I think you're mentally obese

A modern affliction

Nov 03, 2023

Humanity’s collective diet is atrocious.

And I’m not talking about what we shove into our mouths. I’m nauseated by what we feed our minds. We have adopted a mental junk food diet that would even make the FDA cringe.

A mental sweet tooth seemed harmless at first, but now it’s clearly rotting our minds.

The internet is the ultimate double-edged sword.

These days, there is more nutritious content than could be consumed in a hundred lifetimes. Yet, there’s even more (seductively packaged) mental junk food disguising itself as healthy. Both just a mere scroll, swipe or click away.

The modern struggle is distinguishing the difference between the two.

Hate to say it but, the deck is stacked against us.

Thanks to many of the brightest minds going to work for some of the most powerful corporations in the world who are incentivized to entertain us to death. Their playbook is simple and hidden in plain sight — let’s cram their mental food pyramid with enough irrelevant (yet captivating) nonsense that would even leave the stars from “My 600-Lb. Life” feeling over-satiated.

Dramatic? Sure. True? You betcha.

The issue is that many of us don’t even realize we are binging on an all-you-can-eat mental junk food buffet.

We like to think we are feeding our minds a balanced meal consisting of (but not limited to): breaking news delivered by talking heads, notification bells and whistles screaming for our attention like a toddler who’s parents ignore them, and a big fat scoop of celebrity gossip served as the cherry on top.

This is all justified under the guise of being an informed citizen, or so we are told. But we must be careful not to fool ourselves, even though we are the easiest people to fool.

Let me ask you this — are you properly equipped to handle this torrential downpour of endless information, content, or whatever you want to call it, in real time?

Many of us look like decapitated chickens running around aimlessly.

Now I must confess, I love mental junk food as much as the next fellow. So before you think I’m seated atop my throne wagging my finger at you peasants, allow me to share an all-too-recent morning in the life of yours truly…

Wake up, roll over, unplug phone from the charger, and let the games begin. Still crusty eyed, I would open up all of my favorite apps such as: ESPN, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo News, and Linkedin (oh my!). Then, as if falling into a hypnotic state, my wife’s alarm would snap me out of it and I’d be left wondering, “where did the past sixty minutes of my life go?”

As if that wasn’t enough, I’d stumble into the living room to turn on the TV and flip to the local news channel to fill up on a few neighborhood burglaries, rapes, and murders. All delivered by some slightly-too-friendly newscasters covered in pounds of makeup who didn’t seem to have any comprehension of what they were saying.

At last, I was finally ready to walk out the front door to start the day. Sound familiar?

Mental obesity is a modern affliction with zero ancestral experience for us to fall back on.

At no other time in human history have we had a never-ending stream of mental junk food available at our fingertips. Free to stroll down the grocery aisles of the internet where we can fill our bottomless carts with anything we please.

So now what?

I’ve found two useful ways to combat mental obesity that I thought would be worth sharing with you.

Never watch the news again.

Here’s a fun little experiment — go back and read the front page of The New York Times from seven years ago. You’ll get a good laugh from how meaningless 99% of it turned out to be.

The only news worth knowing will find a way to reach you without you seeking it out. Think about it, if World War 3 breaks out, will you really need to tune in to Fox News or CNN?

Stop consuming content created in the past twenty-four hours.

Every social media platform is setup in a way to always show you what’s new. But just because it’s new, is it worth knowing?

Here’s a friendly reminder — in addition to all that new, likely useless information, there’s a smorgasbord of nutritious mental snacks shared by the greatest minds to have ever walked the earth. Also just a scroll, swipe, or click away.

Now I can’t guarantee that you’ll lose that mental dad bod overnight, but neither could P90X.

Here’s what I can confirm from personal experience — just as removing actual cheetos from my food diet improves my physical health, removing mental cheetos from my information diet improves my mental health.

It ain’t gonna be easy, but let’s combat mental obesity by standing up and walking out of the mental junk food buffet so we can go find the Whole Foods for the mind.

Hope to see you there!

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