Happily Ever After?

To live happily ever after is what life is all about, isn't it? But I have to wonder.  Is that true of all life?  Or, is it only true for us homo sapiens? Or, is it even a reasonable expectation? And then there is the question of who and more importantly what defines happily ever after. Of course, it is just us who can think in this manner. 

What is happily ever after for an impala, for example, when it worries all the time about the leopard, or a pride of hungry lions, lurking among the tall grasses. It is likewise not even always a happy moment for a cheetah after a heart pounding, lung-exploding chase to catch a gazelle because a band of marauding laughing hyenas or a platoon of wild dogs are within a scent away of the fresh kill. A lion king is never assured of holding on to the pride that he fought so hard to get and keep.  There is always one young strong unattached male waiting to barge in, or worse, two young brothers in search of a pride of lionesses to wrestle away from an aging male.  Life, for these and many other animals, does not have any, not even a tiny bit, of potential for "happily-ever-aftering", to quote King Arthur in the Broadway musical, "Camelot".  Animals don't retire to pursue a hobby or do volunteer work. They merely expire, often abruptly, without ceremony, speeches or the obligatory retirement cake.

The zoo is the only place where a wild animal is guaranteed safe space. But clearly, it may be a sanctuary, but we know, the animals know, that that is not living happily ever after, either.

But then, in our world, the one we've taken millennia to develop into a civilized society, does happily ever after really exist? We need to be honest about answering this question. Please read the quote below.

"I've often wondered what it would be like to win the lottery and suddenly have more money than I could ever reasonably spend. I won't win because I don't play, but of course most people who play don't win, either."

----------------------- William von Hippel  (Discover Magazine, March 2019)

Mr. von Hippel wondered further, talking about those who actually won the lottery, "They may be driving a nicer car, but their mind is focused on the fact that they're still sitting in traffic."

Now, now Mr. von Hippel. Would you rather be  sitting in traffic in an eleven year old Chevy, in dire need of a tune up with an air conditioner that barely works or  in a Bentley, on an ergonomically calibrated supple leather seat, breathing HEPA filtered air-conditioned air, listening to jazz over 16 Dolby-tuned surround speakers driven by a 200 watt amplifier? Which would you rather be in?

Let's back up for a minute. Is "happily ever after" really real?  More properly, is it defined as a destination, a final place, the ultimate physical state, or is it a state of mind? Or, none of these.

Factual or not, Alexander the Great, at age 33, supposedly wept after realizing he ran out of places to conquer.  There is no record of it  anywhere, attribution from Plutarch the Historian notwithstanding, nor was it credibly fact-checked by film script writers when Hans Gruber  said it in the 1988 movie, "Die Hard". Alexander died at 34. We don't know how old exactly but he died young.  That much is true.

This question, many would consider as mere musing, is actually far from trivial. Seriously, what is everyone's ultimate motivation in life?  Job interviewers almost always ask the question, "Where do you see yourself five years from now, ten years from now?" Hardly, not even once, I think, that an applicant is asked, "How do you see yourself at retirement?" Or, "What do you like to do when you retire?"  I think that is more insightful than a 5 or 10 year plan. Maybe. But that's not a bad thing to ask a future employee. It could be put into the mix for a different window into the applicant's outlook. 

Back to the original query. Sociologists, psychologists, HR experts, your priest, minister, or rabbi, more importantly your significant other, will likely disburse differing opinions. We'll stay clear of those. But where else can we turn?

Von Hippel did look into that. He writes for Discover magazine, so he viewed it from the context of the natural sciences, more specifically, how this aspiration for a happy ending is driven by evolutionary impulses, or by natural selection. 

In the article was a German adage, "Anticipated joy is the greatest joy". Let that sink in for a minute.  

Every parent in the Western and every Christian world knows just how much energy their kids put out in anticipation of Christmas morning. Hanukkah, while not at all similar to the Christian tradition, is accompanied by anticipation as well, perhaps not to the same degree but it too had changed over time as to have digressed from its original meaning. Anticipated joy is further enhanced by the Christmas countdown, including knocking off time from celebrating Thanksgiving to give way to Black Friday that now even begins on Thursday night. But what happens when all the gift wrappers are all strewn over the floor, and all the anticipation quelled? I'll let the reader be the judge.

