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Taekwondo vs Muay Thai 2014 | Martial Arts Fight Scene (Real Contact Hits)

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10 Más Grandes Peleadores De la Historia

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10 Artes Marciales más letales del mundo

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10 Artes Marciales más letales del mundo

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TOP 10 ARTES MARCIALES MAS LETALES DEL MUNDO

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Let me tell you the story of two investors, neither of whom knew each other, but whose paths crossed in an interesting way.

Grace Groner was orphaned at age 12. She never married. She never had kids. She never drove a car. She lived most of her life alone in a one-bedroom house and worked her whole career as a secretary. She was, by all accounts, a lovely lady. But she lived a humble and quiet life. That made the $7 million she left to charity after her death in 2010 at age 100 all the more confusing. People who knew her asked: Where did Grace get all that money?

But there was no secret. There was no inheritance. Grace took humble savings from a meager salary and enjoyed eighty years of hands-off compounding in the stock market. That was it.

Weeks after Grace died, an unrelated investing story hit the news.

Richard Fuscone, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch's Latin America division, declared personal bankruptcy, fighting off foreclosure on two homes, one of which was nearly 20,000 square feet and had a $66,000 a month mortgage. Fuscone was the opposite of Grace Groner; educated at Harvard and University of Chicago, he became so successful in the investment industry that he retired in his 40s to "pursue personal and charitable interests." But heavy borrowing and illiquid investments did him in. The same year Grace Goner left a veritable fortune to charity, Richard stood before a bankruptcy judge and declared: "I have been devastated by the financial crisis ... The only source of liquidity is whatever my wife is able to sell in terms of personal furnishings."

The purpose of these stories is not to say you should be like Grace and avoid being like Richard. It's to point out that there is no other field where these stories are even possible.

In what other field does someone with no education, no relevant experience, no resources, and no connections vastly outperform someone with the best education, the most relevant experiences, the best resources and the best connections? There will never be a story of a Grace Groner performing heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained cardiologist. Or building a faster chip than Apple's engineers. Unthinkable.

But these stories happen in investing.

That's because investing is not the study of finance. It's the study of how people behave with money. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. You can't sum up behavior with formulas to memorize or spreadsheet models to follow. Behavior is inborn, varies by person, is hard to measure, changes over time, and people are prone to deny its existence, especially when describing themselves.

Grace and Richard show that managing money isn't necessarily about what you know; it's how you behave. But that's not how finance is typically taught or discussed. The finance industry talks too much about what to do, and not enough about what happens in your head when you try to do it.

This report describes 20 flaws, biases, and causes of bad behavior I've seen pop up often when people deal with money.

1. Earned success and deserved failure fallacy: A tendency to underestimate the role of luck and risk, and a failure to recognize that luck and risk are different sides of the same coin.

I like to ask people, "What do you want to know about investing that we can't know?"

It's not a practical question. So few people ask it. But it forces anyone you ask to think about what they intuitively think is true but don't spend much time trying to answer because it's futile.

Years ago I asked economist Robert Shiller the question. He answered, "The exact role of luck in successful outcomes."

I love that, because no one thinks luck doesn't play a role in financial success. But since it's hard to quantify luck, and rude to suggest people's success is owed to luck, the default stance is often to implicitly ignore luck as a factor. If I say, "There are a billion investors in the world. By sheer chance, would you expect 100 of them to become billionaires predominately off luck?" You would reply, "Of course." But then if I ask you to name those investors - to their face - you will back down. That's the problem.

The same goes for failure. Did failed businesses not try hard enough? Were bad investments not thought through well enough? Are wayward careers the product of laziness?

In some parts, yes. Of course. But how much? It's so hard to know. And when it's hard to know we default to the extremes of assuming failures are predominantly caused by mistakes. Which itself is a mistake.

People's lives are a reflection of the experiences they've had and the people they've met, a lot of which are driven by luck, accident, and chance. The line between bold and reckless is thinner than people think, and you cannot believe in risk without believing in luck, because they are two sides of the same coin. They are both the simple idea that sometimes things happen that influence outcomes more than effort alone can achieve.

After my son was born I wrote him a letter:

Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.

2. Cost avoidance syndrome: A failure to identify the true costs of a situation, with too much emphasis on financial costs while ignoring the emotional price that must be paid to win a reward.
Say you want a new car. It costs $30,000. You have a few options: 1) Pay $30,000 for it. 2) Buy a used one for less than $30,000. 3) Or steal it.

In this case, 99% of people avoid the third option, because the consequences of stealing a car outweigh the upside. This is obvious.

But say you want to earn a 10% annual return over the next 50 years. Does this reward come free? Of course not. Why would the world give you something amazing for free? Like the car, there's a price that has to be paid.

The price, in this case, is volatility and uncertainty. And like the car, you have a few options: You can pay it, accepting volatility and uncertainty. You can find an asset with less uncertainty and a lower payoff, the equivalent of a used car. Or you can attempt the equivalent of grand theft auto: Take the return while trying to avoid the volatility that comes along with it.

Many people in this case choose the third option. Like a car thief - though well-meaning and law-abiding - they form tricks and strategies to get the return without paying the price. Trades. Rotations. Hedges. Arbitrages. Leverage.

But the Money Gods do not look highly upon those who seek a reward without paying the price. Some car thieves will get away with it. Many more will be caught with their pants down. Same thing with money.

This is obvious with the car and less obvious with investing because the true cost of investing - or anything with money - is rarely the financial fee that is easy to see and measure. It's the emotional and physical price demanded by markets that are pretty efficient. Monster Beverage stock rose 211,000% from 1995 to 2016. But it lost more than half its value on five separate occasions during that time. That is an enormous psychological price to pay. Buffett made $90 billion. But he did it by reading SEC filings 12 hours a day for 70 years, often at the expense of paying attention to his family. Here too, a hidden cost.

Every money reward has a price beyond the financial fee you can see and count. Accepting that is critical. Scott Adams once wrote: "One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power." Wonderful money advice.

3. Rich man in the car paradox.

When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, "Wow, the guy driving that car is cool." Instead, you think, "Wow, if I had that car people would think I'm cool." Subconscious or not, this is how people think.

The paradox of wealth is that people tend to want it to signal to others that they should be liked and admired. But in reality those other people bypass admiring you, not because they don't think wealth is admirable, but because they use your wealth solely as a benchmark for their own desire to be liked and admired.

This stuff isn't subtle. It is prevalent at every income and wealth level. There is a growing business of people renting private jets on the tarmac for 10 minutes to take a selfie inside the jet for Instagram. The people taking these selfies think they're going to be loved without realizing that they probably don't care about the person who actually owns the jet beyond the fact that they provided a jet to be photographed in.

The point isn't to abandon the pursuit of wealth, of course. Or even fancy cars - I like both. It's recognizing that people generally aspire to be respected by others, and humility, graciousness, intelligence, and empathy tend to generate more respect than fast cars.
4. A tendency to adjust to current circumstances in a way that makes forecasting your future desires and actions difficult, resulting in the inability to capture long-term compounding rewards that come from current decisions.
Every five-year-old boy wants to drive a tractor when they grow up. Then you grow up and realize that driving a tractor maybe isn't the best career. So as a teenager you dream of being a lawyer. Then you realize that lawyers work so hard they rarely see their families. So then you become a stay-at-home parent. Then at age 70 you realize you should have saved more money for retirement.

Things change. And it's hard to make long-term decisions when your view of what you'll want in the future is so liable to shift.

This gets back to the first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily. But how do you not interrupt a money plan - careers, investments, spending, budgeting, whatever - when your life plans change? It's hard. Part of the reason people like Grace Groner and Warren Buffett become so successful is because they kept doing the same thing for decades on end, letting compounding run wild. But many of us evolve so much over a lifetime that we don't want to keep doing the same thing for decades on end. Or anything close to it. So rather than one 80-something-year lifespan, our money has perhaps four distinct 20-year blocks. Compounding doesn't work as well in that situation.

There is no solution to this. But one thing I've learned that may help is coming back to balance and room for error. Too much devotion to one goal, one path, one outcome, is asking for regret when you're so susceptible to change.
5. Anchored-to-your-own-history bias: Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.
If you were born in 1970 the stock market went up 10-fold adjusted for inflation in your teens and 20s - your young impressionable years when you were learning baseline knowledge about how investing and the economy work. If you were born in 1950, the same market went exactly nowhere in your teens and 20s:

There are so many ways to cut this idea. Someone who grew up in Flint, Michigan got a very different view of the importance of manufacturing jobs than someone who grew up in Washington D.C. Coming of age during the Great Depression, or in war-ravaged 1940s Europe, set you on a path of beliefs, goals, and priorities that most people reading this, including myself, can't fathom.

