In which I spend time away from the noise

Say you're trying to start a diet. You look on the internet, and you find a promising article that tells you to only eat these certain foods at this time of day, etc. You follow what the article says, and the next day, you look for some more ideas on the internet. You find another reputable article that completely contradicts the first article, telling you that only eating the foods that the first article told you to eat will not work, and that you have to eat these foods instead. So you do that, a little more warily, for a day. The next day, you wake up, check the internet, and lo and behold, you find yet another trustworthy-looking article that is saying you should listen to neither of the first two articles, and eat what you would normally eat, but exercise more, and then you will definitely be happy.

Frustrating?

It took me two years of living away from society to realize just how much of an influence these inconsistencies had on my lifestyle. Why is there such a myriad of contradictory information out there? It is certainly good that new research is still being done in so many topics, but how are we supposed to live our lives with the experts always changing their minds? Here are some real examples:

1. LiveStrong.com recommends doing sit ups three days per week in order to tone your abdominal muscles. ^[1] On the other hand, the Men's Health website says that a long term affect of sit ups is spinal damage. ^[2]
2. Several years ago, the FDA released a warning that artificial sweeteners might be a cause of certain types of cancer, due to some studies done on laboratory animals. Many years later, after significantly more research was done, the National Cancer Institute said that “There is no clear evidence that the artificial sweeteners available commercially in the United States are associated with cancer risk in humans.” ^[3]
3. This past December, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held a meeting to discuss changes to the Dietary Guidelines, and due to numerous studies, are now saying that “Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” ^[4] Despite the fact that the government has been telling us for more than 40 years that cholesterol intake should be 300mg a day or less, they are just now deciding that eating a lot of cholesterol might not actually be as bad for you as they thought.
4. The University of Rochester medical center states in an article that “Muscles that are warmed up before being put under a sudden stress are more likely to be able to handle the stress. Mild warm-up exercises before vigorous exertion is always recommended.” ^[5] And, of course there is the contrary article from the New York Times that argues that “pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.” ^[6]

It's enough to drive you crazy. One would think that all of this competition and fact-checking would be good, because it keeps everybody in line, but what it really does is discourages readers from trying at all. All of this contrariness, what it really does is to create a lot of noise. It creates a whole world full of noise, and it is our job to filter through the noise, but are we qualified? How can we possibly tell which side of the story is the right one? These are rather daunting questions.

Being a virtual hermit for two years has let me escape from a lot of the noise. Life, in some aspects, suddenly became a lot easier. I had time alone with my thoughts, time to sit down and just think. What I learned was the value of establishing good habits.

About a year ago, I decided to start practicing my French again. I was referred to a website called Duolingo, which is a free language learning website that is actually based off of video games. It makes education fun. The beauty of Duolingo is the streak counter. It counts everyday that you study, even if you only complete one lesson. If you miss a day, your counter starts back at zero. I had a pretty impressive streak of 50 days going at one point, but alas, I missed that one day. It was rather devastating, losing that hefty streak, and emotionally tolling. To my surprise, it took quite a bit more effort to restart the streak than it had in previous days where I just had to continue on a streak that had already been running. To that end, this realization was just enough motivation for me to start with another streak, knowing that it would soon get much easier. My realization was further demonstrated by this video:

3 Secrets for BREAKING BAD Habits (& Making Awesome Ones)!

that talks about breaking bad habits and replacing them with good habits, and can be found on a YouTube channel called 'How to Adult'.

It was not until after all of this that I realized how powerful establishing habits can be. What happens, as a result of all the noise, is that we try something new, say a new diet, but are then overwhelmed by the inconsistencies, not knowing which path to follow. This often leads to despair, and eventually failure. The alternative to not trying at all, is of course doing nothing. That's not a very good alternative. Therefore, it occurred to me recently that this streak method could be translated onto other skills or habits. That is when I decided to make this:

My Good Habits Calendar, on which I will keep track of what habits I do by writing them down each day that I do them. Not only will this help establish these good habits, but it will also help my goldfish brain to not forget to keep the streak going, so I can maintain an even more impressive streak next time, and not have to go through with the monumental effort that is starting a streak all over again. As with my French streak, the wonderful thing about habits is that once you've gotten over the initial hump, it is rather smooth sailing from there. Basically, it's like training a dog, except you're the dog and the trainer.

It is my hope that once I establish some good habits, such as exercise, regular studying, and eating well, that it will create a solid basis from which I can try to experiment on my own. By building myself a solid base to work from, I can then, through trial and error, filter through the noise, figure out which side of the arguments work for me, and which don't, while still having that groundwork and not feeling overwhelmed or discouraged. The key point is that no matter how loud the noise gets, as long as I have good habits established, I will at least be doing a little bit of something everyday, which is a whole lot better than nothing.

In which I flop and blog about my day

Today was an eventful day at my school.

First, a big bus of foreigners arrived at school this morning, and started setting up a tent and lots of seats.  They weren't just one nationality, you could see faces from all over the world.  They taught the students and teachers first about basic health and sanitation.  Then, they divided up the teachers and the students.  The teachers were taught about more in depth health and sanitation, including hygiene, urinary tract infections, kidney diseases, and sex-ed.  The purpose of this was for the teachers to be able to turn around and teach the students about all of this.  They went over a lot of important details, on how to avoid these illnesses, and how to diagnose and treat them as well.  The teachers seemed very receptive to the information, if not a little shy about the sensitive topics.  They even brought two thousand condoms to give out to the whole community, which they ended up giving most to the health center next door.  All of the teachers were now really shy, and reluctant to take any, especially the girls.  When my co-teacher, Voleak, told me that only boys need them, I explained to her why it was important for girls and boys to have them.  She giggled at me and blushed, but nevertheless she took one.  After the education part, the volunteers set up a sort of clinic inside the classrooms.  Anybody who thought they wanted to be checked up would write their symptoms down, and wait in line.  There were rooms for blood tests, gynecology, and regular check-ups.  Most people left with two or three bags of pills, some of which were vitamins.  It was really interesting for me to see another organization like that in action.

After all that, my program manager from Peace Corps came to visit my site for a few minutes, because he is looking to put another education volunteer here after I leave. (Yay!!)  I requested to have another volunteer placed here, because I believe that there is a lot more to be done in my village and my school, and although the English level in my co-teachers and students has improved quite a bit over the past year and a half, there is still much to be improved.  My manager, Sangkhim, asked me if I would suggest having the volunteer stay at my house, to which I said yes, and what kind of personality did I think would be good for the dynamics of my host family.  I noticed that Peace Corps seems to put a lot of weight on volunteers' personality when deciding site placement.  It seems to be common, when volunteers are site mates, to put extroverts together with introverts.  Can you guess which one I am, and which one Meghan is?  (Sarcasm can be difficult to portray in text.)  It was difficult for me to answer this question, because while I have gotten along fine with my host family, Meghan got along just as well.  I think either would work, and both would be beneficial to the community in its own way.

After all of that, I flopped on my bed with my adorable kitty, and turned on the fan, because according to my thermometer, it is 103 degrees in my room right now.  It only gets hotter from here.