Sandra Hayes won the Missouri lottery that was 224 million dollars in 2006. This is what she said about the very people she loved whom she described as , "turning into vampires, trying to suck the life out of me". Winning obviously did not buy her happiness. And, I'm sure the reader has heard or read about other similar unfortunate anti-happily-after-ever outcome.

The clamor for happiness is universal. The emotion is real. Von Hippel wrote that the evolution of species is all about being re-productively successful. Propagation of the species takes precedence over everything else, to the exclusion of the individual's real or perceived happiness. Take this with a grain of salt, if you like, but it is just another rationale for why the aspiration for happiness is a universal instinct, or that it has a natural driver rooted in our genes. "Happiness is a tool that evolution uses to incentivize us to do what is in our genes' best interest".  In fact, he said that lasting happiness would actually get "evolution to lose one of its ways to motivate us". A rather cold assessment but let's move on.


Amazon knows about "anticipated joy". Next time try to remember and note the stages of your state of mind from the moment of  "researching", and narrowing down your choices until you get to click that "Place your order button".  You not only get the confirmation almost immediately but Amazon knows to get you on that high level by enabling you to "track your order".  This lengthens and sustains that part of your brain where "anticipated joy" resides. It continues until that package arrives. Then what? You're ready for the next moment of "anticipated joy" that Amazon is counting on.  Now, this is not true of everyone, for sure. But do remember this. There is something about "Anticipated joy is the greatest joy".  

Did the founding fathers knew it then when  the Declaration of Independence was conceived? Take the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It is still being debated today as to the meaning of "pursuit of happiness". Many claim that it means to chase after, others say it has more to do with the attainment of it as a goal at the end, while others take the idea of practicing happiness as part of everyday life as opposed to going after it like some kind of distinct material entity, such as a prized trophy rather than a state of mind.  Whatever the case, or wherever the reader stands, happiness was conceived by the founding fathers as one of equal value with life itself and liberty.

We know, of course, that happiness is not something that can be bottled or packaged. It is as different as the beholder may decide what it actually is. Sandra Hayes, the lottery winner, clearly realized it cannot be purchased. In fact, money or the acquisition of a sudden windfall made happiness an impossibility. In her case, she knew she was a lot happier before than after winning the lottery. 

Here is something to consider. A two dollar lottery ticket is the cheapest form of entertainment money can buy. You see, until the numbers are drawn and just before you throw away the now useless non-winning number you were filled with anticipated joy.  Make note though that the minute you spend a lot of money on lottery tickets, such as those who spend a great portion of their weekly check for the Power Ball at its peak, no longer get the anticipated joy. It is trepidation instead - the anticipated sorrow that a bunch of tickets worth a bunch of money will plummet in value, negatively worse than Venezuela's Bolivar (at an inflation rate of 1,698,488% 2018 est.). So now we know entertainment can be bought cheaply with two dollars. Ironically, unlike a front row seat at a concert, a bunch of money on lottery tickets buy nothing but a nerve wracking, woeful episode. Buy it cheap, if you must, because two dollars might be worth the anticipated joy.  However, one should realize that it is money thrown to the wind, 99.999% of the time.

In my woodworking I notice that I am happiest in the midst of doing the project.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the finished product but it is always while working on it that gives me most joy. And time seems to flow more quickly in the midst of working on a project. The quality of joy in the process seems to evoke more tingling sensations than during the moments spent viewing the finished work. We all know that sitting idly makes time move like molasses; working on something makes the minutes and hours go in haste. 

Therefore, happiness must be a derivative of the process, not some kind of destination to go after. It is not a physical entity but perhaps one that is dimensionless, without form but one that only an individual may recognize. It cannot be dictated or forced onto anyone by anybody. It could actually be a regimen that can be practiced. It could be a means and an end in and of itself, outwardly visible only through the individual. It is practiced and can be measured in doses of optimism or one defined by a generally positive outlook. Optimism is one of anticipated joy, pessimism is one of dreadful expectation. If one must engage in the pursuit of happiness, take optimism along. Unharness any pessimism and leave it behind before it drags everything the other way.  The wrong way.

