Low Information Diet

2025 started aggresively. World in shambles, fraud everywhere, economy in turmoil, people geting shot, economy on the brink, charlie kirk assasination, everyone getting six packs, and major health decline for Americans. But was it all for real? Or just the news, my own curated YouTube feed and reels, and instagram, X, etc showing me what I liked and feared the most?. I truly don't know if these are the reality of the time or just the attention capturing 30 second clips that has captured and locked down my attention.

Either way, I know that my stress levels were ticking up. My own thoughts daily ranged with

I need a personal trainer
I need to be out having more cocktails and socializing more to be successful
I need to buy new suits, and need a tailor who can make it look even better
The kids need to be doing more
Geting saddened that I don't have a 911 Turbo and NSX in driveway yet
How long was I going to be alive?

Needless to say, the thoughts in my head were ranging from mild annoyance to complete discontentment. This was a wild one cause the problem-solver in my wanted to find the one area to fix. Started working out more consistently, started being at work earlier and knocking down major projects which even resulted in a promotion, and more things with family. The outcomes were not changing my overall perception of the world. I felt roughly the same.

Objectively, I could do more pull-ups, and run way longer than past 5-years. But I had no visible six pack, so what was even the point??? of all this time and effort. I had a promotion and new responsibilities but was I really advancing at the imaginary rate in my head. All of this swirl was causing a feeling of discontentment.

In 2026, I know that I wanted to do more (see all reasons above), but at the same time I didn't want to feel the same way. One subtle change that I've introduced into the equation is a Low-Information-Diet. I am trying to achieve a curation in my my overall consumption. This is both physically and mentally.

Monitoring my diet: Calories and Macros
For 60 days, a full detox from YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, Reddit, and other social media

Monitoring my diet

Starting with the physical since everyone that I've had a conversation with that I consider successful, ambitious, and smart have pointed out that what you put in your body determines so much of how you feel the rest of the day / rest of the week. I did not realize how bad my macros (protein vs fat vs carbs) were until I started gauging these metrics daily. The net effect here is that I feel better overall throughout the day, the crashes that I was experiencing has diminished. I'm no longer tempted to just sit and scroll mindlessly. There was an overall reduction in calories recommended based on my TDEE. I'm sticking to the reduction, but this needs a revisit for long-term sustainability.

The Social Media Detox

This has been harder. The amount of times my fingers involuntarily and without thinking type out reddit.com or instagram or x, is scary. I had to go at the local DNS level and block out these domains completely so that I'm not slipping into the old habits. There has been suggestions on curating the lists within the social media sites, but I've found out that for me all or nothing is the best option.

I don't know the long-term sustainability of this. Since all family members and friends continue to share links from any of these sites. So far I've avoided all of these. The inventory of my future watchlist is growing but I'm also curious if looking at something 60 days later will even have the same effect. It's too easy to get caught up in the moment while something heated is going on. Did I really need to watch 5 different angles on the shooting of Renee Good by a ICE agent in Minnesota, and hear 20 different viewpoints and commentary from online detectives. I truly might be better reviewing this out of the heated moment.

Progress Meter

Progress on both of these are good for my mental and physical health, and I'm going to stay on this path. This is still all about learning HTML, and here is the latest development.
40% of the way in Social Media Detox (24 out of 59 days).
100% adherence to tracking calories and macros so far.

                        
                            <meter value ="0.4"> AND </meter> is the code used for the progress meter
                            <meter value = "10" min ="0" max="10"> AND </meter> is the code to setup a range to display

This is pretty wild. Because in the past I did not know about the meter option and used to resort to much more complicated code to get the desired outcome. All the while the simplicity was right here all along. There is a bigger lesson here about stop being a mile wide and a meter deep INSTEAD go deeper before going wider.