Happy Newtonmas, Happy Hanukkah, a belated Happy Solstice, and overall Season’s Greetings!
This was another low volume year as far as blogging went. The principle reason was work and the epic project we’ve been working on in the last few years, which is entering its most intense period. By this time next year, it won’t be done, but the most intense part should be behind us.
It was also a year where, due to variety of health reasons, I decided it was time to clean up my act and lose weight. I also added breaking a couple of addictions, one to aspartame (most notably via Diet Dr. Pepper) and the other to caffeine. These efforts weren’t conducive to enthusiastic and energetic blogging. Hopefully 2025 will be better on that front.
But 37 posts and 1600 comments still made for a pretty good year of discussions. And of course that’s in addition to the ones we had on your blogs, substacks, and over the various Twitter replacements.
Anyway, as always, I remain grateful for my online friends and the deep and interesting conversations we have, wherever they happen. In a world that seems to increasingly require distractions to stay sane, you make life much more bearable and interesting. Thank you!
Whatever Christmas means to you, I hope you and your friends and family are safe and having a wonderful holiday season. Looking forward to another great year of discussions on consciousness, space, history, quantum mechanics, sci-fi, and whatever else comes up.
Happy Holidays!
SelfAwarePatterns 
Well said Mike. I’m happy to hear that you’re working on your health. Don’t forget that if standard weight loss doesn’t go as well as you’d like, they now have some great drugs for that. Merry Christmas!
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Thanks Eric. I’m not above taking drugs, but for me the hard part has always been keeping the weight off, and I think that has to come from developing the right habits during weight loss. It doesn’t seem like the drug would help. I could of course just stay on the drug, but I prefer to minimize the drugs I live on.
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I fully agree on trying to get more natural. It sounds like too much eating has been a habit thing for you. I may have told you something like this before, but I’ll say it again now that it seems more relevant.
Did the human eat three square meals each day as it was evolving? Of course not! This is just some bullshit that society taught us about how healthy people eat. In reality the human simply evolved to get enough calories in for it to survive. So the body adjusts to how a given person tends to eat regardless of regularity.
What we clearly didn’t evolve with was the ability to eat as much as we like all the time, and this tends to give us bad habits. Then of course we consciously know that fatness is both unhealthy and unattractive and so try to refrain. Then our bodies act like we’re starving them and punish us for this by making us feel more hungry more often. So the question is, how might your body come to trust you? If you can gain your body’s trust, then it should tend not to make you feel so hungry so often.
A great option here I think is to only eat once a day, and the evening tends to be the most convenient time to do that. It should take time and effort for your body to trust you on this, but if you can get into such a pattern it should be difficult to over eat a single time each day. I eat as much as I like every evening without otherwise ever getting hungry. Even as a hedonist I stay close to my recommended 160 pounds. Here you might even get deontological — except in the evening you “Kant” eat. 😀
I’ll add one thing more that I like to do that might help with weight, and is surely healthy, though it does take a time commitment that can be difficult. It’s to work in lots of high quality fruit. There’s a Mexican market that sells me the wonderful Honey Crisp variety of apple for around a buck a pound. I generally rely on these apples year round, as well as standard bananas, with the rest seasonal. My daily portion is something like an apple, orange, grapes, and four bananas, all cut up on a plate for my evening bath. It not only tastes great, but if you can spare the time, ought to get your diet far more natural than otherwise.
Good luck!
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I think you have told me about your eating habits before. And if it works for you, that’s great. In my case, one of my issues is acid reflux. I’m not sure waiting until the end of the day and then eating a huge meal would work well with that.
I had a procedure a few weeks ago, one of those things you’re not allowed to eat or drink anything the day of, but it was at 1pm. I ate and drank well the day before to minimize the effects, but it still felt rough. I imagine your approach would have a lot of advantages on days like that.
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Merry Christmas Mike to you and yours! Glad to hear you’re taking care of yourself, and looking forward to discussions to come.
*
[not yet ready to give up the caffeine and sugar, but may be time to go invest in some barbells …]
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Thanks James!
Yeah, I would not have chosen to give up caffeine, and actually giving up the aspartame was harder. But it is nice not having to worry about getting my fix.
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Merry Christmas to you too Mike. It’s great to have such a thoughtful person to discuss big ideas with. Looking forward to more in years to come.
BTW, giving up caffeine? That would be harder than hard. A very hard problem indeed. Good luck to you on that!
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Thanks Tina! I always look forward to our conversations!
Yeah, caffeine. I had wanted to give up aspartame for a long time and planned to save the caffeine for later, but events forced my hand. I’ll probably do a post on how I did it, since finding techniques out there isn’t easy.
And I don’t plan to give up having the occasional coke or coffee, but only as a special treat.
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It’s probably too late to wish you a Merry Christmas. Which leaves me to wish you a relaxing and restful holiday season.
As for me, I stick to drinking tea, drinking it without sweetening, which revitalises me, whereas I’ve never liked coffee or cola. Nobody is 100% healthy, especially as we get older. Have you ever tried raw carrots as a snack? They fill you up but are low in calories.
Looking forward to many interesting blog posts and stimulating discussions in the new year.
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Thanks Karl. Never too late.
I did drink tea for a while when I was looking for an alternative to coffee. But drinking the amount needed to get the same level of caffeine I was taking in left me feeling bloated. I won’t turn down an occasional cup, but just decided I didn’t want that daily dependence anymore.
I have been drinking some herbal teas lately, just to have something warm in the winter.
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