Love Healthy

Love Healthy

Love’s the most important motivator in getting healthy. If you love life, you love health.

Love Yourself

Being a little selfish is best for everyone that you love. 

I was on the path to the big basket of metabolic diseases, fatty-liver woke me up, heart disease concerned me, and sugar caused dementia scared me.  Dead is fine, I accept that I’ll be dead someday, I don’t want to be dementia fog, oblivious for years before dying.  I’m especially concerned about brain health due to the numerous concussions during 15 years of playing football and rugby. My feelings, led to knowledge, then stronger feelings that motivated me to take action.  

My self-image is an analytical action figure – see a problem, think about, and fix it.  I like to help people.  I never want to be a burden to family and friends.  Taking time to focus on my own health, lose weight and get fit, was selfish and the best thing I could do for the people that I care about.  Studies show that exercise makes you happier. 

Only by taking care of yourself can you take care of other people and decrease the risk of being a burden to others.  

Love Your Life

To love your life you have to pay attention to the good things.

Love your life – You have a life worth fighting for.  We’re protectors and problem-solvers we’re geared to see immediate threats and look for problems.  To overcome this focus on the negatives we must pause and think of the positives. 

A gratefulness log will show what an amazing life you have.  Studies show that a gratefulness habit makes you happier.  Pick a time every day to log 5+ things that you’re grateful for.  If you’ve not been keeping a log, start by using a timer and spend fifteen dedicated minutes writing down things that you’re grateful for – people, pets, experiences, things you enjoy.  Then set a daily time, normally when you get up or go to sleep everyday to journal.  Build in a habit pattern.  I log at breakfast instead.  It helps me avoid getting sucked up into the daily news distraction, at least until lunch.

I journal about 4 or 5 days a week and find it to be a remarkable tool to keep me balanced and motivated.

You Love Helping People

When you journal gratefulness you’ll realize how much you enjoy helping other people.  Studies show that helping other people makes you happier.

Healthy Hate

It’s healthy to hate bad things - things that cause disease and death.

Worst .gif Ever

I hate this looped .gif - It’s a disaster that doesn’t stop. Each color change is millions of people becoming obese, getting ill and dying too young. No state is spared. This loop stops in 2010, the problem is worse now. These colors are the obese %, the overweight % is around 30%. Soon 70% of adult Americans will be either overweight or obese.

It’s Our Problem

We need to do what we can to stop this trend, to turn it around.

If you’re heavy, like I was, cutting weight is an amazing experience. You’ll surprise yourself and everyone else. You’ll feel great and establish a positive feedback loop. When you cut 20-30-50-100 lbs. and keep it off, you’ll be a role model - you’ll inspire others that it can be done.

Cutting my own weight was a challenge, helping others is harder. I didn’t know where to start.

I feel like I jumped off a sinking ship and swam to shore, saving my own life. When I get ashore, I’m not relieved, I’m horrified. I look back at the sinking all-you-can-eat cruise ship - slowly drowning its passengers. On the ship are hundreds of family and friends, and millions of other Americans. They’d like to get off the sinking ship, but they don’t know how. I can’t help them alone. The people safe on the shore and the people on the sinking ship need to work together. We’re all on the same team. It’s our problem.

Healthy Hate

Hate is one of the tools that kept your ancestors alive.  Hate increases the judgement part of your brain and makes you alert to threats.   If you use it wisely, it’ll help keep you and your family alive.

We’re hardwired to hate.  What you hate is the mental software.  Let’s do some coding.  It’s not productive to hate yourself or other people.  You can use hate as a tool to fight threats like disease.

• We hate Dementia.  We’ve seen too many great minds fade away.  Researchers believe dementia is connected to added-sugar, aka Type 3 Diabetes. 

• We hate T2 Diabetes.  It runs in my family, probably yours - It’s projected that 40-50% of us will get it. 

• We hate Sleep Apnea.  It makes us tired and unproductive.  Being tired leads to weight gain and low energy – a negative spiral.   

• We hate ED.  It harms intimacy.  

• We hate Liver Disease, Heart Disease, and Cancers - they destroy us.     

The above diseases, and many more, are in the Metabolic Disease basket. 

