Thursday 27 June 2013

#ThrowbackThursday: The things that we already know

Back in Year 12 we used to have free periods - in exchange for classes before or after school. In those periods we would be studying because oh well, we had the HSC to conquer.

It was quite frankly a very difficult year. In year 11 we had to do short classes of 7 subjects each day, and that changed to long classes of 4 classes per day with tons of homework everyday because we did not have classes for those subjects the next day. The school decided to roll out these long classes just before we graduated because - I don't know.

Despite studying for different subjects, we used to sit in groups. In case you don't know, I was one of the geeks who took 4 units maths and 3 units of everything else - except English. I spent most of my free periods dwelling in mathematical proofs that I was never quite able to grasp - and that sealed my fate in not pursuing the engineering path.

Because we sat in groups, we often talked to each other - not so much a full on conversation, but rather a passing comment here and there. The comments that half the kids would say is "I wish I am just average, so I don't have to do all of these difficult subjects". The other half is "I wish I am smart then I don't have to work so hard."

I think it is fair to say that at that time I completely missed the point - the point is not about being smart, but it is about working hard. That is why we have the grading system whereby the students are classified into advanced maths, intermediate maths and whatever maths there were. Because as human beings, we need to be challenged, and we need to work hard to overcome those challenges.

A life with no challenge is perhaps not as rewarding as a life with challenges. In fact, these days I think a life with no challenge is borderline on being boring. There are a lot of challenges in life, don't get me wrong. Some people have more challenges than others even when they did not explicitly ask for this - like for example, a broken family or a family member with terminal illness. For some people surviving on a daily basis is a challenge because they do not know where their next meal will come from - like those living in a famine-striken country in Africa.

All of these led me to think that working hard is one of the necessities in living a fulfilling life. It doesn't really matter in what area you are working hard on, it can be your job, your volunteering, your family, etc. Working hard brings with it a sense of satisfaction - the one that somewhat fulfills you because you have done something useful with your time.

Isn't it funny that sometimes the secrets to a happy life is so simple - doing something that you like to do, spending time with people you love, and giving your best in all that you do. The choices that I make today and the attitude that I bring with them are the starting points that would determine how my life and myself would turn out. The world doesn't owe you anything - it does not owe you a good life. The life that you have right now is what you make of it.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

On leaving my twenties

Ok... so it goes like this. I permanently bid good bye to my twenties recently.

I don't have a problem with my age, or specifically, disclosing my age. Sometimes I have a problem acting my age though. This is because at times I forget how old I really am. As they said, you are as young as you feel you are. (Or in my case... immature.)

I have always been quite open with my apprehension about being in my thirties. I guess I didn't talk about it on the blog, but I did (and still do) think about it a lot. I researched the fuck out of it, because I could. I am a doctor for a reason, you know. 

One of the things that I stumble across was this book titled 30 Things Every Women Should Have and Should Know by the time She's 30. Yes, there are bits of the book that's borderline superficial, but if you read between the lines, most of the points have substance. Trust me on this one. Maybe this is because I sort of went a little bit (a lot) overboard in analysing them (blame it on the doctor). Needless to say, I purchased the book and it became an instant favourite. (Side note: the thought catalogue published a follow up - a further 30 things that's relevant for anyone for any age, really. 

Because I can be somewhat illogical when it comes to aging (and becoming older), I converted the 30 Things Every Women Should Have and Should Know by the time She's 30 into a checklist. I did not tick all of the items on this list. I surprised myself when I found out that I was not as upset as I would have been if I was in ... my early twenties. I have always been somewhat a perfectionist and so ticking checklists became second nature. 

I was not upset because while I generally agree on the importance of the items in that list, I had (have) a personal checklist that I wanted to tick, stored away at the back of my subconscious mind. I did not approach my thirties with a list that goes like this:
[x] Become a doctor
[x] Get a (long term, steady) boyfriend
[x] Live on my own, at least for a month 
[x] Build a well-curated wardrobe

Does anyone? I mean, should I now start drafting a list of things to tick by the time I am 40? 

*
The reason that I am thinking about this right now is because I was editing my photos from my recent birthday and those photos made me think about turning 30 all over again.

On kindness and paying it forward
I find it rather funny that in this life we put a lot of emphasis on the softer things like being kind, compassionate bla bla bla, yet when it comes to evaluating major milestones in life (like when your age ends with a zero), we don't really put the fact that someone is kind and compassionate as an "achievement" on their lists. 