With that, science or not, I think happiness can indeed be practiced. And so we can conceivably make it a form of exercise, and with practice we could get better at it.  As with any kind of exercise, it must be done with regularity.  I'm just talking here because obviously happiness is immeasurable but are we not able to see it brightly when we see someone so ebulliently exuding with it?  Yes, an individual will feel it, we see it, but happiness' greatest feat is to be different and varied in form and intensity, and it always depends upon the individual. Most of all, happiness is one we will have to choose to have on our own but it cannot be forced on us by anybody or by you on others. However, mark this. The other feat happiness is capable of doing is that it could be infectious and this is the only instance where one may choose to be a carrier and the infection you carry is sought rather than avoided.

So, be a carrier, or if you see someone who is, get close and decide to be infected.

We Just Don't Know ... We Just Can't Know

Consider this. You were at the cashier's check out register. You noted immediately from the moment you laid the items down on the conveyor that it was not going to be a friendly encounter. The cashier didn't make eye contact, and she was almost manhandling the merchandise. You try to make small talk. It's an effort that usually works because that's the least anyone can do to lighten someone's day who obviously had been on her feet all day. No response of any kind. If anything her face looked even more dour. When she handed your receipt she didn't even look at you. No "have a nice day"; instead, you were dismissed as if you were an inconvenience. You walked back to your car wondering, "Was it me or that was the worst service experience ever?"  You wanted to forget the whole thing but then ...

You wonder. You just had to. She was having a bad day, obviously. Did she just break up with her boyfriend? Was the store manager particularly harsh on her today? Or, was she a single mother worrying about her three year old at the day care because the kid had a bit of sniffles and clearly did not want to be left there.  You just knew there had to be many reasons why the cashier behaved the way she did. But you don't know. You just can't know, could you?
  

Forget the mysteries of the universe. You might have a crack at understanding the "inverted yield curve" in the world of finance or you had recently acquired a working knowledge of general astronomy but finding out the answer to what was bothering that cashier is something you can't know. Well, you could have tried if you went back there and talked to her. But you will not. You should not. And even if you did, you can never be too certain she will tell you the truth.  So, you just have to accept that it is another unknowable mystery.

Now, on your drive home you were stopped at an intersection. Waiting for the red light to turn, you looked to your right. Under the awning of a bus stop stood another youngish woman with a little girl next to her. The girl was looking up at the one whom you assumed was her mother. The woman was crying uncontrollably, shoulders shuddering. There was a couple next to them who were quite oblivious to the woman and the little girl. The couple were giggling over whatever it was on the guy's smart phone.  The light turned, instinctively you took your foot off the brake and onto the accelerator and off you went. Like most every driver, you drove with very little thought to what used to be a very complicated, synchronized manipulation of muscle and machine when you were first learning to drive. Now it was like riding a bike. Your mind is able to preoccupy with other things while simultaneously maneuvering a 2500-pound vehicle on a busy street. But again, the mind just had to engage on that now pressing other "something else". 

The cashier's problem was now replaced by the plight of the woman and the little girl. You can't shake off the image of the girl looking up at the woman whose tears you imagined had to be flowing still. And you remember she didn't even have a tissue in her hands. The image of the giggling couple kept intruding but surely the crying woman and the girl proved indelible. This time the mystery is definitely unknowable. You're now 6 blocks away from the intersection, the bus must have already come to pick them up. Another mystery unsolved.

In that short span of time the human experience once again reigned supreme over everything else that is going on in the universe.  7 billion people means an almost infinitely complex exchanges that no  algorithm can ever predict or evaluate.  For example, why people do what they do, or behave the way they do, or say what they say.  Otherwise, timing the stock market, predicting election results, or understanding the mind of a teenager, would by now be an exact science. 

Well, it comes down to this.  Yes, the whole world would now seem like a smaller place than it used to be. Though the globe's circumference has remained the same, there are now close to 7 billion people alive. The number was 1.6 billion in 1900. A century and a half before that, in 1750,  it was only 700 million. Modern technology in communication and social media had created this illusion of a much smaller world, yet we seem far apart from each other. But we should realize that the entire human experience is still mostly local even when the entire world is within a screen shot of a video-conference, a 24-hour news cycle, or a culture now constantly being altered by You tube, Facebook, selfies, and the pervasive ubiquity of the phone camera in ultra-high 1080 pixels of resolution.

