obsession -- it's UGLY

It continues to astonish me how monomaniacal a few trolls are -- they seem DRIVEN to attack a person or concept to a degree that is clearly unbalanced.  When HATE is a prominent motivator, there's something wrong, either in the brain chemistry or perhaps ... just in the personality.  I mean after all, some obnoxious people aren't sick, they're just personally repulsive.

And it comes back to what I said the other day about liking the people we spend our evenings with.  I see nothing admirable about the personalities in Big Brother:  I therefore have no desire to spend my evenings with those people.  I see nothing admirable in the rantings of CICO zealots:  I'd rather endlessly revisit the archives of constructive bloggers like Eades, Harris and Petro than wade through the ravings of agenda-driven, unpleasant assholes, on the off-chance of finding a factoid of real-world applicability.

REAL-WORLD APPLICABILITY -- this is the central problem with some types of research!  Mouse studies are valuable for determining how physiological details function, but to fantasize that mouse-metabolism may be directly applicable to humans is delusional.  Some human studies are not transferrable to groups of different demographics -- but we're supposed to believe that caged, KO rats and free-living humans will present identical responses...???

No, the ideas that are useful to a person like me are those which have been SHOWN to be SUCCESSFUL FOR OTHERS like me.  Karen at Garden Girl may not have tips that will help a gym-rat to reduce to single-digit body fat, but her "what works" list has gems of practical information.  Wooo's specific responses to various supplements aren't directly applicable to ME, as my challenges and hers are not identical, but I've harvested invaluable knowledge about hormones and neurotransmitters from her writings.  All of the blogs on my list are not only interesting, they're pleasant to read and USEFUL.

Thanks largely to the blogs I DO read, I've solved the problems of my metabolism.  I've learned to boost the performance of my thyroid and to compensate for my genetic shortcomings.  I've discovered how to maximize my hedonistic pleasures while minimizing the physical repercussions (charcuterie-plate and champagne anyone?).  I've hacked the issue of chronic fatigue (for myself at least, because all cases are different).  More central to the theme that so many people are interested in, I've learned how to eat to lose fat and gain muscle PREDICTABLY AND RELIABLY. 

Gone are the days when I'd eat under 1000kcal/day for weeks and NOT lose weight.  Gone are those low-fat days when I stuffed my stomach with vegetables, fruits and lean proteins and STILL paced around the house with an insatiable appetite. 

Are my current successes in the slightest bit reliant on Conventional Wisdom and traditional ELMM philosophy?  Absolutely NOT.  Over the decades I tried it in one style or another, many times.  I tried Ornish-style vegetarianism, and I felt horrible.  I tried Rotation diets, Eat to Win, Cabbage Soup, and so on.  I tried eating MORE of WAPF-type foods, and that didn't work, either.  Trial and error taught me what to eat so that I look AND feel better.  Atkins was a good start, but it wasn't the last hurrah.  Adding cream and butter wasn't it, either.  Nor coconut oil or isolated MCTs.

I found my answers.

LIFE -- I win. 

...The trolls, I doubt their "winner" status.