In an earlier post about weight loss, I pointed out that one of my three unnumbered rules is "Don't Eat Crap". I had a deeper lesson in that rule recently. I discovered that, when I'm in good shape, and exercising hard regularly, I can eat a small amount of junk, and if I only do it sporadically, I don't gain weight. In fact, if I do it only a little more regularly than that, I gain a little weight, and if I catch the new weight in time, I can get it off again easily.
The problem is that I either do it too much, or change my metabolism, or something... because I wound up putting on a few pounds that have proven hard to take off. My daily weight was finally down yesterday to where I want it to be, but my trend is still up, and will be so for a while (the trending programs I use average the last ten days). So it's back to strict food plan for a while until I find a system that will work for me. (I'm writing this at about 2:00 am, awakened, in part, by hunger. I'll get back to sleep soon.)
As I was thinking of the stuff in those two paragraphs, I got to thinking about pattern recognition. Humans are pattern-seekers, as I've been reading in Taleb, Gladwell, and Levitin, and it's because of this that I was able to see the pattern in my food history and my weight. I'm reasonably sure that there's a cause-effect relationship between those patterns, because there's a good theory that would explain it, and because history has suggested it top be true in the past, and because the experience of others indicates it's true.
I'm also one of those people that sees faces in inanimate objects (car headlight-and-grill patterns, especially; some of them remind me of particular acquaintances) and sounds (door squeaks can bring back melodies), where I know there is NO relationship between the pattern and the meaning I bring to it. I've been lying in bed raging about the fact that flow dynamic patterns so frequently look like a person wearing a veil, or a long-haired person in flowing robes (another reason I'm not sleeping; I'm not the most rational person you ever met at this hour of the morning), so that people thank that this, that, or the other flow pattern is a visitation from their favorite religious figure. And then I remember that some of these people have done some marvellously* generous things, claiming inspiration from these religious figures, which takes some of the fire out of my grumbling and makes me sound like just another cranky old guy (which, of course, I frequently am). Oh, doodies.
Oh, well. Back to sleep soon. There's another yonk of snow on the ground, I'm probably not going to work in a few hours, and there's more important stuff to worry about - like the fact that I think I finally got the fore-aft level of my bicycle saddle right!
*Yes, I spell "marvellously" with two internal "l's". And I spell "grey" with an "e". I'm pompous and insufferable that way. Live with it.
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