The Great Depression scared a generation for the rest of their lives. Most of them, at least. In 1959 John F. Kennedy was asked by a reporter what he remembered from the depression, and answered:

I have no first-hand knowledge of the depression. My family had one of the great fortunes of the world and it was worth more than ever then. We had bigger houses, more servants, we traveled more. About the only thing that I saw directly was when my father hired some extra gardeners just to give them a job so they could eat. I really did not learn about the depression until I read about it at Harvard.

Since no amount of studying or open-mindedness can genuinely recreate the power of fear and uncertainty, people go through life with totally different views on how the economy works, what it's capable of doing, how much we should protect other people, and what should and shouldn't be valued.

The problem is that everyone needs a clear explanation of how the world works to keep their sanity. It's hard to be optimistic if you wake up in the morning and say, "I don't know why most people think the way they do," because people like the feeling of predictability and clean narratives. So they use the lessons of their own life experiences to create models of how they think the world should work - particularly for things like luck, risk, effort, and values.

And that's a problem. When everyone has experienced a fraction of what's out there but uses those experiences to explain everything they expect to happen, a lot of people eventually become disappointed, confused, or dumbfounded at others' decisions.

A team of economists once crunched the data on a century's worth of people's investing habits and concluded: "Current [investment] beliefs depend on the realizations experienced in the past."

Keep that quote in mind when debating people's investing views. Or when you're confused about their desire to hoard or blow money, their fear or greed in certain situations, or whenever else you can't understand why people do what they do with money. Things will make more sense.
6. Historians are Prophets fallacy: Not seeing the irony that history is the study of surprises and changes while using it as a guide to the future. An overreliance on past data as a signal to future conditions in a field where innovation and change is the lifeblood of progress.
Geologists can look at a billion years of historical data and form models of how the earth behaves. So can meteorologists. And doctors - kidneys operate the same way in 2018 as they did in 1018.

The idea that the past offers concrete directions about the future is tantalizing. It promotes the idea that the path of the future is buried within the data. Historians - or anyone analyzing the past as a way to indicate the future - are some of the most important members of many fields.

I don't think finance is one of them. At least not as much as we'd like to think.

The cornerstone of economics is that things change over time, because the invisible hand hates anything staying too good or too bad indefinitely. Bill Bonner once described how Mr. Market works: "He's got a 'Capitalism at Work' T-shirt on and a sledgehammer in his hand." Few things stay the same for very long, which makes historians something far less useful than prophets.

Consider a few big ones.

The 401(K) is 39 years old - barely old enough to run for president. The Roth IRA isn't old enough to drink. So personal financial advice and analysis about how Americans save for retirement today is not directly comparable to what made sense just a generation ago. Things changed.

The venture capital industry barely existed 25 years ago. There are single funds today that are larger than the entire industry was a generation ago. Phil Knight wrote about his early days after starting Nike: "There was no such thing as venture capital. An aspiring young entrepreneur had very few places to turn, and those places were all guarded by risk-averse gatekeepers with zero imagination. In other words, bankers." So our knowledge of backing entrepreneurs, investment cycles, and failure rates, is not something we have a deep base of history to learn from. Things changed.

Or take public markets. The S&P 500 did not include financial stocks until 1976; today, financials make up 16% of the index. Technology stocks were virtually nonexistent 50 years ago. Today, they're more than a fifth of the index. Accounting rules have changed over time. So have disclosures, auditing, and market liquidity. Things changed.

The most important driver of anything tied to money is the stories people tell themselves and the preferences they have for goods and services. Those things don't tend to sit still. They change with culture and generation. And they'll keep changing.

The mental trick we play on ourselves here is an over-admiration of people who have been there, done that, when it comes to money. Experiencing specific events does not necessarily qualify you to know what will happen next. In fact it rarely does, because experience leads to more overconfidence than prophetic ability.

That doesn't mean we should ignore history when thinking about money. But there's an important nuance: The further back in history you look, the more general your takeaways should be. General things like people's relationship to greed and fear, how they behave under stress, and how they respond to incentives tends to be stable in time. The history of money is useful for that kind of stuff. But specific trends, specific trades, specific sectors, and specific causal relationships are always a showcase of evolution in progress.
7. The seduction of pessimism in a world where optimism is the most reasonable stance.
Historian Deirdre McCloskey says, "For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell."

This isn't new. John Stuart Mill wrote in the 1840s: "I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage."

Part of this is natural. We've evolved to treat threats as more urgent than opportunities. Buffett says, "In order to succeed, you must first survive."

But pessimism about money takes a different level of allure. Say there's going to be a recession and you will get retweeted. Say we'll have a big recession and newspapers will call you. Say we're nearing the next Great Depression and you'll get on TV. But mention that good times are ahead, or markets have room to run, or that a company has huge potential, and a common reaction from commentators and spectators alike is that you are either a salesman or comically aloof of risks.

A few things are going on here.

One is that money is ubiquitous, so something bad happening tends to affect everyone, albeit in different ways. That isn't true of, say, weather. A hurricane barreling down on Florida poses no direct risk to 92% of Americans. But a recession barreling down on the economy could impact every single person - including you, so pay attention. This goes for something as specific as the stock market: More than half of all households directly own stocks.

Another is that pessimism requires action - Move! Get out! Run! Sell! Hide! Optimism is mostly a call to stay the course and enjoy the ride. So it's not nearly as urgent.

A third is that there is a lot of money to be made in the finance industry, which - despite regulations - has attracted armies of scammers, hucksters, and truth-benders promising the moon. A big enough bonus can convince even honest, law-abiding finance workers selling garbage products that they're doing good for their customers. Enough people have been bamboozled by the finance industry that a sense of, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" has enveloped even rational promotions of optimism.

Most promotions of optimism, by the way, are rational. Not all, of course. But we need to understand what optimism is. Real optimists don't believe that everything will be great. That's complacency. Optimism is a belief that the odds of a good outcome are in your favor over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way. The simple idea that most people wake up in the morning trying to make things a little better and more productive than wake up looking to cause trouble is the foundation of optimism. It's not complicated. It's not guaranteed, either. It's just the most reasonable bet for most people. The late statistician Hans Rosling put it differently: "I am not an optimist. I am a very serious possibilist."
8. Underappreciating the power of compounding, driven by the tendency to intuitively think about exponential growth in linear terms.
IBM made a 3.5 megabyte hard drive in the 1950s. By the 1960s things were moving into a few dozen megabytes. By the 1970s, IBM's Winchester drive held 70 megabytes. Then drives got exponentially smaller in size with more storage. A typical PC in the early 1990s held 200-500 megabytes.

And then ... wham. Things exploded.

1999 - Apple's iMac comes with a 6 gigabyte hard drive.

2003 - 120 gigs on the Power Mac.

2006 - 250 gigs on the new iMac.

2011 - first 4 terabyte hard drive.

2017 - 60 terabyte hard drives.

Now put it together. From 1950 to 1990 we gained 296 megabytes. From 1990 through today we gained 60 million megabytes.

The punchline of compounding is never that it's just big. It's always - no matter how many times you study it - so big that you can barely wrap your head around it. In 2004 Bill Gates criticized the new Gmail, wondering why anyone would need a gig of storage. Author Steven Levy wrote, "Despite his currency with cutting-edge technologies, his mentality was anchored in the old paradigm of storage being a commodity that must be conserved." You never get accustomed to how quickly things can grow.

I have heard many people say the first time they saw a compound interest table - or one of those stories about how much more you'd have for retirement if you began saving in your 20s vs. your 30s - changed their life. But it probably didn't. What it likely did was surprise them, because the results intuitively didn't seem right. Linear thinking is so much more intuitive than exponential thinking. Michael Batnick once explained it. If I ask you to calculate 8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8 in your head, you can do it in a few seconds (it's 72). If I ask you to calculate 8x8x8x8x8x8x8x8x8, your head will explode (it's 134,217,728).

The danger here is that when compounding isn't intuitive, we often ignore its potential and focus on solving problems through other means. Not because we're overthinking, but because we rarely stop to consider compounding potential.

There are over 2,000 books picking apart how Warren Buffett built his fortune. But none are called " This Guy Has Been Investing Consistently for Three-Quarters of a Century." But we know that's the key to the majority of his success; it's just hard to wrap your head around that math because it's not intuitive. There are books on economic cycles, trading strategies, and sector bets. But the most powerful and important book should be called "Shut Up And Wait." It's just one page with a long-term chart of economic growth. Physicist Albert Bartlett put it: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

The counterintuitiveness of compounding is responsible for the majority of disappointing trades, bad strategies, and successful investing attempts. Good investing isn't necessarily about earning the highest returns, because the highest returns tend to be one-off hits that kill your confidence when they end. It's about earning pretty good returns that you can stick with for a long period of time. That's when compounding runs wild.
9. Attachment to social proof in a field that demands contrarian thinking to achieve above-average results.
The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha attracts 40,000 people, all of whom consider themselves contrarians. People show up at 4 am to wait in line with thousands of other people to tell each other about their lifelong commitment to not following the crowd. Few see the irony.