One of the things that I am most grateful for in my life is that I have a lot of kind people in my life. Although I thank them a lot, I don't tell them that they are kind often enough.From these people, I learn what it really means to be kind. And sincere. These are the people who are living with paying it forward. Colin from The Exile Lifestyle has an excellent post on paying it forward and I don't have much to add on this topic.

On making mistakes
Throughout my twenties, I met a lot of people, befriended them, hung out with them etc. I admit that there was a period in my life whereby I discovered that the people whom I thought were my friends turned out not to be my friends. I discovered that upon discovering this, life goes on and you survive and start making better decisions on the things that truly matter in your life. I admit that I had given people chances when I probably was better of not to. This was a mistake I needed to make so that I could learn from it.

There are other mistakes that I have made, of course, and I hope not to make the same mistakes again because that's when I know that I have learned from those mistakes. When I was younger, I avoided making mistakes as much as I could, I am a perfectionist after all. I think I was more of a perfectionist when I was younger, and as I get older, I begin to see why a lot of people abide by the Pareto Principle. I don't think I need to say that we all need to make mistakes and mistakes are fine. Acknowledge them, fix them, learn from them and move on.

On love and settling
One of the things that are somewhat "important" to women approaching thirties is the presence of a significant other in their lives. They may not want to admit this publicly, but this was one of the topics that I discussed a lot with my friends. For a lot of them, it is about starting a family, and the biological clock ticking louder and louder. While this is a very valid desire, this is also not something that you can plan. As one of my conversation partners put it, it is not like you can enrol in a course and 12 months later get a certificate and be done with it.

Granted that throughout my twenties I attended a lot of weddings - most of my friends were getting married, the rest who are not are mostly attached. So we were either getting married or thinking about getting married. Or freaking out of the seemingly bleak prospect of getting married before we turn 30 (or immediately after we turn 30). It is like, oh gawd, all this pressure to love and be loved, at the right time. Timing is all the essence.

In addition to timing, there's the actual person. My boyfriend told me that in this life you have to go through one really shit relationship before you can appreciate the really good ones. I told him that if you are a good person, then you are a good person; it is not a relational comparison. It is definitely not like you are good because someone else is bad.

On change
Change is the one thing that's constant in this life. The moment that change is absent is the moment that I know that something is not right. I have come to accept change and expect it on pretty much an almost daily basis. We are all getting older. Our bodies start to break down and we have to start putting in more efforts to take care of it. I know for a fact that hang-overs recovery time is longer than it used to be, and partying once a week is tiring, let alone doing it twice a week.

Other changes can be subtle - like changing the layout of your abode, or in my case, an ever-changing wardrobe! This is because I recently came across a suitcase of old clothes... and I cringed when I was sorting them. I sent everything to St Vincents. I don't even want to think about how hideous I used to dress. But I thought I was pretty good at the time. Go figure. My preferences change.

On setting your own standards and staying true to yourself
This is the thing, isn't it? How do we measure our own success? Can we use a personalised metric to do it? And if we do, will that metric be an accurate measure of our success, or would it be biased because oh well, how do you measure yourself using something that you invented? Conflict of interest, no?

It is very natural that when we want to measure ourselves, we want to use an objective metric. This is not about comparing ourselves to other people, but this is more about an attempt of getting a somewhat objective assessment of how far we've become. The danger is that we end up focusing on conforming to some form of societal standards which we may or may not necessarily agree with. It is great if we do, but chance is that, the agreement is not 100%.

This is where staying true to yourself comes in. I spent my twenties thinking that this is important, although not exactly knowing how to do this. Because this is difficult to reconcile with societal standards at times. Take for example, the above example about the dilemma of single girls as they are fast approaching their thirties. Most of them know that just because they are single does not mean that they are not worthy of love. Yet they can't help feeling so because even when they are comfortable with being alone, it is nice to have that special someone in your life, it is nice to be loved. And who doesn't want to be loved?

To be comfortable with the choices that we make and the ones that are given to us without us having a say in them, or in other words, accepting some things that we are yet to change, and being content and happy with our present state, and live our lives in accordance with a standard that works for us, formulating our own ideas of success and being honest with ourselves with the things that we truly want (in addition to need), that's what successful living is all about. Is it not?

