A Lighthouse for Personal Growth

Healthiness

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aliasesWhat can I do to think more clearly?

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ALSO KNOWN AS What can I do to think more clearly?

# Overview

Moral You don’t have to have a flawless body, but you must maintain it well.

Definition
In the program, healthy means making good decisions for the health of the body, which helps the mind. It’s not about diseases, disorders, or other maladies a person can’t control. It’s about choosing healthy foods, taking exercise, having consistent sleep patterns, and doing what you can, all of which promote brain activity. A person mustn’t neglect their body. It takes discipline to maintain a body that is ready not only to move when needed, but think sharply.

Captain Theme Go FESHing! Mnemonic Healthy body, healthy mind.

Location Healthy is a quality of the Self-aware trait in the Instinct power.
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# Agenda

  1. Why do I have to be healthy to think clearly?
  2. How can I be healthier?

1. Why do I have to be healthy to think clearly?

Being physically healthy means that you move around and watch what you eat. If you have an active body, you have an active mind. Having an active mind helps you make better decisions.

The idea of overindulgence and laziness as signs of unhealthiness isn’t new, of course. In Christianity, Temperance is one of the Seven Virtues of Heaven, while Sloth, Greed, and Gluttony are three of the Seven Deadly Sins. The ancient Greeks would often say “nothing in excess”, which implied that enjoying anything for too long or too often is unhealthy. Nowadays, we say “everything in moderation”, but Oscar Wilde came up with an interesting alternative. “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” It might be true, but it’s important to consider the goal of success.

Being mentally healthy is also important, but that is another lesson in Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Management. In this section, though, we will take our time to move through the reasons we should maintain bodily health.

1.1 CP Value Illusion

Many people find that sacrificing health for cost-performance ratio (or CP value) is an acceptable practice that is all too easy. A high-CP value means that customers feel like they get more than their money is worth. It’s a way to get “more bang for your buck”; it feels good for many people to think that they got a great deal. Sometimes, that’s an illusion that’s difficult to see through.

Anyone who has ever lost sleep understands how important it is to rest. Anyone who has gone more than a few hours without food or water knows how much the body needs it. Anyone with chronic pain knows how important it is to move the body and eat right.

These are some of the most basic things required for survival, yet, in our modern time, it may be the most neglected of all. Nutrition is often sacrificed in the name of laziness and cost efficiency.

In this section, we’ll examine what it means for a person to be fooled into following a frugal, low-effort diet of processed foods. We will also see how a company makes money off of you, and we will reveal the illusion behind the “high-CP value” mentality.

1.1.1 Company Perspective

It may seem to be an easy decision to get more food for less money, except when the quality of the food is examined. Just take a moment to think about why the food is cheaper.

What we will do now is put ourselves in the company CEO frame of reference. If you don’t know what a frame of reference is, please review that section in Perspective to find out. Come back to this lesson when you are ready.

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Inform yourself rather than allowing others to misinform you.

Keep in mind that everything in the exercise below is hypothetical, and I don’t support the CEO’s thinking. However, being able to think like a CEO is very valuable because you see what motivates them.

