Common Sense

I was on the treadmill this morning, wearing my Fitbit, of course, and watching the Today show. What do you know, they were teasing a story about "pedometer plus" monitors like Fitbits and Jawbones, and whatever else there are out there. I kept it on because the teaser was how people wear them to lose weight yet "they" are making them GAIN. I thought- what kind of BS story is this going to be. That's impossible.

I did not take into account what is apparently the current thorn in my side theme of the week- lack of common sense. And just outright stupidity. The more I read, see and hear, the more I fear for the future of humans.

The story went like this: A girl buys a Fitbit. She gets obsessed with wearing it. So she's sometimes logging 35,000 steps a day. BUT, she's also going by the amount of calories then that Fitbit is telling her she should be able to consume. I think she was somewhere up around 2900 daily calories. So she was EATING THEM. ALL. Just because IT SAID SO.

WHO DOES THAT?? I don't know how tall she is, but let's say she's the statistical "height of the average woman" at 5'3 or 5'4. I don't remember which it is, but I know it's one of those. There is no way, by common sense, that she should be eating that many calories. Even if she went 35,000 steps, it depends on what she was doing. Was she slowly walking or was she running hard? THEN, she said she used her calories to eat whatever she wants. She mentioned milkshakes. And other crap. Well, if you're trying to lose weight, it would stand to reason that even if you're exercising, if you're eating junk food and drinking milkshakes, you're not only not going to LOSE, but you'll most likely gain.

But of course, she's blaming Fitbit. Because that's the kind of moronic society we live in now. Where no one knows how to be accountable for their own stupidity or lack of common sense. I have a Fitbit, I use it daily, I'm obsessed with checking it for my steps, flights of stairs, calories, etc. But I don't use it as a Bible for the amount of calories I can eat. I love food. I think about it all day long. I'm thinking about it right now. I just know that even I can't eat 2900 calories a day at five feet, seven inches, without gaining weight. I have actual common sense. I know that I can't just eat 2000 calories worth of pizza and cake all day and lose weight. Why do I know this? Because it doesn't take much to even just look up what you're eating on the internet for nutritional information. Even on the Fitbit dashboard you can input your food and it will give you the nutritional information of most foods.

This all goes back to where I feel people are just lacking in a general way. It's become that if people aren't given explicit directions, in numerical order, with a diagram and a Siri-esque voice to tell them exactly what to do at any given time in any situation, they just can't figure out another way. They can't just find their way out of the paper bag without a map. Even with the map, the route would have to be highlighted or drawn out. I just don't know how some people are getting up, getting dressed, leaving their house and making it home for the night without something really terrible happening to them from not being able to make common sense decisions, judgment calls, change things up, etc. It's like the girl staring at me in Nordstrom when I told her I was looking for a dress that wasn't immediately in front of us. The thought of how she might be able to find it or help me in some way totally escaped her. I'd like to think of all these things and people as isolated but they just aren't.

It drives me absolutely insane when my five year old doesn't use his head. He's five. I can get over it and teach him that there is always another way to get to the desired result. People in their 20's through middle aged? I can't teach them. But I have to deal with them. I can't help thinking that we've made this whole way of life with little freedoms to make decisions. People wouldn't know what to do with those freedoms if given to them at this point. It's like their brains have gotten lazy. Just relying on being told. Like going through life with permanent GPS. Except that with GPS there is a definite destination so you always get to the end result. With life, it's unpredictable and you have to be to change your path and do something different at the drop of a hat. If you don't figure out another way, you're never getting to where you want to be. Unfortunately, there is no GPS of life. Not so far. Yet- for anyone to get anything done, it seems that everything has to be written in a handbook and followed. Otherwise you just get that...stare. Like a robot stare. I know because it's an awful lot like my "You are an incapable moron. I am just staring so I don't actually tell you that with expletives" kind of stare. Basically what that stare says is- "If I have no handbook, I can't help you".

No one questions anything. The sentence "that's just always how it's been done" is an acceptable answer. It's scary. Where is the challenging? Where is the questioning of how it can be done better?