Foreword

Becoming the Superior Species

Your no-nonsense manifesto to your optimal

body (Physiologically and psychologically)

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By: Antonius Cato

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

“Complexity is easy. Simplicity is difficult.”

-Georgy Shpagin

Foreword: Why I wrote this book

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So you just got done with a business conference and have learned some new information from your company's CEO (The one at the headquarters across the country). At this point you're very accepting of what the CEO had to say about the subject, mostly because his social status is higher in the world than the average middle class citizen (And all your co-workers). The realization occurs, though: There is conflicting data with what you heard from the conference today, and you want to debunk it, but some of your information came from your neighboring co-worker in the office, while the other bit of other conflicting details were told to you by the gorgeous secretary on the first floor (Which hears plenty of conversation snippets all day from all ranks of the trade). At this point, your most reliable two are the CEO and the secretary, but who to trust? Where is the disinformation truly presented?

At this point, you're probably asking me “What does this have to do with anything, especially since the title of this book has nothing to do with my company matters?”

This is the question I shall bring up to you then, fellow readers: Who do you believe? Your father? Your best friend? Your cousin? Your secret lover? Your boss? This is a question that people can usually answer after they come to the realization that, regardless of title or status, that word-of-mouth is the most common way “Facts” get around these days. The problem is, the more often the “facts” get around, the more distorted and less recognizable the message becomes. I promise you, I am getting to my point.

Just imagine this: Remember back to the time in Elementary School when you played that game of telephone with your friends in the classroom? Now let's put this theory into a real life situation. If we were to take an idea, a phrase, a word, or even a philosophy, and tell someone else all about it, maybe that person is so interested in this idea that they want to adapt it themselves. If this idea is successful (And marketable. We are human beings and if it makes money, then why not mass produce it?) and it spreads like wildfire, you must understand that this idea will “Distort” itself, just like your message in the game of telephone. Do you wonder why most languages have cognates with other languages? Do you wonder why so many religions are similar to others? Do you ever wonder how different genres of music emerged? Ideas ideas ideas! Malcolm Gladwell had a great explanation of word-of-mouth epidemics in his book, The Tipping Point.

So, you're probably asking: How does relate to me obtaining my optimal body? Well, when it comes to nutrition and fitness, if you didn't already know, there is quite a bit of information out there, and you may not be susceptible to all the misinformation, but you may be to some (Maybe you already have all the information you need, you're just reading more than you need to. I don't blame you, I'm the same way). This is what I will tell you before reading this book: If you are someone that tends to be close minded (Most who are won't admit it), and tend to criticize anything and everything that goes against your beliefs, then I don't know if you'll make it a few pages through this book. Keeping an open mind is a successful method to defusing problems between two people by looking at both sides of the spectrum, so all I ask you is this: I want you to allow yourself to take as much of this information in as possible. Try to look at this from a bigger picture. If you can do that for me, you will get quite a bit out of this book. If you can't, and want to “debunk” my opinions, please go for it. However, since I will be providing citations from legitimate studies found on select medical databases, I expect you to do the same. Do not provide me with a forum or web page ranting about “studies have shown” this is better than this without providing a proper citation. It's really not that hard.

I am not saying that these ways are right, then again, the methodology and recommendations I provide in this book are simply scientific observations, and some word-of-mouth. You must understand in the medical world there is always a study conflicting with another study. The problem with so many scientific studies today however, is how much of the information recorded is actually accurate? How many subjects were involved in the study? Were any of them suffering from some kind of disease or deficiency during the time of the experiment and not figured out until post-experiment? How does the control and experimental groups differ? How are they similar?

As I told you before, be skeptical of any information. Question it. Where is the evidence? If there is no science to study it, where did it fabricate in the general population? Where did the information distort at? I'm not saying that the big nutrition and fitness companies are scamming you into buying worthless words, but as we know, status is everything when it comes to people listening to you, and if you have the money to advertise and got celebrities or sports athletes to rave about your product, then you know it's accurate information, right? Wrong! Why so gullible? Social conformity is normal among the general population. People don't want to be singled out, so they choose what everyone else does. Boring much? If you really want to blow your own mind, break past the “cultural norm”. Or you can keep doing what you do, but are you really happy with staying the same? Obviously not. You came here to find some answers after all.

Now that I may have offended a few (Or intrigued some, depending on your character and susceptibility to bias) we'll move onto what you've been waiting for: The book that'll give you a little more insight into improving your nutrition, fitness, and psychological aspects in concern to the two former subjects.

Copyright 2013 Antonius Cato