On health 
I am not the healthiest person in this planet. I am gluten intolerant and I am allergic to coconut. These days I am learning that a lot of things have coconut oil in them, everything is sprinkled with coconut and everyone is drinking coconut water. Okay. I don't know how coconut manages to come centre stage, but this is quite literally a living nightmare for someone like me. Because gluten free products often contain coconut in them.

The natural progression is for me to learn how to prepare my own meals, otherwise known as cooking. Cooking has never been my thing, you  know. This is definitely one of those things that I do because I really.have.to; and it looks like this is fast becoming one of those things.

The one thing I manage to get sorted just in time before turning 30 is the exercise routine thing. There are some people who are naturally sporty and these people would naturally choose sports activities and do not see it as a chore to make time for these things. I honestly do not regard myself as one of these people yet. What I think about every morning as I wake up and drag myself to the gym is this: I would love myself more if I do this. As we are seemingly in the middle of winter right now, this is somewhat less effective given that the alternative, i.e. warm bed with extra shut eye time, has taken over as the more attractive option.

This battle is fought daily, and is won one day at a time. I prefer winning this battle so I persist with whatever is required for winning this. Winning does not get easier, just consistently rewarding.



I am pretty sure that in a few years time I would change my mind on a few of these things. And I think that's ok because well, I am bound to change my mind when my circumstances change. Of course there are things that I aspire to, and these things also change with time, especially once I've managed to achieve them.

In fact, now that I think about it, the only thing that I can expect from myself is that I will change with time. At least I hope I will be dynamic and flexible enough to so. There is nothing worse than a stagnant individual who is seemingly stuck in time, wishing for a repetition of the time gone by.

There we go. This marks the end of an era that is my twenties and the beginning of a new one.  

[This writing falls under the general heading of what people would talk about if they would openly admit to the fact that life is actually hard and requires constant effort on our part to ensure that we are living the best life that we want to. Somewhere along the lines, we fall in love with the idea that life is supposed to be easy because we see life's representation in the media (all various forms of them) as beautiful, and seemingly easy. We got it into our heads that we are princesses living in invisible castles and we started to believe that we are beautiful not because of our efforts and merits but merely out of the power of our beliefs. While this blind faith is useful at times, I believe that at the end of the day, we have to be practical, otherwise, we will be spectators in our own lives, instead of being the perfectly capable drivers that we were born to be.] 

Thursday 20 June 2013

#ThrowbackThursday: how our memories are built

sometimes i think it doesn't hurt to look back so that i can appreciate how far i have come. but reality is that it does hurt to look back. it brings back memories of the things that you thought you have forgotten. the things that you thought were never there to begin with. but those things were there and they were not merely a pigment of your imagination.

growing up i got my fair share of being reminded of remembering the good stuff others have done for you and forgetting all the shit that they have done to you. if i can say something now - i think that is the worst piece of advice ever invented because if you keep on doing so then how the hell can you ever learn from your "mistakes". if others are not nice to you, then please do yourself the favour of doing something about it instead of just letting them do that to you and then forgetting them.

so against my better judgment, i walked the trip down my memory lane and the next thing i knew i was trying to construct pieces of memories. and because i am getting older by the second, i have difficulties trying to remember some things - much to my annoyance. maybe because they were no memorable to begin with. maybe because they were unimportant to begin with. i dont know.

there are good things that i remember and these things make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. and almost always (if not always), these would involve people. and these things make me miss them. these things make me wish they are here with me right now. i am not sure whether this is human conditioning or whether this is a function of one of the worst advices i have ever received - i do remember the good stuff more than the bad stuff.

funny how our memories are built like that.

[#ThrowbackThursday is a term that denotes an act of putting a picture from the past on your social media sites. Here it has been altered to denote an act of putting up a writing that I've done in the past in the blog. I don't really let my writing that I've done in the past posted anywhere because I don't like talking or writing about my past, period. But then I come across this picture on Facebook, courtesy of Flourish in Progress with the following caption: I used to be afraid to write about my past because I made so many poor life choices along the way. Then, I realized that whether I wrote about it or not, it would always be my life, and ignoring it or hiding it would not make it any less true.]

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Ironing



Last night we had the good fortune of hanging out with our close friends. These people we’ve been friends with like forever and can pretty much handle the crazy side of me. 