We love America

Obesity and metabolic diseases are more of a threat to our nation than any terrorists, natural disasters or foreign government. 

• Obesity harms our children. - Childhood obesity keeps escalating.

• Obesity harms our military - Fewer eligible recruits and overweight active duty.

• Obesity harms our economy - Lower productivity and higher healthcare costs. 

Not on Our Team

Not on our team is anything or anyone that’s contributing to the problem. If they’re encouraging unhealthy choices, they’re our opponents.

Coca-Cola and TCU Companies are bad for you and bad for America.  Smart Americans despise fake food companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Hershey’s, Mars, and Nabisco.

By joining a team dedicated to fighting against obesity and fighting for health, fitness and energy, you’ll see the world differently. You’ll no longer accept marketing BS from companies selling terrible TCU “food.” For example, you’ll never again think that it’s good to give kids soda, Gatorade or juice boxes. Team Descartes is designed to help you think about, challenge and defeat these opponents with feelings, knowledge and actions.

Go Team!

Feelings and Habits

Beyond Experts

Close,covey is.

right, not quite.

This model implies that Knowledge is the most important part of Knowledge-Desire-Skills loop to create good habits. So why do people continue bad habits? Not robots, we are.

7 Habits Model - super complicated Consultaneese approach…

“Synergize?”

In Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he has a diagram of three circles – to represent that the combination of Knowledge, Skills and Desire creates new effective habits.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t do much with this model.  It’s introduced on pages 47 and 48 and then only mentions it once more in the book.  His “7 Habits Model” is complex - written by a business consultant - and tries to motivate people with logic and knowledge. You desire something, now follow these steps to make it happen.

Knowledge and skills are conquered everyday by Feelings. You can’t vanquish a bad habits that you love. Hacked feelings make us continue bad habits.  Our bad habits dampen the energy needed for good habits.

He’s not alone in missing the importance of feelings - love and hate.

• Motivation experts focus on getting you excited to make changes.  “You can do it! Let’s go! Charge!”

• Health experts focus on increasing Knowledge.  “Another study published on how addiction and overeating are bad…”

• Habit experts focus on Actions.  “If you do these 59 things every morning before 5 am, you’ll…” 

Feelings, Knowledge and Actions - X, Y, and Z of Habits.

Feelings Dominate habits

X - Feelings, Y - Knowledge, Z - Actions

When it comes to good habits and bad habits:

Knowledge – It’s there if you want it.  The books and studies available to you are immense. The internet and Amazon are the knowledge equivalent of a 5,000-acre library full of leather-bound books on rich mahogany shelves.  The books are gathering dust, useless without your desire to learn and apply knowledge.  Alone, without feelings, Knowledge isn’t worth much.  We generally know which habits are “good” and “bad” - yet bad habits carry on, and good ones aren’t picked up.

Skills are tools that are rusting in the garage, useless unless you have the desire to pick them up and take Actions. Actions don’t lead.  Actions follow feelings.

Feelings are everything.  Control your feelings and you can control your habits.  How you feel about something – will determine what knowledge you pursue and how you view new information.  Feelings will enable you to take actions – try new things, add skills, and make changes - for better habits. 

Change your feelings first and then use feelings, knowledge and actions to change habits. 

Example: Bubba’s and Daycart’s feelings about Doritos and Apples

Bubba’s Habit Pattern for a TCU Food – Bag of Doritos:

• Feelings – He loves that crunch, flavor boom, he wants them-now.

• Knowledge - They Taste amazing and their Cheap. He knows how to buy bags of them. 

• Action – He buys them.  He eats them - sometimes a whole bag when watching TV, surfing the web, or playing a game.

Daycart’s Habit Pattern for a TCU Food – Bag of Doritos:

• Feelings – He dislikes poor health and deception. He won’t be tricked by fake flavors and happy ads.

• Knowledge – Corporate food scientists have designed a Tasty flavor he likes (a hack) while using the Cheapest legal ingredients.  It’s Unhealthy processed food.

• Action – He doesn’t buy them.  He doesn’t eat them.

