That's more sugar than I've had in a week. (Photo by Theresa Thompson)

To be honest, the Tao of Bachelorhood’s anniversary was four days ago, but I was a bit laid up, so better late than never.

It’s been an interesting year, and I thank you for reading and responding. In the first few months it was all baby steps, but as I learned what was important to you I was better able to keep rolling, and working on this becomes more of a pleasure every day.

I’m working for your benefit—and learning plenty myself in the process—so please, don’t hesitate to drop me an e-mail or voice mail message. Whether you’re stuck somehow and would like a second opinion or fresh idea, or if you have a suggestion that would help deepen your enjoyment of this site, by all means let me know.

Over the past year I’ve created some killer content, if I say so myself, and I’ll bring some of it out of mothballs periodically for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t been with me since the beginning. We’re still just laying the foundation though, and my current list of article ideas is long and varied. In addition I’m adding multimedia content: the very first Tao of Bachelorhood podcast is coming up in the very next post, and some video may even be on the horizon.

For those of you who might have recently found this humble blog, let me point out a few of the cornerstone bits:

• A Simple Starter Workout

• Attracting Better Women, and The Myth of “Up-dating”

• 10 Steps to Working a Room

• The Most Important Trait for Men, and How to Get It

• The 3 Stages of Seduction

• The 3 Things You Must Be to Attract Women

• 22 Tips to Jumpstart Your Life

• Eat Right

• Do Real Men Moisturize?

• The Secret to Getting the Date (Not Just the Number)

• How to Tell When a Woman is Interested

• Be Observant; Be Successful

• No-Weights Workout

• How to Perform 14 Basic Skills (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

Read on, and thank you once again for giving me some of your valuable time. I hope I can help you get where you want to go.

If only you could rig this up as a controller for Gran Turismo...

It’s news, but it’s not news: scientists have found that sitting for long periods of time is bad for your health. While you should just be able to feel that a sedentary lifestyle is the inverse of fitness, now there’s evidence that actual negative changes in your body occur while you’re sitting still. Healthy substances that are generated when your muscles flex don’t appear when you’re stationary.

From a recent New York Times article:

Men who normally walk a lot (about 10,000 steps per day, as measured by a pedometer) were asked to cut back (to about 1,350 steps per day) for two weeks, by using elevators instead of stairs, driving to work instead of walking and so on. By the end of the two weeks, all of them had became worse at metabolizing sugars and fats. Their distribution of body fat had also altered — they had become fatter around the middle.

It’s not just at work, either. If you come home and flop on the couch to watch TV or settle in at the computer for heavy-duty web surfing, it compounds the problem. And exercising your thumbs with the PlayStation doesn’t help much.

What’s more, you can’t completely make up for a day of sitting around by working out at 5:00. Among people who observed a program of regular exercise, those who sat the rest of their day were fatter and less healthy than those who moved around throughout the day.

The World Changed, We Didn’t

The prescription for good health is to eat wholesome foods and keep active. It’s what humans did in the days of the caveman and medieval times, through the Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century this all changed. The office job was invented, the automobile became popular, and an ever-growing percentage of the “developed” world remained seated virtually from the moment they left the house in the morning until they returned at night. And when they got home, people had fewer “chores,” ever more convenient processed food requiring no preparation, and more passive entertainment options.

The problem is that our bodies haven’t changed they way they operate. The owner’s manual is still the same. Put healthy food in and keep active.

Rage Against the Chair

Fortunately, the same modern world that tries to keep us sitting has created a wide variety of tools and techniques to get us active again. Some of them are incredibly simple, others are a complete lifestyle change—but it’s possible a lifestyle change is just what you need.

From easiest to hardest:

1. Take frequent breaks. Even if you have to sit for your job, you still don’t have to sit for hours at a stretch. Set an alarm and walk away for a few minutes. Don’t leave it up to yourself to remember—there are simple computer programs you can use to alert you every 15-20 minutes that it’s time to get up and walk around or do a few exercises. Scirocco Take a Break (Windows) and Time Out (Mac) are free and will do the job. And stop sending e-mails across the office for trivial information when it’s a perfect opportunity to get up and take a walk.

