I promised an update and I keep my promises.
The last six week of eating healthy had their share of advantages and disadvantages. I was at home for much of the time, but also travelled for business in the period which was bound to make things more complicated. I cheated a couple times - this was a voluntary thing after-all - though the extent of the cheats was small and not material.
Overall ? I feel better. Hard to characterize it beyond that, but I'll attempt to nonetheless.
You know that stressed, tired feeling you have in your brain/mind/soul when you're just about to go on a needed vacation ? And the result of the vacation - where you are not stressed, regain the bounce in your step, and feel mentally refreshed ? Well, that's the closest thing I can compare how it physically feels. I'm fractionally lighter, tighter, and I do feel better.
Was it worth it ? Absolutely.
Will I do it again ? Yes, in fact I plan to go back to this style of eating as soon as I'm back from my current business trip.
Which brings me to the downsides - there isn't great choice, and some of the choices, inventive as they are, just don't taste very good. Bread products without that gluten aren't that nice - or at least I've not found any that I'd buy again, or want to consume again. I'm probably lucky that that hasn't been a big downside for me. I can take it or leave it as far as bread goes. Convenience (and bacon) is what I missed the most. The ability to make simple choices was gone. I had to really concentrate on what was on each food I ate, much like a real sufferer of Celiac disease. That frankly was a pain for a person like me whose big decisions in the past was which fast-food place to stop it (not if I could).
I managed to survive a business trip and stick to the plan while in San Francisco, but as I'm off to Asia at the moment, I think that's going to be impossible.
What did I end up eating ? Lots of fruit and veggies, some fish, and I even found gluten free chips (Boulder - yum!), and ice cream - (Breyers..who knew?). Hey this was an experiment, not a monastery commitment.
Should we all do this ? Well, those who've read more than one of these posts understands that I try to never tell people what they should do, but rather I encourage you to understand your own decisions and make peace with them, or change them. In this case - I'd suggest you also tried this. You might also like it. If you don't, the downside is that you might get temporarily healthier. Not much of a price to have to pay, now is it ?
Friday, July 27, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Looking forward, looking back
Much like New Year's, a birthday seems like the right time to both reminisce about the times that were, and cast your eyes forward to what's ahead. Tomorrow is my birthday, so indulge me while I wander the synapses of recollection of my early life and recall some key moments. These will clearly mean more to me than you, but like anything else, a glimpse into how another looks at things, is often instructional for each of us as we consider how we approach the same thing.
My earliest memories are in a row-boat. I think my mother and father are there too. As I recall it now, it looks like New York's Central Park, which is of course not possible as I wasn't ever there until years later. That's what the movies will do to you.
When I was older, but still young, we lived on a lake. We moved up there and I was united with my new family. I recall visiting before the move, and huddling in the corner, trying to be invisible to all the noise and activity of four other kids around me. Memories in that house weren't all frightening though - I also recall my mother ironing in our living room as we were watching the moon landings on our b&w TV. It was a renovated cottage - a summer home, and had lots of great places to hide, including the TV ariel that would have been 100feet high. I could climb it and go up onto the roof - our dog never found me there. I also recall jumping on my Dad - Kato-style from the Pink Panther movies. I'm sure that exactly what he was hoping for after a long day of work, and a big commute. (does yur dog bite?)
In spring and autumn before the lake was frozen solid - in those freezing/thawing times of the year, I'd go out alone in our little un-sinkable aluminium canoe and play 'ice-breaker'. I had to wander far-out and now I look back and wonder how I didn't flip it and drown. I had a sense of confidence in that little boat as it was rimmed in styrofoam, not quite understanding how the frigid water wouldn't have been so kind to my little body. I wasn't quite as unsinkable of course.
Many childhood memoires involved our dog - and long stretches playing by ourselves. To my mind, I'd go out in the morning, and show up again at dinner time. Of course, my ability to playback episodes of Gilligan's Island and Hogan's Heroes means I also spent some time on the couch.
