How a Vegan Diet Motivates You to be Healthy

I've been a vegan for probably one year now. When I started, I remember going on the diet in secret. I was a covert vegan. I didn't tell anyone because I was concerned they might freak out.

I remember finding the vegan diet difficult because I lived with my family and my mother cooks my meals. Furthermore, when I am at work, I was too lazy to cook, so I always ate out at restaurants with coworkers or friends.

Rather than eat out with coworkers, for lunch I would instead purchase vegan food and eat at my desk. Now I make my own sandwich at home and bring it to work. Then I told my mother that I didn't want to eat meat, cheese, and egg. She didn't seem to like this at first, and my dad had a word with me about my behaviour, but I stuck with my position. After all, I wasn't a child but a fully grown adult. If non-vegan food was served to me, I simply didn't eat it, and I could easily blend my own green smoothie if I needed to fill myself up.

I am now mostly vegan. Some animal products probably slip in here and there. Sometimes I am vegetarian when eating out or travelling.

A few days ago, I was at a family gathering. My brother was there. Everyone was surprised at how skinny my brother was. His bones and ribs were showing. My concerned grandmother told my brother he needed to eat more. One family member joked that my brother was even smaller than me, which was surprising to him because I was a vegan.

Supposedly the stereotype of a vegan is that they are skinny and malnourished.

That night, while I was lying in bed, I thought about the incident. Before I was vegan, I often tried to be healthy. I tried to exercise a lot. I tried to eat healthy food. But often I would just fail. It was too tempting to eat hamburgers and bacon, so I would binge on the McDonald's and KFC. I think the reasoning is because I figured that you only live once, so why not enjoy your life eating what you enjoy eating?

However, as soon as turned vegan, I found that the motivation to eat healthy and exercise was rock solid.

My dad used to be a smoker. He'd smoke several packs of cigarettes per day. However, when I was a baby, I accidentally crawled and fell into a cigarette ashtray. There was ash all over my face. My father realized suddenly that if he wanted to set a good example for his children, he needed to quit smoking. How could he recommend his children not smoke when he himself smoked? So he quit completely the next day.

Sometimes when faced with fulfilling a cause greater than himself, a man will act. When it comes to addiction, many of us are happy to feed the addiction, even if it costs us our health, but if it is another being who you're hurting (e.g. your own child through passive smoking) then that is completely different.

The same applies to veganism. When I went on a vegan diet, I knew instantly that I would be judged. If I ended up looking unhealthy, if I ended up looking skinny and malnourished, people will shake their heads and blame the vegan diet regardless of whether the vegan diet was to blame or not. If someone is thinking of cutting down meat, dairy, and eggs, and they see a vegan who is skinny, pale, and malnourished, they will automatically conclude that the vegan diet is unhealthy and they will continue to eat animal products, and hundreds of thousands of extra animals will be slaughtered. Cows will be raped, pigs will be electrocuted, and chicken will be macerated.

If I don't eat healthy and go to the gym, I will become unhealthy, and as a result I will represent veganism badly, people will increase their animal intake, and therefore hundreds of thousands of animals will be slaughtered, and there will be blood on my hands.

This was what motivated me. It's easy to chow down on KFC and McDonald's when it's just your own health at stake, but when your decisions affect the lives of other innocent beings, that is a powerful motivator.

Superficiality is Happiness

Being superficial is essential for happiness. The moment you penetrate the surface of superficiality, you plunge into areas of corruption, selfishness, pain, and violence. You don't want to be there, and if you are already there, keep it to yourself. That you have witnessed the worst of humanity should be concealed from the innocent, so as not to drag them down with you and pollute their virgin minds.

Live in the moment. Seek happiness in the present; be superficial and optimistic. When you turn your thoughts to your past, selectively dwell upon happy moments, and suppress traumatic memories. When you plan for the future, be risk-averse, so as to ensure that your future self does not stumble into grief while having fun.

Live on the surface, and try to rescue those who are up to their necks. Be wary of those who live within the depths, for they, like predators of the sea, will grab on to you, and you will drown in realism.