Somehow the conversation launched into “how to do the laundry” which then touched on the best washing machine and the best brand for household appliances. I kid you not. We are getting old(er).

And naturally, the discussion permeates into who does the ironing.

There were 3 girls and 3 boys in the discussion. Out of these 6 people, 2 boys do the ironing of their own shirts. One out of these 2 boys occasionally does the ironing for his significant other. One out of the 3 girls irons for her significant other, because her significant other asks her for it. To which the other two girls who do not iron say "NOOOOO, don't do it" and to that we got a reply along the lines of "you are corrupting her" from her significant other.

While I am not at liberty disclosing any further detail than the above, what I can disclose is well, things about myself. (Side note, to all of you people who say that this blog is all about me, and in the process infer that I am self-absorbed; you really need to realise the context of your comments. Of course this blog is about me, because it is like the only thing that I can disclose in as much detail as I want to.) I am not going to lie, I hardly do any. It is like seriously, one of the things that deter me from purchasing a certain clothing item is how often I have to iron it. This is one of the most annoying dilemma that I have because 100% cotton items are like awesome, but they are so high maintenance. I figure that in my life time I can only take care of one high maintenance thing (i.e. myself), so my clothes can’t be that high maintenance.

I guess I also got lucky that my boyf does not and has not asked me to iron yet.

So, do I know how to iron?

Answer is not really. I guess if I really have to, then I know that I will work it out and do a decent job (hopefully). It will take a long time though, so if it’s something that has to be done in a rush, I would just pick a different outfit. 

I really do have quite an aversion to ironing. 

Sunday 16 June 2013

You should totally blog this!

The "thing" about blogging is that just like any other thing worth doing in life, it is hard. It is especially hard for people like me because this is not the central of my life. As in, I don't do this full time, and I have a lot of respect for people who manage to do this on the side and do it well. I admit that, as some of you have told me, that I do struggle with this, not only in terms of finding the time to do it, but also in terms of what the blog is going to be about. This lack of direction (for the blog) is annoying to me. Trust me, I actually want this to be more streamlined and dare I say it, more interesting than it is currently, which is mostly a blab of the little bits and pieces that I think about or share with someone during the day and get a "you should totally blog this" squeal.

Uh-huh.

Like totally blogging it right now.

The blog is called belle.reinvention for two reasons. Belle is my name, in case you don't know it by now. Reinvention is a concept that I am fascinated with because I think in our lives, we constantly reinvent ourselves even when we don't consciously realise it. I think, this is the whole point of living. This is because the world as we know it is a ever-changing place, nothing ever stays constant. Therefore in order to survive and thrive in this life, we need to be flexible, you know, adapt to the changes of the world.

So the blog is about me reinventing myself. That sounds really self-absorbed, but there really is no other way of putting it in a few words. Dare I say that I want this blog to be something that I look back to in my old age? Ha! I am already old!! I have already bid good bye to my twenties and now am living in my thirties - and this is going to be the decade that is the best to date!!

In my twenties, I struggle with the question of "what should I do with my life". The key word here is "should". I think a lot of people struggle with this too, we just don't really talk about it. Or we have parents who told us what to do so that we are so occupied with these things that we don't have a chance to pause and think about what it is that we really want to do (which is a different question altogether from the first question).

Oh the things that we "should" ourselves to. For a while I am so allergic to this word that I tune out every time someone says that word - which quite unfortunately, happened quite often. It would drive my dad ballistic if he were in the same room as me, however, thankfully, it is hard to tell when your conversation partner tune out when your conversation is done over a screen. Don't worry, I have stopped doing that because I realise that often times what people really mean is to say this is what I want us to do, and somehow that gets phrased to "we should". Saying "I want us" is so much better than "we should" to my ears, but I get that it may come across as dominating and all the hu-ha, so yeah, "we should" is perhaps the more publicly acceptable option so it stays.

This is not to say that I don't use "should"-s in my life, or rather my speech (gotta love the double negative). This is to say that there are things that I have to read between the lines which are not always clear nor hold true at all times. NOT everyone who says "we should" really means to say "I want us", some of this people really mean "we should" for whatever reason we should do something. Sometimes I get to differentiate this correctly on the spot, other times, I don't and I got it totally wrong, and it is fine, I live, they live, we learn.