2. Exercise and stretch throughout the day. Besides your daily workout, have some exercises to do in the office or at home. Even a minute at a time will help you. Do a set of pushups or some lunges. I keep my Iron Gym in the doorway of my home office, and I find myself doing 5-10 pull-ups several times a day. There’s a list of exercises on eHow that can help you shake off atrophy at work.

3. Walk everywhere possible. If you live less than a mile from work, you shouldn’t be taking a car. Walk somewhere to eat your lunch, even if you made your lunch yourself. Walk to do errands. Walk just for the heck of it. Once you get adjusted to walking, it will seem unnatural to get around any differently.

4. Use the stairs. Are you using the elevator to travel fewer than 4-5 floors? You’re wasting energy as well as a prime exercise opportunity. One good exercise habit is to use the restroom on the floor above or below the one you work on.

5. Ditch your chair. If it’s possible, use a standing workstation at the office. Some businesses with good wellness/fitness policies will help you get one. Same at home: elevate your computer to eye level and stand while you surf. If you’re really feeling like pushing the envelope, try a treadmill workstation. If you can’t stand standing, at least consider using a balance ball (which recruits your core to stay seated).

6. Get a Wii. The hardcore gamers are going to roll their eyes, but the Wii owners will have the slimmer waistlines, so who cares? In my opinion this is the single biggest technological boon to fitness since the dumbbell: videogames that force you to move around, keeping you entertained while getting you off the couch. Just keep a firm grip on the controller.

7. Get an active hobby. Or three. Find a sport you’d like to try. Learn to dance. Take a self-defense course. Grab the evening class schedule from the local community college and find the most active classes. Even skills like cooking and woodworking require you to move around. Not only does learning new skills get you off the couch, it makes you a more valuable, rounded person.

8. Take pride in your home. Everyone would like to improve their living space, and it’s a healthier way to spend the weekend than watching TV. Have a list of fixes and improvements to make around your place, and teach yourself to do tasks like putting in light fixtures and switches, re-caulking the bathtub and weeding the lawn. Paint, hang doors…you know, the things men should do.

9. Trade your car for a bike. We’re reaching the “lifestyle change” end of the spectrum here, but these days getting around your town or city by bicycle is easier than ever, not to mention much cheaper than burning petroleum. Many businesses even have shower and locker facilities for cyclist employees. Once you get the hang of cycling, you may even be tempted to get rid of your car! And why not: another technological boon for mankind is something called Zipcar, a kind of auto timeshare that lets you use a car when you really need one, without the expense of a loan, insurance and maintenance. It also frees up your garage for more bike stuff.

10. Get an active job. Why not take a break from the desk like Peter Gibbons in Office Space? You might not want to join a cleanup crew, but there are plenty of jobs that enable you to get out from behind a desk for part or all of your day. Not long ago I moved laterally in the company I worked for, and started handling trade shows. I got to travel, set up and take down a simple booth, and walk the floor glad-handing people. Not to mention that the services counter at each of these huge trade centers was always about a half-mile from our booth. If you’re doing inside sales, consider outside sales. Moonlight as a barista. Or start your own company—that could very well keep you on your feet.

The bottom line here is to put yourself in the healthiest position possible, and that position is not seated. Do what you’re comfortable with, but do something. With the options and technology at our disposal, we should be able to break through the sedentary example set by the last few generations while we improve our entire lifestyle.

Now it’s your turn: what are you doing to keep yourself active at an office job? What other ideas have I missed?

That's your ex's new boyfriend. Yeah, he's a Dick. (Photo by Alan Light)

“Nice guys finish last.” They say Leo Durocher coined the phrase in reference to a baseball team, but we’ve adopted it as a description of how supposedly respectful, deferential men are pushed aside by women for the “jerks.” And while it’s true that there is a segment of women who live to “fix” damaged guys, the real problem is usually with the Nice Guy—who may not be so nice after all.

