A slight tangent to this, although it may just be more flesh on the bones of what I've suggested.
Some of he unhealthiest people I know seem to engage in a borderline OCD set of behaviors over health, food, exercise and the like. They seem downright miserable to me, and the stresses they create or endure or both just don't seem to be normal, healthy, or in any way productive toward the stated end-goal -- to live a healthy life that avoids some debilitating issue earlier in life than at the end.
Dunno. People in their 50's and 60's who have their clothes falling off of them, vegans with a grey pallor, folks over 15 who look like skeletons, everyone carrying around water bottles all the time, and on and on.
Seems to me lots of it is genetics that dictate how all this goes for folks in general. Good food helps. Exercise helps. But the extremes on both ends catch the attention, and both concern me when I witness them.
Reminds me of a comment my doctor made to me recently, not about anything I told him about my diet but because he's a skeleton of a guy who is obsessed with germs, food, and seemingly most anything at all. He said, "there's no good reason to ever eat a potato chip." My response, "other than the fact that they taste great, I'd have to agree with you."
That's kinda my philosophy in one facet of how I view food, health, exercise, and the like -- there's lots of joy in food, wine, booze and all the social pieces that come with them. I ain't gonna miss those years of joy worrying about the next article that suggests something like lard is bad for you when I know that the lard I occasionally use comes from pigs raised in a way that makes its nutritional value far superior to much of the faux "organic" oils hyped to me by packaging and other sources of information. A similar lard fed my ancestors (up through my parents) for decades, and none of what was in it from the farm had anything to do with how they died or lived out their later years.
Real joy in my youth was watching my farmer/lawyer grandfather eat the smoked ham hock off the green bean platter at what we called "dinnner" (the midday meal that was the largest of the day). He died at age 90, never having a sick day in his life. |
