Insights

Come to Your Senses – Non sequitur

Recently my wife and I were staying in an Airbnb. The breakfast provided was a package of blueberry muffins and a carafe of orange juice. I could talk about how this was representative of a breakfast, but I have a better story.

After a while, I said to my wife, “I think I will have one of those muffins.”

She gave an endearing look and said, “Really?” “Whatever?”

I will sometimes challenge my body on these types of trips or as I say, “Go to the festival.” Her response led me to ponder my decision. Before slamming the miniature muffin or two, I looked at the ingredient list. I wasn’t surprised that it was large, but what caught my attention was how much larger the ingredient list was than the muffin itself.

Additionally, the first ingredient was sugar and blueberries were well past 10th on the list. Shouldn’t they be called sugar muffins with a little blueberry?

It was curious to see that it contains less than 2% of food starch-modified. What is that?! And what does modified mean?

It reported containing less than 2% mono and diglycerides. However, later down the list it shows the same two ingredients without any quantification. I am not sure why you would want any? Is less than 2 % supposed to reassure you?

It showed three different things that were artificial, including blueberry flavor. Why would you need artificial blueberry flavor if you had blueberries?

I am sure many of you could provide additional interesting observations and concerns and I hope you see my fascination.

I was reminded of what a colleague once said about a box of sugar-based cereal, “you would be better off eating the box.”

And, in this case you might be better off eating the muffin wrapper.

If you ate the wrapper, you might have slight indigestion and be prompted to fast for a few additional hours or longer. But no long-term consequences. And you would not want to do it again.

If you ate the muffin, you would likely experience approximately five known undesirable physiologic consequences. Additional unknown consequences are likely given the unknown ingredients!

Low energy would be immediate and most concerning, it would stimulate you to want more of the same types of large ingredient list foods. And you would want to eat them again even if you don’t eat them ordinarily.

I am not saying eating this muffin or things like it is a death sentence. Depending on your current resiliency state, the lasting ramifications could vary. If your visceral fat number is 5 or body fat percentage is 15 for men and 17 for women, no big deal. If your visceral fat number is 10 or above, body fat percentage is 20 for men and 25 for women and above, it would keep tipping the scale of your inflammation. Inflammation is linked to most disease and pain states.

What I am saying is there are so many of these moments and situations in our lives that are non-sequitur. It just doesn’t follow logic that a list of ingredients for a blueberry muffin should be bigger than the blueberry muffin. Keeping your eyes, ears and other senses open for these illogical moments and things is key to closing the gap on what you know and what you do. Staying in discovery mode is essential.

The message is simple and of course, hard. As we state in most of our work with clients and The Power of Doing What Matters, do these good things and nothing else. Eat real, colorful food and nothing else. The nothing else is the hard part. And every person’s nothing else is different based on where they stand.

Lastly, doing what matters and nothing else for a period of time is what improves your ability to “go to the festival” more often and have little to no effect on your resilience.

I did not eat the muffin or drink the orange juice. As is often the case, I was grateful for my wife who caused me to Pause and think logically. I did later “go to the festival” and eat a coffee ice cream made of milk, eggs, sugar, and espresso coffee. The ingredient list made sense.

Reach for the stars,

Clayton Skaggs

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