, IBS, etcetera) that they never even consider possible dietary causes.  On a broader level, I also I firmly believe that wheat and the concomitant bread and snack food industries are responsible for the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes in America.  Read any label, and the only praise you will find for "healthy whole grain" products is the fiber content.  Fiber can be obtained through vegetables, along with many other vitamins and nutrients absent in wheat.  Balanced against the problems of gluten, I maintain that there is literally no need for grains in the human diet.
• I am incorporating legumes back into my diet, albeit judiciously.  Lentils are kind to blood sugar levels and an effective way of filling out meals while reducing grocery costs.  And with some some of my recent, post-India stomach trauma, I needed the extra fiber to restore some regularity to my GI tract.  On a more recreational and positive note, cashews are back in the mix, too.  I had the chance to eat fresh, raw, locallyg-grown cashews in India...I had forgotten how good those little buggers are!
• Systemized intermittent fasting, ala Leangains, is overrated, and the way most people talk about it right now, it has become a fad for most people.  Unless you are already well-muscled and sub-12% bodyfat (sub-20% for women), I believe that the visible results are marginal at best.  Spontaneous meal-skipping, for weight loss or to aid in cell autophagy, on the other hand, is something I think is healthy to do once or twice a week.
• There is only so much nutrition you can get from whole foods.  Supplementation is important.  Omega-3 (fish oil, flaxseed oil), vitamin D and acidophilus are all supplements which I take daily now.
• Protein is the new king.  Yes, a tall smoothie of coconut milk, nuts and berries is paleo-approved, filling and healthy, but it is not the ideal lunch when you want to cut the last five pounds of fat and build new muscle, which is my goal.  I don't believe in counting calories, but I believe firmly in macronutrient ratios.
• I will no longer call myself a devotee of the "paleo diet."  I have developed a strong dislike for the groupthink and the tendency toward confirmation bias and anecdotal arguments.  The very definition of "paleo" as a set of dietary guidelines has yet to be standardized, but every Grok and Grokette with a blog seems to think that his or her personal definition is the universal standard.  The arguments that arise out of the lack of mutually-understood terms are hilarious in the insipidity.  In the end, it doesn't matter if "paleo" means high-carb, moderate carb, low carb or ketogenic, the argument of "well, I don't think ancient man would have eaten ____" is always used too often and too lightly.

For the first time in my life, I am going to follow a structured diet.  I mentioned The Four-Hour Body earlier in this entry, and I am intrigued by the "Slow Carb Diet."  The whole first chapter on the subject is available to read for free, but what I like the most about it is that it brings me back to my original reason for changing my diet in the first place.  I wanted to cut fat and build muscle.  In my zeal to be perceived as a holistic know-it-all, I drifted away from that stated goal, and as such I never reached it.  It's time to return to my original purpose.  The Slow Carb Diet is designed out of sound nutritional principles, solid data, and is specifically designed not just for weight loss, but for reducing body fat and maintaing muscle.

The SCD approach includes a weekly "cheat day" for reasons of metabolism and social well-being.  I originally had mixed feelings about cheat days.  The old me always considered "cheating" to be a sign of weakness and inability to make lasting changes, but lately I realized that my monk-like consistency made me a social pariah in most arenas.  Taking one day off from dietary restriction not only prevents metabolic downshifting, but it gives the individual a day to be "normal" again.  Even one of my favorite paleo fitness blogs (one of few that is truly well-adjusted in its presentation of information) advocates cheat days wholeheartedly.  John Romaniello, one of the most stacked fitness coaches I've ever seen, has written extensively about using planned cheat meals effectively.  Good enough for me.  For my own first designated cheat day, I plan to indulge heavily in sushi, Nikki's Coconut Butter and perhaps a big cup of chai or creamy turmeric tea for a nightcap.  I'm looking forward to it.

So there you have it.  If you are one of the people whom I harangued in the past year for what you ate, I apologize.  It wasn't my place.  I changed my lifestyle at a time when I had little control over anything else in my life, and I allowed myself to be consumed by the idea of controlling both my own diet and that of others.  I will not pontificate any more.  If asked, I will be glad to share my experience and help other people improve their lifestyle, because I do have good advice to offer on the subject.

But!

Unless or until that happens, I am no longer the "paleo" or "primal" guy.  I'm just Steven, and I eat a certain way.

And I really, really love breakfast food.

Christians, Christianity and the Paleo Diet. Compatible or Not?

For your weekend consumption, I encourage you to read a rather unique article which I wrote on HubPages:

Christians, Christianity and the Paleo Diet: Are they Compatible?