1.1.2 Crab King

  • You are the CEO of a restaurant, Crab King. You have to make money on every customer you serve, or your business will collapse.
  • You come up with a high-CP value offer for the customers: an all-you-can-eat in two hours Alaskan King Crab buffet dinner.
    • Crab King targets customers of low- to middle-class workers. It’s not particularly known for offering expensive crab species.
    • Alaskan King Crab sells for six to nine thousand New Taiwan Dollars per kilo, and a person could typically eat 1.5 to 3 kilos of crab in 2 hours.
    • To make money, you choose to serve pre-shelled crab meat (meat outside of the shell) as a promotional offer to boost business for your restaurant.
    • Many customers will be suspicious of the shell-less crab meat, but you counter with the fact that they have less work to do to eat. If the meat is easier to get to, the less time they have to fight the shell, and the more meat they can eat. Savvy customers, however, will totally dismiss this offer as false.
    • If the customers see your counter as an added value, you can begin the deception because you have won their trust, which is easy to do sometimes. Most people are trusting, anyway.
    • Now, you buy the empty shells of many king crabs to decorate the buffet line. You don’t buy the meat because it’s not a viable business decision. The meat is too expensive to sell during this promotional offer.
    • Instead, you buy cheap crab meat, maybe even artificial meat because your target customer is not accustomed to eating Alaskan King Crab. They probably won’t even know the difference! You pay 4,000. It’s much cheaper, and you stand to make a lot of money.
    • Yes, this meat may not be what you advertise, and it may even be harmful to customers’ health, but the only thing that matters is you make money. It’s the customer’s fault that they believe in such a deal, not yours because you offered it to them. They have to be smart enough to take care of themselves. That’s not your problem, right?
  • While the CEO is fully aware that the meat he sells is not what’s advertised, he may not be fully aware of the quality of the meat he does sell. The crabs he chose to sell are filled with artificial chemicals to abnormally promote their growth, and they are farmed inbred crabs instead of wild-caught crabs.
  • Consider the following questions:
    • Does anyone like losing money? Do companies succeed by truly giving more than the customer pays for?
    • Does the culture educate people to look for these scams? Are these education programs successful?
    • Why is it easy to convince people that a high-CP value means a good deal?
    • What would happen if the customer is confronted with the comparison between the actual price of real Alaskan King Crab meat and what they paid for imposter Alaskan King Crab meat?
    • Why is healthy food more expensive than unhealthy food?
    • Why is highly processed food less healthy than natural foods?

It’s economically viable for companies to cut costs. They do so by offering highly-processed foods that are cheap to make and easy to sell because they are packed with unhealthy, good-tasting materials. They even do so knowing the health risks their products pass on to their customers. Maybe companies care about health, but they care more about keeping their jobs and making money. Meanwhile, many customers care more about taste than health. Even though white rice is more processed (less healthier) than brown rice, people prefer the white because it “tastes better”.

The Unseen Cost Companies often take advantage of the impulse buy and immediate gratification psychologies. A lifetime of customers choosing taste and CP value over their health adds up: chronic pain, degenerative diseases, and lifelong disorders. Perhaps healthier food choices could have avoided these effects. Perhaps genuine love for our fellow man could have prevented this state of affairs as it exists today. A customer might think they are saving a few bucks now by buying cheap food, but they will pay more than a few bucks in future hospital visits to treat conditions brought on by their dietary choices. The medical industry is just that: an industry. Could they have their hand in the food market, making the food that injures us so they also make money treating our injuries?

#7 Quote

If you can’t afford to be healthy now, you’ll pay for it later.

— Popular Adage

To circumvent these negative effects on our health, try avoiding foods that don’t grow naturally on Earth. If it comes in a package, it’s “fake food”. Buy real meat, vegetables, beans, fruits, whole grains, brown rice, and more. If it grows on a plant or comes directly from an animal, it’s “real food”. Don’t be fooled by real food that comes in a package, such as a salad or a vegetable wrap of natural foods, because they are sometimes packed with unhealthy chemicals.

If we all were more aware and careful regarding our diet, the companies that sell fake food might make a shift toward real food. The world could be changed. Keep an open, but discerning, mind.

1.2 Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

One thing leads to another, actions have consequences, and for every action there’s a reaction: we’ve heard it before. What we do now has a short-term and long-term effect, not only on our body, but in our mind. It’s placing one domino after another, then pushing the first one over. Soon, one action set into motion numerous others. If we prepare ourselves with health in mind as a child, it’s likely that we will be health minded as an adult.

#6 Concept

Domino Effect: a causal event which causes other predictable events to happen as an effect

Most of the ailments of humanity come from the long-term effects of processed foods and sedentary lifestyles. The evidence in reports is readily available in scientific reports. The key understanding is that eating unhealthily may solve the short-term problem of being hungry. However, the long-term effect is that it degrades the body and deprives the mind.