Anything worthwhile with money has high stakes. High stakes entail risks of being wrong and losing money. Losing money is emotional. And the desire to avoid being wrong is best countered by surrounding yourself with people who agree with you. Social proof is powerful. Someone else agreeing with you is like evidence of being right that doesn't have to prove itself with facts. Most people's views have holes and gaps in them, if only subconsciously. Crowds and social proof help fill those gaps, reducing doubt that you could be wrong.

The problem with viewing crowds as evidence of accuracy when dealing with money is that opportunity is almost always inversely correlated with popularity. What really drives outsized returns over time is an increase in valuation multiples, and increasing valuation multiples relies on an investment getting more popular in the future - something that is always anchored by current popularity.

Here's the thing: Most attempts at contrarianism is just irrational cynicism in disguise - and cynicism can be popular and draw crowds. Real contrarianism is when your views are so uncomfortable and belittled that they cause you to second guess whether they're right. Very few people can do that. But of course that's the case. Most people can't be contrarian, by definition. Embrace with both hands that, statistically, you are one of those people.
10. An appeal to academia in a field that is governed not by clean rules but loose and unpredictable trends.
Harry Markowitz won the Nobel Prize in economics for creating formulas that tell you exactly how much of your portfolio should be in stocks vs. bonds depending on your ideal level of risk. A few years ago the Wall Street Journal asked him how, given his work, he invests his own money. He replied:

I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn't in it - or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions 50/50 between bonds and equities.

There are many things in academic finance that are technically right but fail to describe how people actually act in the real world. Plenty of academic finance work is useful and has pushed the industry in the right direction. But its main purpose is often intellectual stimulation and to impress other academics. I don't blame them for this or look down upon them for it. We should just recognize it for what it is.

One study I remember showed that young investors should use 2x leverage in the stock market, because - statistically - even if you get wiped out you're still likely to earn superior returns over time, as long as you dust yourself off and keep investing after a wipeout. Which, in the real world, no one would actually do. They'd swear off investing for life. What works on a spreadsheet and what works at the kitchen table are ten miles apart.

The disconnect here is that academics typically desire very precise rules and formulas. But real-world people use it as a crutch to try to make sense of a messy and confusing world that, by its nature, eschews precision. Those are opposite things. You cannot explain randomness and emotion with precision and reason.

People are also attracted to the titles and degrees of academics because finance is not a credential-sanctioned field like, say, medicine is. So the appearance of a Ph.D stands out. And that creates an intense appeal to academia when making arguments and justifying beliefs - "According to this Harvard study ..." or "As Nobel Prize winner so and so showed ..." It carries so much weight when other people cite, "Some guy on CNBC from an eponymous firm with a tie and a smile." A hard reality is that what often matters most in finance will never win a Nobel Prize: Humility and room for error.
11. The social utility of money coming at the direct expense of growing money; wealth is what you don't see.
I used to park cars at a hotel. This was in the mid-2000s in Los Angeles, when real estate money flowed. I assumed that a customer driving a Ferrari was rich. Many were. But as I got to know some of these people, I realized they weren't that successful. At least not nearly what I assumed. Many were mediocre successes who spent most of their money on a car.

If you see someone driving a $200,000 car, the only data point you have about their wealth is that they have $200,000 less than they did before they bought the car. Or they're leasing the car, which truly offers no indication of wealth.

We tend to judge wealth by what we see. We can't see people's bank accounts or brokerage statements. So we rely on outward appearances to gauge financial success. Cars. Homes. Vacations. Instagram photos.

But this is America, and one of our cherished industries is helping people fake it until they make it.

Wealth, in fact, is what you don't see. It's the cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The renovations postponed, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. It's assets in the bank that haven't yet been converted into the stuff you see.

But that's not how we think about wealth, because you can't contextualize what you can't see.

Singer Rihanna nearly went broke after overspending and sued her financial advisor. The advisor responded: "Was it really necessary to tell her that if you spend money on things, you will end up with the things and not the money?"

You can laugh. But the truth is, yes, people need to be told that. When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they really mean is "I want to spend a million dollars," which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire. This is especially true for young people.

A key use of wealth is using it to control your time and providing you with options. Financial assets on a balance sheet offer that. But they come at the direct expense of showing people how much wealth you have with material stuff.
12. A tendency toward action in a field where the first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.
If your sink breaks, you grab a wrench and fix it. If your arm breaks, you put it in a cast.

What do you do when your financial plan breaks?

The first question - and this goes for personal finance, business finance, and investing plans - is how do you know when it's broken?

A broken sink is obvious. But a broken investment plan is open to interpretation. Maybe it's just temporarily out of favor? Maybe you're experiencing normal volatility? Maybe you had a bunch of one-off expenses this quarter but your savings rate is still adequate? It's hard to know.

When it's hard to distinguish broken from temporarily out of favor, the tendency is to default to the former, and spring into action. You start fiddling with the knobs to find a fix. This seems like the responsible thing to do, because when virtually everything else in your life is broken, the correct action is to fix it.

There are times when money plans need to be fixed. Oh, are there ever. But there is also no such thing as a long-term money plan that isn't susceptible to volatility. Occasional upheaval is usually part of a standard plan.

When volatility is guaranteed and normal, but is often treated as something that needs to be fixed, people take actions that ultimately just interrupts the execution of a good plan. "Don't do anything," are the most powerful words in finance. But they are both hard for individuals to accept and hard for professionals to charge a fee for. So, we fiddle. Far too much.
13. Underestimating the need for room for error, not just financially but mentally and physically.
Ben Graham once said, "The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary."

There is so much wisdom in this quote. But the most common response, even if subconsciously, is, "Thanks Ben. But I'm good at forecasting."

People underestimate the need for room for error in almost everything they do that involves money. Two things cause this: One is the idea that your view of the future is right, driven by the uncomfortable feeling that comes from admitting the opposite. The second is that you're therefore doing yourself economic harm by not taking actions that exploit your view of the future coming true.

But room for error is underappreciated and misunderstood. It's often viewed as a conservative hedge, used by those who don't want to take much risk or aren't confident in their views. But when used appropriately it's the opposite. Room for error lets you endure, and endurance lets you stick around long enough to let the odds of benefiting from a low-probability outcome fall in your favor. The biggest gains occur infrequently, either because they don't happen often or because they take time to compound. So the person with enough room for error in part of their strategy to let them endure hardship in the other part of their strategy has an edge over the person who gets wiped out, game over, insert more tokens, when they're wrong.

There are also multiple sides to room for error. Can you survive your assets declining by 30%? On a spreadsheet, maybe yes - in terms of actually paying your bills and staying cash-flow positive. But what about mentally? It is easy to underestimate what a 30% decline does to your psyche. Your confidence may become shot at the very moment opportunity is at its highest. You - or your spouse - may decide it's time for a new plan, or new career. I know several investors who quit after losses because they were exhausted. Physically exhausted. Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big declines. But they cannot model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you've made a huge mistake that will impact their lives.
14. A tendency to be influenced by the actions of other people who are playing a different financial game than you are.
Cisco stock went up three-fold in 1999. Why? Probably not because people actually thought the company was worth $600 billion. Burton Malkiel once pointed out that Cisco's implied growth rate at that valuation meant it would become larger than the entire U.S. economy within 20 years.

Its stock price was going up because short-term traders thought it would keep going up. And they were right, for a long time. That was the game they were playing - "this stock is trading for $60 and I think it'll be worth $65 before tomorrow."

But if you were a long-term investor in 1999, $60 was the only price available to buy. So you may have looked around and said to yourself, "Wow, maybe others know something I don't." And you went along with it. You even felt smart about it. But then the traders stopped playing their game, and you - and your game - was annihilated.

What you don't realize is that the traders moving the marginal price are playing a totally different game than you are. And if you start taking cues from people playing a different game than you are, you are bound to be fooled and eventually become lost, since different games have different rules and different goals.

Few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games.

This goes beyond investing. How you save, how you spend, what your business strategy is, how you think about money, when you retire, and how you think about risk may all be influenced by the actions and behaviors of people who are playing different games than you are.

Personal finance is deeply personal, and one of the hardest parts is learning from others while realizing that their goals and actions might be miles removed from what's relevant to your own life.
15. An attachment to financial entertainment due to the fact that money is emotional, and emotions are revved up by argument, extreme views, flashing lights, and threats to your wellbeing.
If the average American's blood pressure went up by 3%, my guess is a few newspapers would cover it on page 16, nothing would change, and we'd move on. But if the stock market falls 3%, well, no need to guess how we might respond. This is from 2015: "President Barack Obama has been briefed on Monday's choppy global market movement."

Why does financial news of seemingly low importance overwhelm news that is objectively more important?