So in my thirties, I have decided that I am going to dedicate this decade to doing things that I want to do with my life, even when I am largely finding them out as I go along. What? You know what you want to do with your life? Congratulations! Now leave the rest of us clueless mortals in peace because finding out what we want to do is hard enough without people like you pressuring us to do something with our lives so that we don't end up being another contribution to the wasted potential pool.

KIDDING. None of you people are like this, only the horrible ones are like this. If you feel guilty as you are reading this, then it is you. Ha!

Ok, I am off to the running with the sun, so this blog entry is going to end here abruptly.

Thursday 13 June 2013

On being yourself and on... love

I can't quite remember how I came across Ashley Riordan, just like I can't quite recall how I came across Jemma Wei. I have been thinking a lot about one thing lately, and that thing is this: I've been told that in order to make my writing more powerful, I have to get personal. I have been trying to do that with this blog, I mean, really, how much more personal can I get given that my name is all over this page. That said, I do admit that I have the same thoughts that Ashley wrote about here. You really need to read what Ashley wrote first so that what I write here has some sort of context, which is neatly described by Ashley and I am too lazy to repeat.

On being weird. I have come to accept that weird and its variants are one of the very first adjectives that people use to describe me as their first impression kind of thing. I think this is a good thing because oh well, who wants to be ordinary? I get that in this society we are expected to conform and I do try to, believe me, at least when it is required anyway. And at the same time, we also exist in the same society that celebrates creativity and embraces differences, insofar as it does not make it uncomfortable for a continuously extended period of time. And this has got to be good, no? Because it means we have the freedom to be ourselves, although this freedom, if we choose to take it up, comes with consequences - the consequences of judgement and rejection, and/or the possibility of being remarkable. High risk, high return. Take your pick.

About approximately five years ago, I had the luxury of lunching with a friend called Toby. This event is not something that I talk about a lot or even recall had it not for me coming across a piece that I wrote about that day. That day was memorable because of something that he said, for every person who finds you attractive, there are at least one other person who finds you ugly. Yes, we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this is quite frankly the first time that I come across someone who quantifies. If that statement is true, and if the opinion of the majority goes, then everyone in this planet is very likely to fall under the classification of ugly than beautiful. I don't think this is a bad thing per se, because what really matters, in my opinion, is how you feel about yourself. In fact, I'd like to go as far as thinking it is the only thing that matters, because how you feel about yourself determines how well you sleep at night (and trust me, sleeping well is important, especially as you get older). I mean, why do we place so much emphasis in what other people think about us anyway?

I find this business of being yourself extremely difficult to reconcile. This is because when you've achieved "greatness" or "success" then everyone wants to be your "friend", guaranteed. This is something that I see far too often and this is also something that makes me run away from people in general. Because the very same people cannot understand that I am who I am and if you want to hang out with me, then, oh well, you've got the whole package. You can't cherry pick, and you don't always get the polished, edited version. Are you going to be okay with that? Can you really seriously call me feisty and stubborn on the same breath as telling me that you love me because of those things and then swallow the things I hate about you that I deliver in a blunt, forward mannerism, which is not always solicited, but definitely expected? Because there are times in which I forsake politeness for a possibility of a deeper bond between you and me, given the limited time and space that we do actually have.

And then when that bond happens, I would tell you that I love you. Not because I want to marry you or have sex with you or anything like that; love is so much encompassing than that and at the same time, so widely misinterpreted and misunderstood. Once we bond, of course there is that possibility I would love you, and you would love me, for whatever reason. And yet, how often do we find ourselves suppressing this feeling rather than actually expressing it, let alone celebrating it? Bonding, human connection and ... love are inevitable consequences of life that are supposed to be beautiful and cherished because as they always say, love makes the world goes around. Love makes my world goes around.

