The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
-Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching, Chapter 12
“You work out that much? Wow that’s crazy.”
“That’s all you eat? Isn’t that kind of limiting?”
“That can’t be healthy. Doesn’t your body go into starvation mode or something?”
“I could never give up <insert favorite carbohydrate bomb here>”
“That’s a little too extreme for me.”“Are you crazy? You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“You’re going to have a heart attack eating like that.”
I’ve encountered all of the above statements, in multiple forms from multiple people. The funny thing is, I believe that saying things like that says more about the person saying them than it does about me. Instead of me being crazy, a wonk, a health nut, it means that they are unquestioning, lazy, complacent.
People tend to go through their lives never questioning the conventional wisom, never doing the legwork or research to find out how the human body works. They trust the American Heart Association, or the American Diabetic Association or the U.S. Government to guide them correctly, their intellectual laziness causing them never to find out how to write their own owner’s manual.
What surprises me most is the indignant, defensive posture that many people assume when any subjects like diet of exercise are broached. The traditional models are so “obvious” to people that any divergence from this norm is looked upon with hostility, instead of natural human curiosity.
It takes a while of talking to someone to put the least amount of doubt in their mind about the traditional Bran-and-marathons view of fitness and diet, and even when presented with evidence to the contrary, they still generally settle back into their old methods of thinking. People would rather be right than healthy, it seems.
Even more puzzling to me than people who at least subscribe to some vision of health and fitness (Even it it is bran and marathons) are the people who comprise the majority of the people under the bell curve. They view anyone who consumes a diet other than Pizza Hut and Chic-Fil-A, or exercises more than walking to their car and back to be “crazy”. Well, to these people I say:
Are you crazy?
