My “next” post, err uhm this post, was supposed to be about my current motivation for losing weight. I’ll get to that later. I’m irritated today. I’m irritated by the plethora of misleading, erroneous, and sometimes harmful information I keep reading online. Some of this disinformation is being passed around by self proclaimed experts. Of which I am one. I am an expert at cutting through the bullshit. It’s the Scorpio in me.
I was going to write up an “about this blog” sort of page. This will be a rough, probably too bitchy first draft. In case you missed it, the title of this blog is “Deconstructing the Meme”.
First, my definitions:
deconstructing: Breaking down, taking apart, getting to the core.
meme: Ideas spread from one person to another; commonly held beliefs, or bullshit that many accept as fact.
Here are some “official” definitions. I particularly like the one for meme:
de·con·struct (dē’kən-strŭkt’) tr.v. de·con·struct·ed, de·con·struct·ing, de·con·structs
1. To break down into components; dismantle.
2. To write about or analyze (a literary text, for example), following the tenets of deconstruction.
meme philosophy
/meem/ [By analogy with “gene”] Richard Dawkins’s term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.
The term is used especially in the phrase “meme complex” denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, “meme” is often misused to mean “meme complex”.
Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
OK. Now for the rant…..
Over the past two days I’ve seen discussions online regarding weight, diet, nutrition, and fitness that are infected by parasitic, harmful memes, i.e. bullshit).
First there was a question asked on a fitness forum about whether or not the person should do yoga more than once a week. The poster was concerned by the fact that after three weeks, which means three sessions, they could not get into some of the asanas.
Of course, as is far too typical, a yoga hater immediately jumped in with a snide comment all but outright stating that the question was stupid. They told poster to do something more useful - without stating what that more useful thing might be, much less why yoga was not a good idea.
The “expert” stated, “trust me, I do this for a living”, and then proceeded later in the thread to tell the poster to buy a book on weight training. I own that particular book and it is a good one. However, the program in the book does not address flexibility training aside from a few pre-workout stretches and a later heads up to yoga’s potential benefits.
The poster wasn’t asking about weight training, they were asking about flexibility! And, anyone who “does this for a living” should know that full range of motion, flexibility that is, is required for safe, effective weight training.
The funny thing was, some of the workouts in the recommended book “The New Rules of Lifting for Women”, include the yoga asanas cobra and plank. And, it’s not the first popular workout to include yoga asanas. They just don’t call it yoga. And it’s a good thing they don’t call it that because yoga is more than asanas, or the poses.
What irritated me was that the so called “expert” was snide and put the questioner on the defensive. For what reason? Because they asked about yoga specifically? And how much does the “professional” actually know about yoga other than it’s for girls who are afraid to get “bulky” and gay men?
All the trainer succeeded in doing was making the poster feel stupid. He does that for a living? Good for him. I hear karma’s a bitch.
There is a large contention of bodybuilder/strength trainer yoga haters. Yes, there are certainly risks involved in yoga, especially these days when you can get a mail order cert no better than the online certs many Golds Gym trainers have. From what I’ve seen, none of these yoga haters are aware of how a safe yoga practice can enhance the effectiveness and safety of a weight training program. More on that in another post on my list of things to do!
Then there was another discussion that Billy was a part of where the people involved in the discussion were basically disciples of the blog author and strict followers of the very low carb lifestyle craze. The discussion was a perfect example of a meme. Some, not all, people, get this idea into their head, find a diet change or lifestyle change that worked for them and assume because that one thing worked it is the one and only gospel truth for all; fact. Anyone who does not follow scripture, in this case Billy, is a heretic doomed to failure. People become blinded by their beliefs.
In that particular discussion, many were basically giving up personal power and self control; believing that it’s carbs that make them eat too much and/or gain weight. Carbs and carbs alone. Yes, too many carbs can do that to some degree or not, depending on your particular metabolism. It’s an individual thing. True for some. Untrue for others. That’s just the way life is.
Yet, according the some of those folks, making the personal choice of whether or not to eat carbs plays no role in weight loss maintenance - at least according to low carb scripture anyway. They are seemingly giving all their personal power and ability choose what to eat over to carbs and maybe food marketers.
Uhm, excuse me but please do not pass the Kool-aid, even if it is sugar free and will earn me a free pass to hang out with the 72 virgins.
And then there was this.
I don’t have the steam left to type all that is wrong with the discussion in that thread. It was in the top results of a Google search for “why do I keep gaining back weight”. There is just too much in that thread to pick apart. The kicker was the last person who said:
“A lot of the advice being given here is good, but a lot of it is, really, really bad. In particular, the line of thinking which says to “exercise, and eat when you are hungry” almost certainly will not work for you. Fortunately, I can tell you why it won’t work and what you can do to end your cycle.
This is how your body works (you may already know this part, so I apologize if this basic explanation is unnecessary for you): when you take in more calories than you burn over time, you gain weight. When you burn more calories than you take in, you lose weight. One pound of fat is equivalent to 2500 calories, so if you take in 2500 calories more than you burn over the course of a week, you will gain precisely one poind of weight.”
Uhm, not quite. It’s actually 3500 calories in a pound, but eh who’s counting? It only gets worse from there. I guess I should be laughing but jeez, who knows how many people will read that top Google result and try to make healthy lifestyle choices based on it?
And that, in a nutshell, is my issue today. People are not being helped. People are making efforts to get themselves healthy and you’ve got idiots all over the place spewing bullshit and that bullshit gets #6 in a Google search. I mean even my own doctor spewed bullshit at me. She didn’t do it intentionally. She did it because there is this meme that has infected far too many of us. The meme is that fat people just eat too much.
I was fat. I ate too many calories and yes, that’s how I got fat no doubt. Eating too many calories was NOT the reason I couldn’t lose the weight. In fact, I was eating too few. My weight loss stalled and I was told by a medical doctor to eat less, which in the end made it even more difficult for me to lose weight. She didn’t even believe me when I told her how much I worked out - 90 minutes a day at the time. She just told me to eat less.
So, my aim here in this blog, is to expose many commonly held ideas for what they are; bullshit.
