Health

How to Build Your Timeless Food Philosophy

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Eat meat. Or maybe not.

Skip carbs. I mean dairy. No, wait, nuts.

Soda? Sugar? Is there such a thing as too much fruit??

You can find a study about food that will tell you just about anything you want to hear. And if all you want is to know for sure what the best diet really is, researching and experimenting can just about have you ready to pull your hair out.

Ask me how I know.

Because of unexplained digestive issues, chronic fatigue, fertility issues, and unexplained joint pain between us two newlyweds, we got really serious about diet a few years ago.

The problem was, the research pointed us in so many different directions, we tended to bounce aimlessly from one strategy to another.

Sadly, this isn’t a testimonial of the diet that fixed all of those issues for us. This is an area we are still fighting to take baby steps in. (It is amazing how ingrained eating habits are! — Make sure you check out the questions below)

But, this is where our hunt for lindy living really blossomed.

After all, when all of the research points in all the directions, what makes more sense than looking at the food that has been eaten across generations and around the world? If several healthy cultures are all eating the same thing, doesn’t that make sense that we should at least look at it?

After all, while society and habits change rapidly, our human bodies are basically the same as the human bodies walking around on this Earth 3,000 years ago.

That line of thinking brought us to the Weston A. Price Foundation — an organization founded on the observations of, of all things, a dentist, who traveled the world and compiled information on the health and corresponding diets of traditional cultures (AKA, cultures that were living very similar lives to those their ancestors had).

He started out observing teeth, but he couldn’t help noticing other features like strength and baby health and longevity, and he found lots of patterns among the groups that were the healthiest. 

Things like eating certain fats, soaking grains, and fermented foods were present in numerous ancient practices and seemingly contributed to their health.

(And there is now science and studies that back up his observations, if you aren’t totally burned out on those.)

As a defining example of lindy living, we bought into this philosophy wholeheartedly. 

Not the specific diet per se (we are still struggling to implement it), but the philosophy.

The food philosophy of using what nature has to offer — of using everything from the good bacteria to the natural vitamins that God put into the world in accordance with the bodies he created —— the philosophy that says those people who were most closely observing nature were probably the wisest, and the foods that have lasted from 1,000 B.C. to today are probably worth eating.

So, before you go crazy with soaking and sprouting and buying exotic grains, slow down a minute and think. Think about your food philosophy. What do you know to be true about your health and that of the people around you? What do you want to know more of?

Here are some questions to help you think about what you are doing and where you want to be:

Family, Health

3 Easy Ways to Make Your Life More Lindy

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Life change is hard. And going against the grain is even harder.

Maybe that’s why we never seem to really do it..

As a family, we have researched, pondered, and talked late into the night about some of our life philosophies, and it always comes back to the same idea: timelessness.

  • How can we decorate our home in such a way we won’t need to redo its trendiness in 5 years?
  • How do we best nourish our bodies?
  • How should we be spending our free time?
  • How can we worship God as a family?
  • What should community look like? Or our jobs?
  • How do we give our kids the healthiest childhood on all counts?

But conversations are hard to turn into actions. Looking around, it seems like everybody has plans for how they would make a more money or get healthier or finally do x thing. But plans are cheap. Our plans are a dime a dozen.

And we are tired of being stuck there when it comes to our family. We are determined to make some real changes. That’s what we are here for. That’s what this blog is about — finding out how to turn philosophy into action.

If you want to join us, here it goes.

3 easy ways to make your life a little more lindy:

 1. Get outside more

Let your kids run wild. Plant a garden. Go on walks. Just sit and talk.

Life used to be lived outside — for good reason! (Well, besides the fact that that was often the only choice… 😛 But it was beneficial nonetheless!)

We have started with daily outside time for our kids, even if it’s short, and family Sunday walks. Baby steps!

2. Work with your hands

Find a project you can do or skill you can learn.

We have tried fitting in more baking and we are planning on learning some sewing and woodworking.

If that feels overwhelming, there are even smaller steps you can start with — take care of a plant, do some extra yardwork, make some origami!

3. Eat real food

Don’t worry too much about which foods to eat, soaking, etc. just yet. Just start somewhere!

For us, that meant adding in some more fruits and vegetables, cutting out all of our snack food, and looking for some higher quality meat.

That’s about where we are right now. It hasn’t been too hard and it has made huge amounts of difference in the pace of our lives, which has in turn affecting our health and stress, not to mention just enjoyment of what we do.

So, if that’s what you’re looking for, jump in!

Community, Design, Family, Health, Rhythms, Self-Sufficiency

What is “Lindy?”

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I tried looking the word up in the dictionary and got: “a jitterbug dance originating in Harlem”

Ahem. What?

Sorry, no jitterbug here.

And can we talk about the irony that the dictionary definition is a super trendy generational dance move?

That’s basically the opposite of what we are going for. When we think of lindy, it is more in this framing:

“If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works at ninety percent. On the other hand…if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are it works at less than ten percent, unless it is also what has been covered by the grandmother and the classics…” (Nassim Teleb).

It’s the “Lindy Effect” — the idea that if something has continued/has been used/is successful for a long time before, it will continue to be for a long time in the future.

So what does that have to do with family life? Friendships? Our part in society?

Well, as we are trying to build our lives well, we hear a lot of studies and opinions shouting at us, “DO IT LIKE THIS!” How do we sort which of this contradictory advice to adhere to and which to toss? I mean, the decisions we make about family structure, health, city design, childrearing, etc., etc. are far reaching and nearly irreversible. Talk about pressure.

But, we have a lot of the answers!** For thousands of years people have been trying to live life well and, according to the Lindy Effect, the strategies of our ancestors have already been sifted to see what will and won’t hold up. The principles that have already proven to be successful across generations, nationalities, and specific situations are the principles that will probably still be successful in the future.

Timelessness.

Are we making this parenting decision/architecture decision/decorating decision/food decision based on the timeless experience that is humanity or based on an unproven trend?

Those are the kinds of questions we are trying to ask around here.

**We can’t go without saying that the ultimate proof of the Lindy Effect are the truths of God’s Word, the Bible. As the Designer of the universe, the truths that God encoded in are unchangeable and the final answers to these questions. Every person and society since the beginning of time has proven that, and at the end of time we will realize just how much. Until then, the Bible is our ultimate answer to the question about living life well. We look to the Lindy Effect just to fill in some of the specific how to’s (like what to eat or how many hours to sleep), but always on the bedrock foundation of God’s design.