Impressing Others

I have been reading The Simple Dollar, and one blog post there is called Ten Big Mistakes #5: Worrying What Others Think of You.

The author is a frugal man who keeps a blog to teach others how to be frugal with money. He certainly has not been a saint for all his life. When he was younger he was a big spender. He spent money on luxury cars, fancy clothes, up-scale restaurants, and so forth.

Even though the author claims that you should not care what others think of you, I personally find that it's difficult to not care at all what others think of you. I try hard not to let other people's opinions of me matter, but I find that it does matter. This is especially the case with, say, the clothes I wear. I have a lot of old clothes in my wardrobe. In fact, I approximate that about 95 per cent of the clothes in my wardrobe is out-of-fashion. I find that I cannot wear really old clothes in public. It would be like wearing pajamas in public. People would stare at me and I would feel self-conscious.

The author says, "Spend money on what you value, not what other people value. I buy automobiles based on reliability and gas mileage and safety, not how they look in our driveway or whether the neighbor will be impressed." I would agree. I purchased a fairly cheap car about four years ago. However, because I am a male I am glad I purchased a sedan and not a small girls car like a Nissan Micra or a Ford Ka. It would be terribly embarrassing if I drove one of those. I think conforming to gender stereotypes makes people feel more comfortable, and this definitely applies to me. I have admitted this to my friends, but some of them tell me that I should just do what I please, e.g. if I wanted to wear a dress then I should just do it and not be worried. I quickly showed them that they too were influenced by fear of what others thought because I dared them to wear a dress in public or to come to work with blue hair. Many people seem to like to think they are immune from the opinions of others, but when you really test them it seems as if they are just acting rebellious to impress you.

Blind Optimism

A 17-year-old has gone to the Invested forum and posted his goal of being a millionaire by 20:

I'm 17 years old and I have a goal of making one million dollars before I turn 20. That gives me just under 3 years.

...at the moment I am interested in learning about the share market and trading silver and gold.

Quite a few people told him being a millionaire by 20 is extremely difficult and he would likely have to do risky things, e.g. borrow money from the bank to trade gold.

However, what surprised me was the number of people who lept to the kid's defense, saying that his ambition was admirable and that he should forget about those who warn him of the dangers and go to the goal regardless of the risks.

This is like a drug lord asking you to transport heroin from one country to another. The drug lord claims he will pay you $250,000 if you transport the drugs, but if you get caught by police you may spend decades in prison or, in some countries, be executed. The drug lord will use all the same arguments: forget about the risks, aim high, you can do it, etc.

My point is that it is important to not be blindly optimistic and ignore the risks that other people may point out to you. Suppose you have a desire to commit a crime that may profit you immensely, but the risks may put you in prison. Some people who know about your criminal plans (e.g. your parents) may try to warn you not to proceed with the crime. The idea that you must believe in yourself, ignore everyone who says you cannot do it, and just do it regardless of the risks, is very dangerous.

If a friend of yours decides to transport heroin from one country to another (i.e. be a drug mule) and you try to discourage him because of the risks, and it actually turns out that your friend is successful and scores $250,000, it doesn't mean that your trying to discourage him was somehow wrong. You notified him of the risks. It also doesn't mean that you suffer from tall poppy syndrome because your motive for notifying the friend of the risks may be because you are concerned about him. The risk-return tradeoff is a fundamental concept in finance theory. It pretty much states that in order to make a lot of money you will have to take on much more risk. Just because a person can cite a story of a successful drug mule who is a millionaire from all the drug trafficking he has done, it doesn't mean the risk-return tradeoff is disproven. If a potentially lucrative activity is risky, for all the success stories you can find you will be able to find hundreds of stories of failure. If you hear of a story of a millionaire who won the lottery and you think that buying a lottery ticket is a worthwhile path to riches, you should balance this idea with the stories of the millions of lottery ticket holders who do not win and spend their lives buying lottery ticket after lottery ticket hoping they could win.

My main point is to have a goal but to be mindful of the risks. An appropriate risk management framework is essential for most businesses, so why shouldn't an individual think about risk?

