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It’s hard starting out – in anything, really. Sometimes, you just don’t know where you want to go. You may have an idea, but that place may be so far away that getting there seems endless, daunting, impossible. Like, if your destination was on the other side of the planet. Which direction do you start walking? Hundreds of paths will get you there – some more work and treacherous than others. How long will it take? What documents, luggage, personal effects will you need for the journey? There are just so many unknowns!
That’s why it’s important to have mentors in life. People who you can relate to, who have done it, who can share what they’ve learned about their journey. The insight they can provide will help you shape your goal and manage the process in which to get there. The key point there, is process. Everything in life is a process. To get from “A” to “Z,” you have to go through the entire alphabet. I know, everyone wants to find ways to skip letters and just get there already, but that’s generally not how it works. Most of the time though (albeit longer than what we’d like), the steps to get there have already been laid out. You just have to follow them one step at a time and believe.
I would scour the internet for people who looked like what I wanted to look like. I’d model what they are doing thinking, “if it worked for them, it has to work for me.” I would read magazine articles, blog posts, books – hell, I’d take advice from strangers. There’s no faster way to make a “bro-friend” than to say to a dude in the gym, “Hey, bro. You look really buff. How’d you do it?” It is a little awkward, however. And they never seem to know what really got them there.
The worst part about combing the internet for advice, though, is the endless opinions you’ll get on pretty much anything and everything – and how often those opinions contradict one another. It can be really aggravating. One person tells you to go left while the other tells you to go right. One will tell you to avoid carbs, while another will say to eat only that. Maybe you decide to go see a “professional.” After all, they should know what to do, right?! Yet, when you meet them you see they either don’t know how to follow their own advice, can’t, or worse yet DO but seem to gain weight faster than you are. Who to trust? Who to listen to?
Then, I stumbled on to Dr. Berg. I remember the first video of his that I watched on YouTube. It was on cravings. I had been struggling with my reduction in calories methodology for losing weight (which I cover in my previous Journey articles), and I simply had to find a way around it before I fell off the wagon. In his video, Solutions to Any and All Cravings (Dr. Berg), Dr. Berg doesn’t just lay out “substitution foods” or lecture you on mantras to repeat in order to get through some withdrawal symptom. Instead, he lays out the threads connected to (literally) “Any and All Cravings.”
It was while watching this video that I realized, food isn’t just food. Calories aren’t all equal. Hunger isn’t just a feeling you go through to make you eat. Your body is smart, and is constantly trying to communicate with you. You just need to learn to listen! Cravings, my friend, are your body’s way of telling you that it is deficient in something. And it ain’t chocolate!
It may very well be, however, a chemical component of that chocolate you are craving. Perhaps your adrenals are burnt out, you’re stressed, or your body is low on serotonin. Instead of digging into a sugar-laden Twix (or two or three), consider taking some Magnesium or L-Tryptophan supplements to give your body what it really needs. Once your body receives the core nutrition it requires – I guarantee you, your cravings will go away!
Dr. Berg was that “Ah Hah!” moment for me. It was that elusive bridge between feelings and science that I was missing. No longer was it about diets and fads and “bro science.” It was about biology. FINALLY! I was getting to the why! Finally, I was uncovering the cause to effect. It was starting to make sense.
- It’s a lack of potassium, not too much sodium that’s bad for you – and how that potassium deficiency leads to high blood pressure.
- You can take all the calcium supplements you want, but without vitamin D it won’t be absorbed properly. It’s likely a vitamin D deficiency leading to your joint pain, cataracts, asthma and allergies, not the effects of “getting old.”
- How an imbalance of Omega 6 fats to Omega 3 fats leads to disease.
- How acid reflux, heartburn, and gerd is a result of the body not having enough acid – not too much of it.
It was all so fascinating! I had a new mission – to really understand the my human body. I started to learn all I could about the body – about cellular structure, different body systems, hormones, organs, processes. How they are all interconnected! I would read everything I could get my hands on and watch every video I could find on the topic. I even considered going back to school for a medical degree, I was having so much fun!
Now, I could make my own decision on which way I needed to go to reach my goals – the confidence behind each decision coming from an understanding of the science beneath it. It wasn’t about blindly following edict anymore. It was about systematically stepping through each day, experimenting with cause and effect, changing single variables and measuring the results. I was my own little science experiment, and (as an engineer) I was loving it!
Click here to continue on Tobias’ journey: Part 4: Fox Guarding the Hen House