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If you prepare poorly now, you are setting yourself up to fail later.

When we prepare ourselves well in the short-term, the long-term benefits too. What we will do now is examine how poor choices in the short-term can affect the mind.

1.2.1 Two Lands

  • Before you start, at this moment, would you consider yourself well rested and well fed?
  • Let’s assume your role as a captain sailing a ship.
  • You are sailing eastward when your navigator gives you an update.
  • He says you are now between two lands. One is the Land of Liars (where everyone always lies) and the other is the Land of Truth (where everyone always tells the truth). North or south, he doesn’t know for sure in which direction the lands lie.
  • Suddenly, another crew member alerts you to a man in a small boat nearby. He lives in one of the two lands. You want to go to the Land of Truth.
  • What question can you ask the man to find out if the Land of Truth is in the north or south?
    • Think for a while before clicking to reveal the answer below.
  • Now, imagine being awake for 3 days with no sleep, eating only sugary donuts, and lying in bed the whole time.
  • If I give you the same puzzle for the first time, explain how easy or difficult finding the answer would be.

If you considered yourself healthy before starting the exercise, did you find the puzzle difficult? Other things can compound the mind’s ability to think clearly, but that is a different lesson. I don’t encourage testing this theory out by depriving yourself of sleep and nutrition. My hope that the demonstration here is enough to highlight the importance of rest and nutrition in support of the mind’s ability to function efficiently.

1.1 Moral

Our actions now have an effect now and much later, too. Being healthy isn’t just for your body’s benefit; it also helps your brain think better. If you neglect your body, you are setting your brain up to fail. If you are finding yourself overwhelmed by the stress of life, focus on the right diet, exercise, and sleep pattern.

2. How can I be healthier?

Being healthier asks you to educate yourself on how the body works and what it needs. It’s as easy as providing those things and avoiding unhealthy, addictive behavior.

This section is less about puzzles and exercises and more about informative techniques. Most people already know what to do to be healthier, but what they lack is the motivation. People who need you, like family, is a great way to motivate yourself. People who love you is a great reason to live longer with them. However, the best reason of all is for yourself. You will always need yourself, you will always love yourself (if you don’t, please see Self-Love), and you are always around yourself to monitor what you do. Just listen to the part of you that warns you against something, and don’t do it more often than you do it.

2.1 Maintenance

Captionator

Ben Koorengevel Let’s go FESHing!

To maintain the boat, the captains of the 1400s had to have barnacles (a kind of crab) removed from the bottoms of the boats because they slowed the boat and caused damage to the wood. They had the crew “swab the deck”, which means to mop the floors of the ship. They also had to be sure to carry lemons aboard to avoid Vitamin C deficiency, or they would get a disease, called scurvy. These are just some of the details that the captains of old had to worry about.

What about you? It could be said that you need to worry about your own “captain and boat”, which is your mind and body. You need nutrition, quality sleep, cleanliness, and exercise to maintain your body and mind. Whatever you do, try not to do too much, but don’t be so strict as to stress yourself.

#6 Quote

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

— Unknown

This quote encourages us to be balanced in things, but there is even balance in short periods of indulgence. Adhering to strict diets and depriving yourself of something can be harmful to the mind, or stressful. Doing something too much can be harmful to the body, or toxic. It’s up to you to be honest with yourself and have the discipline to know what is too much and too little.

2.2 FESH

We can remember the our own maintenance checklist with this acronym: FESH; F for food, E for exercise, S for sleep, and H for hygiene.

2.2.1 Food

Suppose you get enough sleep, but you don’t eat healthy foods. Most food today is fried, oily, and processed by factories, which put chemicals on the food to make it last longer on store shelves. When you eat the food, your body digests it very quickly because of how the food is made. Not only that, but you also eat the chemicals, which harm your body. The company doesn’t care about that, though. They want your money!

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Eating unhealthy food is like setting sail with a boat full of holes.