If I relate this to my own kids, I can't say I let them be as wild as I sensed I was. Granted it was different times, but that's as much to do with the speed of information sharing these days as anything else. I enjoyed being a kid and hope my own children did too. I was free then and while I did find my fair share of mischief, I could express myself in making a fort in the woods, or building an army base through the garden (sorry Mom), or trying to see how I could get the lake to catch fire. (Don't ask)
Getting older probably places a rose-coloured lens on earlier days, but that's not a bad way to consider your own life. Looking back, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
My earliest memories are in a row-boat. I think my mother and father are there too. As I recall it now, it looks like New York's Central Park, which is of course not possible as I wasn't ever there until years later. That's what the movies will do to you.
When I was older, but still young, we lived on a lake. We moved up there and I was united with my new family. I recall visiting before the move, and huddling in the corner, trying to be invisible to all the noise and activity of four other kids around me. Memories in that house weren't all frightening though - I also recall my mother ironing in our living room as we were watching the moon landings on our b&w TV. It was a renovated cottage - a summer home, and had lots of great places to hide, including the TV ariel that would have been 100feet high. I could climb it and go up onto the roof - our dog never found me there. I also recall jumping on my Dad - Kato-style from the Pink Panther movies. I'm sure that exactly what he was hoping for after a long day of work, and a big commute. (does yur dog bite?)
In spring and autumn before the lake was frozen solid - in those freezing/thawing times of the year, I'd go out alone in our little un-sinkable aluminium canoe and play 'ice-breaker'. I had to wander far-out and now I look back and wonder how I didn't flip it and drown. I had a sense of confidence in that little boat as it was rimmed in styrofoam, not quite understanding how the frigid water wouldn't have been so kind to my little body. I wasn't quite as unsinkable of course.
Many childhood memoires involved our dog - and long stretches playing by ourselves. To my mind, I'd go out in the morning, and show up again at dinner time. Of course, my ability to playback episodes of Gilligan's Island and Hogan's Heroes means I also spent some time on the couch.
If I relate this to my own kids, I can't say I let them be as wild as I sensed I was. Granted it was different times, but that's as much to do with the speed of information sharing these days as anything else. I enjoyed being a kid and hope my own children did too. I was free then and while I did find my fair share of mischief, I could express myself in making a fort in the woods, or building an army base through the garden (sorry Mom), or trying to see how I could get the lake to catch fire. (Don't ask)
Getting older probably places a rose-coloured lens on earlier days, but that's not a bad way to consider your own life. Looking back, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Hippo's, ABC's and Intution
There is a fascinating shift going on beneath our noses, and you may not even be aware of it. Much of it revolves around the ideas of what intuition offers us, and how we have historically and perhaps mistakenly trusted it. I grew up believing intuition as a positive thing - it was borne of experience and reflected sound judgment, and was what you fell back to when the path forward wasn't clear. Like many things in modern life though, the role of intuition seems to have been blurred with opinion and the sound-ness of it isn't always what we thought it was.
Here's an example question that I'll admit having some fun with recently. I read it in Daniel Kahneman's recent book Thinking Fast & Slow (A great read). The idea is to instinctively react to it, and at the same time, listen to your own brain in the process. It goes like this:
A ball and bat together cost $1.10
The ball costs $1.00 more than the bat
How much does the ball cost ?
Easy yes ? Well, not for everyone. Our intuitive brain is wired to do the fastest and simplest of maths here, and arrive at the answer that the ball is $0.10. That's the wrong answer of course. (This is where you go back, re-read it and think about the answer.) That process of thinking illustrates to you that the ball actually costs $0.05. You see, you were deceived by two factors here - the deceptive phrasing tricked your intuitive processes, and your brain lazily allowed intuition to carry the answer, without stopping to think if it was actually the correct answer. According to Mr. Kahneman, we do this frequently and automatically, and he offers many great examples where extensive testing has been done to prove this out. You see thinking slowly and deliberately uses lots of energy, and our bodies are hard-wired to avoid high energy usage brain activities unless we have to - some switch inside each of us controls this. I won't go into more details, if this is interesting to you, read the book.
What does this have to do with Hippo's and ABC's ? I'm glad you asked that.
There are related ideas in something else I came across, about A&B testing and how decisions are made. It correlates to the inconsistency or at least pollution of the purity of intuition as well. A&B testing is happening all around you. For all I know, you're experiencing it as you read this page. It's the subtle ongoing testing of varying page layouts in our online world, and reflects very small changes to increase levels of engagement. Perhaps you've had a "Matrix-moment" where things seems a little different to you ? You aren't crazy, you are seeing different things. It seems popular sites - the Google's, Yahoo's and others don't amend their look and feel all at once, they evolutionize them though A&B testing. A subtle small change is designed and floated out in live time to perhaps 10% of the user population. The engagement level (against the baseline of existing page users) is measured and the more successful page becomes the new standard, until it's evolved. Clever..yes. If the goal is to get us to click-through more ads which it often is, then it works. But - what's this got to do with intuition ?