I say this because there had been a lot of time in my life whereby I can't describe what I feel as anything other than love and appreciation. In the past few years, I have been lucky to be surrounded by some of the kindest, most empathetic, most generous people I have come across. I learn from these people the important skills in life that we need to have, but there is no one who can really teach us, unless we take the time and the opportunity to genuinely bond with them. I am talking about things along these lines: how to be kind to myself, how to open my heart, how to forgive sincerely, especially forgiving myself for the mistakes I make (and there are plenty), how to ask for forgiveness for the mistakes that I make (even when they are unintentional), how to feel and express empathy and how and when to reach out (or not) during the most painful of conversations. They teach me how to stay true to myself and at the same time give me the time and space to grow into a better, much improved version that is continuously evolving. If this is not love, then I am not sure what this is.

life is a box of macarons
I should know, right, because for the longest time, I have been looking for love. I asked what it means, and I asked that question over and over and over again, until I got sick of asking the same question and not knowing if there is someone, anyone, who can actually answer truthfully. And then I realise that we can only see what we want to see, and the world that we see is what it is because of the lenses that we see it from. These lenses are our personal filters and if not managed accordingly can be something that is so limiting. So. Perhaps I am different in my take on this thing called love, or replace love with anything else, beauty, eating, running; and you know what - this floats my boat, for now. When I say this, what I really mean is, this is something that I am comfortable with and that is it.

It takes a long time for me to be able to come to this conclusion and it takes an equally long time for me to be able to write this. There we go, my first of many attempts to be more personal, at the risk of over-sharing and being terribly quoted out of context. Oh, in the extremely off chance that Toby is actually reading this, I hope he would call me, except that he probably doesn't have my number.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Hello Thirty!

Now that I am no longer in my twenties, I feel somewhat allowed to reflect on my twenties as if it happened like twenty years ago. I know, I have this incredibly terrible sense of time whereby I regard anyone who is younger than me by a year as someone who's so young and someone who's a year older as, oh well, old. But don't get offended ok, I love old people, they have this tendency to be better than their younger counterparts. There is so much wisdom and so much stories that I love to hear, if they are willing to share.

Right. Back to my reflections about my twenties. A lot of people say that your twenties are your time for experiment: you find out what sort of career you want to do, for starters, or if you want to work at all (some of us can afford not to). You find out what sort of friends you'd like to hang out with, what sort of lifestyle you want to maintain, the kind of clothes you want to wear and bla bla bla. When you are in your twenties and you make a mistake or two or more, people are generally forgiving because of the fact that, oh well, you are young. Because of this, by the time you leave this decade, you would've gained the skills to forgive yourself, and hopefully understand the importance of experimenting and embracing new things in order to stay curious and maintain an open mind (or the way I put it, stay relevant).

If I were to point out the most important realisation that I had when I was in my twenties is this: we are here (in this life) only for a short period of time. Everything is temporary, so we make the most of this thing called the present. Because no two moments is exactly the same; you can sit down with the same friends at the same restaurant eating the same food and the moment would be different because well, people change, things change and life goes on.

I am pretty sure I am not the only person who is freaked out of the fact that my time in this planet is limited. But I think, a lot of people forget that their time is limited and because it's easy to think that we are invincible or something along the lines, we live our lives as if we are going to live forever - which is great, except when we are faced with this thing called mortality, or the end of it. And then it's panic at full force, and you're like, yeah, what? It's like my fiftieth birthday and I am all alone?

To be fair, not everyone thinks about mortality and not everyone is confronted with the question of their own mortality. I mean, why else do people have religion if not to insure themselves against the risk of the life after life or that they want a distraction in the form of worrying about the life after life so that they can forget they can live in this life, if they want to. (KIDDING! Gah. There are plenty of other reasons as to why people practise religions.) Anyway, so we live this life as if we are invincible and that nothing can touch us. We focus on the things we think are important, and they are important alright, they are, unless they cease to become important and we find ourselves back to square one, with no one else being there with us because presumably everyone has moved on and we want to move on too, except that we don't know how. Or that we forget how since it has been quite a while since we were in square one. And let's face it, falling down hurts. Getting up is hard. Moving on is a pain and letting go, well, that's bloody fucking difficult.

If you are in your thirties and you still haven't figured out the things that are important to you and how to manage these things (and your desires), then you better start figuring out the things that are important to you, not just in the short run, but also in the long run, so that at least, in the extremely small chance that you really are invincible and you do live forever, then at least you've got this bit sorted out. Just sayin'.

ps. Of course I love you. Happy birthday, you old man.

Sunday 2 June 2013

On lowering sugar consumption: a real life science experiment

I literally did a little dance of joy that the month of May is over. I don't know what's with May, but it just felt so frikkin' long to me. My theory is that the weather is getting colder and it feels painful (to me) that I have to fight this constant feeling of being cold. Plus the month itself is actually long - thirty-one days!