But what could possibly be wrong with the guy who shows up at a girl’s doorstep with a rose, takes her out for a classy dinner and drops her off at her door with nothing more than a peck on the cheek? Can’t a guy treat his woman like a queen without her running off with the first knave to cross her path?

The Problem With Nice Guys

The first issue—and a big reason Nice Guys turn women off—is that many nice guys are deliberately non-sexual. A Nice Guy believes that women will be attracted to him because he’s not a threat, and in making himself non-threatening, a Nice Guy buries his masculinity. Buying drinks, gifts, dinners, deferring to her on decisions and letting her lead the interaction indicates a lack of confidence. Without an undercurrent of desire, there’s instead a feeling that he’s hiding something.

And this brings us to the second issue: by burying their true desires under the pretense of non-threatening platonic supplication, the Nice Guy is being dishonest. He does what he does because he expects her to reciprocate. He really does want to take her to bed and do the things people do there, but he won’t admit it. He’ll stay as far from the issue of desire as possible, hoping perhaps that she’ll broach the subject when his niceness finally wins her over. When she ultimately never does, he shuts down, or mopes, or maybe even gets mad and acts out.

Yes, I know how wonderfully romantic it sounds that a guy can’t live without this girl he barely knows (or has known from afar for a really uncomfortably long time), but if a Nice Guy is pinning his future happiness on someone else, that guy is going to blame others for his unhappiness.

What’s He Got That I Don’t?

So what is it about the “jerks” and “bad boys” that lets them steal the women right out of the arms of the Nice Guys?

It’s their confidence. Their self-esteem. Their audacity. Jerks may suffer from addictions, lack of respect or delusions of grandeur, but they also project masculinity. They may have some huge warts, but they’re embracing life, warts and all. A Jerk is his own man, but he’s definitely a man. It’s a vibration women respond to, often against their own better judgment.

What Nice Guys don’t want to hear is that they could learn something from the Jerks.

Instead of Nice, Be Real

Listen, men have desires. Women want to be desired. You don’t have to talk like a sailor or grope your date to demonstrate that you’re all man, but you do have to prove you have backbone and resiliency. Instead of worrying about showing how respectful you are to women, show how you respect yourself. You can be incredibly giving, as long as you give with no expectation of anything in return, because affection isn’t bought. Make decisions. Lead, don’t follow.

A confident man doesn’t pin his self-esteem on a date. He knows that even though this woman is beautiful and charming there’s a big world out there, and plenty of beautiful and charming women. He has the huevos to make a move—and if she rejects him, he respects her wishes and moves on. He’s going to have the greatest time tonight, and she can come along for the ride or not.

Men with integrity, self-esteem, and direction can be extremely successful with women, and they don’t have to be Jerks to do it. They’re Real Men, and women will take a Real Man over a Nice Guy any day.

(Photo by Stuart Conner)

You’re looking in your closet the day before your big date. You see some old button-down patterned shirts, some polos, an old pair of pleated khakis and about nine t-shirts from concerts you attended in the ’90s. You start to panic. You look at your shoe storage area, which is the space behind the front door, at your Air Jordans and a pair of rain-ruined brown suede sneakers, and you break out in a cold sweat.

Not to fear. There’s still time to pick up a few items that will not only get you through that date, but also have you looking sharp at work, at the sports bar with your buddies, and maybe even at a relative’s wedding. They won’t go out of style next year or even in the foreseeable future.

For this list I’m leaving out the two extremes: a suit and jeans. If you don’t have a suit, you’ll eventually need one, but not for the vast majority of your daily life, unless you’re a lawyer or stockbroker. Plus, with the items below you can fake your way in some situations. Jeans…well, you’ve probably already got jeans. I’m not including sneakers for the same reason, but a pair of nice white ones can give you a more casual option.

Before you grab that credit card and head out, don’t forget to follow my two cardinal rules of clothes shopping:

1. Buy quality. This doesn’t mean you should pay the highest price; it means you should look for items that are well-made. You want your clothes to last.
2. If in doubt, get a second opinion. Enlist someone you know who dresses well to help you with color and fit.