You have to click through to HubPages to read the article, but I would like to provide some background on it here.

I have made my position as an advocate for the paleolithic style of eating and exercise very clear.  I have researched the subject for the past year and have seen remarkable results in my own life from adopting it as a complete lifestyle.  Simultaneously, I also do not shy away from letting people know that I am a Christian.

People are fond of reminding me that grains are in the Bible.  Fair point.  Furthermore, the science behind the Paleo diet is almost entirely based on evolutionary biology, so aren't I compromising?  How can I live the way that I do without compromising my beliefs or subjecting myself to ongoing cognitive dissonance?

These were questions which, after a long enough period, I had to ask myself in a structured manner.  So I poured myself a cup of strong coffee, settled in with my Bible and my old friend, Google, and did as I always do when I want to educate myself on a subject: I read, researched, assimilated and typed out my findings.

This article was the result.  I would appreciate your reading the full story, but here is the CliffsNotes abridgment if you are pressed for time.

• Nutritionally, the Bible and the paleo diet give the same advice.  (Genesis 1:28-29, 9:1-3).
• Christ used grains and bread as a metaphor because that is what his audiences understood when he spoke to them, 2,000 years ago.  The grains of today are much different than the grains spoken of in the Bible, and now contain many harmful anti-nutrients.
• The paleo diet's reliance on an evolutionary model is rooted in its desire to express why a pre-agricultural diet is most beneficial for the human body.  Evolutionists in the paleo community state that we evolved to our physical and mental apex through a diet free of grains and other products of agriculture.  However, this fits in very well with the Biblical model as well, only in this paradigm, it simply means accepting that an Intelligent Designer created us to eat this way, and we messed it up.

I go into more detail on each of these points in the article.  You really should read it.

The M&M's website is not safe for kids!

I told them I was eleven.

While researching material for the fitness ebook I am currently writing for Kindle, I pulled up the M&M's company website a minute ago to check some nutrition information.  To my surprise, it has an age lock!

On a hunch, I screencapped the page.  Then I put in my date of birth, but changed the year.  According to the Mars Corporation, I was an eleven year-old boy.  As such, I was too young to be a participant in their "responsible marketing" of sugar-coated sugar to American youth via "toys and games."

Between HBO's Weight of the Nation ringing its bell and Mayor Bloomberg capitalizing on the publicity with the NYC ban on large sodas, the entire snack food industry is on edge right now.

Heck, even Alec Baldwin is weighing in on the fun,

I didn't intend to post a second entry today, but I just found this little tidbit way too entertaining not to share.  I don't generally follow the news, but I am writing about health and fitness a lot these days and the fact that it took a well-publicized documentary to kickstart this sudden hysteria interests me greatly.

I had a film teacher in college who talked about working for the California Department of Transportation in the 1960s (yeah, he was old).  His job was to assist in filming informational shorts about automobile safety.

Every film included elaborately staged crash tests in which dummies were mercilessly hurled through windshields and slammed into steering wheels.  The air was thick with statistics and numbers, chosen specifically for their capacity to frighten viewers into wearing seat belts and stopping completely at every intersection.

"But," Dr. Karimi said, with an air of disbelief which had not waned in fifty years, "no matter how much damn information we threw at them, the statistics never changed!  People still got into accidents and acted stupid all over the highway."  He took a deep breath and looked up at the class again.  "I learned...one thing...from that experience.  You can't sell safety.  You can tell people how bad something is and show them exactly what will happen, but people will still do whatever they want to do."

You can't sell safety.  And you can't sell health.  Government initiatives can throw as much money as they want at the issues of obesity and public health consciousness, but people will continue to eat whatever makes them feel good.  And, to stir the pot even more, America is built on the ideals of free enterprise.  What happens to other laws when a mayor can ban something as insignificant as a soda cup?  I don't want to veer into a slippery slope fallacy, but laws do set legal precedents...

If people want it, companies will make it.  If companies make it before the people think of it, people want it all the more.  It's an interesting cycle that is very telling about our culture.

On that note, there are some excellent blog entries which I would like to recommend.  I don't know if the moon is full or not, but today was a great day for paleo bloggers.

I wrote a few lines ago that people will eat what they want to eat.  J. Stanton's latest post on Gnolls.org, beautifully titled Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty helps illuminate exactly why we become so attached to certain foods, good for us or not.

Concluding our contemplation of the government's attempting a nationwide stomach-stapling through "reform," Richard NIkoley (whose book I recently reviewed) just blogged about how the government is not great hope for our nation's health--healthy people are.  He also included a superb video.  Check it out at Free the Animal: Paleos & Primals: YOU are the Key, not Disney or Michelle Obama

Be healthy.  Be blessed.