Bubba’s Habit Pattern for a Healthy Food – an Apple:

• Knowledge – He thinks they taste ok. Doesn’t think they are fun or exciting.  He doesn’t like that they go bad.  He’ll have to wash it, dry it and then slice it up because he doesn’t want to risk eating a brown spot or a bug. 

• Feelings – He dislikes the prep required.  He prefers a fun exciting instant gratification party in a bag.

• Action – More Doritos.

 Daycart’s Habit Pattern for a healthy Food – an Apple:

• Knowledge – He knows that the sweet taste is nature’s way to get animals to eat fruit, spread seeds. While apples have been selected over time for bigger size and sweeter taste, they retain micro nutrients and fiber. 

• Feelings – He loves that he can eat apples as a healthy sweet treat. 

• Action – He eats one every day at the end of his lunch.

The Circle of Love and Hate

The Circle of Love and Hate

By Patrick “Patch” Foran – Love-Healthy-Hate.com

The Circle of Love and Hate

• The opposite of passionate love and passionate hate is indifference.

• The opposite of strong love is mild dislike.  The opposite of strong hate is mild like.

• Love and hate are intense, passionate feelings that consume attention.  Who a person is can be defined by what they do and what they care about. 

• At extreme love and hate, a person can go back and forth between them.

  • In Rom-Coms people that hate each other fall in love.

  • In real life people that love each other fall in hate, become ex’s.  

• When we don’t care at all about something it’s “iced.”

By Patrick “Patch” Foran – Love-Healthy-Hate.com

Use the Circle of Love and Hate to Eliminate a Bad Habit

• Step 1. Identify bad habits you want to eliminate.

• Step 2. Pick one bad habit to eliminate. 

• You’re now its opponent.  You’re on the other team. Focus negative attention on your opponent – judge it, look for flaws. 

• Step 3. Love the better health and life you’ll have once you get rid of it.

• Step 4. “Go over the Top” - Acquire knowledge that’ll make you hate the habit and keep feelings (motivation) high.

• Step 5. Take actions (skills) to eliminate the habit you hate.

• Step 6. Ignore it. Let time and neglect lower your intensity, put it on ice.  

Note – Don’t Yo-Yo bad habits you love by trying to cut back, only like them.  When you cut it back, it will grow back to love levels.

By Patrick “Patch” Foran – Love-Healthy-Hate.com

Use the Circle of Love and Hate to Acquire a Good Habit

• Step 1. Identify good habits you want to acquire. 

• Step 2. Pick one good habit to acquire that’s Iced. You’re it’s champion.  You’re on the it’s team.  It’s now who you are.

• Step 3. Love the better health and life you’ll get from the good habit.

• Step 4. Acquire knowledge to make you like the habit and get to the Flirting Phase. Experiment in the Flirting Phase – don’t buy a $2K bike, burrow one. Failure is OK.

• Step 5. Use motivation and skills to increase frequency, build relationship.  Love is needed to sustain a healthy habit.  You need only like the habit - get wedded to, love, the results.  It’s easiest to sustain when you love the activity and results. 

• Fight Fading by Fluxing – make changes to keep it interesting.

The Creation of the Circle of Love and Hate

The Love - Hate Switch

In my mind, I quit soda - by flipping a switch in my brain from Love (ON) to Hate (OFF). I was on the soda team and then I was on the anti-soda team. This binary model was disturbed when I learned that both philosophy and science agree that the opposite of Love and Hate is not each other, its indifference.

In the study Neural Correlates of Hate, Semir Zeki and John Paul Romaya, October 29, 2008, brain scans showed that Love and Hate shared two out of three brain regions. They share areas of intense feelings. Love activates the brain region that increases acceptance, lowers judgement - common wisdom that “love is blind” was affirmed. Hate activates the area of the brain for disgust, judgement and prediction. When we hate something we see everything that it’s done and going to do as wrong.