Now to the items that will make up the foundation of your new wardrobe.

1. Sport coat.

The sport coat, sports jacket or blazer is incredibly versatile. You can wear it with a fitted, colored t-shirt and jeans for a casual evening out with friends, with a nice sweater and chinos if you’re meeting up with that Match.com date, or even with dress pants and a tie for a job interview. It can go places a suit jacket can’t.

The most appropriate color for your first sport coat is blue. I recommend a dark blue, which can look dressy when paired with a nice pair of pants, or go well with a pair of jeans. If you’re extra adventurous you might look at a casual corduroy sport coat or something with a herringbone pattern, but a deep, solid blue is classic, with a two-button front. Trendy patterns, designs and fabrics like velvet are for advanced users.

2. Dress shoes.

A pair of nice black dress shoes can also match up with a variety of looks, and the most versatile of the dress shoes is the lace-up Oxford. You’ll want to pick up a pair with a regular toe (not square, and not the elongated pointy look that will be out of date in a year or two) and quality construction.

A good pair of shoes can last you several years if you’re not wearing them every day. When you’re ready for more, a pair in brown can look good with jeans, and a pair of boots can accentuate your party look. Grab a pair of good white sneakers or stylish casual shoes like Sketchers for urban hiking and you’re ready for anything.

Don’t forget to pick up a black leather belt as well—let’s make that 2a.

3. Casual pants.

This is where you’ll normally get advice to buy a pair of khakis. However, I look in my closet and see about seven pairs of casual pants, not a single one of which is a pair of khakis, and can say you’ll be better off with something different. However, paired with the other items on this list even khakis will look better on you than they do on 90 percent of guys.

Look for cotton casual pants such as chinos, or some casual wool pants. Gray, navy, tan, or black are all good color options—try some on and see which color works best, but you probably won’t go wrong with a charcoal gray wool or cotton pant. Just make sure it’s not too dressy if you’re depending on it as the foundation of your wardrobe.

4. White dress shirt.

This probably sounds like the easiest item to pick up, but there are a surprisingly large number of styles and cuts of the basic white dress shirt out there. However, there’s one secret to looking great in a dress shirt: tailoring.

First, look for a shirt made with Oxford cotton. It’s a cloth with a basket-weave or waffle-like look. You don’t want a button-down collar: usually a “straight” collar, pointy with no tabs or buttons, will work fine. As you expand your shirt collection, consider a “spread” collar for wearing with a tie, and a button-down as a hangin’-with-the-guys option.

Dress shirts are sized according to sleeve length and neck circumference, so make sure you get measured before shopping. When you’ve found your shirt, it’s time to have it tailored to fit you. Most shirt manufacturers make their garments like tents around the middle, and the billowy-fabric look went out with pirate shirts. So take it to a seamstress (many stores offer this option) and have the shirt altered to fit properly.

5. Solid tie.

When you need to go dressier, the tie brings it all together, turning your basic sport coat, shirt and pants a little closer to formal. This is where you can add a splash of color to the basic pieces above. A deep red or a complementary shade of blue are the best options for your first neckwear. From there you can go to a diagonal stripe for a traditional business look.

6. Sweater.

Listen, you can’t wear a sport coat all the time. And when you do wear it, you want to have more options to go under it than just a white shirt. A good cotton or cashmere v-neck sweater can add interest and color to this wardrobe. Again, find a color that complements your jacket. A deep red or contrasting blue are my choices.

Try on a few different cuts and colors: some people can rock a red sweater that others can’t, and not all v-necks are created equal. You don’t want to walk out of the store unaware of the man-cleavage that plunging neckline will expose. You might even find that a crew-neck is more “you”: so be it.

When all is said and done, you want to feel comfortable in your clothes, so shop carefully. These six pieces can form the foundation of your everyday wardrobe, and the only thing more important than looking good in them is feeling like you look good in them.

