The must-haves and must-tries.
The latest pieces of cotton in your closet. Or that device, held at chest height as a few fingers rapidly type and swap away while stuck in a hunched position. Many of us are in need to stay abreast with the latest trends. And invest in it heavily.
Nothing wrong with this.
For some, it is more than a sport to outside your fellow colleague or classmate with what was actually just launched. Bought for top dollars and flaunted like you own the runway. If this is what you are after, go for it. I am not holding you back.
Updates and upgrades.
Just that tad better not to lag behind the demands of today. As much as fashion runs in circles – what you wore 10 years ago may hit the catwalks again next year -, this does not apply to technology. The only way forward is to buy new or update what has your fingerprints smeared all over it.
While trends come and go, so does the satisfaction factor of all things anew. No exceptions here, as I hammer away on the keyboard of my 8-year-old laptop.
At the time of purchase, I was over the moon.
Now? It is another piece of the furniture.
We jump into new because we feel it may add something better to our lives. A feat unheard of last year, yet now marked as a must-have. Without it, marketed well, you are bereft of working faster, dressing like you’re the king of the world, or simply going faster.
The novelty wears out in record time. It is not uncommon to hear that once you walk out of a store, your purchased item is already out of fashion and has dropped in value. It is all what’s new, what’s hot, and what no longer makes your/society’s heart skip a beat of excitement.
As a relatively new science, nutrition has had its fair share of trends and trend-watchers. One of the main trends at the end of the 20th century was demonising dietary fat. We all went as low fat as possible. The results? Our health deteriorated exponentially.
You can say the same about going Keto or Paleo. The move in taking in more plant-based foods and the advances in science in creating foods that one day may replace what in the future may no longer be existing. Trends pushed forward as the latest fad that proudly is put in the spotlight. What we know now compared to two years ago has jumped by leaps and bounds. With this, dietary experts take on their own creative spin in devising ample ways to entice customers into buying into their solution.
Trends come and go.
Whether the trend is set by a famous French fashion house or that Cupertino-based computer brand with that fruit logo, adaptations to the supply and demand to become the talk of the town will never fade away.
Except when we have to consider a constant in our lives. Our physical and mental inner workings.
I have stated the following before. Go ahead and try to change my mind.
If you want to battle against your body, you will always lose. Trend or not. Shoving a Mediterranean diet down my throat – because it is the thing to go for – may not work. Personal preferences or not, it simply does not tickle my wishes to change because society says it is time to up your nutritional ante.
If you want to see trends that flow effortlessly into our world, sure, there are some notable ones. Sustainable nutrition is an ever-emerging one. It is the philosophy that what we eat and drink must be done with keeping the earth in mind.
A nice and responsible way of taking sustainable bites and sips, but a trend? Hard to find out when you only have the packaging or the chalked board at your eco-friendly supermarket as your source of reference.
A highly interesting one is the progressions in DNA studies and how we can use our personal blueprint in seeing what we lack. Nutrients which we may need to scale down or what types actually do us more harm than good. The studies surrounding our gut and the microbiome are watched closely because the correlation between our brain and gut has become a no-brainer when mental and physical health is on your agenda.
The caloric experts in the world scream and shout that plant-based is what we all must embrace. The veganists have firmly planted their flag as hard-core opinion leaders. There certainly is some truth in it.
But a trend? I leave the right answer in the middle.
Properly feeding athletes in any sport – be it on a professional or recreational level – are trends that come and go like ebb and flow. Particularly the fitness industry has bouts of opinions left and right stating both the obvious and personal preferences.
Who knows what will come next year? I tend not to go in-depth in these papers because many of these trends contradict themselves.
Change is a constant. Nothing moves and flows with a similar rhythm.
From the tiniest change in exceeding expectations when checking in before devouring a unique hotel concept for a couple of nights, to the rise of new NFT blockchain technology, trends are set by those who have the power to influence and have that acclaimed foresight. Those feeling these methods as the next best thing follow blindly while others hesitantly wait for the price to come down or wait for the latest upgrade/update.
It is all about choice.
But to choose between taking on a trend and dropping all your firm beliefs on the nutrition side, there is one constant that determines the rate of success. And how are able to translate it into a healthier outlook. Nothing is a trend in food and drinks because the mechanics for successfully integrating a nutrition trend are based on the foundations from generations ago.
One year going for this, the other three months taking on that does not work. If you are hungry enough to dig deeper and make trendsetting changes for a better you, those DNA tests certainly are worth checking out. Let me know if you are interested, as I do know an excellent source for getting your DNA checked out.
I may be old-school in that perspective. However, keeping the same trend now for close to four years has served me very well.
The outcome of upholding this same trend? Compliments on how healthy I look, how good I personally feel, and why I consistently keep on raising my own bar in terms of performance and deadlift records.
How’s that for a trend?
I have a trend of my own | Andrei Platonov
