Pard
Member
It seems to me that most people, or at least Americans, now a days have, what I call, a "multi-vitamin" mentality. What the heck does that mean, you may ask? It's simple, really. It means that in today's culture we are trained to seek as much benefit as we can in exchange for as little commitment as possible. I am slowly becoming convinced that this, in conjunction with another thing which I will be speaking of in another thread, is the route of our downward spiraling culture.
I was at the gym yesterday doing barbell rows (you bend over a barbell and do "upside down chest presses") when a friend of mine walked in, uncommon as I have specifically scheduled my gym time when no one else is around. Now all my friends have surely noticed my "transformation" over the last year from weighing 315 pounds to now coming in at just under 245, however few ever bring it up. Well yesterday when this girl walked in she immediately came over and asked me what I was doing in order to lose so much weight so quickly and to get such good results.
Well, first I finished my set before answering her. I then told her how I totally changed my lifestyle. I went from being an Xbox-junkie to weightlifting-junkie. I changed my eating habits from roughly a 3500 kcal "see"-food diet to a 2500 kcal high fat/high protein diet. I probably got a little two technical for her, but I my point was that it was not "easy" and took a lot of physical and mental strain to pull it off.
After lecturing her for a good ten minutes (and totaling ruining my barbell row routine, so much for 1-minute rests
) Her only response was, "But I want to do something easy to give me quick results." Anyways I told her off at this point and went back to lifting, but she got me thinking.
What she was saying is not only like what everyone looks for now a days, and thus all these fad diets and killer weight-loss pills. It also reminded me of a discussion I was having with my doctor a while ago. We were talking about supplements and he asked me what I was taking for supplements. I told him I took garlic, EVOO, Fish Oil, Fiber, Green tea extract, a few other technical things, protein, and a multi-vitamin. He was nodding at everything I listed so far, and then when I said "multi-vitamin" he frowned and shook his head. Instead he gave me a list of things I needed (some of them I was already taking and hadn't listed to him, like magnesium) to take on a daily basis. He then left me with this golden nugget, "Multi-vitamins are a quick fix to a hard problem. It makes you pee yellow and it gives you a placebo effect, but a multi-vitamin isn't enough for a normal person."
So while I was restarting my barbell row it occurred to me that my multi-vitamin is the same as that girl's quick weight loss, and that is the same as the fad diets and pills. And let's go beyond the health world for a moment, it's the same as politics in this country. People look to the candidate that can "fix" things the quickest and with the least issues. It goes into everything. The thing is that the "quick fix" isn't the "right fix". The "right fix" takes lots of time and effort.
You can't rely on the "quick fix" because it's only a temporary thing. Down the road five, ten, or twenty years it's going to bite you in the butt, and it's going to bite hard! Look at what happened with the housing market. They started giving out ridiculous interest rates and mortgage deals, and sure for a time it really did fix things, but then five years later it sent us into one of the worst economic times in modern history!
Not to get political, but it's why the Republicans consistently lose (not just in elections, I mean in bills and the such too). They, often, have proposals that have a ten year timeline. It all makes sense, but guess what? Ten years down the road is too long for most politicians to wait around. They need fixes that will be apparent in before their next election cycle.
It's corrupting or morals too. Instead of talking to their kids, parents ignore the problems.
Drugs? "It's a 'phase'."
Alcohol? "It's a 'phase'."
Sex? "It's part of 'growing up'."
A bunch of you-know-what excuses is the "quick fix" for the majority of this country's parents.
I was at the gym yesterday doing barbell rows (you bend over a barbell and do "upside down chest presses") when a friend of mine walked in, uncommon as I have specifically scheduled my gym time when no one else is around. Now all my friends have surely noticed my "transformation" over the last year from weighing 315 pounds to now coming in at just under 245, however few ever bring it up. Well yesterday when this girl walked in she immediately came over and asked me what I was doing in order to lose so much weight so quickly and to get such good results.
Well, first I finished my set before answering her. I then told her how I totally changed my lifestyle. I went from being an Xbox-junkie to weightlifting-junkie. I changed my eating habits from roughly a 3500 kcal "see"-food diet to a 2500 kcal high fat/high protein diet. I probably got a little two technical for her, but I my point was that it was not "easy" and took a lot of physical and mental strain to pull it off.
After lecturing her for a good ten minutes (and totaling ruining my barbell row routine, so much for 1-minute rests
) Her only response was, "But I want to do something easy to give me quick results." Anyways I told her off at this point and went back to lifting, but she got me thinking.What she was saying is not only like what everyone looks for now a days, and thus all these fad diets and killer weight-loss pills. It also reminded me of a discussion I was having with my doctor a while ago. We were talking about supplements and he asked me what I was taking for supplements. I told him I took garlic, EVOO, Fish Oil, Fiber, Green tea extract, a few other technical things, protein, and a multi-vitamin. He was nodding at everything I listed so far, and then when I said "multi-vitamin" he frowned and shook his head. Instead he gave me a list of things I needed (some of them I was already taking and hadn't listed to him, like magnesium) to take on a daily basis. He then left me with this golden nugget, "Multi-vitamins are a quick fix to a hard problem. It makes you pee yellow and it gives you a placebo effect, but a multi-vitamin isn't enough for a normal person."
So while I was restarting my barbell row it occurred to me that my multi-vitamin is the same as that girl's quick weight loss, and that is the same as the fad diets and pills. And let's go beyond the health world for a moment, it's the same as politics in this country. People look to the candidate that can "fix" things the quickest and with the least issues. It goes into everything. The thing is that the "quick fix" isn't the "right fix". The "right fix" takes lots of time and effort.
You can't rely on the "quick fix" because it's only a temporary thing. Down the road five, ten, or twenty years it's going to bite you in the butt, and it's going to bite hard! Look at what happened with the housing market. They started giving out ridiculous interest rates and mortgage deals, and sure for a time it really did fix things, but then five years later it sent us into one of the worst economic times in modern history!
Not to get political, but it's why the Republicans consistently lose (not just in elections, I mean in bills and the such too). They, often, have proposals that have a ten year timeline. It all makes sense, but guess what? Ten years down the road is too long for most politicians to wait around. They need fixes that will be apparent in before their next election cycle.
It's corrupting or morals too. Instead of talking to their kids, parents ignore the problems.
Drugs? "It's a 'phase'."
Alcohol? "It's a 'phase'."
Sex? "It's part of 'growing up'."
A bunch of you-know-what excuses is the "quick fix" for the majority of this country's parents.