The other way to make changes is to do it based on what people think. That's the historic model that delivered to us the iPod design, sleek sports cars and the Guggenheim museum. When I say people, I mean select people, or even more precisely in an organization, the highly paid people who should know about these things using their .... wait for it .... intuition. The problem with this approach, is that we don't all have the gifts in design that Steve Jobs or Frank Gehry have. Instead we have business leaders that have opinions, and bias's and their authority can carry the day under the guise of intuitive design. They are the Hippo's - highest paid person's opinion... and they are often as not wrong. The purpose of the A&B testing is to rely on the data of engagement levels to determine if change should occur - they are the business world analytics version of thinking slow.
So the upshot of all this ? I wish you all the energy and time to make thoughtful decisions. Our world doesn't suffer time spent thinking slowly positively, but it's clearly worthwhile.
Here's an example question that I'll admit having some fun with recently. I read it in Daniel Kahneman's recent book Thinking Fast & Slow (A great read). The idea is to instinctively react to it, and at the same time, listen to your own brain in the process. It goes like this:
A ball and bat together cost $1.10
The ball costs $1.00 more than the bat
How much does the ball cost ?
Easy yes ? Well, not for everyone. Our intuitive brain is wired to do the fastest and simplest of maths here, and arrive at the answer that the ball is $0.10. That's the wrong answer of course. (This is where you go back, re-read it and think about the answer.) That process of thinking illustrates to you that the ball actually costs $0.05. You see, you were deceived by two factors here - the deceptive phrasing tricked your intuitive processes, and your brain lazily allowed intuition to carry the answer, without stopping to think if it was actually the correct answer. According to Mr. Kahneman, we do this frequently and automatically, and he offers many great examples where extensive testing has been done to prove this out. You see thinking slowly and deliberately uses lots of energy, and our bodies are hard-wired to avoid high energy usage brain activities unless we have to - some switch inside each of us controls this. I won't go into more details, if this is interesting to you, read the book.
What does this have to do with Hippo's and ABC's ? I'm glad you asked that.
There are related ideas in something else I came across, about A&B testing and how decisions are made. It correlates to the inconsistency or at least pollution of the purity of intuition as well. A&B testing is happening all around you. For all I know, you're experiencing it as you read this page. It's the subtle ongoing testing of varying page layouts in our online world, and reflects very small changes to increase levels of engagement. Perhaps you've had a "Matrix-moment" where things seems a little different to you ? You aren't crazy, you are seeing different things. It seems popular sites - the Google's, Yahoo's and others don't amend their look and feel all at once, they evolutionize them though A&B testing. A subtle small change is designed and floated out in live time to perhaps 10% of the user population. The engagement level (against the baseline of existing page users) is measured and the more successful page becomes the new standard, until it's evolved. Clever..yes. If the goal is to get us to click-through more ads which it often is, then it works. But - what's this got to do with intuition ?
The other way to make changes is to do it based on what people think. That's the historic model that delivered to us the iPod design, sleek sports cars and the Guggenheim museum. When I say people, I mean select people, or even more precisely in an organization, the highly paid people who should know about these things using their .... wait for it .... intuition. The problem with this approach, is that we don't all have the gifts in design that Steve Jobs or Frank Gehry have. Instead we have business leaders that have opinions, and bias's and their authority can carry the day under the guise of intuitive design. They are the Hippo's - highest paid person's opinion... and they are often as not wrong. The purpose of the A&B testing is to rely on the data of engagement levels to determine if change should occur - they are the business world analytics version of thinking slow.
So the upshot of all this ? I wish you all the energy and time to make thoughtful decisions. Our world doesn't suffer time spent thinking slowly positively, but it's clearly worthwhile.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
The GOD Particle
I love it when the media gets hold of a complex idea, and feels the need to simplify it so that you and I understand it.
The GOD Particle. In case we missed the significance that this is important. Really important.