We see this divide everyday in politics, people seeing two movies on the same screen. If President Trump sent out a tweet that said “I like puppies.” His supporters would think that it was light, funny and cute. His detractors would say he is either frivolous, that he likes to eat puppies, or insulting leaders of Asian countries where dog-eating is still practiced. The same high positive and negative reactions happened to President Obama. Unfortunately, our media needs to keep people in a constant state of tension in order to keep ratings high. Hating Obama or Trump is pointless and hurts your mental health and friendships, it’s like taking a drug that makes you yell at walls during parties - driving yourself nuts while pissing off friends. A few months of hating TCU food companies might seem irrational, but you’ll likely be healthier for the rest of your life.

http://mysteriouslights.blogspot.com/2011/02/opposite-of-love.html

The Triangle of Hate, Love and Indifference

After reading the study I searched online for a visual model of love-hate-indifference. I found a triangle by the creator of the blog - Mysterious Lights. The triangle model is a good visualization of hate-love-indifference being opposites on different dimensions - Intensity of feeling and like-dislike. The triangle model isn’t good for showing changes in feelings and habits. I wanted the triangle model to be 3-D and have the love and hate curl in together so that they are almost touching. When people have intense feelings, they rarely flip to indifference. It takes time to settle down to indifference. Love - hate flips do happen.

In movies, Rom-Com characters frequently go from Hate to Love. In real life, Love to Hate seems more common - many people spit bile whenever they mention their ex-, a person you assume they once loved.

Because I wanted a love and hate to come together, I looked for a love-hate circle and couldn’t find one. So I began to make one.

The Circle of Love and Hate

Creating the circle gave me a lot to think about. The circle also gave me insights into feelings and their impacts.

I created a circle with parallel scales from 1-10 for intensity of feelings. Blue at the bottom to represent, indifference, coldness, the opposite of passion. Red as you go up for both love and hate to represent red love hearts and angry hate. A slight gap at the top to separate love and hate.

Here are some insights from making and using the circle.

• The least likely change in feelings is across the circle to the opposite feeling. I’ts not likely that you go from hating something a little bit (H6) to liking it a lot (L4). If you hate something a little bit (H6), you are more likely to hate it more (H9) or calm down and just dislike it (D3).

• It is a battleground where love and hate come together. Going over the top happens when a person flips their view of something. I’ve seen this happen in politics, hobbies, relationships and habits.

• We define ourselves by what we do and what we care about. She’s a smoker. He’s a drinker. They protest clinics. They vote this way. He’s an ex-drinker.

• Because, there is more that we don’t do, then do. We don’t normally define ourselves by what we rarely or never do and don’t care about. He’s a once a year bowler. She’s never golfed. They don’t fish. They just never registered to vote.

• The emptiest quadrant should be hate. It takes energy to oppose something and it’s often futile - like pressing against a cement wall. Most things we hate, drift down over time to dislike as we give them less thought.

• The fullest area is “iced,” L2 to D2. It’s also the hardest to list things for, because by definition you don’t give them much thought.

• Our frequency of a habit that is unhealthy and addictive or healthy and scheduled can give the impression that we love it (L9), when in reality our true feelings are lower (L6)

• When battling an addiction its not possible to get from Love (heavy usage) to Dislike (no usage, little thought) by slow reduction and eventual indifference. To quit an addiction you have to go over the top - you’ve got to hate it - or at least hate what it does to you. Give it up, be its opposition, then as it is no longer in your life, your feelings will decline.

• When battling a bad habit - Love8 for ice cream every night - it’s more likely for you to get to a Like2 - ice cream once a month - by going over the top, focus on the negatives, and eliminating it all together for a period of time, rather than trying to cut back. You might end up in D2 or L2, both of which are healthier than L8. When you love something and try to reduce consumption to low like levels, consumption will yo-yo up and down and you’ll feel like a failure.

• When trying to build a good habit, like a type of exercise, it’s also best to go clockwise. There’s little possibility of taking something you hate doing and doing it at love levels. Look to increase activities that you like and experiment with types of exercise that are iced.

Hate keeps me warm

After “going over the top” on soda from Love to Hate I’ve stayed in the hate quadrant because I want to help other people. I’m a person who’s actively opposed to added sugar, added sweeteners, and most processed foods. I need to remain alert to the actions of these opponents - the bad people who are hurting America. After you go over the top and dump many TCU foods, I expect your fervor to decline. You’ll still be healthier as you end up disliking some things forever and liking others enough to have them only on occasions.