Social Influence is the Enemy of Thrift

A new personal finance blogger I am starting to read more about is Ramit Sethi. I have just been reading a blog post he has written titled 7 Lies We Tell Ourselves About Money.

One of the points he makes in this blog post is that you should not look to others as role models because most other people are failures when it comes to money. That is, if you see other people taking lots of vacations and buying luxury goods, you don't need to copy them. Ramit says the following:

Would you look at a bunch of blue whales for advice on losing weight? Then why would you look at your ordinary friends, who are making ordinary money decisions, and will end up with ordinary results — not having enough money — as role models? Refocus your financial aspirations to people you value and their conscious decisions...

Ramit has just told us not to be like everyone else. If other people buy a Mercedes, don't copy them. However, Ramit then goes on to say the complete opposite, that you should prepare yourself to be like everyone else, that you should save money based on the expectation that you will spend like everyone else.

People are delusional about what will happen in the next 10 years. For example, if you’re in your 20s, the next 10 years will bring kids, a new car, a mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance, travel, life insurance, medical insurance….etc.

Every day I get frustrated people who tell me they’ve implemented all my strategies, yet when I tell them the next step is to implement the Ten Year Savings Strategy — where they save for the most likely things they’ll encounter within ten years — they become oddly dismissive.

This strikes me as being contradictory. Earlier he said that you should not spend like others and then suddenly he is saying you should spend like others. Should I buy the new car or not?

As a thirfty person, of course I am not going to splash out on a new Mercedes. I'd be spending $100,000 for a car when I can easily get a car for maybe $20,000. Given that the average child costs $250,000, producing a child is monetarily equivalent to purchasing a Ferrari. If you've committed yourself to never touching luxury sports cars, why wouldn't you apply the same thrift to children?

This children-as-luxury-goods concept is something I always talk about to people. It's one of those topics of discussion that everyone loves. Whenever I tell people I plan to never get married and never have children, more often than not they tell me that I say that now because I am young, naive, stupid, or a combination of the three. According to them, I will change. What they normally say is that when they were my age they thought as I did but over time they fell in love and subsequently their whole way of thinking changed.

Ramit even says something similar to this to some degree. In the blog post Why do Delusional People Think Their Spending Will be Different Than Other People’s?, Ramit says, "We like to believe we’re individual and different, but the entire field of social psychology illustrates how we mistakenly believe we’re in control of our own lives while systematically underestimating situational and social influence." Ramit's main point, I think, is that even if you believe you won't have children, save up for it anyway because chances are you underestimate social influence and will end up having children.

I will concede that I do understand what he is talking about. I am fresh out of university and with my new full-time job I have a new group of friends who are more cashed-up than my old university friends. Already I do indeed notice how much social pressure there is, not just to wear the best clothes but also to drive a nice car, to have a beautiful wife and children, to fill your weekends with fun social activities, and so on. Being the rebel that says no to all this can be draining as I have to explain everything in detail from first principles. I am going against culture merely for the sake of saving money. To refuse to have children or buy a luxury car for monetary reasons is equivalent to walking into a wedding function naked because you want to save on the costs of clothing. You will save $100 or so from not having to buy a suit, but you pay for that with non-monetary and cultural costs, namely by incurring the emotions of shame, self-consciousness, embarrassment, and so forth.

So then what is the optimal trade-off? To what degree do we incur pain for cash? Saving money is a tool I use to gain security in the future, which in itself is something I do to achieve certain emotions since financial stability induces within me emotions like comfort and confidence. The solution then is to do what suits you. Do you value social conformity or are you willing to incur the costs of shame and embarrassment so that you can attain stability and comfort (as opposed to anxiety)? It's a dilemma because you either face shame or anxiety. If you buy a luxury car or produce children today, you reduce shame and gain pride but at the cost of comfort in the future as your loss of money creates anxiety. If you sacrifice the luxury car or children today, you feel ashamed at being such a rebel but the abnormal cash you accumulate reduces anxiety in the future and gives you comfort and stability. What is better for you depends on your preferences.

