Media

Media - be it social or otherwise. It can be a boon and a curse. You can use it for motivation, for information, to measure your progress. To link up with others on a similar journey - After all what is this site about. at the end of the day?

But it can also demotivate you, lead you up the garden path and down blind alleys. It can present you with unattainable goals and crush you emotionally.

But you can learn to harness it, tame it, learn from it or even remove it if you so wish.,

So much has been written about the evils and dangers of media I won't regurgitate it here. Hell I can be as guilty as the next as clicking on that article promising quick fixes to injuries or rock solid abs, Its clickbait, we all know it's clickbait so why do we still click on it. This year I'm making a conscious effort to stare at my phone much less. I am trying to not mindlessly scroll the news or flick from one app to the next looking for the next dopamine hit. If I do stare at my phone it's to read a book. I urge you to try to cut down on your screen usage. It's quite possible to cut down and not out, it just takes discipline and I'm finding if I fall off the horse and find myself scrolling then an internal reminder is enough to make me put it down. As with everything else in this project it takes time. But is anything that is instant truly worth it?

If you find yourself comparing your lives to others on social media you will only find unhappiness there. Remember that others tend to only post the good bits, you live in your head continually, you will never continually live the good bits. Scratch social media as soon as possible or at least cut down the sources of your own unhappiness to edible portions.

The media is happy to lie or at the least bend the truth - It's as simple as that - they want you to click so they get the website traffic and the money. It's too easy to fall into the trap that sites care about you and your health. They acre about the bottom line. This is of course not to say that some sites do care - this is one of them because its here as my own project not as a moneyspinner.

The trick is learning how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise and the truth from the lies. Follow your instincts, its like the good old saying "if its too good to be true - it probably is" In the case of the media and health its more of a case of "If its easy to do and promises fast results - Its too good to be true"

All I can suggest is you take everything you read with a pinch of salt, verify sources, look for the money trail, look for motivations. Are there contradictory studies? Diets are a classic example, high fat, low fat, high protein, low carb, fasting, no fasting. the list goes on and all seemingly contradictory. The simplest answer is that there is no simple answer. And that's not even when you take into account that everyone is an individual with different genetics.

So if i swipe left on my android phone I get a news feed - here is a sample of the "health" articles I could have forced down my throat today

"How much home gym equipment is unused in the UK"

"How the microbiome might affect motivation and performance"

"15 of the best non-alcoholic beers for dry January and beyond"

"How to become a hiking guidebook author"

"Heres how to eat to live longer, new study says"

"Industry funded study of the week: Ultra-processed foods are OK, really"

"The meaning of dry January"

"What dry January says about humans and alcohol"

And on and on, day in day out - The last two of these articles were published by the same company on the same day and link to the same article - Disingenuous or just clever at generating traffic?