Last Breakfast of 2020

Last day of 2020, and I had a fine breakfast! I toasted a banana muffin, had my almost daily savory oats and something new I fashioned up. I had some granola hanging out in the cupboard so I poured some in a bowl. I added raspbeerry pudding in place of yogurt from the Engine 2 Cookbook and topped it off with some blueberries.

This coffee isn't really coffee but Teccino Dark Roast Chicory Root "Coffee". It is close enough to real coffee that I don't really need coffee anymore. One of my goals last year, unspoken though it was, was to wean myself off of caffeine partiularly in the form of coffee. But i really like coffee, dark and black. Even Decaf has caffeine in it so I really wanted to get off caffeine. This helped me do that. It is close enough to a dark roast coffee that I was able to convince myself it was acceptable. I actually made a pot of "coffee that 1/4th was regular dark roast coffee and the rest this and I could tell almost right away the effect of caffeine on my system. I did it again yesterday and decided I don't really like the effect even though it does provide you with some focus. I decided that other than really necessary scenarios I will not be drinking coffee and even so if I want to have some caffeine I intend to get it from green tea not coffee.

Started Okinawa Program

I actually read the Foreword and first Chapter of The Okinawa Program. I read this book in the early 2000s when it was first released. I may have mentioned in my earlier post on it that I lived in Okinawa at the time the book was released and I've met all three of the authors as well as Dr. Weil who wrote the foreword. As I suggested in that previous post, the Okinawa Program does say it is not simply diet, but exercise, spirituality and community that help define what makes Okinawans so long lived.

Unexpected Synergies

Not really a fan of the word "synergies" but when it is appropriate I use it. As you know I've been reading the Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You (blog post) personally and The Remote Facilitator's Pocket Guide (blog post) professionally. Interestingly enough, both are talking about how social fears or work stress can lead to problems. In the case of the former book it is focusing on how the survival instinct can turn in to maladaptive habits. In the latter book it talks about how social pain is the same as physical pain in that the same centers of the brain light up to process it; and therefore being exluded from participation in remote meetings can feel like physical pain to people.

Not earth-shattering revelation but the degree to which our bodies impact our mind, and our mind our bodies is an increasingly fascinating topic to me. And it is fun to find this type of unexpected synergy between books I'm reading for different purposes. Far out!