Diet Archives - nik.art

Are You Free to Abstain?

May 25, 2021August 10, 2024 Nik

French scientist Pierre Fouquet was an early researcher of alcoholism. He broke the illness into three categories, two of which describe the circumstances of people we now describe as “alcoholics,” such as drinking in secret with the goal of blacking out.

The third, “alcoholitis,” is “the most common form of alcoholism in France, particularly among men,” Fouquet noted. The subject has a high tolerance and lacks serious psychological complications — they mainly drink beer and wine in social settings, just in too large quantities for it to be healthy.

“We drink to drink with others,” Fouquet said, but “the toxic effects of consumption are still felt.”

Our sneakiest addictions are those we don’t consider to be problems at all. If you drink with coworkers four nights a week and everyone has two beers, that seems like a perfectly normal thing to do.

The question — and this may be Fouquet’s greatest contribution to the world — is:

Do you have the freedom to abstain?

No One Is Coming to Save You

June 9, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

Your parents aren’t coming to save you. They’ve done that often enough. Or maybe never at all. Either way, they’re not coming now. You’re all grown. Maybe not grown up, but grown. They’ve got their own stuff to take care of.

Your best friend isn’t coming to save you. He’ll always love you, but he’s knee deep in the same shit you’re in. Work. Love. Health. Staying sane. You know, the usual. You should check in with him some time. But don’t expect him to save you.

Your boss is not coming to save you. Your boss is trying to cover her ass right now. She’s afraid she might get fired. She’s fighting hard to keep everyone on the team. She’s worried about you, but she has no time to save you.

The First Successful Rebrand in History

May 29, 2020June 28, 2024 Nik

If you were to visit the grave of Frederick the Great in Germany, chances are, you’d find some fresh potatoes on it:

For most of his record 46-year-rule of Prussia, Frederick was known as “the potato king” — a reputation that lasts until this day.

That’s a pretty strong brand for someone from the 18th century — no phones, no internet, most people couldn’t even read! So how come?

How Domino’s Turns Your Cupboard Into a Billboard

May 13, 2020June 28, 2024 Nik

You look up from your laptop. 7:13 PM. Damn! Work ran late again. It’s gonna be pizza tonight. Where should you order from? Hmm…Domino’s!

You put in your order, and, 27 minutes later, you take that comfortably warm box we all love more than Christmas presents from the delivery man’s hands.

You sit down at your kitchen table, crack it open, and have yourself a delicious slice. As you chew on some crispy pepperoni, you start to ponder: “Why did I go for Domino’s? And how did I come up with it so fast?”

The answer hits you like lightning. The cheese almost falls out of your mouth. “No! Those clever bastards!”

Staring at you, right from the spice basket in the middle of the table, is a little white packet. On one side, it says “Oregano Seasoning.” Across the other, in bold blue letters, your fate was spelled all along: Domino’s Pizza.

Coronavirus Cheat Sheet

March 31, 2020June 27, 2024 Nik

Coronavirus is global. It’s a pandemic, meaning it’ll affect every person in every country on the planet, be it directly via contracting the disease or indirectly through changes in work policy, travel restrictions, containment measures, or loved ones being affected.

You, however, are not global. You’re a single human being. Yet, the sum of how billions of individuals will act during this time is going to determine how fast, how well, and how strong we will emerge from this crisis as a species.

Therefore, this cheat sheet is about you. How you can stay healthy, how you can contribute, how you can survive this dilemma and help us all do the same.

Looking at you as an individual, here is what matters:

Getting a handle on your emotions and not panicking
Staying healthy or recovering quickly if you catch the disease
Not infecting others, especially those weaker and more fragile than you
Taking precautions for isolation without getting paranoid
Finding a new, comfortable, productive daily rhythm
Managing your mental health to stay happy and motivated
Relying on verified information from the right sources

Also looking at you as an individual, here is what matters not:

How many cases appear in which country from one day to the next
Measures taken in other cities that don’t affect you or those you know
Opinions of public figures that dramatize or downplay the situation
Which way the stock market went and what’ll happen to the economy
Conspiracy theories from less than trustworthy sources

Right now, it is your duty to separate the former from the latter and do your best to live up to the one without getting lost in the other.

This is a time to put aside pettiness. Stop looking left and right so you can clean your own doorstep. If we all do it, the streets will soon be clean.

I’m not a healthcare professional, nor do I have a PhD. I’ve been writing for five years, and I do my homework when it comes to research. This cheat sheet should give you the most important information, backed by credible sources.

You Control Your Thoughts, Not Your Impulses

September 18, 2019August 10, 2023 Nik

When you’re hungry, are you actually hungry, or do you just think you’re hungry?

“What a dumb question,” you might think, “of course I know when I’m hungry!” But do you? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

For one thing, 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Not all those cases might be the result of overeating, but a lot of them are. At some point in their lives, two out of three people in the United States have lost the connection between how much they should eat and how much they actually eat. Chances are, that initial question has something to do with it.

