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Hello 2016 — 16 Comments

  1. I’m going to eat more plant based foods and eat less meat. It’s more compassionate to the animals, better for the environment, and healthier too!

  2. I don’t do new years resolutions but politics aside (pretty difficult), I’d just like to do more of my hobbies and go see more movies in the theater.

  3. I have never made a New Year’s resolution in my life.

    I resolve to continue that tradition.

    Oh, crap.

  4. The nice thing about not keeping New Year’s resolutions is that you can continually recycle them.

  5. All the usual stuff. Write more, waste less time, get in better shape — blah blah blah. But really, those are all important things.

    I wish everyone happiness, health and prosperity in this new year!

  6. Eating less sugar (more precisely, eating high glycemic foods less often and in less abundance) has had an incredible impact on me. I got the idea from the New York Times’ Gary Taubes and you can google him and glycemic index to get all the science and information you need on the subject.

    I imagine I eat 1/3 of what I did a few years ago, I’m just not as hungry any more, and I have more energy; it’s even saved me money! I start most days off with eggs in some form, and that keeps me feeling very full until dinner. I often have a few handfuls of nuts in the middle of the day, but I think that’s mostly because my body wants some salt.

    I’m not overly strict about it; I had a bowl of ice cream last night and have had my share of my wife’s Christmas cookies, but the less high glycemic food I eat the better I feel and I like feeling better. I talked to another guy who recently did something similar (his is pure Atkins, but Atkins is very low glycemic) and he noticed something that also happened to me, but I was hesitant to correlate it with my change in diet. Knee pain, joint pain, other bodily aches and pains have greatly diminished. I was starting to struggle with remaining kneeling throughout the sections one kneels in the Catholic mass, but since changing my diet it’s no longer an issue. I hadn’t expected that result. My best guess is maybe it has something to do with retaining less water, or something else insulin may do to fluids within one’s joints?

    Taubes is also very pro fat, or at least not against fatty foods. That always made sense to me. If I eat olives, nuts, cheese, I always felt better than after eating a muffin, or a big roll. A much greater percentage of my current diet is fat and I’m about 15 pounds thinner than I used to be and feel much better. I’ve always enjoyed sports and exercise, so I’ve typically been active throughout my advancing years, but at 52 I don’t recall feeling this way since my mid-30s. I want to drop about 10 more pounds in the next few years. I think carrying less weight in one’s dotage might put off hip and knee issues that seem to hit anyone who lives long enough.

    I should add, I’ve also come to believe diet is very personal. We’ve all evolved from different ancestors and goodness only knows what genes we have. I firmly believe folks living on the Steppes for thousands of years evolved different digestive systems than folks living on a Polynesian island for thousands of years. Try different stuff and go with what helps you feel better.

  7. One more point; eating fewer high glycemic foods resulted in my feeling better and the reduction in bodily aches and pains, but I did not lose weight. I could see folks reading what I wrote and saying, “Of course your knees feel better, Rufus, you’re carrying around 15 fewer pounds.” Actually, unlike Taubes’ claims, a lower glycemic diet did not result in much weight loss for me. It may be because I wasn’t too un-lean before I started. I dropped the 15 pounds by starving myself for a few days (maybe a single bowl of soup), and then eating less for a few more days.

    I should also add, since I’ve been eating far fewer high glycemic foods fasting has become much easier. Many days I only eat one meal because that’s all I want to eat. I don’t get hungry.

  8. Or was your New Year’s resolution to give up New Year’s resolutions?

    That was my implicit New Year’s resolution, as I made none.

    Interesting comments from Rufus T. Firefly.

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