Here's the details you need to know.. expressed not simply in layman's terms, but in everyday language.
When Scientists come up with an idea they need to test it through experimentation to validate the idea is real. Prior to testing and validation, it's a theory (only). Until this week, the Higgs Boson or God Particle was a theory only, and one of the primary aims of CERN was to find it, and confirm it's existence. Why is the Higgs Boson important enough to be referred to as the God Particle ? Because huge sums of money and energy have been spent in pursuit of it. You see this theoretical piece of the puzzle was the missing link in what Particle Physics refers to as the standard model. This standard model outlines how the universe hangs together and moves to offer details around around everything from the ice in your martini to the Big Bang. So to Particle Physicists, the Standard Model was missing one crucial piece of proof - the Higgs Boson to confirm they were all on the right path. (It specifically speaks to adding or not adding matter or weight to a given particle and is instrumental in explaining key parts of the model) Imagine that they couldn't prove it existed - the standard model falls apart, and they all are reset back decades in their work to help create understanding of how the universe works.
So, the confirmation that CERN has some evidence (not 100% solid yet) that they've found the key signature of the Higgs Boson is big news. Especially to Physicists.
But, and here's where I'll try to offer some perspective - But we should acknowledge that there is little completely pure research into the greater things in our lives going on. We aren't sending people to space anymore; we aren't exploring the depths of the deepest oceans to uncover other forms of life. We are however funnelling billions into applied physics - it is our pure research as a species at the moment, so what affects this small group of people, actually affects us all. The "God Particle" is media hype, but the real importance of the discovery proves the value of continued pure research for all of us to advance as a species.
Here's the details you need to know.. expressed not simply in layman's terms, but in everyday language.
When Scientists come up with an idea they need to test it through experimentation to validate the idea is real. Prior to testing and validation, it's a theory (only). Until this week, the Higgs Boson or God Particle was a theory only, and one of the primary aims of CERN was to find it, and confirm it's existence. Why is the Higgs Boson important enough to be referred to as the God Particle ? Because huge sums of money and energy have been spent in pursuit of it. You see this theoretical piece of the puzzle was the missing link in what Particle Physics refers to as the standard model. This standard model outlines how the universe hangs together and moves to offer details around around everything from the ice in your martini to the Big Bang. So to Particle Physicists, the Standard Model was missing one crucial piece of proof - the Higgs Boson to confirm they were all on the right path. (It specifically speaks to adding or not adding matter or weight to a given particle and is instrumental in explaining key parts of the model) Imagine that they couldn't prove it existed - the standard model falls apart, and they all are reset back decades in their work to help create understanding of how the universe works.
So, the confirmation that CERN has some evidence (not 100% solid yet) that they've found the key signature of the Higgs Boson is big news. Especially to Physicists.
But, and here's where I'll try to offer some perspective - But we should acknowledge that there is little completely pure research into the greater things in our lives going on. We aren't sending people to space anymore; we aren't exploring the depths of the deepest oceans to uncover other forms of life. We are however funnelling billions into applied physics - it is our pure research as a species at the moment, so what affects this small group of people, actually affects us all. The "God Particle" is media hype, but the real importance of the discovery proves the value of continued pure research for all of us to advance as a species.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Health
There are some things that I share, and others I don’t, while writing this blog. While I firmly believe in authenticity and standing behind whatever you say, write, do or don’t do - there are also some boundaries we should put in place. That’s not universally recognized sadly, and many of the troubles we see in society are those caused when someone seems to misplace their understanding of what is appropriate in our culture.
And today, I’ll play on the edges of these rules, just for fun and also with the knowledge that while whatever we digitally commit to our online record lasts forever (hello dumb FB postings) the long tail effect also means sometimes we can help one another through shared experience.
Huge build-up, no ?
I’m about to be 48. I know, you’re thinking that I don’t write like a day over a 12 year-old level, but it is the truth. Like many white western males, I have lead a sedentary lifestyle and was overweight for much of my life. That’s acceptable in our culture and there are even proactive efforts to embrace our imperfections - our weight, our table manners or lack thereof, or whatever cause du jour is. {As a complete aside - I think many of these self-serving “love me for my imperfections” statements and posters and cards that you see more and more of are indulgent crap b.t.w. I can’t help it if I prematurely bald, or if I never grew above 5’8 as an adult, and sure, you can embrace that. But eating too much, or being a slob or any of the other poor choices we make are exactly that - choices. Embracing those poor decisions celebrates the wrong thing. OK, rant done, and the aside is now over.}
With a life-long fight against carrying extra weight deeply burned into my experience, I’ve elected to eat healthy for the next 6 weeks as an experiment. There, that wasn’t really worth the build up, was it ? (The “next blog” button in the upper left takes you to someone that celebrates N-scale model trains, be sure to catch that one too).
