What myths do you carry around? A mini Sunday morning rant…

Posted In: Wellness December 17th, 2017 divider No Comments »

I’m currently reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, a book that was heavily recommended by many. It’s a pretty amazing look at our history and how it’s shaped us. And how a lot of it comes down to “myths” we carry around with us.

The biggest takeaway from the first part of the book has to do with nutrition and health. He makes a pretty convincing argument about how the agricultural revolution might not have been the best thing for us. It seems we did not much better as hunters and gatherers.

He also looks at how societies have emerged mostly due to the shared myths we have. The political system, the class system, roles and responsibilities all play a factor.

I’m glad I followed my curiosity to the Primal Health movement. We’re obviously evolving but I think in a lot of respect we might not be evolving in the right direction with this modern society where we don’t fully know the cost we pay for convenience.

It makes think about all the myths we carry in health and fitness:
-You must carb up before long runs
-Running is bad for you
-You must replace your shoes after 500km
-You need a lot of protein to bulk up
-You need 3 square meals every day (or food every few hours)
-Cereal is a healthy breakfast

We don’t really know how most of these myths came about until we look into them. If you read into it (and I have for some of these), it aligns nicely with someone’s or some industry’s interests.

Another respect is technology. Technology is great if you get it to work for you but we’ve become more and more of slaves to it (myself included). Even our friends at Facebook have recently let the cat out of the bag about how they’re their trying to make it addictive so we spend more time on their platforms.

I’m not saying quit everything and move to remote area, although that’s appealing sometimes, all I’m saying is explore where your myths and where they came from. That’s what I’ve been doing over the past few years and it’s been quite insightful for myself.

Anyway, that’s enough of a rant for a Sunday morning. Off to do a long snowshoe to think about some myths I might bust for myself in the coming year…