Fear of the Void, Frasier’s Waistline, and the Art of Reduction

Lately, a recurring theme in my thoughts and conversations has been reduction.

By “reduction,” I refer to it less as a reference to quantity or chemistry, but as an idea. More specifically, the common idea of “cutting back” on specific elements of daily life in order to improve its overall quality. If someone talks about "cutting back, it is usually means that they are reducing some form of expenditure or consumption to see an increase in some other area of life.  At a basic level, it's the most sensible way to streamline and improve life: to have extra time, you must do less. To have more money, spend less money. To improve your weight, eat less.

What I find interesting about reduction in practice is the way in which people often miss the point of the concept entirely, confusing reduction with exchange, or even addition. Sometimes people have such unquestioned assumptions or misconceptions that they actually add elements to their lives in misguided attempts to achieve some form of minimalism.  You don't have to look any further than people's smart phones for proof of this point--how many separate "productivity" apps can one person use before the returns become diminished to nil?

My favorite example of the reduction-through-addition confusion is in a classic episode of Frasier. In the episode “Frasier-Lite,” Frasier and his coworkers at the radio station enter a group weight loss competition. At their second weigh-in, they discover that their team is heavier than when they started. Frasier, with his ever-present glass of sherry and penchant for gourmet cooking, is identified as the weak leak.

“How can that be?” Frasier sputters in indignant disbelief, “I added a salad to every meal!”

That scene makes me laugh just by writing it out, because Frasier’s glaring misconception sums up many of the innate confusions people operate by on a daily basis.  It is my belief that true reduction is hard for many people to understand because it is simple in theory, but uncomfortable in practice. It is easy to say that something needs to be given up. Actually giving something up is much harder. I think this has to do with the human fear of change, but I think it can also be defined a more specifically as fear of a void.

We are confronted every day by choices. It doesn’t matter if we want something to eat, watch, buy or do; we can be guaranteed of multiple options to choose from. For a culture, this is a double-edged sword. Positively, it is an indicator of wealth and success. Negatively, it betrays an entire culture’s over-reliance on material elements at the expense of objectivity, critical thinking and spiritual fulfillment.

Why else would weight loss or budgeting be so complicated? At their core, they both concepts can be condensed to a single sentence apiece: Spend less. Eat less. Entire bookstore shelves could be replaced by single placards if a perceived need to fill all empty spaces did not exist.  If the basic concepts were better understood, individuals' methods of implementing them would cease to be a reliant on the systems and advice of others, and would instead be expressions of personality.

This is extremely apparent when I listen to people talk about time management, then watch how they go about doing it. Everyone wants more time, but as soon as they liberate some space in their schedules, they immediately seek out something new to fill the void. After striving and cutting back activities to have "a moment's peace," the reality of being alone with one's own thoughts is suddenly too terrible to bear, and the void must needs be filled.  Western cultures in particular often perceive voids as a symptom of idleness or of having a lack of constructive activities. In reality, extra time for one’s own self can be a wellspring of creativity to benefit the areas in life where meeting goals and fulfilling obligations is important.  Creative people find creative ways of dealing with problems.  They are valuable no matter where they work or what they do.  And yet we deny ourselves the ability to be comfortable in silence or solitude.

We need to be comfortable with margins. We need to embrace the void.

This same concept applies to weight loss, the area in which many people, like Frasier, often choose what they think is the "least worst" option when, just maybe, the best option was never even thought of.  As such, reduction inadvertently becomes addition.

“I added a salad to every meal!”

“Yes, but you didn’t decrease the size of your meals!”

This is a personal theory, but I firmly believe that the United States labors under culture-wide acceptance of false dilemmas. In situations where the individual must choose between a set of options, they often forget to check and see if they have to choose one of those options at all. Perhaps there is another option that they haven’t been shown yet. Or, perhaps the situation is not so dire that they have to choose anything at all, and can safely reject what they are offered and create their own paradigm for better living.

Easy example:

“Plain chips, or sour cream and onion?”

“No chips for me, thanks.”

Another:

“Regular or diet?”

“Water.”

One more:

“Let’s not spend too much on food; which is cheaper: Joe’s or Charlie’s?”

“Why don’t we just eat at home?”

Not every void must necessarily be filled.

Choosing the “least worst” option is not the same as reducing consumption.

Choosing only from the palette of options offered to you by others is never the same as making your own decisions.

Don’t be coerced. Don’t be fooled.

Let your decisions always be your own, and don't be afraid of a void. Learn the Art of Reduction.