You may not have a weight problem yourself, but you sure know what it’s like to eat something you shouldn’t have. We all do. Who can blame us? So many tasty snacks, so many great TV shows, modern technology just makes it too easy to keep munching chips long after you’re satisfied. Clearly, we can’t always tell reality from fiction when it comes to our stomachs growling.

Why is that? Let’s do a thought exercise to understand what’s going on.

7 Daily Opportunities To Be Mindful as a Non-Meditator

August 17, 2019June 25, 2024 Nik

Dan Harris is as American as it gets. He’s outgoing, confident, and calls a spade a spade. He’s been an anchor for ABC News for the past 20 years, informing his fellow citizens on what matters. He has reported from war zones, interviewed drug lords, and co-hosts Good Morning America on weekends.

In short, Dan Harris represents a life most Americans aspire to live: be a strong voice, follow your ambition, but keep your feet on the ground and your heart in the right place. But, like all of us, Dan Harris is human.

For the first few years at ABC, he was a workaholic. Feeling he didn’t deserve his dream job in his 20s, he overcompensated. He fell into depression and turned to recreational drugs. All of this culminated in one incident: In 2004, Dan had a panic attack, live and on the air, in front of five million people.

How do they say? It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

The Four Burners Theory of Work-Life Balance

May 1, 2019September 25, 2023 Nik

Imagine there’s an old stove in your house. It’s square and has four burners.

You know, the kind where you still have to light the gas with a match and pull your hand away really fast so you don’t get burned. Each of those burners represents an important area of your life:

Family.
Friends.
Health.
Work.

So far, so good. There’s only one problem. According to the original New Yorker article first mentioning the concept:

“In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

Ouch. That hurts. But it makes perfect sense. It stings because it’s true.

How To Increase Your Willpower

April 2, 2019June 20, 2024 Nik

Willpower is easy when you’re having fun.

I never needed anyone to tell me to play video games, explore the internet, or practice soccer tricks. If anything, it was hard to get me to stop. Writing has been the same. Sure, some days I don’t feel like sitting down, like tackling the hard passage that’s next, but as soon as I get going, flow kicks in.

We all gravitate towards different things, but most of us have had our own version of this experience. There’s a big lesson in it we often ignore, mostly due to societal obligations or traditional education: optimize for easy.

If you can find an activity in which talent and interest carry you from being mediocre to above average, you have a new potential career. The timing and specifics of making it financially productive might neither be clear nor work out in the end, but if doing the work comes easy, that’s a huge head start.

To some degree, becoming more skilled supports this growing commitment, but if you start in an area you genuinely dislike, you’ll likely never get that far.

That’s why, generally, I support advice like the following, which comes from Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList and a prolific startup investor:

“Discipline is really overrated. Discipline is just you fighting with yourself to do something you don’t want to do. It’s more important to find something that you want to do and that can be productive, as opposed to trying to discipline yourself. Self-discipline is tough. You won’t sustain it. Tiger Woods didn’t become a great golfer through self-discipline.”

As helpful as it is on a macro-level, if you apply it to a small time frame, this advice falls apart. What’s great for your career is terrible for your day-to-day.

Imagine everyone in your office quit showering. Or dressing properly. Luckily, most of our needed if not fun behaviors have become habits by the time we rely on them. That said, barring multi-millionaire status, the road to which is long, most of us will always keep facing the occasional to-do we don’t like.

I don’t believe I can solve your quest for meaningful work in an article. It’s a slow process that depends on you trying things, being consistent, and adjusting as you go. What I can do is show you some of the small ways to reduce friction along the way. To summon discipline when you do need it.

Here are 14 scientific ways to increase your willpower in one minute or less.

Be Fast When It Matters

March 11, 2019August 9, 2024 Nik

If you’ve ever watched a Kung Fu movie, you’ve witnessed a fascinating relationship: the unity of fast and slow.

Be it Bruce Lee, Ip Man, Mr. Miyagi or Jackie Chan, in day-to-day life, the master is always deliberate. Quiet. Almost lethargic. He walks slowly. He talks slowly. He eats slowly. He’s never in a hurry and no matter who bursts in the front door with exciting or distressing news, he remains unfazed.

But then, suddenly, as soon as the fight begins, he is swift like the wind. Each step lands lightning-fast and with surgical precision. His eyes capture even the tiniest twitch in his opponent’s reactions. He chains together split-second movements, every one of which counts.

And then, as fast as it came, it’s gone. The storm is over. The enemy lies on the ground. And the master folds his hands like a closing flower, retreating back into his zen. Back to unity, where another cycle stands completed.

Meanwhile, we’re not even aware this unity exists. We’re just in fast mode all the time. I mean what do we wake up to? An alarm. If that’s not telling, I don’t know what is. And alarmed we are. Getting ready in the morning feels like rushing to the fire truck, ready to race off, to put out the next inferno, to salvage whatever emergency must have waited for us while we were asleep.

Ding! Wake up! Shower! Get ready! Brush teeth! Faster, faster, faster. Only so we can end up missing the bus, idling in traffic, and forgetting our keys.

That’s the thing: Most of the time, being fast doesn’t matter.

Category: Diet