Related Articles:

• Talking Shirt
• Talkin’ Pants
• What’s Up With Those Shoes?

I'm not even sure how you change the plates on that. (Photo by Rennett Stowe)

If you’ve recently started a weight training program (like my starter workout plan) you’ve probably noticed a steady initial gain in the weight you can lift. But for every man there comes a time when the gains don’t come as easy. What then?

Being stuck at a specific weight can be perplexing. To gain muscle you also need to gain strength: if you use a 30 pound-dumbbell every time you do dumbbell curls, you won’t be building new muscle. So you need to move up—but how?

The answer is easier than you think: just lift the higher weight.

Perfect Your Form

First, be honest with yourself. Are you performing perfect reps at your current weight? If not, concentrate on lifting the weight in a steady motion, and returning the weight to its starting position smoothly in every rep. When you can do this with your full range of motion for at least 12 reps, you’re ready to move up.

Also make sure you’re approaching your workouts properly, getting adequate rest between workouts and proper nutrition. If you’re overtraining or tired, it will be harder to gain strength.

Kick It Up a Notch—But Just One Notch

The general rule of thumb is that you should increase your weight by less than 10 percent at a time, and in general I would keep that to five percent. Ideally the weight increase you choose should let you perform 8-10 reps with good form. If you can’t do 8 reps with good form, back the weight down a bit. Even a 1-2 pound increment is reasonable when you’re performing an exercise like dumbbell curls where your weight is likely to be under 40 pounds.

But what if there aren’t plates small enough to let you increase your weight by less? Look around—a lot of gyms have small blocks to put on a machine’s weight stack, or magnetic plates that stick onto dumbbells or barbells. If your gym doesn’t have these, or you’re working out at home, a fitness equipment store will likely have smaller plates that will let you adjust your weight precisely. They’re a good investment.

As a last resort, do as many reps as you can do with perfect form at the new weight, even if it’s 4-5 reps. Low reps will still build your strength, as long as they’re solid reps.

Change Your Exercise

Another way to improve your strength is to do an exercise similar to the one where you’ve plateaued. If you’ve hit a barrier on the chest press, try an incline or decline chest press to hit the muscles slightly differently. You might find that by the time you hit a plateau in the new exercise, you can lift more weight in the old one.

Take a Break

If you find you’re hitting a plateau at multiple exercises, and you’ve been working out on schedule for several months, take a break for a week. A good rest will help your body recover fully so you’re at 100 percent when you get back to it. Eat and sleep well on your rest week.

When I hit plateaus, I find that simply raising my weight anyway gets me unstuck. Part of the issue with plateaus is the mental factor: you might get it stuck in your head that you can’t lift more, and if you can’t visualize yourself lifting more your body may just have to agree with you. By increasing by less, performing fewer reps and varying your exercise, you should be able to bust almost any plateau.

Worth skipping class for, sure. But what about your buddy's hiking trip? ...Okay, that too.

You’ve seen this: someone organizes an event and requests RSVPs. When event time rolls around, someone no-shows. Maybe a lot of people no-show. The worst is when it’s an event with limited space – you look at empty seats and maybe think about the friend of yours who really wanted to come along, but the event was full. Sometimes the host waits to start, just in case some laggards are running late, but the laggards never show up and you’re now the ones who are running late.

Or on the other side of the coin, you’ve signed up for a class or a group event, and it’s getting close. The afternoon of the event, you feel a little sick. Or that girl you’ve been after calls and invites you for a drink. No big deal, life happens, you can go to the next one, right?

An RSVP is a Commitment

Any time you’re invited and you accept the invitation, you’ve made a commitment. Obviously some commitments are bigger than others – if your best friend asks you to a basketball game and buys tickets, you would probably feel a responsibility to show up. But if you respond to a forwarded Facebook invite to a huge blowout hosted by someone you don’t even know, who’s even to know if you just decide to not go?

No matter the size of the event, your commitment comes with implied responsibility. People do notice when you say you’ll be somewhere or do something and then aren’t there, even sometimes in the largest events. The host of that blowout may have been looking forward to meeting you. A seminar or class might have a waiting list, with people who would be grateful to take that empty chair.