Ramit says that it is important to save up a lot because you are likely to underestimate the extent of unseen influences (such as social influence) on you. But saving up a lot is often dependent on your being able to resist social influence. Many of the big costs that we incur--buying mansions, having children, funding lavish weddings, buying expensive engagement rings, and buying luxury cars--are the result of social influence. How then can Ramit say that we should be thrifty for the sake of conforming to social influence when social influence itself is the enemy of thrift?

I haven't read too much of what Ramit has written, but based on casual observation I have a feeling that Ramit makes his living mainly by rebelling against mainstream thinking, kind of like Penelope Trunk and Jim Betts. Mainstream thinking is filled with contradiction, but knee-jerk rebellion or doing the opposite of what is mainstream will not fix that problem.

Risky Business (Catalyst)

Link: Risky Business (Catalyst)

Risky Business, from the ABC science show Catalyst, shows how poor payment systems for fund managers may have incentivized managers to take high risk.

The show also explains that human behavior (and the behavior of many other animals) is influenced by biochemistry. When a man fails, cortisol is produced in his body, which causes him to become risk averse. Conversely, if a man wins, testosterone is produced in his body, which causes him to become risk loving. This may explain why stock prices moving in one direction (up or down) can be exaggerated. In a bull market, traders win money, which increases their appetite for risk, which increases stock prices even further. Conversely, in bear markets, traders lose money, which increases risk aversion, which decreases stock prices even further.

Overcoming Status Anxiety

I have just watched episode one of Status Anxiety on Youtube. The first 10 minutes of the documentary is below. I have also provided links further below of the rest of the first episode as well as the next two episodes (episode two and episode three).

As the title suggests, the documentary is about how many people are so preoccupied with their status in society. The documentary claims that the average American does not compare himself to people like Bill Gates. Rather, they compare themselves to people like them or near them, e.g. neighbors, friends, relatives, etc. If they are doing better than people like them, they feel successful.

How successful we feel depends on what our expectations are. If we compared ourselves to Bill Gates, we will probably never be satisfied. On the other extreme, if we compare ourselves to the most unfortunate people in the world, e.g. people who live in poverty with disabilities, then the average person can always feel satisfied. Too much satisfaction can lead to gluttony and inaction. There needs to be a nice balance between the two extremes.

I do admit that when I interacting with other people in society, I too feel some status anxiety, and I suspect it's a normal human emotion. When I tell other people that sometimes I feel status anxiety, they tell me things like, "Don't worry what other people think about you." Many other people tend to believe that what others think is trivial, but many people also try hard to look good in the eyes of others, so that seems like a contradiction. Instead of downplaying the magnitude of your own vanity, I think the first step to curing status anxiety is to admit that you feel it and that you are vulnerable to it.

My expectations are fairly low. I think that all you really need in life is about A$100,000. This amount of money should be enough to cover your food and accommodation needs. I get status anxiety when I am around other people. The two areas where I am in contact with others is mainly at work and at home. At work there are those people who earn more than me, and I don't get along too well with them. I merely do what they tell me to do because they are in a more senior position. But I do get along well with people who are paid my salary. These people tend to be just like me, that is, they are in their twenties, recently graduated from university, etc.

Once I am able to save up $100,000 then this should cover my food and rent. I will then be able to live without going to work and without living with my parents. In other words, I will be independent. Being independent and having the freedom to not be around other people means that other people cannot look down upon me. Many people think that by moving away from their parents they are becoming independent. However, many of these people have jobs and because they move away from their parents to buy their own homes, they usually have mortgages they have to pay to the bank, which means that they must keep working to be able to afford these mortgage repayments. Hence by moving away from parents they are not independent but rather they have become dependent on their employment. At their place of employment they are exposed to co-workers who can then give them status anxiety.

Overcoming status anxiety then requires true independence from all social circles. You must have the ability to pull out when you notice that the social environment is giving you anxiety. I don't think that pulling out of all social circles is a good idea because social isolation can lead to other forms of anxiety.