How are we to alleviate the descending disorder of our societies when the internet is now not so much a net as it is a barrier to what used to be a lot more genuine human experience? Are we going to get to the point when  indeed we just don't know, we just can't know much about those within our neighborhood or those within touching distance of our everyday life.

The two extreme examples above are clearly beyond what is allowed in our human experience to assuage.  Even if we tried. But there are within those stories the hope that compassion can be revived or re-strengthened, and sympathy for the cashier's travails can still be had or if the couple at the bus stop could have paid just a tiny tad more attention to the mother and daughter instead of quenching their insatiable taste for social media and cheap humor. 

The tools for communication may be instant and all encompassing but are we really communicating?


Well there is something we can do. The following is a real story. It is real because I was in it.

A little over eight weeks ago I switched gym location. Same chain but is four miles farther and decades newer. It has a salt water pool instead of the standard chlorinated one, 25 yards long instead of 25 meters. This meant swimming an extra two laps (20 to 22) for a 1000 meter swim. But the more significant difference was that none of those I had become friends with at the old gym will be there, let alone familiar faces I had gotten used to and mine to them.

Another huge change and the one that really mattered is the zero wait time to get a lane. The pool is hardly a busy section of the gym. After just a few days of going, there are just a handful of regulars that come at about the same mid-afternoon hours. And the pool, with or without swimmers is as quiet as "an undiscovered tomb" (to quote Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady). Folks were not talking to each other, to my dismay, but it was to be that for the first days I've been coming.  So, there was one big (and I mean big) tall Caucasian (Swimmer A, or Sa, for short), another who swims with a snorkel, web-gloves and fins, and special-looking goggles (Swimmer B, Sb), a petite middle age lady who was clearly a high school librarian (Swimmer C, Sc). Everyone did his or her swim quietly, no one talking to anyone.

Like most of you, the reader, I had opinions about each one of them, and I'm sure they too had some about me. So, each of us just don't know and can't know of each other. The idle mind got busy. Sa does not look old enough to be retired, so he must work nights. Sb must be a "new" swimmer or the snorkel makes breathing a lot easier and webbed gloves and fins are simply reasonable swimming aids. Sc must be a housewife, to make the particular swim hours. 

I was wrong in all three of my opinions. It just shows again that "we just don't know, we just can't know".

One afternoon, I was walking along the length of the pool to set my gym bag on a bench at the other end. I was jolted to hear someone who was already in the water greet me good afternoon in Filipino! It was Sa (the Caucasian). Smiling he said, when I turned, "I'm no Sherlock Holmes but your shirt says about a Philippine Island resort on it and, forgive me, but you do look Filipino". He, as a young man years ago, did missionary work in the Philippines and had become quite good with the language though not too well now from disuse. That broke the ice and the stillness that permeated the pool before that.  It didn't take long for the melting ice to get conversations flowing among the regulars. 

I introduced myself to Sa and I introduced him to Sb and Sc can't be left  out because she had been telling her friends that she'd been swimming among the "boys club" who didn't speak to each other. 

Sa is currently in between jobs, leaving town from time to time for interviews out of state although he prefers to stay in Texas. His special HR skills and the position he had gotten used to requires special employment match up. Sb owns a Tex-Mex restaurant that he named after his wife who actually manages the place. He was originally from Columbia married to one from El Salvador who at that time when he met her already had a young son. Sc is no longer married but has a daughter who now lives in San Diego with a two year old. Sc does work from home as a writer for the company Human resources department (writing newsletters and decoding government, Federal and State, regulatory rules, etc.). Just like that we all got to know each other.

Sb's son graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and so did my eldest. Sb started swimming at the behest of his cardiologist and wife, in that order, so as to prevent another heart attack. He has some kidney issues too but what is most laudable is that he is staying with the regimen. Sc is struggling with her swimming so I gave her pointers when she asked and she is clearly improving out of sheer determination. Sa, aside from his employment potential updates, also talks about his personal campaign to lose weight. It now looks like he may have to move to Philadelphia.

