Marshall Sontag Live!

Connoisseur of Connoisseurs

Last night, I made an interesting realization about myself. Brittany and I attended a class at Whole Foods entitled "To Carb or Not to Carb" given by Cindy Heroux, a registered dietician. It was very informative, and while I did already know a great deal of what she spoke about, she integrated it all beautifully and provided very good general nutritional advice.

She spoke about how Atkins unfairly incriminates carbohydrates when glucose, a carbohydrate, is an absolutely essential energy source for your brain and nervous system. She said that through the last several decades, diet fads like Atkins have come and gone, but epidemiological studies throughout the world have shown that the populations that ate mostly fresh fruits and vegetables were consistently the healthiest.

Another common-sense, yet uncommonly occurring statement she made was "Everything in moderation." Your body needs a little of everything; it needs fat, protein AND carbohydrates, so don't let yourself fall into the recent carb hysteria -- it's just another fad. Provided you learn moderation, you can eat basically anything you want to. Unfortunately, many people lack the self-discipline required to do that and instead seek a nutritional dogma, very much like they would a religion.

She also made a few comments that piqued my curiosity regarding her involvement in eastern philosophy. One was "Listen to your body," and what she basically means is this: Your body will tell you when to stop eating and it will let you know when it doesn't like a food you've eaten, among other things. This sounded vaguely eastern, but I wasn't really sure about it until she discussed her practice of mindful eating (I think she called it sensual, because it engages all of your senses). Brittany also showed me sections in Cindy's book on things like living in the present, and watching your thoughts. It turns out that she does study eastern philosophies. Which ones? "All of them. I'm a student of the world. I think every culture has something valuable to offer." I thought that was an incredible statement, because it's something I've implicitly felt as I've begun to expand my areas of study.

I decided then, after listening to her nutritional advice as well as hearing about her other studies, that she was an expert on, to borrow from her website, wellness. I asked if I could ask her questions via e-mail because I wanted to go to her with any questions I had in the future, which she affirmed that I could do. It was at that moment that I realized that I collected experts.

A collector of experts, or you could say a connoisseur of connoisseurs. In every area of my life, I have connected with and latched onto people that I considered experts in those fields. For psychology, meditation, Buddhjectivism and design, I have Joshua Zader (I'm sorry, Josh, I mean't "ObjectiBuddhism" *wink*). For exercise and design, Drew Baye has always been extremely helpful. For Objectivism, I have William Thomas (Though Diana Hsieh might disagree.) For meditation and Buddhism, I have Peter Carlson and Arinna Weisman. For investing, there's the man that introduced me to the book responsible for my financial philosophy (Rich Dad, Poor Dad -- Buy it!): Dr. Michael Zerivitz, Lindsey's dad (Whom I haven't spoken to about the subject in a long time because I have no money!). For epicurean endeavors, I have my wonderful mother. If I needed to do some handy work, I imagine I'd call my landlord, Arik March, and if I had a physics question, I'd probably ask Luke Setzer.

The realization made me remember something I read in Charles Givens' book, SuperSelf: "Learn from the experiences of others, rather than your own. " He goes on to elaborate:

You can cut the learning curve by up to 90 percent in anything you set out to accomplish through the application of this simple strategy. You become truly wise not when you get a college degree, but when you learn to learn from both the positive and negative experiences of others so that you don't have to repeat their mistakes and travel all of the dead-end roads yourself.

So next time you find an expert, grab 'em -- and if you're reading this right now, you already have! *wink*

Posted by Marshall at March 31, 2004 05:18 PM