Healthy food is more expensive, but there’s a reason for that. It’s more satisfying and less harmful for your body. You pay for that, and it’s a good deal. Cheaper food usually means “fake” food.

2.2.1.1 Grow or No Standard

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If it doesn’t grow, it’s a no. If it lasts, it’s a pass.

This is a standard that challenges you to only eat food that grows naturally on Earth. If the food is made to last, then it contains unsafe chemicals. The Grow or No Standard excludes any foods that are processed by companies so that they are more edible and/or last longer on product shelves. Let’s have a few examples. French fries don’t grow, but they do come from potatoes. Verdict? Don’t eat fried potatoes. Mangoes grow on trees, so as long as they are not treated with chemicals, they’re OK.

Beware! Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by certain products. It’s important to do your research. Many people may be surprised when I make the statement that white rice doesn’t grow on Earth, so it shouldn’t be eaten. Rice does grow, but white rice is white because of how it is processed. Since it is processed, it is no longer a natural product, and it should be avoided.

Obviously, this is an extreme standard to follow, but I encourage you to try it out. If you live by the standard above, you will be amazed to find how much food made available to the public doesn’t meet the standard. Sometimes, you will want that white rice. You have to decide whether or not that is OK for you.

2.2.1.2 Diet

There are a lot of things to get right about diet, and in this section, we’ll list the things that you should consider.

  • Portion size
  • Fresh food, not processed
  • Snacking
  • Sugar
  • Smart

The last one might feel a little strange, so we can start there first.

A1: Eat Smart

This point covers something that many people don’t think about: when you should eat. When you feel hungry, is “Should I eat?” the first question that comes to mind? Think about it!

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You don’t need to eat every time you are hungry.

While you shouldn’t skip meals, you will not starve to death if you don’t immediately solve the hunger problem. The Rule of Threes is a survival guideline saying that an average human will die in:

  • 3 minutes without air,
  • 3 hours without shelter,
  • 3 days without water,
  • 3 weeks without food.

Hunger is a primitive instinct that drives you to stop the discomfort (hunger pangs) from having an empty stomach. Most people don’t even think: hunger pangs mean eat^[Hunger pangs also happen due to gastrointestinal problems and dehydration. If they are persistent and serious, see your doctor!]! However, here’s the thing. If you don’t eat, the hunger pangs go away. Why? Your digestive system has started using your body’s stored fat for its energy. Yes, your body is using your fat to produce energy.

What happens when your body uses fat for energy? You get energy, and you lose fat. What happens if you eat every time you are hungry? You eat more than you need, and your body stores it as fat. If you never exercise, if you eat every time you’re hungry, if you never ignore hunger pangs, then your body never gets a chance to burn fat.

What a tragedy, right? Be smart with your diet: ignore your hunger pangs between meals every once in a while.

A2: Portion Size: Too Much

Have you ever gone to a buffet? Just before arriving, did you change your eating schedule, such as skipping the previous meal so that you can eat more? Did you eat until you felt discomfort? This might be a sign that you are sacrificing your health for a “good deal” on food.

Follow the 80% satiety rule. Satiety means being full when you eat, and in Japan, some follow a philosophy, called “Hara Hachi Bun Me” (腹八分目). It means eat until you are eight parts (80%) full.

When it is full, your stomach sends a signal (the fullness cue) to your brain to say, “Stop eating”. The fullness cue is a bit delayed before it reaches the brain, so by the time you feel it, you might be closer to 100% full or more.

A full stomach at 100% or more causes various short-term and long-term health problems. In the short-term, you feel uncomfortable, sleepy, and you might have heartburn. If you often eat this way, the long-term effects include obesity, metabolic disorders, and stretching the stomach. When the stomach is stretched, it takes more food for you to feel full. Therefore, when you are hungry, not only does it take more food than ever to fill you, your stomach also continues to stretch if you—again—eat beyond the 80% fullness limit. It’s a dangerous cycle because shrinking a stomach means that one would continuously need to eat until 50% fullness or less for a long time before its original size is reestablished.