The eating healthy approach compliments a daily fitness regime that has taken me 90% of where I want to be. I’d always hoped that the time at the gym would be enough – and it isn’t. I can’t eat like I want to and be healthy like I want to. Those two aspects in my life seem divergent and so I’ve taken on this experiment. Six weeks isn’t going to kill anyone, and I’ve elected to remove gluten and eat vegetarian in this time period. (I’ve been at it almost 3 weeks btw, and do feel better.).
What I do miss are easy choices. Keep in mind that I don’t have Celiac disease (the folks that must eat gluten free to stay alive), and I have no moral grounds to be a vegetarian. So, yes McDonald's has beckoned. Yes, I’m craving a nice steak or some BBQ chicken .. but less and less as the time is passing. Choices are easy in normal circumstances, but not at present. While I can shop for gluten free foods for home preparation, going out proves a challenge. But again – it’s six weeks and I’ll survive.
What I will also do is come back at the completion of the experiment to report results. Not this many pounds/ kilo’s/stones etc as that is somewhat pointless without a reference baseline. Rather I’ll offer how I feel, what I want to do going forward, and any body changes noticed. What I'll also try to do is to capture the impact of the change on my life. I think there are both personal and professional implications to this change, so as they say... stay tuned.
And today, I’ll play on the edges of these rules, just for fun and also with the knowledge that while whatever we digitally commit to our online record lasts forever (hello dumb FB postings) the long tail effect also means sometimes we can help one another through shared experience.
Huge build-up, no ?
I’m about to be 48. I know, you’re thinking that I don’t write like a day over a 12 year-old level, but it is the truth. Like many white western males, I have lead a sedentary lifestyle and was overweight for much of my life. That’s acceptable in our culture and there are even proactive efforts to embrace our imperfections - our weight, our table manners or lack thereof, or whatever cause du jour is. {As a complete aside - I think many of these self-serving “love me for my imperfections” statements and posters and cards that you see more and more of are indulgent crap b.t.w. I can’t help it if I prematurely bald, or if I never grew above 5’8 as an adult, and sure, you can embrace that. But eating too much, or being a slob or any of the other poor choices we make are exactly that - choices. Embracing those poor decisions celebrates the wrong thing. OK, rant done, and the aside is now over.}
With a life-long fight against carrying extra weight deeply burned into my experience, I’ve elected to eat healthy for the next 6 weeks as an experiment. There, that wasn’t really worth the build up, was it ? (The “next blog” button in the upper left takes you to someone that celebrates N-scale model trains, be sure to catch that one too).
The eating healthy approach compliments a daily fitness regime that has taken me 90% of where I want to be. I’d always hoped that the time at the gym would be enough – and it isn’t. I can’t eat like I want to and be healthy like I want to. Those two aspects in my life seem divergent and so I’ve taken on this experiment. Six weeks isn’t going to kill anyone, and I’ve elected to remove gluten and eat vegetarian in this time period. (I’ve been at it almost 3 weeks btw, and do feel better.).
What I do miss are easy choices. Keep in mind that I don’t have Celiac disease (the folks that must eat gluten free to stay alive), and I have no moral grounds to be a vegetarian. So, yes McDonald's has beckoned. Yes, I’m craving a nice steak or some BBQ chicken .. but less and less as the time is passing. Choices are easy in normal circumstances, but not at present. While I can shop for gluten free foods for home preparation, going out proves a challenge. But again – it’s six weeks and I’ll survive.
What I will also do is come back at the completion of the experiment to report results. Not this many pounds/ kilo’s/stones etc as that is somewhat pointless without a reference baseline. Rather I’ll offer how I feel, what I want to do going forward, and any body changes noticed. What I'll also try to do is to capture the impact of the change on my life. I think there are both personal and professional implications to this change, so as they say... stay tuned.
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