And so the quiet pool is no longer so. And we all got to know each other without the aid of social media or electronic gadgets.  That's how it used to be. But sadly, even confined to the inside perimeter of a waiting area, as in the doctor's office, or at the auto shop, or anywhere people are in close proximity to one another, conversing is no longer the natural conduit for social interchange because almost everyone is hunched over a world contained within the palm of each other's hands - the cell phone.

Next time, try a person-to-person conversation. There is naturally the risk of a non-response but you'd be amazed at what you could gain, or what you enable someone to gain. It is a win-win when we get to know and we can know when two sides are willing to no longer settle for, "We just don't know, we just can't know".

Most Everything is Just Right

Did you know that right at about this point as you are reading this, everything is going just right for you?  Think about it. Leading  up to this moment everything about you, around you, including your general state of mind, must be just about hunky dory.  Right? Otherwise, if you're hassled, stressed, or there are other things going on in your life that is not right, you will have no time for this mundane, if not entirely insignificant missive. In other words, you have a moment to spare right now, your mind is free from anything urgent because if you'd rather be doing something else then you ought to be doing that right now. This can wait, obviously. 

Actually, yes, this moment in your life is significant for countless reasons. First, you made it all the way right up to about now - alive - and this occurrence is  for  but once, and the rest of all the moments to come are each equally unique and will certainly never be repeated in the future - not even once. Second, a trillion, trillion things, countless uninterrupted moments had to line up just right to get you here. I mentioned in one of my earlier musings that it must take an unbroken chain of cell divisions and countless inherited and discarded traits over millennia after millennia for you to be alive today, because if a break had occurred at any time centuries prior, this past year, or just several moments ago, you will not be here, let alone be reading this. Keep in mind that Ancestry.com and every genealogy website capitalize on this very fact: the continuous and unbroken links of lives, countless lifetimes lived and remembered because, otherwise, what business is there to be had? Every living person, one of approximately 7 billion people on earth alive today, is at the tip of unbroken ancestry chains. Bear with me because there is a point to all of these.

To paraphrase the entire introduction to Bill Bryson's book, "A Brief History of Nearly Everything", trillions upon trillions of atoms,  an infinitely large number for us to contemplate, make up the human body. It took that unthinkable number to make you you. But the atoms in your body don't know that you are there; in fact, they don't even know that they (the atoms themselves) are there. 

Taken individually, any single atom in your body - from your bone marrow to the blood cells made there, to the keratin on your finger nails, to everything that makes up your pancreas and the tissue of your brain - is an inanimate object, unrecognizable and indistinct from all other atoms everywhere. But put together, they've become the whole you. Setting humility aside, for a moment,  nondescript atoms notwithstanding, you may rejoice that there is only one you.


But first, a reality check.  99.9999999 .... % of the approximately 7 billion people alive today don't know you, and neither you  them. But then, unlike the atoms that make up your whole physical body, you are aware that all of the other people are out there, and many of them  think the same way. Why we are aware, why we have this consciousness is a mystery because the parts that make us a single thinking entity do not themselves think.

Let's continue to set aside humility once more. It took a lot of resources from the universe to make you you and just you. Not only that but the process had to be done right and just so. We're still talking about you. Set aside everything else where and when things did not come out right. Because if those happened to you or it occurred in a way that some genes got messed up, or there was a DNA irregularity, or for any number of abnormal events then you may not have the ability to read this. So, set that thought aside and focus on you - the one for whom everything seemed to have gone right.

There is much to feel good about you and you have every reason to be grateful. And if you can't come up with anything at all, right now,  the next few minutes might help.  On the other hand, if you're comfortable with everything going on with your life, there is much more to rejoice about which you may have overlooked.