Because finance is entertaining in a way other things - orthodontics, gardening, marine biology - are not. Money has competition, rules, upsets, wins, losses, heroes, villains, teams, and fans that makes it tantalizingly close to a sporting event. But it's even an addiction level up from that, because money is like a sporting event where you're both the fan and the player, with outcomes affecting you both emotionally and directly.

Which is dangerous.

It helps, I've found, when making money decisions to constantly remind yourself that the purpose of investing is to maximize returns, not minimize boredom. Boring is perfectly fine. Boring is good. If you want to frame this as a strategy, remind yourself: opportunity lives where others aren't, and others tend to stay away from what's boring.
16. Optimism bias in risk-taking, or "Russian Roulette should statistically work" syndrome: An over attachment to favorable odds when the downside is unacceptable in any circumstance.
Nassim Taleb says, "You can be risk loving and yet completely averse to ruin."

The idea is that you have to take risk to get ahead, but no risk that could wipe you out is ever worth taking. The odds are in your favor when playing Russian Roulette. But the downside is never worth the potential upside.

The odds of something can be in your favor - real estate prices go up most years, and most years you'll get a paycheck every other week - but if something has 95% odds of being right, then 5% odds of being wrong means you will almost certainly experience the downside at some point in your life. And if the cost of the downside is ruin, the upside the other 95% of the time likely isn't worth the risk, no matter how appealing it looks.

Leverage is the devil here. It pushes routine risks into something capable of producing ruin. The danger is that rational optimism most of the time masks the odds of ruin some of the time in a way that lets us systematically underestimate risk. Housing prices fell 30% last decade. A few companies defaulted on their debt. This is capitalism - it happens. But those with leverage had a double wipeout: Not only were they left broke, but being wiped out erased every opportunity to get back in the game at the very moment opportunity was ripe. A homeowner wiped out in 2009 had no chance of taking advantage of cheap mortgage rates in 2010. Lehman Brothers had no chance of investing in cheap debt in 2009.

My own money is barbelled. I take risks with one portion and am a terrified turtle with the other. This is not inconsistent, but the psychology of money would lead you to believe that it is. I just want to ensure I can remain standing long enough for my risks to pay off. Again, you have to survive to succeed.

A key point here is that few things in money are as valuable as options. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, and why you want, has infinite ROI.
17. A preference for skills in a field where skills don't matter if they aren't matched with the right behavior.
This is where Grace and Richard come back in. There is a hierarchy of investor needs, and each topic here has to be mastered before the one above it matters:

Richard was very skilled at the top of this pyramid, but he failed the bottom blocks, so none of it mattered. Grace mastered the bottom blocks so well that the top blocks were hardly necessary.
18. Denial of inconsistencies between how you think the world should work and how the world actually works, driven by a desire to form a clean narrative of cause and effect despite the inherent complexities of everything involving money.
Someone once described Donald Trump as "Unable to distinguish between what happened and what he thinks should have happened." Politics aside, I think everyone does this.

There are three parts to this:

You see a lot of information in the world.

You can't process all of it. So you have to filter.

You only filter in the information that meshes with the way you think the world should work.

Since everyone wants to explain what they see and how the world works with clean narratives, inconsistencies between what we think should happen and what actually happens are buried.

An example. Higher taxes should slow economic growth - that's a common sense narrative. But the correlation between tax rates and growth rates is hard to spot. So, if you hold onto the narrative between taxes and growth, you say there must be something wrong with the data. And you may be right! But if you come across someone else pushing aside data to back up their narrative - say, arguing that hedge funds have to generate alpha, otherwise no one would invest in them - you spot what you consider a bias. There are a thousand other examples. Everyone just believes what they want to believe, even when the evidence shows something else. Stories over statistics.

Accepting that everything involving money is driven by illogical emotions and has more moving parts than anyone can grasp is a good start to remembering that history is the study of things happening that people didn't think would or could happen. This is especially true with money.
19. Political beliefs driving financial decisions, influenced by economics being a misbehaved cousin of politics.
I once attended a conference where a well known investor began his talk by saying, "You know when President Obama talks about clinging to guns and bibles? That is me, folks. And I'm going to tell you today about how his reckless policies are impacting the economy."

I don't care what your politics are, there is no possible way you can make rational investment decisions with that kind of thinking.

But it's fairly common. Look at what happens in 2016 on this chart. The rate of GDP growth, jobs growth, stock market growth, interest rates - go down the list - did not materially change. Only the president did:

Years ago I published a bunch of economic performance numbers by president. And it drove people crazy, because the data often didn't mesh with how they thought it should based on their political beliefs. Soon after a journalist asked me to comment on a story detailing how, statistically, Democrats preside over stronger economies than Republicans. I said you couldn't make that argument because the sample size is way too small. But he pushed and pushed, and wrote a piece that made readers either cheer or sweat, depending on their beliefs.

The point is not that politics don't influence the economy. But the reason this is such a sensitive topic is because the data often surprises the heck out of people, which itself is a reason to realize that the correlation between politics and economics isn't as clear as you'd like to think it is.

20. The three-month bubble: Extrapolating the recent past into the near future, and then overestimating the extent to which whatever you anticipate will happen in the near future will impact your future.

News headlines in the month after 9/11 are interesting. Few entertain the idea that the attack was a one-off; the next massive terrorist attack was certain to be around the corner. "Another catastrophic terrorist attack is inevitable and only a matter of time," one defense analyst said in 2002. "A top counterterrorism official says it's 'a question of when, not if," wrote another headline. Beyond the anticipation that another attack was imminent was a belief that it would affect people the same way. The Today Show ran a segment pitching parachutes for office workers to keep under their desks in case they needed to jump out of a skyscraper.

Believing that what just happened will keep happening shows up constantly in psychology. We like patterns and have short memories. The added feeling that a repeat of what just happened will keep affecting you the same way is an offshoot. And when you're dealing with money it can be a torment.

Every big financial win or loss is followed by mass expectations of more wins and losses. With it comes a level of obsession over the effects of those events repeating that can be wildly disconnected from your long-term goals. Example: The stock market falling 40% in 2008 was followed, uninterrupted for years, with forecasts of another impending plunge. Expecting what just happened to happen soon again is one thing, and an error in itself. But not realizing that your long-term investing goals could remain intact, unharmed, even if we have another big plunge, is the dangerous byproduct of recency bias. "Markets tend to recover over time and make new highs" was not a popular takeaway from the financial crisis; "Markets can crash and crashes suck," was, despite the former being so much more practical than the latter.

Most of the time, something big happening doesn't increase the odds of it happening again. It's the opposite, as mean reversion is a merciless law of finance. But even when something does happen again, most of the time it doesn't - or shouldn't - impact your actions in the way you're tempted to think, because most extrapolations are short term while most goals are long term. A stable strategy designed to endure change is almost always superior to one that attempts to guard against whatever just happened happening again.

If there's a common denominator in these, it's a preference for humility, adaptability, long time horizons, and skepticism of popularity around anything involving money. Which can be summed up as: Be prepared to roll with the punches.

Jiddu Krishnamurti spent years giving spiritual talks. He became more candid as he got older. In one famous talk, he asked the audience if they'd like to know his secret.

He whispered, "You see, I don't mind what happens."

That might be the best trick when dealing with the psychology of money.

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Let me tell you the story of two investors, neither of whom knew each other, but whose paths crossed in an interesting way. Grace Groner was orphaned at age 12. She never married. She never had kids. She never drove a car.

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Wrestling is a combat sport involving grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. It represents one of the oldest forms of combat, but now wrestling is increasingly becoming the performing sport for both men and women.

And these are what women wrestling in the past looked like.

Photo of the Day: Just a Baby Swordfish Up Close

New "Game Of Thrones" Season 6 Trailer Promises "The Dead Are Coming"

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Vintage Female Wrestling - 25 Amazing Photos Show Women Fighting in the Ring in the Past

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This is the most comprehensive, the most well-researched nutrition and dieting guide you will find on the planet!

With the advent of all the nutrition wisdom being dropped here in there by otherwise well-meaning relatives (mothers and grandmothers in particular), other friends, your favorite magazine and the Internet health portal of your choice, the term nutrition may have become rather mystified. Believe it or not, there are as many definitions of the word nutrition as there are diet fads: Define Nutrition.

Demystifying Nutrition

In some quarters, nutrition has even become "the secret war waged by parents using direct commands, camouflage, and constant guard duty."

In a nutshell, nutrition is the process of nourishing, by which organisms obtain energy (in the form of food) for growth, maintenance, and repair-still a mouthful, isn't it? But the bottom line of the word nutrition is this: We are what we eat! Nutrition is 50 percent what we eat, and 50 percent what happens to what we eat. And that is why it becomes very important that we watch it!

Indeed, half of nutrition is all about eating! The history of nutrition began with the French book Physiologie du Guot, written by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a lawyer in the year 1826. The book has been loosely translated in English as "Gastronomy as a Fine Art" or "Transcendental Gastronomy."'