But really it is because I am so looking forward to June that I am glad that it is finally here!! As they've always said, in life, you need something to look forward to (and someone to love and something to do). This is why you need something to look forward to - because it is like so awesome when it's finally here!

I don't exactly enjoy writing posts whereby I am explaining myself, but I find myself talking quite a lot about quitting sugar lately. I am not affiliated with Sarah Wilson. I came across her when my friend talked about the "I Quit Sugar" book. I was intriqued and subsequently started reading Sarah's blog.

I kind of like her blog. I kept coming back. I have never met Sarah, so I don't know her at all. (I say this because it is easy for us to think that we know someone by the mere fact that we read their blogs. I don't believe that this is true. This is because, a blog, is an outcome of exertion of thoughts and communication activities (writing) and viewed this way, it is an art form. Yes, this creation can be  rather personal in nature, but I don't believe that it is a whole and total representation of a person, even when it can appear to be that way. When we see a painting, we do not automatically make inferences about the character of the artist, for example, but we would, depending on the painting, make inferences about the talent of the artist. I quite frankly don't understand why the same standard can't apply to a piece of writing.)

Now that all of that has been said, I personally believe that there is some merits about lowering sugar consumption. Yes, the book might have been labelled "quitting" sugar, but if you read carefully, you would note that the end-goal is not about eliminating all sugar in your diet (in contrast to like, quitting smoking). Yes, you can still a banana (I eat them with ice cream, also known as banana split) or two, or three, but by this stage, I am pretty sure that you would be so sick of it that you probably would throw up. And that's the point really, sugar consumption is a declining marginal utility phenomena, simply because the space that we have for sugar consumption, or even food in general, is limited.

So it makes sense to optimise what we've got. Or I should've said, it makes sense to me that I optimise the space that I have. This is because when I eat, I get full, you know, so I can only eat so much. Yes, I get hungry often, but that's not the point. Believe it or not, being hungry often is annoying. It is like you are perpetually searching for food. Like once you've found it and consume it, you are back on the hunt for your next one. (Okay, exaggeration. But it's pretty close.)

I mean, really, it is just like the time that we have. We all have limited time in this planet. We may not feel that way, but it is the cold hard fact. We may die anytime, so it makes sense that we make the best of what we have now. Kind of like when we spend time, we want it to be somewhat rather productive. So if we spend our time to do something, we want to make sure that it is something that is of net benefit to us - in the form of happiness, or relaxation or perhaps just simply human connection. It is the same thing with eating, and yes, there is a science to it. All the more fun, right, it is like a real life science experiment. You don't have to fiddle around with the beakers and the bunsen burners.

So what does this real life science experiment tell me?

What I found is this: sugar does not stop my hunger, it does not make feel satiated either. This is why I can always eat dessert. This is why I think there is always room for dessert in my stomach. But just because there is room, doesn't mean that I am going to eat dessert. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you have to do it.

I consume sugar, mostly in the form of fruits. These days I love grapes. Other days, apples. Actually, anything that is already cut up for me. (Obviously you don't cut grapes, which is why I often eat them voluntarily.) I still eat ice cream, I don't think I'll ever stop consuming ice cream. Rum n raisin, anyone?

I still drink alcohol, like I did during our date night last night. This morning I ran 10.50km and was wondering what the run would've been like had I not drunk so much alcohol. I also ate cheesecake and ice cream. The combination of dessert and alcohol, to me, pretty much meant the run more painful than it usually is. I felt sluggish and I had to push myself twice as hard rather than if I eat "cleanly".

I keep saying, over and over again, that you need to do things that are suitable for your body and your lifestyle. What I really mean is that if you don't think it is going to work for you, or that it is too hard (in the literal sense of the word), then don't do it because you are setting yourself up for failure (and let's face it, that's shit). Whenever I talk about my running habits, for example, a lot of people always said, I am not a morning person, I don't know how I can wake up early to run. If you are not a morning person, don't force yourself to become one. Just run or do some form of exercise at any time of the day - morning or night, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you actually do it. Timing is irrelevant.

Do what works for you, and what's sustainable in the long run. Being healthy is like a marathon, it is a life-long journey, it is never ending. You can sprint to feel good about these short bursts of progress, but remember that the journey is long and you need to do this for a long time to come. Because the alternative, being unhealthy and God forbid, fat, is so much more unpleasant.