Here is how the universe made you. I am being inclusive here for those who do not believe in The Creator. First, the elements that make up your entire body originally came from far, far away, and from billions of years ago. In fact, there is nothing "local" about where you came from, if "local" is the entire solar system, which did not even exist long before the building blocks that will make you were already in existence. A long, long time ago from somewhere so unimaginably far, far away, a huge star depleted all of its hydrogen, as giants like it lived short lives that may have only lasted perhaps for only a few million years. By the way, a million years from the context of the age of the universe is a mere moment. As soon as it ran out of hydrogen, creating carbon and then all of it into iron, the star, in an instant, exploded into a supernova. Such an explosion was necessary to create the rest of the heavier elements by compressing with such tremendous pressure and heat the surrounding gases and dust near the star at the time. The iron in your body may have come from the original star but all the calcium, potassium, all the other heavier elements came from that supernova explosion. You are made of star dust. So is the gold and silver in your ring and in your smart phone, the titanium in hip replacement parts, the potassium in watermelons, etc.

You are literally made of recycled material. Yet, you are unique because the possible combinations of the parts that made you and from where each had come from, the specific moments of how you were conceived might have been totally random but a lot had to have been just right to make it possible. This brings us to what scientists call the Goldilocks principle or effect. 

"The Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star: As Stephen Hawking put it, “like Goldilocks, the development of intelligent life requires that planetary temperatures be ‘just right’”. The Goldilocks principle is, of course, based on the children's story where the little girl named Goldilocks preferred the bowl of porridge that was just right. Not too hot, not too cold. 

That is how it started for you and all living things around you.  As far as you know, life, as of now, is only known to exist on this planet. That is because everything  happened to be just right. Venus that is too close to the sun is so hot water will boil off in an instant; Mars, a bit farther away, is much too cold for liquid water to exist, except as ice year round. Your earth is where water remains in liquid state under ordinary circumstances that it occupies almost 3/4 of the entire globe.  Air and water and just the right amount of warmth are the major precursors to life as you know it. Your habitat happens to be just right.

Wherever you are, whatever the status you occupy in all of humanity's hierarchical scheme of things, if you are reading this, you had already benefited from a lengthy period in life where most of everything happened to have been just right.  And, yes, there had to have been plenty of moments too where and when certain things did not go right. But lest you forget, here you are reading about it so you must have gotten over those moments when things didn't go right. To have lived this far in time, think that just a  century ago, even the most prolific dreamer of that time had no idea that this was to be the future. He or she never could have realized that their most ambitious list of wishes would pale in comparison to what today you are taking for granted. Just the very thought that you can tap your ideas into a pad and it is instantaneously transmitted over twelve thousand miles into another pad somewhere had to have been the literal equivalent of someone's wildest dream in 1919.

So, not only that everything so far had been just right for you, you have the capability to understand why it is. You see, as much ability that bats and dolphins can navigate by sonar, that the cheetah can out accelerate a Ferrari in 2.5 seconds of time from stand still, or a colony of bacteria can multiply exponentially in all kinds of environment, all of these creatures have no clue why they are able to do so. In just a few keystrokes right now, if you are inclined to do it, you will have more information on the subjects than Madam Curie or Isaac Newton could have had.

You just happen to have it just right. Now, we've set humility aside for some moments now so let our hubris take a rest. Think for a moment that if you believe you are one-in-a-million of some kind, a special person in your own eyes, if you are a citizen in China or India, there are a thousand others like you thinking the same way you do. From the context of the world's total population there could be 7,000 others who could think the same way. 7,000 one-in-a-million type of person is no longer so special, is it? Why this must be said is that to live just right means balancing between the tug of war between humility and hubris. 

The universe may have made you just right but here is something to think about. The Creator made it so, and if you must know, that your place is right in the middle from the hierarchy of size in the solar system, from the tiniest hydrogen atom to the largest structure, which is the sun. From an obscure science article written in Australia, I had read something rather interesting about your place in the overall scheme of things. The average human body, just about 5 feet tall, is right about in the middle. In other words, Danny Devito would be almost in between a single hydrogen atom and the sun. The link to an article below explains it more succinctly. 

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/03/30/2859247.htm

So, there you are, for whom most everything is just right, isn't it?

Weight, Weight! Please Tell Me

Among the many mysteries in the universe there are a handful that are just way too perplexing. For example why are cows and elephants - avowed vegetarians - not exactly exhibit "A" examples of leanness. And why are snakes that are strictly meat eaters, that don't even bother to chew their food, the epitome of slim and slender? Meanwhile, humpback whales, long distance swimmers extraordinaire, where the geographic gap between Hawaii and Alaska is a mere lap to them, can't seem to have a decent discernible waistline even when they are on a starvation diet for six months while making the trans Pacific annual journey away from their feeding grounds. 