Status Anxiety Part 1 (1 of 5) [Above]
Status Anxiety Part 1 (2 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 1 (3 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 1 (4 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 1 (5 of 5)

Status Anxiety Part 2 (1 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 2 (2 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 2 (3 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 2 (4 of 5)
Status Anxiety Part 2 (5 of 5)

Status Anxiety Part 3 (1 of 6)
Status Anxiety Part 3 (2 of 6)
Status Anxiety Part 3 (3 of 6)
Status Anxiety Part 3 (4 of 6)
Status Anxiety Part 3 (5 of 6)
Status Anxiety Part 3 (6 of 6)

The Sucker to Saint Phenomenon

I have been reading an article called Suckers and Saints: How We Rationalize Being Wimpy about a phenomenon whereby a person who is insecure e.g. about being weak rationalizes it by acting morally superior. As the author says, "Claiming the moral high ground is driven by a basic insecurity." This would suggest that those who are poor would be more inclined to believe that money is evil. It also suggests that morality is just rationalization and that a person who is not insecure in any way would have no morality.

For example, many people believe that rape is bad. If you watch the news you may hear about a rapist and you may think that the rapist is an evil person and that you are morally superior to the rapist because you would never rape anyone. However, maybe this feeling of moral superiority is driven by insecurity. Perhaps you claim you are morally superior to a rapist because you do not have the guts to rape people.

This suggests that the fully secure and confident person with self-esteem is the person with no morals, a person who goes around robbing banks and raping women because he believes that nothing is morally wrong.

Sense of Entitlement

I hear many people complaining that too many people nowadays have a sense of entitlement. One person I spoke to said that this is because children are nowadays overprotected and therefore come to believe that the world will protect them when in reality nobody will.

If we all have human rights, aren't we all entitled to something? For example, imagine if a man was raping a woman. The woman complains about this and says that she has the right to not have sex with the man if that is what she wants. However, the man who rapes her can claim that she has a sense of entitlement because she believes that she is entitled to this right to choose whom she has sex with. If it is wrong for anyone to have a sense of entitlement then it is therefore wrong for the rape victim to believe that she or he is entitled to freedom from coercion.

Of course, slavery and coercion is much more complicated than the example given above. When someone is a victim of rape, usually the rapist is stronger then the rape victim, and this difference in strength results in the victim not being able to exercise his or her option to stop having sex. With slavery, the slave can disobey but there are usually punishments set up to make this option not preferred. A slave has choice but the best choice leads to a poor outcome. For example, in Ancient Egypt it is widely believed that slaves were used to make pyramids. A slave had freedom in that he could choose two options: (1) work, e.g. pull heavy stones or (2) not work and get whipped. The slave has freedom to choose between working and not working but since the latter option leads to extreme pain, the slave is driven by fear of pain to work for the slave owner. This slave situation is analogous to the plight of workers in modern capitalist societies. In Australia, if you cannot get a job, you must go to Centrelink, which is a government agency that helps the disadvantaged. Centrelink will pay you a certain amount every fortnight but in return you must look for a job. To prove that you are looking for a job, you must write diaries and attend Centrelink seminars. I know all this because one of my friends went through all this. This system of welfare is analogous to slavery because the worker does have choice. For example, suppose an 18-year-old girl is dumped by her parents and needs to get a job to feed herself. Assume she is not intelligent and therefore cannot get any job other than being a prostitute. She doesn't want to be a prostitute because she hates sex and therefore resigns and is taken to Centrelink. The only thing Centrelink will do is put her back into employment, which means she will be a prostitute again. Therefore, she cannot escape work, which therefore means she is a slave. The fact that she is forced into sex against her will also means that she is being raped. What if she can find another job? It doesn't matter. It's still slavery because the individual cannot escape work, and the work available will likely be low paying and just as demeaning and nasty as a job as a prostitute. What if she gets a good job that she likes? What if she likes being a prostitute? If that is the case, then she is fine. She is doing what she loves. However, preferences tend to differ among people and there will always be those who don't like what they are doing but have to do it.

Many people who see those who don't like their job and choose to quit call them lazy. However, if you saw a slave complaining about how horrible being a slave is, would these people blame them for being lazy even though their situation is analogous? Would these people judge rape victims?

Having a sense of entitlement can be beneficial because we therefore fight for those rights we think we should have. For example, if nobody had a sense of entitlement, people would never fight and die to secure for women rights to vote.