No-showing, or “flaking,” shows disrespect to those who invited you, and in some cases to the other attendees. Enough no-shows and you might expect to become dis-invited to future parties or events.

Manage Your RSVPs

The first step to avoiding no-shows is not to commit to something you’re not sure you’ll attend. I get invited to dozens of events a month – many more than I can realistically make time for – so I only agree to attend what I really want to attend. Everything else I decline. If I decline a personal invitation, I normally add a short note reading something like, “Unfortunately I have a conflict that night. Thanks for the invitation.”

It’s important to respond “yes” or “no” to all invitations, and to do so within a reasonable amount of time so that the host can plan appropriately. Many online RSVPs include a “maybe” button – the best idea is to ignore it. Most people respond “maybe” because either they’re afraid to say “no” or because they’re waiting to see if something better comes along. Instead of a “maybe,” wait to respond when you’re sure you can or can’t make it. You should either commit or decline in a timely manner, period.

If the invitation is handwritten or e-mailed, your response should be sent the same way. If the invitation is second-hand, it’s still a good idea to respond – that way the host may be inclined to invite you directly in the future.

When Something Comes Up

Everyone has had to cancel plans at the last minute. Cars break down, people get injured, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities come up. It’s how you handle these life issues that demonstrates your character.

If there’s still a reasonable amount of time, you can simply change your RSVP. Make sure to include a note apologizing for changing your response, explaining that something has come up, and thanking the host. If time is short, however, you’ll have to contact the host directly. Within a day or two you can safely send an e-mail message explaining the situation, but on the day of the event you should phone. Do this at the earliest possible moment: it’s critical if the host has to do any planning based on the number of guests, or your absence would free up an opening for someone else to attend. And make sure that you have the phone number with you as you drive to the event, in case you have car trouble or are called upon to make a roadside rescue (it could happen).

If the event is a class, seminar or another type of function where you must register, contact the organizer or instructor as soon as you know you can’t be there. This could enable someone on the waiting list to attend, and if you had to pay for the event it might even get your money back.

How You Treat Commitments Defines You

Reputation is cumulative. As a man, you build your reputation by honoring commitments, communicating when there’s a problem, and making the confident, bold move. No-showing is definitely not a bold move. Do it enough and you’ll be known as a flake, and the invitations will stop coming.

If you communicate well, you’ll be well-regarded by friends and strangers alike.

I found this video recently (it’s an ad for a super-healthy food chain called “The Pump”—next time I’m in Manhattan I’ll have to try it) and it got me thinking:

Everywhere you turn there’s crap.

I watched a special on Coca-Cola recently where a company executive defended his product by declaring “people just want to take a break in their day to feel good.” The fast-food burger joints long ago stopped pretending to be healthy, instead focusing on the “good times” you have while eating unrealistically large and juicy-looking versions of their menu items.

A lot of crap is masquerading as “healthy” food, too. The worst cereals in the world, packed with as much sugar as a soda, declare “10 Vitamins & Minerals!” Protein “workout” bars are filled with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup. A recent commercial tells you that by choking down Chicken McNuggets you’re “eating like an athlete!” The frozen dinner aisle is packed with the words “lean,” “gourmet,” “smart” and “healthy”—read the long, fine-print ingredient list to see just how much they’re stretching the truth. Even canned fruit is frequently packed with corn syrup.

But you know what? At some point you’ve got to sack up and take responsibility for your own life, for your own health. And there’s only one sure way to make sure you can always eat healthy…

Cook.

I can’t tell you how many single guys I know who boast about their inability to prepare a meal from scratch. Hell, I know a lot of women who seem inordinately proud of that.

Part of this isn’t your fault: since the rise of fast food and “casual dining” restaurants, cooking is a skill that has fallen out of favor in America. By some calculations, we’re on the third generation to not be coached on basic food prep skills. Why, when for a mere $2 you can get a double cheeseburger and a soft drink with 30 grams of sugar? Or buy a prepackaged meal with a list of ingredients you couldn’t pronounce with a gun to your head?

