i’m choicely buggered…you decide!

This week I decide less

decision fatigue willpower i'm choicely buggered...you decide!
by John Rensten / Getty Images

I have two seemingly unrelated theories about life.

First, successful people eat boring breakfasts. Crude, but true. Look around the busy exec-y types you know – they eat vegemite on toast, or porridge. Every day. And don’t put any further thought to it. It’s only ratbags like me who deliberate wildly between boiled eggs, quinoa porridge and left-over Indian.

The second, kids – despite their protestations – don’t actually want to be asked what after-school activity they prefer for next semester, or what they’d like on their sandwich today. I don’t have kids, but I was talking about this with friends-who-are-parents last weekend. As one said, “It was better, wasn’t it – for everyone – back when we were told ‘hey, kids it’s devon and tomato sauce today’. We’d move on to wrestling with our sister. What have we done?” We’ve bludgeoned kids with decisions, that’s what.

I’ve touched on this issue before in this column: the chore that is making decisions. But, seriously, it’s the sexiest topic doing the psychology rounds at the moment and so I thought I should re-penetrate with the latest findings. They all say the same thing: we’re a society suffering “decision fatigue”. The New York Times magazine this month ran a long feature on the subject and there’s emerged a spate of books to choose from about the art of choosing. At every turn, we have to make more decisions – whether to reply to an email, to pay for extra legroom, to subscribe to the weekly newsletter. We’re expected to have an opinion on everything and it’s leaving us choicely buggered.

A study earlier this year found, unlike, say, running fatigue  – which sees us hit a wall – decision fatigue sees us do dumb things, like reverting to default or safe options, or to making decisions that keep our options open…which just prolongs the fatigue. After a day spent making decisions, judges in the US were found to default to more severe parole sentences in the afternoon. They were decision-spent, so set conservative sentences that kept options open (they could always reduce them later). Another study found when we have to choose the customized extras for our car, we deliberate conscientiously at the start of the form, then eventually “give in” to the default options (nattily, companies put the more expensive decisions at the end of forms).  Or, of course, we put off deciding.

But, friends, I’m interested in solutions here. And preferably ones that are dictated to me. Because this is the point: the less pithy decisions we make, the more decisive energy we have for the important ones.

Fix #1: set your life up to make less decisions.

Eat the same breakfast. Wear a suit. Buy the same brand of frozen peas.

Read more

so, I’ve written a “I quit sugar” ebook…

* this post has been updated*

…and I thought I’d tell you about it in advance of it’s release in a few weeks. And to give you the chance to sign up to be alerted when it arrives.

Picture 1 so, I've written a "I quit sugar" ebook...

Basically, because so many of you kept asking how I quit sugar eight months ago, I thought it best to put together a bit of a guide.

It’s one of those issues that just grabs at people. I think most of us know we eat too much of the white stuff…and we wish we didn’t…and we wish there was a short-cut, simple way to get on track…that wasn’t too painful. I get stopped at markets, at the bank, on planes, and am asked about how I quit.

It’s an issue that hurts people. I think everyone is very hard on themselves about how much of it they eat. And would like to be freed of the bind, even just for a while.

Anyway, I’ve spent several weeks (months?) writing up answers to everyone’s questions and compiling an 8-week program. I reckon it takes two months to quit, and there are specific steps that I took – after researching all the material – that make it effective and (relatively) smooth.

If you want, enter your email here and I’ll send you a little email alert when it lands.

(I promise your email won’t be used for anything else!)

And so…the I Quit Sugar ebook

It includes:

* an 8-week program with weekly things to do to get sugar out of your system, and that best beat cravings – both emotional and physical – and detox issues

* an overview of why quitting sugar is a good idea (the scientific explainers that you can hold up to your mates when they think your bonkers for even trying the idea out).

Read more

“Something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back”: Thelma & Louise turns 20!

When things that were a big part of my life have a birthday I’m taken aback. Twenty years!? Thelma and Louise!? I first saw Thelma & Louise smack-bang in the middle of my vocal feminist period. I was women’s officer at my university. I ran a mountain bike group (for men and women…but mostly to get women into it) and set up rape support and eating disorder programs. In 1994 I took a scholarship to study women’s studies in California. Do people do such things anymore?!

Picture 2 "Something's crossed over in me and I can't go back": Thelma & Louise turns 20!