If you are overweight now, it’s time to take action to shift to a healthier situation. Follow the 80% rule of fullness, don’t let anyone convince or guilt you into eating more, and you will start feeling much better.

A3: Portion Size: Too Little

Oppositely, if you don’t eat enough, then your body doesn’t get what it needs, and again, there are short-term and long-term effects. In the short-term, you will feel fatigue, brain fog (confusion or slowed thinking), weakened immunity (you get sick often), and digestive problems, such as heartburn. In the long-term, you will experience muscle/tissue loss, bone loss, hormone imbalances, and organ failures.

Try to eat a variety of foods to give your body something interesting to do: get nutrients from different things. Aim for 80% satiety, as well, and you will be as right as rain.

A4: Fresh, Not Processed

One of the reasons processed food is bad for your body is because of what it’s made of. Carbohydrates (carbs) are an important part of a person’s diet, and they are a great source of energy. However, to simplify understanding, let’s say there are two kinds of carbs: simple and complex.

  • Simple carbs come from processed foods. They are unhealthy and inefficient for the body because they are digested for energy very quickly with very little nutrition.
  • Complex carbs come from natural food, like vegetables and fruits. These are better for the body because they burn for much longer than simple carbs, and they have more nutrients.

Satiety is not only how full you are, but also how long it takes for you to feel hungry again after you eat. Optimally, satiety should last at least until our next meal. That means if we had a healthy breakfast, we shouldn’t feel hungry again until lunchtime.

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If you eat fast food, you will become hungry again very quickly. If you eat fresh food, you won’t be hungry again for a while.

#6 Analogy

Satiety is like a campfire on a cold night: use logs for fuel, not leaves.

Let’s imagine that you are in the wilderness on a night that is freezing cold. You absolutely need a campfire that lasts through the night so that you can sleep comfortably. If you use dried leaves for fuel, the fire will die quickly because the leaves are thin and light material. They turn to ash in seconds, but logs are thicker and denser. The fire takes longer to burn them down to ash.

Now comes the symbolism.

  • The leaves symbolize simple carbs.
  • The logs are complex carbs.
  • The duration of the campfire is your satiety.

With this metaphor, we can easily understand carbs better. What’s the lesson here? If you eat simple carbs which are in processed and fast foods, then you are setting yourself up to freeze, or become hungry faster. If you want to feel full until your next meal, eat logs—I mean eat complex carbs that come from natural foods. Don’t eat logs.

A5: Snacking

The best thing to do is don’t snack at all—unless you are doing a lot of physical activity, like hiking, cycling, or playing sports. Why do people snack? There are two reasons, and we already talked about exercising. The other, most encountered reason is that people feel hungry, and they want the hunger pangs to go away. Since, we’ve already talked about portion size, eating smart, and carbs, you might already know what I’m going to say.

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Eat enough healthy food during meals to feel 80% full, and ignore the hunger pangs until the next meal.

If you really can’t last until the next meal, choose your snack wisely. Eat one fruit, a few nuts (the less processed the better), or a piece of dark chocolate. That’s all about snacking! It’s really very simple.

A6: Sugar

Sugar isn’t considered to be a drug, but it should because it’s addictive, readily available, and harmful. The way we treat sugar, how it’s in so many foods, is a terrible act.

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Sugar alters a person’s mood, produces measurable withdrawal symptoms, it damages fullness signals, and it elevates body tolerance levels.

Your body builds sugar tolerance over time, meaning that you have to eat more of it to get the same effect. If a person is ignorant about what sugar does to the body, then they are unwittingly damaging their body. If a person has a high-sugar diet, it becomes harder for them to stop eating it because of the withdrawal symptoms.

What are the long-term effects of sugary diets? Heart disease, diabetes, decline of brain function (dementia, Alzheimer’s), and that’s the short list.

