It is not easy: don't eat too much, try to eat healthy foods, which are often not the ones that immediately appeal. The ones that immediately appeal keep right on appealing, even while I am actually eating healthy foods.
It is not easy: doubting the naysayers. They sound right, they sound helpful: watch out!!!!!! Things are dangerous and they are getting worse!!!!! Keep your worrying cap on and maybe, with terror and tears, you MIGHT survive.
Think back: things used to be so sweet, didn't they? Girls were girls and men were men. But now!
When I think about eating well, keeping up-to-date, and remembering, I keep meeting myself. C'est moi! I am not actually my enemy but I do seem to have components that direct me in directions that I can out-do, if I remember what I am doing. I finished "The Hungry Brain" by Stephen Guyenet and now we are reading "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling. Both blame my own beloved ancestors, even the ones I never met, for developing bodies and internal systems and circuitry that may well have been optimal for the time. However, times have changed.
My great, great grandfather was probably a fine man but he never used Microsoft Office, iOs or Android products. He never got his driver's license. He didn't know Howdy Doody or Captain Marvel. A couple more "greats" back, and we are in Europe. No engines, no motors, poor sanitation, definite danger of starvation, keep your eyes open for dangers.
It is not a bad idea even today to be cautious, but lots has changed in the last couple of centuries. Even in the last couple of decades. Maybe it is not unusual, but I seem to have my head set to about 1980. The time since I turned 40 has gone by in a flash: smoothly, pleasantly, seemingly in one undifferentiated chuck.
But Guyenet emphasizes that many of my drives are tuned to former times and different conditions. So, how about some chocolate? Wasn't life on Gordon Road great? Rosling emphasizes that my own tendencies of mind and the inaccuracies of memory point me toward thinking things are going downhill when they aren't. But restraining myself is not all that new. I had plenty of experiences growing up that called for self-control, consideration of others, restraining myself, taking an extra moment to ask what was the best thing to do.