From the Vanderbilt Medical Center

http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/biolib/

Another landmark book in the annals of nutrition takes us to yet another vital aspect of the science. In 1926, Owen H. Wilson wrote "The Care and Feeding of Southern Babies," stressing of course, the importance of starting good nutrition early.

From the Vanderbilt Medical Center http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/biolib/hc/nh5.html

So this is where the great divide between good nutrition and bad nutrition came from. Any adult can figure out the difference between the two. Even what Grandma said an eon ago about eating green leafy vegetables because "these are good for you," still rings true today. Ironically, however, there is a dizzying variety of diets to choose from nowadays. So many that one website has only to devote itself exclusively to just reviewing all the diets which come and go at Diet Reviews.

The Benefits of Eating Healthy

Obviously good nutrition is synonymous to healthy eating. But the great irony with eating healthy is that the benefits are obvious, yet it's easier said than done. For example, it is common knowledge that excessive sweets are bad for one's health, but who gives this a thought when confronted by the ice cream challenge one sizzling hot summer day?

Most of us know about (or have at least heard) of the CICO dictum (Calories In, Calories Out), yet how many people really walk the talk? To illustrate, you may feel immediately nauseous upon consuming a known toxic substance, but the impact of eating a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts daily may take days or even weeks to show up! And when it does, it's but human nature to blame it on something else!

This explains why the fattening of America took several generations, although experts only discovered it to be an epidemic in the last 5 to 10 years. We will go into this matter in much detail later, for now let's content ourselves with trying to really understand why it's so important to eat healthy foods. To accomplish this feat though, we will need to begin from the basics.

Let us ask ourselves the question of all questions, what did your mother tell you about what's healthy eating? Not trying to be Freudian here or anything like that! If your mother were like mine, she would have fed you the whole gamut of the following diatribe.

She would characteristically begin by telling you that recommendations and guidelines for healthy eating vary from time to time (often reflecting new research or a new line of thinking), but the basic rules have not changed. And they are?
Low fat
Cutting down on all fats from fatty and fried foods, butter, cream, margarine and oils is agreed on by nutritionists the world over as a way of making the modern diet healthier.
Lots of starchy carbohydrate
Rice, pasta, potatoes, bread and cereals play a crucial role in our health.
High fiber
Not just bran! Fiber, that largely indigestible part of our food and often the part that really gets us chewing, is responsible for so much good. It not only keeps our insides moving smoothly but it helps to lower cholesterol, prevent gallstones and bowel cancer, and keeps our weight in check.

Whole meal and grain breads are full of it, as are brown rice, barley, lentils, beans and vegetables. To start your day, there is a wonderful array of wholegrain and bran breakfast cereals.
Vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants
Vegetables, fruit and grains carry an abundance of vitamins, minerals and numerous other natural substances (called phytochemicals) which scientists are only just beginning to discover.

Phytochemicals function as anti-oxidants, which fight off free radicals that could otherwise damage our cells, membranes and DNA. Numerous studies show that people who eat lots of veggies and fruit have lower rates of heart disease and cancer.
Variety
Variety doesn't mean 10 different cereal packs in your cupboard, but rather a variety of botanically different foods. Pasta, bread, puffed wheat and couscous all look and taste different but are all derived from the one basic (but versatile) grain (wheat). So they all provide similar nutrients.

Substituting other grains like oats, barley, corn or rye for some wheat adds diversity to your diet and ensures a wider range of nutrients. The nutrients you miss from one food, you can make up from another.
Moderate sugar and sweets
Babies are born with a liking for sweetness, a trait that probably helped the human race survive by signaling when things were safe to eat (bitter-tasting plants are often poisonous). Sugar in modest amounts adds to the flavor of cooking and is a useful fuel for athletes and other active people.

In excess, however, sugar adds unwanted kilojoules and can displace other more important foods - particularly for children and teenagers. In chewy and sticky form, sugar also can cause dental caries (or tooth decay).
Light on salt
Our modern diet is laden with salt. It's not until you avoid salt for a few weeks that you notice how it masks the true flavor of foods. As 75 per cent of our total salt intake comes from everyday commercial foods (including bread, biscuits, cereals, butter, deli meats and snack foods), it is imperative to buy salt-reduced or no-added-salt products.
Drink plenty of fluid
Two liters (8 glasses) of fluid a day is needed to keep the body hydrated and the kidneys working efficiently. In hot weather, even more fluid is required. Alcohol and strong coffee do not count, as these act as diuretics and force the kidney to excrete more fluid than normal.
Enjoy mealtimes
Stress, tension, rushing and eating on the run all take their toll on your digestion and health. Try to relax and take the time to really appreciate the food in front of you.

Not only will it increase your enjoyment and satisfaction by having a "comfortably full" stomach, this technique is often recommended as a strategy to help people lose weight.

So that was easy. We just went through the basics of nutrition in a snap- sort of like a short high school quiz. And talk about ancient wisdom! But that really came from Catherine Saxelby at Foodwatch.

If you're a diehard Atkins fan, though, the blurb on "Lots of starchy carbohydrates" probably ticked you off. Under the plan, starchy carbohydrates are taboo. That is why we are going into this subject immediately. Newer research shows that carbohydrates are still good, provided they come from whole wheat, not white! Translation: You can still stand by your idol's focus on proteins, but when it comes to carbs, you just have to limit your intake to 40-45 percent less. While doing this, ensure, however, that the carbs you ingest are from whole wheat. Is that alright?

Now let's look into your protein intake. You can take two to three times more than the usual intake (we will go into actual serving samples later). And when it comes to fats, you can reach for healthy fats (meaning omega-3 and monounsaturated). That said; let's go into a little more detail on this.

What is omega-3? Studies show that omega-3 supplements, combined with good sleep, can help melt away abdominal fat that bedevils otherwise thin people. This is good news for men, especially office-working men, whose chief malady is that unsightly over belly. But it works for women, too. Abundant in salmon, omega-3 fatty acids help improve the skin's firmness and elasticity!

The Three Kinds of Fat(s)

That taken care of, we need to backtrack on proteins a little. We need to be careful of the aftershocks so-to-speak, or the backlash of eating too much protein. Low- carb opponents argue that the dietary focus on proteins has the flipside of consuming bad fats - saturated fats. This can be avoided, however, by being extra zealous of the kind of fats you are willing to take for health's sake. There are three varieties, so it's not enough to just go low fat - though it helps. Saturated fat raises your cholesterol levels, and, just like your doctor would say makes you a prime candidate for heart disease. Saturated fats come mainly from meats, dairy products and in some vegetable fats like coconut, palm, and palm kernel oils. Monounsaturated fats come mainly from olive, peanut and canola oils. Lastly, polyunsaturated fats are derived from safflower, sunflower, corn, soybean, cottonseed oils and some fish. When in doubt? Take the last two varieties and you can never go wrong with these two!

The Mediterranean pyramid below, has contributed two magical foods to the health fray. Nut butter, found in walnut, almond, cashew, macadamia or hazelnut spreads has gained ground as a heart disease fighter. It turns out to be rich not only in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. It is also a rich source of protein, fiber and folic acid. So not all kinds of butter are bad, after all! Thanks to this new finding! And lest we forget, the US government has recently taken the cudgels for good old olive oil. Apparently, aside from adding flavor and burning fat, it may also reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.
Always Be Validating Half of What You Know on Healthy Eating with New Research!
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

The information alone on the three kinds of fats (kinda like separating the good witches from the bad) is relatively recent. Proof: My mom was caught unawares when the three different varieties were explained to her once over dinner. She kind of like went into a trance. We couldn't communicate with her for a while.
The Glycemic Paradox as Told by Dr. Al Sears, Health Confidential for Men.
Instead of counting carbs, what you really should be looking at is how high each carb spikes your blood sugar and insulin. Here's why: High insulin causes your body to convert any food you eat into fat. If you ignore this, you'll put on fat instead of losing it!

So what's the biggest blood-sugar offender? Most people think sweets are the trouble. But they're wrong. Sweets aren't the problem if you eat them in moderation. The real problem is starches. They cause a much more prolonged elevation of sugar and insulin than simple sugars do.

The best way to monitor for insulin-releasing foods is with the Glycemic Index, which ranks foods on how much they boost blood sugar and, subsequently, insulin. For instance, a food with a glycemic index of 50% will cause half of the rise in blood sugar that glucose (pure natural sugar) would. What this means is that the higher a food's glycemic index, the more fat you'll make from it - even if it has the same number of calories as a lower glycemic index food.

The idea is to reduce the amount of foods that score high and substitute lower-scoring foods.

