Cody Robert — design, code, freelancing, productivity, LIP, travel

As a freelancer, and granted, anyone really, it’s crucially important that we stay as fit and healthy as possible. Big corporations have made billion dollar businesses based on this fact.

We eat our daily vitamin supplements (Flintstones anyone?), we follow our healthy dieting plans, and I bet it’s a good estimate that 1 in 8 people carry a bottle of Aspirin/Ibuprofen/Tylenol with them wherever they go. Just in case they might need it to ward off that oncoming pain.

Who could possibly work the rest of the day with a mild headache?

I had a discussion with my mom the other week about obesity in America. She started telling me about this woman she had seen walking around town nearly everyday during the last few weeks. This woman was also very large, rotund, whatever you’d like to call it. I’m not going to try to be politically correct.

My mom mentioned something she had thought:

Wow, I’m really proud of you. You’re one of the few people actually taking this problem into your own hands instead of blaming other people.

It wound up that soon afterward, my mom recognized her walking into the high school football stadium, presuming she was there to walk around the track.

She did, and after went to the concession stand and bought a large coke.

It’s those disgusting contradictions that really piss me off. Like why we think we can stop aging or lose weight with a pill. Is everyone so easily bought in by advertising that they believe this shit?

I presume that I’m not easily bought in because my parents have always taken care of themselves the hard way and taught me the same:

• keeping fit
• eating well
• eating less

Though sometimes I do have a hard time eating well. Luckily, at the ripe age of 20 I have a roaring metabolism that keeps my bad eating in check.

This is the start of a series on healthy living. I’ve been planning on this for a while because it’s one of the most important aspects of a freelancer’s life. Do you pay yourself for sick days

Well, I’m pretty sure most of us work through the sick days anyway, but that doesn’t make it any less pleasant or heal the ailment any faster!

So I’m throwing the cards down here and now. Don’t take offense. If I were trying to offend you, no, wait, I wouldn’t. Shut up, sit down and listen up now boys and girls:

1. There is no miracle weight loss pill. The only thing they help you lose is your hard earned cash.
2. Being fat is not ok. Not because it’s you take up more room on the sidewalk than you should, or because I have some disposition against fat people. It’s wrong because being overweight is an endangerment to your health. I would go as far as saying it’s a crime worthy of punishment. In the same respect, it’s wrong to be unnaturally underweight. (Thank God France did make this a crime!)
3. You might have underlying mental/social problems to your unhealthiness. Too bad. That cannot be an excuse to be unhealthy. Yes it makes it that much harder to accomplish the goal of being healthy but it will make you that much better of a person for having done so.
4. Warehouse membership stores (Sam’s club, Costco) are not your friends. Think for a second: if you buy less food, you’re forcing yourself to eat less food, and in the end have less possibility of gaining weight from the food you eat. For that matter, stores, gyms, any business is not your friend. They are not looking out for your best interests. They are looking out for #1 only. #1 wants your money and wil do anything to entice you to give it to him.
5. No pain, no gain. It hurts to change. It’s going to hurt to change your diet and eat less. It will hurt to start working out. It will hurt to deal with pain without a bottle of Aspirin at your side.

Are you ready now? There might’ve been some tears. That’s good. You should have realized that it’s going to be hard to get what you want. And I hope you want to be healthy.

Now we’re going to start by eliminating the junk from our diet.

I had a bit of comment banter with Sheamus last week about a post I wrote on the pareto principle. He mentioned how we would have to try hard to differentiate his post as he was planning on writing about roughly the same thing.

Well Sheamus, too bad but you wrote it too well and I’m just going to steal it back: The Problem of Clutter… in our diets (And What I Intend to do About it). Ok, maybe that’s not such a great title. Works great for Sheamus, but not me. Let’s try something different.

The Plan to Declutter our Diets

This is the crucial first step because without knowing what’s wrong in our habits, we can’t know when we’ve stepped back into them.

I guess it’d be kinda like going cold turkey on smoking cigarettes. It almost never works because your mind and body have attached physiological needs to the nicotine and don’t know why it’s been taken away.

We’re going to apply the pareto principle to our refrigerators. Now flat out assume that if you are fortunate enough to own one, 80% of the stuff inside provides little actualy value for your body.

1. Throw away everything that contains high-fructose corn syrup. It has got to be one of the worst things you can ingest, ignoring toxic chemicals. Unfortunately, most U.S. products use it in some amount.
2. If it doesn’t have a reasonable experiation date, toss it. Twinkies would be right on the top of this list. I’m just waiting to read a blog post about someone that eats a twinkie they’ve saved since 1970 and we finally have proof that the damn things don’t expire.
3. Dump the wonder bread. It’s not good for you, much like the twinkie. Bread is not naturally that white or spongy.
4. If you can’t read the ingredients, get rid of it. Too many foods have way too many preservative chemicals in them that are not good for you.
5. Limit the meat and dairy. Dr. Atkins died of a heart attack. That should probably show you that red meat isn’t as great as he professed.

At this point, you should have been able to throw away most of the food in your house. That’s a good thing! It means we’ve taken the first step - identifying the problem. These are our problem foods. The ones that cause us unhealthiness.

Let me know your thoughts. Please! If you think I’m crazy about all this, tell me. Or conversely, if you see some point to what I said, say so.

I may want to expand on this topic even more than simply a series here, and launch a new blog dedicated to it. I’d love to do it with somone else that’s interested as well. Hint. Hint.

Tags: diet, Freelancing, health, healthy living, weight loss