Later On

Sobering realization

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11 Responses

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1. Move more, eat less.

   

   Jack

   19 June 2010 at 4:10 am
2. Jack, I’ll forgive you for that. But you really ought to reconsider that bit of advice so freely (and frequently) offered. It is insulting, to begin with, and I wonder whether you might consider that it might perhaps not actually be quite the solution you imagine. I note that Rand Paul is taking a similar approach to solving the unemployment problem (“Get a job”) and the same approach can be seen on how to end poverty (“Spend less than you earn”), cure cancer (“Get well”) and mental illness such as depression (“Get a grip”) and end the problems caused by hard drugs (“Just say no.”).

   Like most simplistic and overtly obvious remedies, this fails to take into account individual differences and specific situations. Its main function, I think, is to testify to the moral superiority and strong will of the person offering the advice.

   Luckily, I am not offended. I understand that this sort of advice mostly illuminates the adviser’s incomplete understanding of the problem. But it does get old. (As do we all, but more quickly than we.)

   

   LeisureGuy

   19 June 2010 at 6:27 am
3. I’ll stick with what I’ve said. I’ll send you an e-mail with more discussion.

   

   Jack

   19 June 2010 at 8:17 am
4. I look forward to it. In the meantime, I read this sort of advice as a way of saying, “I don’t have that problem,” and little more.

   

   LeisureGuy

   19 June 2010 at 10:10 am
5. Good grief, LG! Open up your mind. Everybody has problems. They may be different, but fundamentally, if they are to be solved, or at least ameliorated, you have to do what you have to do. If you need help, then get it. Just sitting there and thinking that you are a special case won’t get you anywhere. To put it in the starkest terms, do you want to live?

   

   Jack

   19 June 2010 at 10:19 am
6. He is getting help from a trainer and a nutrition group — so he is moving more and eating less. While he might be overreacting to you, Jack, I must say that your comment did come across as a little obnoxious — but that is the danger with computer based communications (email, etc.) — tone is lost in translation and can come across in an undesirable way.

   

   TYD

   19 June 2010 at 10:28 am
7. Jack, you must not be reading the blog. I am seeing a dietician and losing weight there, I am seeing a trainer and getting exercise direction there.

   I’m quite aware—apparently more than you—that people have problems. What I do not do is go about offering snappy, simplistic, and obvious solutions to those people with problems.

   I’m not quite clear on what additional steps you think I should take.

   

   LeisureGuy

   19 June 2010 at 10:32 am
8. TYD, LG and I are old acquaintances going back more than half a century, and I’m candid with him. Our friendship ought to be able to allow that.

   LG, clearly you are concerned about your condition, which is a good beginning. But I think that you are being rather sensitive about being offered ” . . . snappy, simplistic, and obvious solutions to those people with problems.”

   Sure the solution I offered is all that you say it is; so what? That the solution is obvious ought to tell you something: It’s been there all along, and so why is it so offensive to you? Elaborate diet and exercise programs might do some people some good, but I really think that the simpler you keep it, the better and more productive it will be.

   I most certainly wish you well in your endeavor to lose weight and to regain health, whatever it takes and whatever proves to be beneficial to you.

   As I explained in my e-mail message to you (I know that this is unfair to readers of these comments, but there is much personal information in that message that I don’t think needs to be generally broadcast), just doing what needs doing (I repeat myself) is the way to get there. And the easiest way to do that is to keep it simple.

   

   Jack

   19 June 2010 at 10:51 am
9. As Albert Einstein once observed, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I think the problem with short, snappy solutions is that they are, in general, too simple. While it’s true that a person with depression could benefit from looking on the positive side of things, that advice (generally speaking) does not speak the causes of the depression, except mechanistically. A more structured and (inescapably) complex approach of going through a course of cognitive behavioral therapy does seem to work well, though it doesn’t lend itself to a single, snappy phrase.

   Similarly, my suggestion is that “Eat less, move more” is mechanistically correct, but so far as helpful advice to the obese, it simply does not deliver a helpful message. The main messages that come across, as I am trying to point out to you, are messages about the speaker such as: “I don’t have that problem. I think that you are too dense to realize that the solution is obvious. In this area, I am better than you.” and similar such statements.

   If you find someone struggling to keep from drowning in debt, do you trot out, “Spend less than you earn!”?

   Well, maybe you do. But then you should not anticipate that their problem is solved, and that they will be grateful to you for vouchsafing to them this secret of financial health.

   I have written a number of posts about my growing realization that I am facing a problem I cannot solve alone, even with the assistance of pithy sayings. I have tried, and I have failed, and I ultimately realized (at some level) that I needed the help of professionals to get me back on track, and I am getting that help. (Indeed, as I noted, I started the professional help before the conscious realization.)

   I am working on two programs that seem to have promise.

   But then you stop by, trot out the same advice you’ve offered several times before, and think… what? That you’ve done your job? Illustrated your superiority? Helped me face my ignorance of a biological fact?

   That your statement is obvious and one that I clearly know ought to tell you something, and that something is that the problem is not that I haven’t heard that observation or that I don’t understand it. It ought to tell you that the problem is deeper than a mechanical matter. There are problems of this sort that some people have, and I hope that you are grateful that you are free of them.

   

   LeisureGuy

   19 June 2010 at 11:10 am
10. BTW, email has not yet arrived…

    

    LeisureGuy

    19 June 2010 at 11:11 am
11. Your frank exchange is most thoughtful and illustrates the great mystery surrounding human appetite. My contribution to simple but ineffective “truths” would be the following:

    au[ THOREAU, Henry David
    ti[ WALDEN in THE PORTABLE THOREAU, Ed Carl Bode, Penguin, 1977

    kw[ diet vegetarianism

    ... I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc: not so
    much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were
    not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the
    effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live
    low and fare hard in many respects.... p461

    The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in
    that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray
    them. p461

    qt: He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he
    who does not cannot be otherwise... Not that food which entereth into the mouth
    defileth a man, but the appetites with which it is eaten. It is neither the
    quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is
    eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life , but
    food for the worms that possess us. p464]

    au[ THOREAU, Henry David
    ti[ LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPAL in THE PORTABLE THOREAU, Ed Carl Bode, Penguin, 1977

    kw[ diet

    qt: We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all
    the latter's substance. p650]

    “Okinawans . . . . practice a dietary philosophy known as HARA HACHI BU literally, eight parts out of ten, full.”

    TIME, 8/20/2004

    I have no personal success which I can ascribe to these wise sayings, but they help. That along with the fact that I value the fitness and flexibility that follows what little control I have been able to muster. I note that keeping busy is a distraction from the desire to eat. I count it fortunate that I have always been as much of a do-it-yourselfer as possible. On really engrossing projects I often skip meals. I think it is a mistake to hire out chores as we grow older – we vegetate.

    

    Bob Slaughter

    19 June 2010 at 11:46 am

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