In my fit tip on sleep, I wrote about how people need to get more sleep. It has been programmed into our DNA for 35M.Y., yet many try to show they can live off the least amount of sleep possible. What for? Why not reduce the amount oxygen and test yourself. Although truly foolish, this isn’t the only foolish thing we as humans come up with.

I once had some one tell me I could live off 700 calories per day and 50 grams of protein then cited some source that was probably correct. But what would my quality of life be like? Hmmm I thought; I suppose that number of calories would support enough respiration and a pulse to supply my brain with a little oxygen and sugar. I guess if I were hooked up to machines, I might be able to reduce the calories even further. Granted there would be cellular life competitive with a petri dish experiment, but would I have LIFE? The question is nearly rhetorical even silly, but we do have anorexia and various grades of excessive weakness/thiness. We also have the opposite, and this is even more common.

People gobbling in gluttony every form of garbage that has ever been called “food.” We see those who have been engaging in 7000+ calories a day, where the chief burning of calories can be reduced to metabolic functions and feeding. 

So we have many who indulge themselves in rapturous rationalized extremes, at the edges of theoretical survival. I have often asked; why not seek individual harmony, resonance and vital rhythm as optimums for life? Most of you watch plenty of television (maybe not for those of you reading this) and have more entertainment than Caesar, preoccupied with tabloid twittle, multi thousand calorie meals and wonder why you are not healthier. I wonder in amazement how your bodies keep you alive, despite these fitness horrors. I often wonder why people in the health professions from doctors on down including personal trainers won’t say the reason you are unhealthy is you are too LAZY to do something about it, too undisciplined to modify eating in a healthy way and yes procrastinators. Well there I said it. I will be honest, and I have 2 reasons.

1) A friend who was exceptionally smart, knew who every person was in the House and Senate and most of those who held the seats before. He could track legislation like nobody’s business and I miss him. He’s dead. Died of a heart attack at age 37. For 7-8 years before dying, I gave him crap about his lunches; gargantuan affairs, usually oversize wider and bigger than your “footlong” subs, stuffed with an inch and a half of cold cuts, bolognas and salamis and the like. Day after day, I gave him a hard time about it because I cared, and he would remind me that he was OK, that one of these days he would get fitter and lose weight. After a couple of years of my daily questioning of his eating and lack of fitness habits, I stopped, deciding that just doing it seasonally would suffice. Whatever I did was not effective. He died. I learned I can’t make someone understand when they are filled with rationalized delusions. If you are 150 lbs. overweight I don’t need to tell you that you are OK; you’re not. You might be ok for the next ten minutes, but what about 5-10 years from now. Other than the inheritance, how would your loved ones feel? (this is supposed to be humourous).

2) Another friend, gone. Age 39 heart attack; I hadn’t seen him in ten years and when I did he had gained well over 100 pounds topping the 3 century mark, no small achievement. I did ask, “what are you doing with yourself?” Just living and working. Years of fast food crap and multi thousand calorie meals and no exercise led him to a very premature death — just senseless.

These reasons rival drug O.Ds. in what I call stupidity. I want to smack both of these guys upside the head, New York style and wake them. It won’t happen. If you are in a situation where you are not healthy, someone should tell you. While I won’t smack you upside the head, I hope this serves as your wake up call.