“Did you book this at the travel agents in Ashbourne?” [Not as unlikely as it seemed]

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In 1997 my friend Rob came with me and my parents on our family holiday to Turkey.

The main story coming out of that holiday was that we both had food poisoning and had to have an injection in our bottoms from a dodgy looking Turkish ‘doctor’.

But another story was how we bumped into Becca Ward from the year below by the pool.

Rob started going out with her when we got home funnily enough.

But the conversation at the time was about what an amazing coincidence it was.

However many thousand miles away and you bump into some from school.

What are the chances?

Well, that’s what everyone else said.

I’ve always had a somewhat analytical mind.

I worked backwards in my head to where we’d booked the holiday.

The travel agents in Ashbourne.

It was up in the window (remember when that’s how you found holidays?).

I asked Becca if that’s how they found it.

It, of course, was.

Same dates, flights and hotel.

I would imagine there were several families from the area there somewhere.

Not the million to one coincidence it first appeared.

But a pretty high chance we’d see someone we recognised.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

The human brain isn’t always great and finding the real reasons behind things.

If often misses the genuine connection and / or adds another one in.

Sometimes it sees correlation as causation.

We start Intermittent Fasting, keto, raspberry ketones, skinny coffee, a certain diet or any other approach to losing weight…………..

Lose weight………..

And miss the important fact that the method just put us in a calorie deficit.

Or our friend seems to be able to “eat what they like and not gain weight”………….

Assume that they have “a better metabolism”………..

And we miss that we only see their eating, maybe 10% of the time and that they’re just creating average maintenance calories.

We see that someone we know has always been in great shape………

Feel it’s unfair………

And miss that they might have done 2,000 workouts in the last decade and eaten in average deficit or maintenance.

The reasons for things are often simpler than we might think.

We want to get in shape?

Eat in an average deficit and do a progressive form of exercise that we enjoy.

That’s not the entirety of it sure.

But it’s more than enough to make some great progress.

Much love,

Jon ‘Started texting Rob during COVID after over 15 years out of touch’ Hall