(Note: I am not a doctor and none of the following is meant to be medical advice, I am only sharing knowledge from personal study. I am not affiliated with any of the authors, books or websites I recommend) Thank you for all the nice comments and supportive emails. By far, the subject everyone seems to be most interested in and curious about is The Food Plan. No sugar & no white flour. So I will tell you what it means and what I am doing. My grown daughter, Tallulah, who has moved to The South to pursue a career in acting is also doing this with me. Having a partner in crime makes life easier! It is also nice to have something that is ours, even though we are far apart. We sat down before she left after the holidays and wrote down our plan. It is pretty simple. The reasons are not to lose weight, although I am looking very forward to that being a benefit. I gave away my bathroom scales and didn't weigh myself before I started. I decided not to get hung up on the numbers. Before when I have tried to change my eating habits, I would use the numbers as the measuring stick, when to feel encouraged, and when to get discouraged and give up. So no numbers this time. And, yes, that was very hard to do. But theoretically, if I do this for one year, I will be at a healthy weight by Christmas and that's a good thing. My main focus on the food is to support my desire to live more simply, be less of consumer, & to learn to eat in a manner closer to the rest of the world as opposed to a McAmerican. We spend more on dieting and fitness than most people spend on FOOD. Most of the diseases and medical conditions we suffer from and pay to fix are caused by an excessive lifestyle and high sugar consumption. Most auto-immune diseases seem to me to be our bodies crying out for us to be eating the foods we were created to eat. Almost all weight gain and diabetes and other related problem are caused by insulin becoming totally whacked out in our bodies. It affects everything and causes those of us who are the heaviest and eat the most to actually be STARVING to death, suffering from malnutrition. The affects on mental health are shocking and I will talk about that later. Which brings me to my main reason for "going off the sugar" and that is it clears my head, levels my moods, banishes my depression and I begin to function like a semi-normal human being. Also the white flour causes your body to react in the same way the sugar does, and it ain't good. They affect your brain chemistry, seratonin levels, B vitamins absorption, in other words, they AFFECT YOUR ABILITY TO BE HAPPY. Depressed? Ditch the flour & sugar. This time sugar includes not eating sugar, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice or honey. Now "something sweet" means "God's candy", fruit! This is not a "low carb diet" & grains are welcome. Much of what I have learned came from Kathleen Des Maisons work. Some of her books include Your Last Diet & Potatoes Not Prozac & you can read more on the website radiantrecovery.com She teaches you the relationship between sugar addiction, alcoholism & depression & how to "do the food". There have been numerous other helpful books and resources in my life, among them Nina Planck's book, Real Food. I eat a high protein breakfast every morning, the hardest adjustment and new habit to learn as I am not a breakfast person. I have small breakfast steak and stir fried frozen vegies or greens or an omelet with spinach, or organic yogurt with frozen berries. At the end of the day, for a bedtime snack, I have a "carb", because it causes your seratonin levels to raise for the next day, and causes a small blood sugar spike and fall which makes you sleepy. So at night I have a baked potato covered in sour cream or a sweet potato smothered in butter or maybe just a bowl of buttery popcorn. (some diet, huh?) Those two small acts literally change my life. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Am trying to learn to enjoy simpler foods, more soups, or making a meal of cheese and crackers. Learning to eat less and enjoy more. Before I started this, we were a drive-thru family. We were eating off the Dollar Menu several times a week. I have hardly any domestic skills and severe ADD which can make simple meal preparation a nightmare in disorganization. But I am learning. I am getting it. I am becoming more focused and it is getting easier, not harder. My mind is clearing, I feel better, have lost a little weight & I have a spring in my step. People have said it sounds too hard & they will give up this, but not that. Well, I know from experience that it is all about the chemical reactions inside your body, it isn't a lack of will power or a failure on your part. A drug addict can't say they will cut back, be sensible and only have a little bit of cocaine in moderation. That same principle applies to the sugar for me, so it is actually much easier for me to say none at all and to know what to do when confronted with that choice. For this one year, I don't have to decide how to handle birthdays or Easter or Valentine's Day, because I have already decided. So when Halloween rolls around, I don't have to struggle with deciding whether or not to allow myself some candy, I already know and that just makes life SO much easier. The cravings go away if you don't feed them. Now you can remember all my high and mighty claims when you hear along about March that I have gnawed off my own arm and have been carted away muttering something about a Cadbury Creme Egg.
Caring For Your Introvert
Caring for Your Introvert
The Atlantic Monthly | March 2003
DO YOU KNOW someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?
If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?
If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.
I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.
Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts. It pays to learn the warning signs.
What is introversion? In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.
Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses."
How many people are introverts? I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."
Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.
Are introverts oppressed? I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.
Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As Coolidge is supposed to have said, "Don't you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?" (He is also supposed to have said, "If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it." The only thing a true introvert dislikes more than talking about himself is repeating himself.)
With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. "People person" is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained," "private"—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.
Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.
The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."
How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.
Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"
Third, don't say anything else, either.
4 comments:
I love this -
Crap - I'm already reading about 10 things - and now I gotta go dig out that Potatoes Prozac book thingy that I never read all the way through. UGH.
I want to do this - I really do. Do you think I can???
I would love to try this, but not sure how I could with such a large family. Possible?
This may just have been the encouragement I needed to get back on the healthy lifestyle eating mode. Can be so hard but you have been such a inspiration for me. Thanks for writing this blog!
Love you! Mary
I wanted to let you know that I'e been reading right along: Your writing is so graceful and inspiring! Please keep it up. And let me know if there is anything I can do to help. We may do something similar to no sugar as the Husband has a bad tummy leftover from his sick days.
Post a Comment