Take a look at the following list of common foods and their glycemic indexes (adapted from "Dynamic Nutrition for Maximum Performance," by D. Gastelu and F. Hatfield). You'll find some surprises:
HIGH GLYCEMIC INDEX FOODS
100% - glucose

80-90% - corn flakes, carrots, maltose, honey, white potatoes

70-79% - whole-grain bread, millet, white rice, new potatoes

MODERATE GLYCEMIC INDEX FOODS 60-69% - white bread, shredded wheat, bananas, raisins, Mars

Bars

50-59% - spaghetti, corn, whole cereals, peas, yams, potato chips

40-49% - oatmeal, sweet potatoes, navy beans, oranges, orange juice
LOW GLYCEMIC INDEX FOODS
30-39% - peaches, cherries, blueberries, apples, ice cream, milk

20-29% - kidney beans, lentils, fructose

10-19% - soybeans, peanuts

0-10% - most green vegetables

Notice that:

Whole wheat bread raises blood sugar just as much as white bread.

Corn flakes raise blood sugar twice as much as orange juice.

Spaghetti boosts blood sugar higher than ice cream.

Watchful Eye for the Reformed Guy

Here's another reason why you should constantly validate nutrition wisdom against the light of new findings. With massive advances in food technology, you'll never know just how reformed some bad foods can become later on! Like eggs, for example, are no longer the bad guys, writes Ken MacQueen in Maclean's January 17 issue. "Seems much of the stuff clogging your bloodstream comes from dietary fat, not the dietary cholesterol in eggs. Why ignore a fine source of muscle-building protein and fat-burning vitamin B12?"

In the same article, Lianne George hails bread's successful comeback, stressing there are "new reasons to love the ultimate carb." Why is that? Well, it turns out that "bread makers, forced to innovate in order to entice leery consumers, have introduced a slew of healthier, higher-quality varieties, which also happen to taste better."

George thanks the low-carb movement for pointing out "good carbs" such as whole wheat and organic breads. Apparently, kudos to the movement, consumers have become better educated about the health benefits of bread "as a source of complex carbs, fiber, protein, B vitamins and iron."

Hence, not every ounce of conventional wisdom is true. Time to cultivate the habit of reading the fine print.

USRDA (U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance) Tables

You can start practicing the skill with USRDA tables. USRDAs were devised by the Food and Drug Administration for nutritional labeling. These are the lists on processed foods and vitamin products that tell what percentage of each of 19 essential nutrients you get per serving or dose. Make sure you use them only as a rough guide (i.e., they don't factor in sex or age differences in their calculations.)

RDAs are developed by a prestigious group of nutritional scientists who advise the Food and Nutrition Board, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. Every five years or so, the board reviews and revises its recommendations. In the board's own words, RDAs are "the levels of intake of essential nutrients considered, in our judgment and on the basis of available scientific knowledge, to be adequate to meet the known nutritional needs of practically all healthy persons."

Here's one important thing to remember. Except for vitamins A and D, it's not harmful to consume two to three times the recommended levels of vitamins. Many people regularly do through the foods they eat and especially if they take a multivitamin supplement.

An ad for beef from BeefitsWhatsForDinner.com appeared in the October 2004 issue of Men's Fitness.
Headline (in LARGE PRINT):
One more gram of saturated fat than a chicken breast. But a steak knife is heavy.

So it evens out.

Visual: A Mouth-watering Plate of Steak
Ad text:
Compared to a skinless chicken breast, lean beef has only one more gram of saturated fat and six times more zinc, three times more iron and eight times more Vitamin B12. Just something to think about.
Fine print:
Based on USDA data using the average 3 oz. cooked servings of eye round roast, top round steak, top sirloin steak, boneless shoulder pot roast, round tip roast and shoulder steak compared to 3 oz. cooked servings of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Funded by America's beef producers.

Without skimming through the fine print, you wouldn't know whether this ad is comparing apples to apples, or apples to oranges. You would have likely missed the fact that this is a paid advertisement by the U.S. association of beef producers.

So there, you just learned in actual practice how important it is to read the fine print. As it turns out, a 3 oz. steak is being compared to the same amount of boneless, skinless chicken breast. This is pretty good. This means that you're better off eating steak than skin-on chicken in terms of fat content. In more specific terms, it's far healthier to visit your favorite steakhouse than to head off to Popeye Chicken.

New research, however, confirms that eating red meat along with processed meats such as salami or pastrami over a long period of time can increase your susceptibility to colon cancer. This was reported by HealthDay reporter Ed Edelson, who based his report on the findings of a 20-year study of more than 148,000 meat-eating adults aged 50 to 74.

Dr. Michael J. Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society stressed though, that this is not a groundbreaking finding. "There have been 20 such studies looking at the relationship between consumption of red or processed meat and colorectal cancer."

What makes the finding truly significant, according to Dr. Thun, is that "this is the largest study that I'm aware of so far...it adds substantially to the available evidence about the relationship."

This finding doesn't mean, though, that you have to quit altogether the trip to your favorite steakhouse every once in a while! For rewards or treats, say the psychologists, are so intrinsic to a successful weight control program. William James, father of modern Psychology stresses in his opus entitled Habit the importance of rewarding oneself for a job well done in order to reinforce a new habit learned.

This said, it's time we delved briefly into the psychology behind healthy eating. An article by Joanna Lavoie (5 Weight Loss Mistakes) which appeared at Sympatico/MSN Lifestyle underscores the importance of minding the psychological aspect of nutrition such as making adequate mental preparation. Lavoie highlighted the importance of seriously considering the following stages, rather than jumping head on into a strict diet regimen which more often than not, ends in failure.

* Preparation: developing both short- and long-term goals and strategies.

* Action: following through with your plans.

* Maintenance: keeping up with your goal in the future.

"Is your goal to shape up, lose weight or both? The plans of action and end results for these objectives may be quite different," the author emphasized. While trying to lose weight too quickly is setting oneself up for failure, skipping meals, says Lavoie, is sealing precisely that kind of outcome.

The Fat Phenomenon

The news that half of the total population of the United Sates is obese, trumpeted by no less than CNN, hit the ground like a tsunami. Craig Lambert in his article The Way We Eat Now in Harvard magazine seconds the motion: "Many foreigners already view Americans as rich, greedy over-consumers, stuffing themselves with far more than their share of the planet's resources, and obese American travelers waddling through international airports and hotel lobbies only reinforce that image."

Sundance Film Festival's winning "Supersize Me"

Lambert qualifies the term obese. "Two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and half of these are obese. (Overweight means having a body mass index, or BMI, of 25 or greater, obese, 30 or greater." To calculate BMI, take the square of your height in inches and then divide your weight, in pounds, by that number; then multiply the result by 703. You can do the calculations on-line at the CDC BMI site.

Evidently, the sequel to this obesity phenomenon is the astronomical rise in gym memberships, as well as a confusing strain of diet fads mutating like bacteria. Ironically, despite the Abs and the Carbs images portrayed ever so repetitively on our television sets during sitcoms and soap operas, the obesity phenomenon persists. It is a truly stubborn virus, immune even to the Baywatch culture!

Prior year's Obesity Summit of the Institute of Food Technologists hoped to identify key research areas solving the problem of obesity-"arguably the most pressing public health problem in this country."

From Science For Kids

Indeed, the epidemic of obesity is a vast and ever growing public health problem. "Weight sits like a spider at the center of an intricate, tangled web of health and disease," writes Willett in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, arguably the best and most scientifically sound book on nutrition for the general public. He notes that three aspects of weight-BMI, waist size, and weight gained after one's early twenties-are linked to chances of having or dying from heart disease, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and several types of cancer, plus suffering from arthritis, infertility, gallstones, asthma, and even snoring. While this epidemic took several decades to develop, the tsunami of obesity is sweeping through the younger populace.

Age-Specific Trends in Child and Adolescent Obesity From Ogden, et al., 2002a; CDC, 2003.

WHAT PRICE, NUTRITION?

Part II

The term childhood obesity encompasses children and youth between the ages of two and 18 years of age who have BMIs of equal to or greater than the 95th percentile of the age and gender specific BMI charts developed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Let's try to explain this in the simplest terms.

Emily Sohn in Science News for Kids, writes, "If someone is seriously overweight, doctors use a mathematical formula that takes a person's height and weight and spits out a number called the BMI," the same measure of adult obesity we saw earlier. They then compare the person's BMI to those on a special chart.

Son continues: "In adults, a BMI between 18.5 and 25 is normal, greater than 25 are overweight, and greater than 30 is obese. An adult who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, for instance, would have to weigh 150 pounds to be overweight and 180 pounds to be obese."

Childhood obesity is a little different. For one thing, age makes a difference. So does whether the child is a boy or a girl. To be considered obese, a kid has to be in the top 5 percent of the BMI chart for his or her age.

