“Darling I don’t know why I go to extremes”

Who got the song reference? You, my new favorite person? Great.

This isn’t a Billy Joel appreciation post (although maybe one day!). I just feel like that’s a really appropriate song lyric for this trend I’ve been noticing. We keep hearing messages that something is either AMAZING, PERFECT, THE BEST THING EVER or it’s AWFUL, THE WORST, WILL DEFINITELY KILL YOU. I ignored it for a while, but my patience has officially run out.

Let’s talk about eggs.

Eggs and I have had a complicated relationship, and I’ve just recently started incorporating them into my diet regularly in a way that I actually enjoy. I made an effort because of all of the research that shows how beneficial they are to eat. But lately there’s also been information that has tried to negate that, and tell you that they’re actually the same as eating poison rather than being something you should eat tons of everyday. So should you eat 0 eggs or 5 eggs everyday? Are they a superfood or basically the same as eating toxic waste? Neither. The answer lies somewhere in the middle in the neighborhood of “when eaten in moderation, eggs have health benefits!”.

That’s true of most things.

Remember the 90’s? Don’t say no, you’ll make me feel old. It was low fat everything. Snackwell’s were huge, and in retrospect, I am very impressed with us collectively for convincing ourselves that they were edible. They were not. We were very motivated by the idea that everything related to fat was bad, and that fat actually makes you fat. We now know (I hope) that’s not at all true. We need healthy fats to live and function as humans. But, since we can’t seem to manage to keep any semblance of balance, we are now in the world of the Keto.

The keto diet is super popular and tells you that FAT IS GOOD EAT ALL THE FAT. That’s a far cry from the days of pretending to love whatever Snackwell’s made their cookies out of that was masquerading as chocolate. Were we THAT wrong?

No. The answer is rarely at one end of the spectrum or the other.

99.9% of the time, the “right” answer or the truth actually lies somewhere in the middle. You should go outside and be in the sun, because vitamin D is super important. But not too much, because then you burn and run the risk of sun cancer. Eating your favorite foods, even if that includes french fries, is good for your mental health and keeps you more motivated to eat healthier foods as well. But if you eat your weight in french fries everyday, you’re going to have a problem. Exercise is basically a magic potion for your health, but if you do too much, you risk injury and burn out. See what I’m getting at?

If someone tells you something on one extreme or the other is the way to go, run in the opposite direction.

There are very few (if any) things in life that are always good or always bad. Your relationships aren’t either perfect or not worth a second of your time. Most situations, even if they’re just plain awful, do have some semblance of a silver lining. The phrase “happy medium” exists for a reason.

We live in a world of social media influencers, click bait, and not so informed people giving information as if it were the absolute truth. It’s hard to navigate what’s factual and what is actually going to work for you. So I encourage you to go back to what my BFF, Billy Joel, says. I really don’t know why you’d go to extremes.