I’m an Omnivore

A few weeks ago, I came down with a cold. Colds suck. Now, that shouldn’t be such a big deal normally, but I am keeping a close eye on the way my diet is affecting my health. Oh, and there’s also the fact that I wrote this article:
4 Ways to Never Get Sick Again

I speculated there that getting sick frequently is probably not necessary, a bold claim indeed. So it sure is a peculiarity that I became sick myself. There could be a lot of reasons that I got sick and I can only guess as to why. I was just returning from a bit of traveling (commercial flights are pretty good environments for the spread of illness) and I was returning from Wisconsin. And believe me, it was cold! There was even snow on the ground at one point and it was in November. I usually can’t even expect to get a good snow during the whole winter in North Carolina. Anyway, my cold could be attributed to the flight or stress or the temperature.

However, there are a few interesting notes here. The last few times I’ve gotten sick have been preceded by the same thing: lack of the sleep. I distinctly remember (and it helps that I write it down too) that the first signs of illness (usually a sore throat and mild congestion) start the day after getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep the night before. That’s not what happened this time! In fact, for the days preceding this cold, I was getting 8-9 hours every night.

Of course, there’s one other thing: my diet. I recently reintroduced dairy into my diet as part of a self experiment on acne. I got sick just weeks after I started eating dairy again. I have to say: I’m not really surprised. Surely, this could be a coincidence, but it is thought provoking to me. I’ll feel more confident about this connection, one way or the other, when I start experimenting again with Paleo next month.

I’ll leave you with an intriguing video about preventing and treating colds and flus. I don’t agree with everything presented here (especially skeptical of the hydrogen peroxide tip), but this guy does confirm some of my previous outlandish thoughts about getting sick . Enjoy:

Welcome to Part II! Last time, I talked about why you should be consciously creating a healthy diet for yourself. This post discusses the actual formation of that diet.

Heuristics
Ok, I was a jerk and used an obscure term I love from computer science. Heuristics are simply rules you use to make judgments. You could call them rules of thumb. We need a way to select foods and we can use heuristics to guide us. They may not work in all cases, but they are simple and easy to follow. The food pyramid is a good example. This is the old food pyramid created by the USDA:

It splits up foods into “groups” and then gives you a rough estimate of how much you should eat from each group everyday. It works, but it has some issues. I’m sure you can point some obvious problems with this pyramid. There was a new pyramid released by the USDA in 2005. Now think about that for a moment. Up until just two years ago, according to the US government, it was perfectly acceptable to get 11 servings from the bread, cereal, rice, and pasta group in a day. I don’t think this sat too well with low carb dieters. Low carb diets are another example of a heuristic: low carbohydrates, high protein. I like heuristics because they are simple.

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“If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”
-Rumored to have been said by L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of Scientology.

You could say the same thing about starting your own diet. Dieting is a billion-dollar industry, but there’s no reason that you can’t be a part of it all. Now, you too can jump on the yo-yo dieting bandwagon! In fact, I’m doing it right now. I’m going to tell you how to create your own diet without actually knowing a thing about food.

Making Millions the Easy Way
All you’ll need to get started is the following:

• A degree from a diploma mill ensuring your credibility.
• A cheesy infomercial proving guaranteed success.
• Pseudo-scientific research.
• A set of confusing and impossible dietary guidelines.

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