Overweight and Obesity by Age in the United States, 1960-2000 Source: CDC, 2003

Based on such formula, some 9 million children in the United States over the age of 6 now qualify as obese. Over the last 10 years, obesity has become more than twice as common in children between the ages of 2 and 5 and in young people between the ages of 12 and 19. In the 6-to-11-year-old set, the rate has more than tripled

The chart above shows how the percentage of children who are overweight has increased since 1963. The chart gives information about children in two different age groups (6 to 11 and 12 to 19) in the United States.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Thus, while the US adult obesity's incubation spanned some 50 years, child obesity took root only in the past three decades! But there is where the dissimilarity ends. The Childhood Obesity Fact Sheet issued by the Institute of Medicine in September last year mirrors the parallels between the two problems. Like father like son (or, like mother like daughter).

Thus says the IOM: "The rise in childhood obesity is due to complex interactions across a number of relevant social, environmental, and policy contexts that influence eating and physical activity. Over decades, these have collectively created an adverse environment for maintaining a healthy weight."

Environmental, behavioral, and biological hypotheses for obesity From the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Third Research Summit February 2004.

Such environment is characterized by urban and suburban designs that discourages physical activities such as walking or biking; pressures on families to minimize food cost by minimizing food preparation time; inability to afford fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious foods; cancellation of Physical Education in the education curriculum due to budgetary constraints; and finally, television watching and computer gaming replacing wholesome outdoor sports activities. The table above summarizes in visual terms the correlation of all the mentioned factors in jointly causing the obesity epidemic in the United States.

Note how the U.S. government's increased subsidies over the years to non-fruit and non-vegetable staples of the farming industry exacerbated the burgeoning obesity situation in America. This is discussed in more detail later under the USDA pyramid.

But from a purely dietary point of view, the average North American diet is to blame for at least half of the overweight syndrome:

* 60-70% of calories derived from refined carbohydrates such as white flours and sugars

* 20-25% of calories derived from saturated fats and trans fatty acids

* 10-15% of calories derived from protein

Research clearly shows that eating in this ratio leads to weight gain which can result in diseases such as heart disease and high cholesterol.

Notice that we said half of the overweight syndrome? Here's the other half!

Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N.S. recently unveiled the ten "worst dressed" snacks. Avoid these at all costs, short of running for your life. If you can't totally abstain from these, at least be responsible enough to tell yourself that you are committing suicide every time you eat these!

1. French fries (the worst snack food on the planet)

2. Donuts (pretty obvious)

3. Potato or corn chips (French fries in chips clothing!)

4. Soda (nothing of value, a whole lot of chemicals)

5. Cup cakes and snack cakes (fake whipped cream, the rest sugar, flour and flavoring)

6. Candy bars (sugar orgy and nutrition nightmare in one)

7. Pork rinds (saturated fats galore)

8. Fat-free cookies (the most pretentious of all cookies)

9. Crackers (trans-fats, anyone?)

10. Pretzels (nothing but white flour, water and sugar
On the bright side, there are foods you can eat to your satisfaction even while you're so ever carefully watching that weight. Below are essentially healthy foods for anyone who wants to lose weight.
1. Yams and potatoes (great diet foods because they are especially low on the glycemic index)

2. Oranges, apples and grapefruit (contains high levels of the soluble fiber pectin which slows digestion)

3. Killer sandwiches (to lose 40 pounds in 21 weeks, Kristina relied heavily on sandwiches stacked with vegetables as well as deli meats "but always oven-roasted turkey over anything vacuum-packed")

4. Cereals (it's true, the good ones are hard to find, i.e., kind of like men; the Kashi brand is the best. Check it out!)

5. Salad (mind the dressing though, key is to stuff it with green leafy vegetables)

6. Quiche made with egg whites and just a couple of yolks

7. Yoghurt (make sure it's low-fat)

8. Almonds (omega-3 fatty acids galore)

9. Peanut butter (monounsaturated fats magnate, but this one is still eat-in-moderation)

10. Hummus (AKA pureed chickpeas, garlic and a little lemon juice, great with whole-wheat pita bread or organic corn chips)

11. Salsa (now what can possibly be unhealthy about tomato, onion, jalapeno and cilantro?)

Now let's lay away from the foods for the time being and take a look at little practical things you can do to eat away at those excess pounds. In the film Point of No Return, Bridget Fonda looks herself in the mirror and says "I never really did mind about the little things!"

Well Bridget, it's time you did! Here's why: The little things are the real ones that you can really do. If you keep adding to the list, pretty soon you'll accumulate so much to seriously challenge those excess pounds (not talking to Bridget now, she has no weight problems, obviously). Think of them this way - they work like coupons and Air miles!

Improve your treadmill routine. When walking on a treadmill, don't grip the rails - at least not all the time. Try increasing the incline as well. Your body exerts more effort when you're going uphill.

Shop 'til you drop...pounds! What do you think? You get to shop a lot when you walk a lot.

Walk an extra 100 steps at work by taking the stairs in lieu of the elevator, or parking farther from the office building.

Be creative! Create your own Little Things List. This invaluable tip is courtesy of WeightWatchers.

And, while many are struggling to lose weight...

Unknown to many, is the less- advertised flip side of the coin: America is also suffering from chronic malnutrition! 1stHolistic.com cites a recent research which reveals that few Americans really eat very well, and that nutritional deficiencies are more rampant than meets the eye. Even many supposedly normal people have been found to be nutritionally deficient. A 30-month study of 800 patients in two U.S. hospitals, who were admitted for conditions not having anything to do with malnutrition (pneumonia, hip fracture, etc.) were found in blood tests to be 55% malnourished.

A poster at FNB.org reports "over 20 percent of Americans are both malnourished and obese. Food insecurity, meaning lack of regular access to healthy foods-is a large contributor to malnutrition in poor communities, affecting some 33 million Americans nationwide."

All these findings certainly make the health situation in the United States a living paradox. From the health point-of- view, America is a country of contrasts where the abundance of nutritious foods has caused both widespread obesity as well as chronic malnutrition! This leads me to conclude that the mere presence or availability of nutritious foods does not guarantee a healthy populace. While the United Nations trains its policing powers on the underdeveloped countries to combat malnutrition around the world, the richest country in the world is struggling from undisclosed malnutrition from within.

This irony becomes even more glaring when we consider that the typical American consumer is supposedly getting more than his or her fair share of healthy-eating tips through books, videos and television advertisements in any given day. The slim, sexy characters in televised fashion shows, 1-800 ads, soap operas and sitcoms are apparently a lofty dream to aspire for, rather than a reflection of modern day reality or the mainstream.

Of Rainbows and Pyramids

Of course, no president wants a population of obese citizens. It's hardly a cause for patriotic pride. "We're leading a race we shouldn't want to win," says Harvard associate professor of pediatrics David Ludwig. This explains why there has been a flurry of health pyramids in recent years.

The U.S. Food Guide pyramid

Behold our first pyramid, developed jointly by the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Using a pyramid shape to show what foods you should eat began when the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) created the Food Guide Pyramid in 1992. Since then several pyramids have been added to the gallery to reflect the eating habits of different ages (kids and seniors), ethnicities (Latin and Asian) and points of view about what makes a diet healthy (the Mediterranean diet).

But first, the USDA pyramid, which can only echo the slant of the stronger players in the spectrum of the farming industry. Although developed in tandem with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the pyramid has been widely criticized for politicizing nutritional matters. Here's why.

Apparently, the law of the lobby has influenced the government in ways that keep the prices of certain foods artificially low. This came in the form of decades of farm subsidies amounting to billions of dollars for the grains the likes of corn ("for corn sweeteners and animal feed to make Big Macs") and wheat ("refined carbohydrates." as opposed to "whole wheat") This, to the detriment of other industries, the far healthier items such as fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. It's a perverse situation, as this causes foods that are less healthy to have an artificially low price, while the healthier foods cost more.

Somewhere Over the Pyramid Lies a Rainbow

Canada's Food Guide

In 1997, Canada released its food guide in the shape of a rainbow. Not to be confused with the Wizard of Oz, the underlying concept behind this presentation is variety; hence the four colors of the rainbow. Understandably, the most important tenet of this guide is enjoying a variety of foods instead of focusing one's attention on one or two groups. Second, it emphasizes cereals, breads, other grain products, vegetables and fruits. Third, it prescribes choosing lower- fat dairy products, leaner meats and foods prepared with little or no fat. Fourth, it throws exercise into the equation, stressing its importance in maintaining a healthy body weight. Fifth, it advises that we limit salt, alcohol and caffeine.

The main motif takes the cudgels for a population that does not want to restrict its culinary freedoms. Choice is emphasized, but so is taking things in moderation. As a whole, it sends a strong back-to-the-basics message.

The latest addition to the pyramid health scheme is called the Healthy Eating Pyramid, which its proponents (the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School) argue, reflects the most current nutrition research available. Just how current, we'll find out soon enough!

Harvard U Joins The Pyramid Scheme.

