Ideas Not Answers

We all want answers.

That's basically why I started Bare 5. In search of answers to many of the questions everyone else is asking. I happened to be interested in health so most of my answer seeking was in that realm...

What is health?

What's the best diet?

Is barefoot better for you?

What's the best way to move?

What do healthier older people do?

What's really going on with cholesterol?

And on and on.

The further I get along in the search for answers the more I realize that there are very few true answers. Just ideas.

A World of Ideas Posing as Answers

Head over to the internet and search, "why can't I lose weight?"

Google quickly gives me:

• An excerpt from Web MD talking about the thyroid
• 25 reasons I can't lose weight from Eat This, Not That
• 15 hidden reasons I can't lose weight from Eat This, Not That
• The full link to the Web MD entry
• A read this now article from Healthline
• The real reason I can't lose weight from The Times
• A green coffee article from Doctor NDTV
• 5 surprising reasons from Dr. Oz
• An article about eating healthy not working from Nia Shanks
• 10 not so obvious reasons from Blum Health MD
• An article from Mark Hyman MD

All of these are filled with answers to the question of why can't I (someone) lose weight. There's enough here to keep me busy for quite a while and that's just the first page of an unknown number of web results!

No matter how much we might want them to be, however, these aren't answers. They're simply ideas.

Answers come from concrete and defined questions, like, "Who played Chunk in The Goonies?" Of course we all know it's Jeff Cohen. 🙂

Answers don't come from uncertain and ambiguous questions like, "What's the best diet?" Try Googling that and see the massive amount of conflicting "answers" you get. That's clue number one that none of them are actually answers and are just different perspectives.

Almost all of the questions we ask in health are hard to really focus and articulate because the body, our pseudo understanding of it and the massive scope of individuality makes it near impossible to set strict enough parameters to even ask a good enough question to get a definite answer.

So we're left with asking questions that, if asked well, result in ideas about answers, not actual facts. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for it to be easy: what's the best way to lose weight? Boom. Done. Next question.

But it's not.

So the best we can hope for are ideas. Which are great. We need ideas to help us search for the answers that work for us. We just can't get the two mixed up. Ideas are not answers, no matter how high up the Google search list they fall. People can pay a lot of money to climb up the internet search engines, which doesn't usually parallel the accuracy and helpfulness of their answers. Nor does the fact that a hundred thousand people viewing a idea does not an answer make.

Keep in mind that next time you ask a question about health. Look for, and realize you're searching for, ideas, not answers.

Also keep in mind that not all ideas are created equal and applicable to you. The reason there are so many answers/ideas in health is that everyone is different. A good idea for someone (the Keto Diet) may or may not be good for you but certainly isn't the legitimate answer.

I Smell Ice Cream!

The best part of the ideas not answers concept is that there's not just one way to do things. Veganism is not the answer to "why can't I lose weight", just an idea on how to do it. So that means if you like to have a steak every once in a while, you still have a chance at losing weight and you're not stuck with an answer you don't like.

Just like there's not one best flavor of ice cream. There's dozens upon dozens and they can all be someone's favorite.

Now, if all the ideas you "like" center around ice cream (they got Pralines & Cream and they got Mississippi Mud, and they got Chocolate Eruption!) and Netflix binges then you might have a little work on your hands to find a helpful answer. 🙂

Ideas mean options. Open ended. Possibilities. Answers mean closed. Strict. Confined.

We all like to know things. I get it. When I'm curious about the release date of Goonies 2, I don't want ideas I want answers! But when it comes to health all I really want to know is that there's some different flavors out there with which I can create my own menu.

Thanks for reading, have a great sundae!