It is so unfair that hummingbirds can't seem to gain weight when they dine mainly on sugary food almost continuously throughout the day as if breakfast, lunch and early dinner are all linked together with a string of unending sweet snacks in between, while we gain weight by merely staring at doughnuts. Consequently, doughnuts and muffins are now mostly banned during company staff meetings. But despite that, corporate America and the U.S. population at large (no pun intended) are getting heavier and the average girth is circumferentially enlarged all the way around? (again, no pun intended).

When doctors tell us we need to lose weight they don't waste consultation time on any scientific validation for their advice.  We just have to lose weight, or else.  "Or else" is a preamble to a litany of bad stuff that can happen to us.  

It is always controversial to talk about weight. Mathematician/philosopher Rene Descartes said, "I think therefore I am", but I surmise that in a much earlier epoch the first cave-man-philosopher must have said, "I eat therefore I be", (excuse his grammar, what did you expect from a caveman).  It is said that our life's stages, biologically speaking may be divided into growth, reproduction and maintenance (keeping us alive and staying healthy).  Nutrition had to attend to growth and maintenance mostly from birth leading up to puberty until we reached the height and skeletal limits as dictated by our genes.

The reproduction part has a narrow window, particularly for the women.  The guys... well ... the ways of the active cave man - hunting and fighting for mates and territory - kept them busy for calories or fat to be an issue, at least until weight gain becomes part of the travails of middle age, although there is no fossil evidence of overweight cavemen.  Women, on the other hand, have 10% more body fat than men to begin with - an evolutionary trait that  assures ample source of proper nutrition for the young by being able to draw from it during pregnancy and nursing. So it's a bit unfair that women must have the extra baggage (pardon the pun) to start with. But then they are destined for a much nobler role. 

At middle age, growth and reproduction fade in priority.  Maintenance - the proper daily functioning and repairing of our bodies are about what nutrition is for at that point.  But guess what happens? We continue to eat like we still have all the three biological phases to contend with. "Diet and exercise", while catchy does not seem to successfully deliver the message that if you can't burn it all, don't eat it all. 

But here is the good news. Actually great news from the field of research.  It always starts with experimenting on mice. Of course.  Adult mice that were given restricted diet, such as just enough for each day, lived a lot longer than those that were fed buffet style.  The theory is that organisms, mammals in particular, make trade off in allocating nutrition.  It's true that when times are good mammals reproduce more but cut back on fertility during leaner times.  Here's why it may make sense.  Our bodies will recognize that when food is plenty the order of business is to propagate the species so it will consume everything it can get for growth and reproduction.  When food is scarce nutrition focuses on making sure the body will survive through the famine. So priority for nutrition once growth is no longer a priority is for our cells to undergo repair and maintenance regularly. What happens is at middle age when growth and reproduction have been signed off and there's plenty of food, our body's response is still to continue with consumption, often in excess of what's needed.  And we store the excess nutrition by filling out our fat cells for the lean times that never come. So by restricting food intake to just enough we may be tricking our bodies to respond to the lean times and so it focuses on repair and maintenance by keeping our cells healthy. Therefore, eating just right may mean longer, healthier life.  And the numbers do seem to support it.

Here are the numbers.  A pound of fat (pardon me but let's call it what it is) has the equivalence of 3500 calories.  If you consume excess calories by 500 each day, you will gain one pound after one week (500 X 7 = 3500).  So, you say you will cut that in half and only consume 250 in excess.  You feel good but you will still gain one pound in two weeks.  So, now you'll reduce that to half again, down to 125 excess calories.  Well, it will now take a month to gain one pound.  Unfortunately, after just a year you will be 12 pounds heavier.  And that my friends is just from one extra can of regular soda (140 cal.) or its equivalent in candies or other sweets every day.  On the other hand, diet soda only gives us a wayward sense of well being, as in someone ordering diet Coke, with double cheeseburger, extra cheese and large fries.  And a milk shake to go.