Time to compare pyramid to pyramid, instead of comparing apples to oranges! The major difference between the new pyramid and that of the USDA centers on the balance of carbohydrates and fats. For a decade, doctors and food experts told people to eat more carbohydrates and avoid fats. Yet as we know only too well, the obesity epidemic still continued unhampered like a tsunami, leading researchers to question the wisdom of this nutritional advice. The Healthy Eating Pyramid breaks carbs and fats into good and bad, rather than lumping them together. The new pyramid suggests other major changes as well, which includes:

* Sharply restricting red meat, potatoes and refined grains, such as white bread

* Limiting dairy products to one or two servings a day

* Replacing unhealthy saturated fat with healthier unsaturated vegetable oils

* Consuming large amounts of whole grains, fruits and vegetables

* Taking a daily multivitamin

* Drinking limited amounts of alcohol

Pyramids of Old

The Mediterranean Diet Pyramid was developed after researchers noticed that people who live in the Mediterranean area (Italy, Greece, Spain) had lower rates of obesity, heart disease and cancer than do most Americans. Researchers caution that diet is only part of the story, since people in the Mediterranean generally eat less than Americans and are also more active.

The typical Mediterranean diet, in contrast to its American counterpart, is lower in saturated fat (animal fats from meat, whole milk and cheese); higher in monounsaturated fat (from olive oil); and places greater emphasis on vegetables, fruits and legumes.
Highlights of the Mediterranean pyramid:
You will find that specific portions are not given. Instead, foods are to be eaten "daily," "a few times per week" or "a few times per month."

The foundation layer includes potatoes, polenta, couscous, bulgur and other grains. (The USDA Pyramid lists only "bread, cereal, rice and pasta.")

Beans, legumes and nuts have a greater prominence, reflecting their status as a basic dietary staple.

Olive oil is emphasized by having its own layer in the middle of the pyramid.

Fish, poultry, eggs and sweets are to be eaten just a few times per week.

Red meat, at the top of the pyramid, is to be eaten just a few times per month.

Wine is recommended, but in moderation.

Both the Healthy Eating Pyramid and the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid provide most Americans with a framework for choosing the proper balance of nutritious foods. If you're a vegetarian, you'll need to adapt your pyramid to be certain that you get enough protein, calcium, vitamins and minerals.

Young children ages 2 to 6 have their own pyramid, similar to the USDA pyramid, but with pictures of foods that kids commonly eat. Serving sizes have also been altered to reflect the true eating habits of kids. Illustrations surrounding the pyramid show kids engaged in a variety of activities, stressing the importance of exercise - or in this case, play - in the lives of healthy children.

People older than age 70 also have their own pyramid. Scientists at Tufts University's USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging published a modified pyramid that addresses the special needs of older Americans.

Differences from the original pyramid:

The base of the 70+ pyramid recommends eight or more glasses of water per day. Although everyone should drink at least eight glasses of water daily, this needs to be emphasized for older adults because of their bodies' dwindling sensitivity to the need for water. Also, drinking plenty of water can help ease constipation, a common complaint among this age group.

The flag at the tip of the 70+ pyramid recommends supplements of calcium, vitamin D and vitamin B12, vitamins many older adults find difficult to get in adequate amounts from food alone.

The senior pyramid is a thinner one, suggesting that older people need to eat "slimmer," to cut down on calories by eating more nutrient-dense foods instead of higher-calorie items.

(Question: Shouldn't the pyramid for seniors have stairs so it's easier to follow? The Aztecs of ancient Mayan civilization had those. Just joking!)

Now How Are Obese Individuals Supposed to Use the Great Pyramids?

One might ask, if there are as many pyramids as there are different folks, then what is the Healthy Eating Pyramid for? Well, it's definitely not for pharaohs; it's for you and me! Undoubtedly, however, this raises the question of who are you and me, or even more pointedly: "Shouldn't there be a separate pyramid for obese individuals as opposed to the healthy ones?"

Surprisingly, the pyramids are dead silent on that! But let me guess. The Healthy Eating Pyramid (AKA the Harvard pyramid) should still be "the One." Surely, there are no signs all over it saying "Hey, I'm the one for those with serious weight problems!" But by incorporating exercise into the pyramid scheme and by so carefully adding "weight control" in the pyramid's base, this is the pyramid I would recommend to individuals battling serious weight problems. Now let me see a show of hands!

If you're not sold on my proposal yet, allow me to stress that this is the pyramid that recommends sharply restricting red meat, potatoes and refined grains, such as white bread. And may I further suggest to our brethren currently having a serious bout with obesity to give up thinking there's a curse in the pyramids and to begin harnessing their powers for good! I believe that by simply following the basic guidelines articulated in the Healthy Eating Pyramid, one can already realize substantial weight loss than any of those fad diets. Besides, those basic guidelines are less confusing than any of those dizzying fad diet admonitions the likes of "flood your body with the vitamins, minerals and essential oils found in this so-called amazing juice!"

All these pyramid schemes, of course, were a sporadic reaction to the United Nations' health initiatives which for decades have been sounding the alarm bell for the growing underbelly of developed, and then the developing nations. Through its health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), the world body has been equally concerned about the burgeoning malnutrition in underdeveloped countries. In a January 2005 report, WHO emphasized that "one billion people-one sixth of the world's population - live in extreme poverty, lacking the safe water, proper nutrition, basic health care and social services needed to survive. Almost 11 million children die each year, six million of them under five from preventable diseases."

In January 18, 2005, WHO highlighted health in its year 2015 development blueprint (aka the Millennium Project). It likewise underscored the need for the world to "immediately and massively increase the investment in health programs."

As if talking to America, the recent WHO report admonished that proven solutions are likely to turn the tide towards achieving health goals. It also added: "We have the means to achieve those goals. We have the technology. What we need are the resources and the political will. We cannot wait any longer to do what we have promised to achieve in the coming decade."

It is interesting to note that such admonition of the world body rings a bell in the solutions recommended by both the American Institute of Food Technologists and the American Institute of Medicine towards combating the obesity epidemic in North America. Both organizations chorus on the need for the government to intervene and look or change its infrastructure policies towards food distribution and production. One quick way that the U.S. can get moving along these lines is to balance its subsidies towards farm products in a way that vegetables, fruits, and whole wheat production are given their due importance in the food chain. This will have the powerful impact of making these staples more affordable for the working masses. The government can also mandate schools to bring back Physical Education in the curriculum, ensure that bike routes and parks are properly integrated into housing plans, and that national advertising focus on healthy eating instead of fad snacking. This is probably what the UN means about proven solutions!

On a micro level, how can an ordinary citizen like you and me contribute towards curbing the tide of epidemic obesity in North America? A most obvious strategy and one that makes the most sense, is to really look after oneself, but then again, this is easier said than done! So let's truly get down to the basics. By all indications a back-to-the-basics approach, coupled with A Sharp Eye for the New Tech is what will work best in the long run.

Here in a nutshell, are the major things we've learned from healthy reading about healthy eating:

1. Let's begin by following the rainbow (i.e., what the Canadian Food Guide says such as the need for variety as well as limiting but not completely abstaining from those foodstuffs that are harmful to our bodies).

2. Follow what mom or granny said, but always validate it consciously in the light of new research. Always remember: the price of health​ is eternal vigilance!

3. Resolve to permanently ban the ten worst snacks from your diet.

4. When in agony over losing weight, look towards the top eleven favorite foods for losing weight. You can never go wrong with them!

5. Little things mean a lot in the long run.

6. Mind the whole psychology of what you're doing. In other words, don't take more than you can chew!

7. Follow the "ancient" wisdom of the pyramids. We've painstakingly laid out their "secrets" for you!

8. Know your RDAs, but also understand that RDAs are not everything. For one thing, these are only for healthy people.

Nonetheless,​ cultivate the habit of always reading the labels.

9. When in doubt, take things in moderation.

10. Following the Healthy Eating Pyramid's guidelines, here are
three meals you can take. After all, isn't it great to end a healthy
eating​article with a meal or two?

Breakfast

2 slices of Whole Wheat bread; 1 ounce of Kashi cereal; 1 medium banana or orange;

1 cup of skim milk or yogurt

Lunch

1 cup of your favorite fruit juice; 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables; 1 cup of other vegetables, cooked

1 cup of brown rice; 2-3 ounces of lean meat or chicken

Dinner

1 cup vegetable juice; 1 cup brown rice; 1 medium apple; 2-3 ounces of your favorite fish

I hope that you find this article useful in your goals for losing weight and determining your healthy food choices. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

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The Ultimate Guide To Losing Weight The Healthy Way - LifeGuider

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This is the most comprehensive, the most well-researched nutrition and dieting guide you will find on the planet! With the advent of all the nutrition wisdom being dropped here in there by otherwise well-meaning relatives (mothers and grandmothers in particular), other friends, your favorite magazine and the Internet health portal of your choice, the term nutrition may have become rather mystified.