Thursday, January 3, 2013

Rely on Yourself!

I don't know about you but I am tired of people telling me what to do, when to eat, and how to live. And this is coming from someone who tells people what to do for a living as I am a registered dietitian in private. (Note: Apologies to my family for all of my freely given, unwanted advice!)

With that said I am sensing, in addition to electronic overload, collectively we are getting sick and tired of everyone being an expert on everything. EVERYTHING. I can go to the dry cleaners and hear advice on my 401K. Go to the hair salon and be told I need to add chia seeds to my Greek yogurt and POM to my morning smoothie. Don't get me wrong, some of the advice I hear is really helpful.

But to sort through just one episode of Dr. Oz is overwhelming. Dr. Oz (maybe he is friends with the wizard?) makes us think we can always do so much more.......and more and even more until we've bought every supplement known to man and don't have any money left for real food. And that is just the beginning of all the experts who are parading around talking about everything from toe nails to wine.

We can see by looking around us that all this advice has not gotten us, as a country, in better physical or fiscal shape. So I suggest we go back to the good old days when we listened to our inner voice. This is called self-reliance. Maybe Thoreau was way ahead of his time.