For me, this is an unfortunate lesson that I have learned because I have a diabetic body. The relationship with sugar I have now is much different than what I used to have, and I learned so much from it. It’s still a difficult habit to break sometimes, but I have already come a long way. The struggle is real, and I am an advocate against the use of sugar in everyday diets.

A7: Conclusion

This section is not a criticism of your behavior because we are never perfect. It’s a presentation of information you already know, but I hope that it’s presented well enough to illustrate its own importance.

Remember, treat yourself with grace, as we discuss in Self-Love. A diet can be a difficult thing to do right. You will fail, you will regress, but when you do, treat yourself with dignity, recommit to the cause, and start the diet again. Do this more than you regress, and you’ll be fine.

2.2.2 Exercise

Moving your body, getting exercise, and increasing your heartrate are all important. What is the point of having a body if we don’t use it? If we use it, why not take care of it?

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Having a body but not exercising is like having a sailboat but never going sailing.

As you get into old age, your muscles become weaker naturally. The more you work now, the easier life will be later. That is a common idea we will see throughout the program. If you don’t have a habit of exercising when you are young, it will be harder to start exercising when you are old because by then you will be old and stubborn!

2.2.3 Sleep

In our captain theme, your mind is the captain, and your body is the ship. The mind and the body seem separate, but, just like the captain and the ship, they work together. Like a mind is to a body, a captain is only as good as the ship. It takes discipline to be able to take control of your own thoughts and actions.

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If you don’t get enough sleep, it’s like sailing a ship without the captain!

The mind needs rest from a day of making observations, calculations, and decisions. It also relies on a regular schedule of sleep, called the Circadian Rhythm. Your body benefits the most if you go to bed and wake up at consistent times. For example, if you wake up at 8 AM and sleep at 9 PM, you should always wake up at 8 AM and sleep at 9 AM.

Additionally, you should only use your bedroom, or at least your bed, for sleeping. This trains your body and mind to know that this room (or bed) is used to sleep. Lying in bed watching a movie or reading a book sends mixed signals to your brain about the bed, which can make it difficult to fall asleep.

Finally, consider not using electronic devices an hour before bed. The blue light in them can also make it difficult to sleep. You can try to reduce this effect by adjusting screens more toward orange light, sometimes called “night mode”. While this makes everything on the screen a little more orange, it’s healthier on the eyes. The brightness of a screen is better if it is below 50%; not only does it save your phone battery, but it’s healthier for your eyes!

2.2.4 Hygiene

You only get to have one body in this life, and you only get to make one first impression on people you meet. Your body is the first thing you wake up to every day, and it’s the first part of you that people see when they meet you! It’s important to take good care to be clean because it shows dedication.

Being clean means washing, caring for your body, and avoiding dirty habits, like smoking or drugs. Even legal drugs given by doctors can be injurious because sometimes doctors are like the food companies: they care more about money in the end. If you think that’s not right, try telling the hospital that you can’t pay for a surgery. Would the doctors give it to you for free, even if it would save your life?

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Not caring for your hygiene is like happily sailing a ship that’s infested with rats.

Washing, brushing teeth, and cleaning your environment really helps with health, but also your mood. Being in a good mood helps improve your mindset and makes you more resilient to life’s setbacks. My suggestion is to try not to be too clean, what we would call a “clean freak”. If you always disinfect your environment, your body may never encounter bacteria it must fight. If your body doesn’t fight germs often, it won’t be strong when a big bad bacteria comes along.

2.3 Moral

What is said in this lesson isn’t meant to scold or depress you. It’s meant to inform and motivate because we all struggle, especially in nutrition because so many things affect the food industry.

There are many things you should do before you make a decision. Your actions now affect your future, whether or not you know it. Being healthy is not easy because it takes discipline and consistency. Prepare your future health by attending to your daily health responsibly. The best way to manage risks is to start with a great foundation of support. Don’t overindulge, but indulge every now and then. Keep up with the checklists of what your body needs: go FESHing!

Extend the Lesson

2026-06-04 11:59