But at the point where you consider yourself a smart man, the responsibility becomes yours.

Look, I’ve written about this before, but I’ve come to believe that there’s nothing more important for a single man to learn than to cook for himself.

Cooking is Easy

There’s no big secret to cooking. It’s not hard. And there are two ways to learn:

• Take a class. You’ll get some structure, learn some basic recipes you can repeat as often as you like, and maybe even start a cooking group with your classmates. Classes are also a great way to get out and be social—even to meet women.

• Learn to cook in the comfort of your own home. The steps are easy: You think of what you want to eat, you find a recipe, you buy ingredients, you cook, you taste, you learn.

Everything you could possibly need to know about cooking is at your fingertips. Recipes by the thousands can be had at Food.com and Epicurious. So are instructions for everything—with video. Never heard of “zesting a lemon” in your life? Look it up. What people used to have to attend cooking schools to learn, you can find in minutes. A couple of good books never hurt either: I recommend books by the host of Food Network’s Good Eats, Alton Brown. They’re very practical, and probably the most manly cookbooks in existence.

Buy the ingredients and equipment you need when you need them. There’s no need to outfit a gourmet kitchen until you’ve become a gourmet cook. You can use the links here to stock a basic pantry, and from there it depends on what’s cooking.

Of course, there will be bumps in the road. Anyone who’s cooked much can tell you of their recipes that somehow didn’t work out as planned. (Tip: never make crab-stuffed sole with imitation crab. Yuck.) But by trying things, substituting when you just realized you’re out of a certain ingredient, and using your own taste buds to tell you when you’ve seasoned something just right, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

Just Have Fun

As with everything, there are cooking purists out there. Ignore them for now. Non-organic vegetables may not be as healthy as organic vegetables, but they’re still miles ahead of the dried, reconstituted vegetables in that prepared package. You don’t have to fret over whether your beef is grass-fed or your milk is raw, unless you want to. Eventually you’ll be able to taste the difference in tomatoes from the farmer’s market and the ones from Gigant-O-Mart, but regular fresh tomatoes still taste pretty awesome in a homemade pasta sauce or salsa.

There are some items you don’t want to substitute, like extra virgin olive oil, but even there the point is to first get used to the process, and then start thinking about the quality of your ingredients. Just go crazy. Try any recipe that looks good.

And don’t forget that because tastes are different, you’ll need to taste while you’re cooking—and do it often. Although recipes specify amounts of seasonings, your own taste buds should be the final judge of whether your meal is ready to eat. As you get to know which seasonings go best with which foods, you’ll eventually be able to “freestyle” your own flavor.

Mark Your Progress

As with any new endeavor, you can get a lot more out of cooking if you keep track of what you do. Keep a journal of the recipes you’ve made. Make special note of any modifications so that if that broiled salmon turns out to be the best you ever had, you can duplicate it the next time. When you find a “go-to” recipe, make sure to mark it so that you can find it again. Make a list of the ingredients and equipment you’ll want in the future.

It’s also inspirational to compare creations with friends or online acquaintances. The message boards on the poker site I used to frequent had a “What’s Cooking?” forum where guys would take a picture of what they’d made for dinner and/or offer recipes. Some guys would feel such a spirit of competition that their creations would become more and more elaborate. I think a couple even tried aging their own beef. In a forum like this you can ask questions, see what others who prepared the same dish may have done to improve the flavor or consistency, and of course, brag.

Good Food In, Crap Out

In your personal war against crap, the ability to prepare your own food is your greatest weapon. And if you ever have a family to care for, cooking is of even more critical importance.

Did you know that diet-related disease and illness kills far more people in America than traffic accidents or homicides? I leave you with another video, this one more serious. British TV chef Jamie Oliver spoke at the TED Conference, where he was awarded a prize to pursue his vision of reversing the trend of obesity in America.

His topic: crap kills.