diet — 2016 — The 21st Century Matriarch

Now that we are more than a month in to 2016 – I am getting serious about what habits I want to tweak this year. They are a little different than a ‘resolution’ or a goal because of the way I am thinking about them as habits. Habits are the things I do almost without thinking and there are strategies for changing them that apply.

The most significant one I am changing (not the optimism) is to stop drinking soft drinks entirely. Late last year I stopped using artificial sweeteners (and didn’t start using sugars) except for those in the Diet Pepsi. It’s time to stop the soft drink habit both because there is no nutritional benefit (and may harm), they are some of the heaviest items in my grocery bags, and the plastic bottles are a significant contributor to the recycle ‘trash’ bulk. I tried the strategy of just stopping suddenly and that didn’t work very well. I fell off the wagon after a few weeks. Now I am color coding the days on my calendar: red if I have a soft drink, green if I don’t. We’ll see if that works. Concurrently – I am developing drinks (water with a little black cherry juice is my current favorite) that I can have in lieu of a soft drink. So I am applying habit changing strategies:

Make is conscious rather than automatic by calling attention to it (color coding my calendar)
Develop a substitute habit (another drink choice)

Another habit that I am changing is when I wear my glasses. I have worn glasses or contact lenses virtually all my waking hours since I was in third grade. In the past few years, I have noticed that I am very comfortable reading on my tablet without my glasses. Just recently, I’ve discovered that quite a lot of what I do on my computer can be done without my classes. I tried it because I noticed that I was holding my head at an angle (to look through the part of the lenses for the best computer distance vision) that lead to quiet an ache in my neck and shoulders by the end of the day. The neck and shoulder problem is totally resolved by not wearing my glasses as much when I am at my computer so – we’ll see if I continue to like using the computer without glasses…. or whether I get some glasses specifically made for use at the computer.

Giving up soft drinks and not wearing my glasses as often are going to be challenging…just as breaking any long duration habit always is. I don’t think I could tackle 10 things like this…but 2 – I should be able to focus enough to change these habits.

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

New National Parks for the next Century – An Op-ed --- thought provoking.

We're Thinking About ADHD All Wrong, Says A Top Pediatrician – Thinking about attentional capacity and skills as a continuum or spectrum….and supporting attentional functions in everyone….and not always using medication.

Posture Affects Standing, and not just the Physical Kind – One of the things I’ve noticed recently that causes me to have poor posture in front of my computer is tilting my head slightly back so that the top of the screen is in focus through the bottom part of my glasses. I’m going to get glasses that have a full lenses that is just for computer-distance!

14 keys to a healthy diet – Most of these seem common sense to me now….but I’ve been paying more attention to my diet for the past few years. The cholesterol recommendation (number 9 on this list) is relatively new.

First ever digital geologic map of Alaska – The story in Science Daily. If you want to dice into the details – the USGS page for the publication is here.

The man who studies the spread of ignorance – This post starts with a quote from the late 1960s by a large tobacco company to counter ‘anti-cigarette forces:’ “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” And the word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.

Kepler has uncovered a trove of new planets in our cosmic backyard – Hurray for the ingenuity of the Kepler team for proposing the K2 mission after the first Kepler mission was no longer possible due to the loss of 2 of its stabilizing reaction wheels. Kepler found 234 new exoplanet candidates in 2014!

The truth about asteroid mining – Iron, nickel, cobalt --- 3D print what is needed in space rather than launching everything from Earth. Then there is the idea of mining water…maybe in the 2020s (that is not that far away!).

Preschool without walls – Children now don’t spend lots of time outdoors like they did when I was growing up…so now there are schools springing up to make it a 21^st century thing. And the preschools are relatively expensive. If I had a grandchild…I’d spend hours outdoors with them!

What earth would be like if humans never existed – A short video (less than 3 minutes).