The Half-Diet Diet by Richard Eyre

Author:Richard Eyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Familius
Published: 2016-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

EXERCISING THE MIND

Compare to Chapter 5

Back in Chapter 5, we discussed the importance of finding a form of physical exercise that you love and challenged you to engage in that lovable form of fitness at least five times per fortnight. Though it is not directly about food or the appetite for food, exercise is a legitimate part of a physical diet because it uses the food. The food is the input, and the exercise is the output.

Exercise puts the fuel we take in to the good use of building muscle and skill and heart/lung capacity and does not leave fuel for the bad use of adding weight or accumulating fat. In a successful diet, the appetite for output (exercise) balances and harmonizes the appetite for input (food) and both appetites, held in check by each other, work to our benefit.

We all know that the mind needs exercise, too, and just as physical exercise tones and trims the body and keeps off excess weight, so mental exercise tones and trims the mind and holds at bay the dimming and dulling that can come to an idle or passive mind.

Just as with food, it is about cultivating and controlling an input appetite and an output appetite and balancing the two of them. Mentally, the input appetite is for awareness, stimulation, information, knowledge, data, understanding, etc. and the output appetite is for accomplishing something or contributing something or impressing someone by turning those inputs into outputs.

On the one side, we should learn to control what kind of inputs we let in. We can monitor ourselves to take into our minds quality rather than junk. On the other side, we should strive not only to keep our minds active and fit but also to control how and to what ends we use our minds and their amazing capacity.

Once again, the physical is truly a “type” for the mental.

Just as we expand muscle and extend our skill and capacity by working out physically, so we enhance our mental faculties by working out our minds. A person who has a physically active job may need less additional exercise, and a constantly intellectually challenged student or someone who is constantly stimulated and mentally tested in her job may need less outside or additional mental exercise.

And just as we must find physical exercise that we enjoy if it is to become a consistent and pleasurable habit, so we must engage in types of mental stimulation that we enjoy if they are to become something we gravitate to and do out of love more than out of duty. Crossword or Sudoku puzzles may be pleasurable mental exercises for one, mathematic problems for another, writing historical fiction for one, attending discussion groups for another. We must each find our own combination.

INPUT VS. OUTPUT

But remember that we are talking about output here, not input. It is important to separate the two. The input of reading or studying or listening to music is like eating, so to say “Reading is my mental exercise” is a little like saying “Eating is my physical exercise.

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