Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. I hope you are doing great wherever you are right now! Let’s smile to such a beautiful day.

Last time I was talking about pendulum effect in our life. Today I would like to discuss a specific side effect of the pendulum, I call it the law of compensation.

How can Pendulum help us to choose good wellness programs?

When I am talking about physical swing of the pendulum, everybody understands it. Emotional swing is also can be seen as a pendulum. But there’s another swing, let’s call it physiological. Good news is that our body can compensate well. Not so good news is that it is not forever, and we have no control there.

Some of that is very obvious, like side effects of taking steroids for a long time, or trying to get off alcohol or drugs.

What I’d like to point at today is a huge variety of diets and training systems. Unfortunately, not all of them are good. When I first came to the US, fat-free diet was so popular. I wanted to scream, what the heck are you doing? My friends were consuming tons of carbs, proudly showing me the label, “look, it has zero fat!”. Nobody would listen to me. But remember, the law of compensation works. Carbs are turned into fat inside our body even better than fat itself.

That’s why I saw so many people getting fat on a fat-free diet. Once they realized they were way out of balance, guess what? We all became witnesses of another swing of pendulum, called low-carb diet.

My short lesson for today is, be mindful of what you are doing to your body. Golden rule I try to follow, is any artificial restrictions to what is natural to our body, will eventually lead to breakdown. Period. I’ve learned it from other people and, unfortunately, from my own mistakes.

The least that will happen in that case, people just drop the diet and overcompensate, means get fat right back. Or get some serious physical traumas.

Good wellness programs have no restrictions against what is natural, they are tailored to individual needs, and they don’t push people too far outside the comfort zone right away. Everything has to be done in small steps.
How to figure out what is good for you? The best way is to get a coach. And I can recommend several good fitness and nutrition coaches who can help you to identify and address your specific needs. Just let me know.

On my web site hpln.org you will find the schedule of classes I teach, as well as links to my audio and video channels.

Thanks for tuning in! Now let’s breathe and smile.
I will talk to you next time.

PEACE!
Jin

Listen to other Morning Mindfulness Podcast episodes here