I loved this movie. I loved the strong women with their muscle t-shirts and bad-ass jeans. Their friendship, which wasn’t girly or sappy or based around a wedding. It was robust.

I loved the end. When they have to choose between being arrested (and facing the death penalty) and flinging off a cliff. Something about what they did (fling… we’re led to presume) left me feeling, “Yes, that’s what life is about”. Even if it’s the last few minutes of it.

Atlantic ran a great read on how the film was the last great film about women. They make a really compelling argument. Slapped me in the face. Especially the bit about where women are at today. The stats are American but the Australian ones are much the same. That is, they explain why movies about chicks are so rare and only ever involve weddings:

Read more

Sally Fallon’s tips for eating breakfast

I’m a big fan of Sally Fallon and her “bible” Nourishing Traditions (in fact it’s my all-time favourite manual…I VERY much recommend it). She’s an adherent to the Weston A Price way of living, which is similar to Paleo living, which is similar to how I eat (I’ve personally found it the best approach for my auto-immune issues).

Picture 3 Sally Fallon's tips for eating breakfast
photo via The Alkaline Sisters

Anyway, in a recent edition of WAP’s Wise Traditions Magazine (by Jen Allbritton), they ran a rundown on the best tricks for eating breakfast based on Sally’s principles. So I’ve shared a few below. I recently shared a post on how to eat breakfast without sugar and grains…this kinda builds on it. I know a stack of you were interested in reading more. Yeah?

5 Weston A Price breakfast tricks:

  • fats and protein should be the featured nutrients, as they are critical for brain chemistry balance (these include egg, meat, fish, full fat dairy including yoghurt, kefir, nuts and seeds, coconut oil, butter, avocados).
  • fruit, veggies, tubers and whole grains make a wonderful side note.
  • make at least a portion of breakfast food easily digestible through soaking grains, or sour leavening, culturing dairy, fermenting fruits and vegetables.
  • don’t rush. Relax through your morning meal.
  • plan ahead.

Some breakfast favourites from fellow WAP foodies:

Sally Fallon: bake no-nitrate bacon in a pan with fruit (such as apple slices, apricot, peaches or nectarines, or with cherry tomatoes and mushrooms). Serve with eggs of any style – scrambled, fried. Enjoyed with a glass of raw milk. Breakfast tonic favourites include swedish bitters, beet kvass, cod liver oil, high vitamin butter oil mixed with warm water.

Read more

the peculiar beauty of being forced to *splat*!

This week in Sunday Life I simply get stopped

anna zakusylo by jamie nelson the peculiar beauty of being forced to *splat*!
by jamie nelson

During the week there was a moment – a very brief one – in which I was flying through the air, superman-style, and cruising towards a pile of rocks, when it occurred to me, “this is going to be majorly inconvenient”.

I landed on all fours, putting out my neck, and gouging a neat, golf ball-sized chunk of me-ness from my knee. But, in that brief moment, all I could think was, “Goddamn, this is totally putting a stop to my plans – three months in the making – to go surfing for four days with my best mate who’s just flown in and has three kids and so never, ever gets four days to surf with a friend”.

Then, splat.

Indeed, I spent the next four days, after a stint in emergency, shuffling about like Gumby. (Have you ever tried going to the toilet without bending your knees? Definitely funny, in a Gumby kinda way).

Quite obviously I was stopped. In my tracks, unable to do any activity as every limb was accounted for with stitches or gashes. (And it was definitely funny that it was specifically every corporeal surface required for surfing – feet, palms and knees.) This is my idea of purgatory and it’s happened many times over, and always just prior to Big Plans for Something Important. Yeah, you too?

Read more

Is your lifestyle “terminally jangled”? here! some Hunter S Thompson advice…

I could stare at that photo below for an inappropriately long time. It’s evocative and in-someone-else’s-moment-ish and makes me want to meet a man in trunks.

Mornings. Spent writing. Calmly. Alone. In sun. Yep.

hunter s thompson Is your lifestyle "terminally jangled"? here! some Hunter S Thompson advice...

I came across this rundown by Hunter S Thompson of his morning routine. Morning routine’s are key to life, I’ve come to learn. I’ve shared mine and others before. But this ode lifts my spirit:

“I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon;

anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast.

In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive:

Read more