We continue to receive our most common criticism of our book: “What’s with all those little numbers? They’re distracting.”
*sigh*
The little numbers, called superscripts, are used to link the statements we make to references at the end of each chapter that provide the evidence for the claim. In other words, if there is a little number 1 next to a sentence, you can look at the end of the chapter and see what scientific journal article or book we used as the basis for proof for that sentence. If you don’t care about proof and you just want to take our word for it, you can simply skip the number and begin the next sentence. While we realize this isn’t common practice and you might not be used to seeing this, it should be common practice so we refuse to do it any other way. Our apologies if you find the little numbers annoying.
But, while thinking about this in preparation for what might become SPEED 2.o, I started to think about the lack of effort and learning some people are willing to put into weight management and health. Last week I gave a presentation about ingredients in foods – what to look for, what to avoid, etc. Half the attendees were whining about having to understand all of it. “There’s just so much to learn. I don’t have time for it.” and “How can we be expected to remember all this?” Ask these same people what no-talent ass-clown is winning American Idol these days and they’ll give you an episode-by-episode summary. (yes, a modified Office Space reference in there) Some people have read our book and complained that it was too technical, that we used big words and sciencey jargon. We tried to make it as simple and easy to read as possible, while still relaying all the information we feel is necessary for you to remain successful. We’re trying to teach how what you can and can’t feed a complex system like the human body, it’s going to get complicated sometimes.
It’s true, in order to improve your health and understand how to do it long-term you might actually have to learn something. No, not might. Definitely. In fact, in order to get what you want out of life you’ll have to learn about a lot of things, or else just sit around being the victim.
If you want to be good at something you have to learn a lot about it, practice a lot, and continue to refine your technique. Being healthy is something you want to be good at. Health is not something you’re owed. You have to take care of it yourself. Now cowboy up and start learning.