Somewhere on the plains of Africa today a Mazai cattle herder is probably subsisting on 800 calories a day. Contrast that to the developed world where somewhere someone was observed to have consumed 2000 calories in one meal! Yet, it is still perplexing that the Mazai's general population are pretty tall, many reach near 7 feet in height. 

In the first world countries marketers and advertisers are a formidable force in influencing consumers. Take the whole idea behind the doughnut hole which gained popularity at one time (it might still be today). The subliminal message of a hole being empty was what drove the psychology of buying doughnut holes instead of the regular doughnut. It turned out folks who bought doughnut holes were eating the same amount, if not more, of carbs and sugar. 

So, what is the consumer to do? Go to any book store or library. Diet books outnumber exercise books by half a shelf or more. If you have any doubt, Google diet and exercise books - images on the subject will tell you the deck is once again stacked against the consumer. But there is hope. 

There must have been a thousand and one diet and weight loss prescriptions and programs already "in the books" since the reign of King Henry VIII - who loomed large (literally) as an image of over consumption. What is the latest idea? Befitting of 2-3 letter acronyms associated with the high tech world in this modern era is a method called IF for short. Intermittent Fasting.   

"In Judaism, fasting is the Biblical or Rabbinic precept or custom of refraining from eating and drinking". Now, the origins of the ritual of fasting, generally speaking from history, is not very clear and not limited to the Jewish faith because other cultures do it as well. What  seems to be consistent, however, is that fasting, specially those rooted in ancient practices, is more deeply aligned to the spiritual, rather than for plain dietary reasons. I do not know this for sure but I have yet to come across fasting as defined by ancient cultures that is based other than the theological origins. Except ... 

These days fasting can be or is a medical prescription. Certain blood work requires fasting. Colonoscopy and other intestinal examinations can only be conducted when fasting is followed by a thorough and clean sweep of the entire gastric system. Not exactly a pleasant experience for anyone but it is a survivable episode. And it proves that we can handle missing a meal for 24 hours. And people have survived hunger lost in the wilderness or at sea, which are the extreme forms of fasting we do not wish on us or others.  

Intermittent fasting comes in different forms, schedules or frequency. What is gaining some real interest, at least from what I've read, is the  16 hour daily intermittent fasting method. It only seems draconian but this popular version sounds reasonable to those who tried it and are staying with it. More severe is the 24 fast, for one day of every seven or fasting four days a month.

The 16 hour one prescribes (not using the word in medical terms here) that if one's evening meal is at 7:00, there should be no more eating after that (no  snacks of any kind, and clearly not a bowl of ice cream or a bar of chocolate). The fast does not end in the morning. The traditional first meal to break the fast, which is of course called breakfast, should be skipped entirely, except for coffee, tea and water (definitely no juices of any kind or milk). So at 7:00 a.m. one should have already fasted 12 hours from the night before. Four more hours to go, we're told, should not be too hard to do. One's next meal, therefore, is at between 11:00 a.m. and noon. That is essentially still breaking fast, except it is at 11:00 a.m. - at lunch. Technically, therefore, one breaks the fast with lunch.

And one may eat whatever he or she wants. In other words, there are no dietary restrictions (within reason, of course). All food consumption is done during the next eight hours (snacks in between are allowed during this period) before and up to the evening meal at 7:00 and the cycle begins again. Not that hard after all, is it? It is simple to remember. Confine eating to a third of the entire 24 hour cycle. 16 hour fast and eat only during the other 8-hour period. One caveat is that one should still follow sensible meal choices, such as making sure veggies and fruit are part of the meals.

Harvard Medical and other clinicians who conducted studies on the method have positive things to say about it.  Weight loss and general health benefits were observed. I encourage the reader to read up on it. In a nutshell, the idea is for the body to draw on reserve fat during the 16 hour period, perhaps mainly during the remaining 4 hours when we will typically feel the hunger pangs after the last 12 hours of not eating.

I can see one major side effect. It will be on the economy and economists might warn us about it. If everybody does this IF thing, IHOP (International House of Pancakes - for my non-U.S. readers) and breakfast at McDonald's will suffer greatly.  On the bright side, restaurants that serve brunch will benefit. Or, rather that brunches will no longer be just on Sundays only. 

http://calculators.hpathy.com/calories-need.asp