The Banana Rule
It’s been awhile since I’ve eaten a banana.
For years, eating one before a workout was just what I did. I learned they gave me steady energy for my workout and were simple to keep on hand. Then I got more careful about what I eat. Sugar especially. I started paying attention to where it came into my day and decided it belonged in two places only: my morning coffee, and dessert when I wanted it. Bananas are high on the glycemic index, so they got filed under things I don't do anymore. I'm a rule follower. Once something goes on the list, it stays there.
These days, my curiosity has me turning to Claude ai and I had a question after losing steam during my last workout. ”Is it bad for my blood sugar to eat a banana before my workout?” What I learned (and verified outside of Claude) is that a banana sitting on my counter at 3pm is not the same banana eaten twenty minutes before a workout. Exercise burns through that quick sugar almost as fast as it arrives. Add a tablespoon or two of peanut butter and the fat slows the whole process down, stretching the energy out instead of spiking it. The rule I'd been following — no bananas, full stop — was true in one context and false in another. I'd just never separated the two.
I’ll be going to the gym this week and I plan to restart my pre workout banana snack, adding the peanut butter.
This whole banana question made me think about the bigger picture regarding rules in general. I follow them all the time, but there’s a gap between a rule and the reason for the rule. "Avoid sugar" is a rule. The actual principle underneath it is something closer to don't flood your body with energy it has no use for and spike your blood sugar. The principle tells you when the rule stops applying. A banana before a workout isn't flooding anything. It's fuel arriving right before the thing that needs it. The rule wasn't wrong so much as it was a shortcut standing in for something more specific, and shortcuts are built to be right most of the time, not all of the time.
Once I noticed that, I started thinking about other rules:
A budget says don't spend money. But paying for a class, a tool, or an hour of someone else's expertise that saves you ten of your own isn't spending — not in the sense the rule was trying to prevent.
Don't check email first thing in the morning, the productivity advice goes. Unless you're actually waiting on something time-sensitive, in which case checking it first is just paying attention to what's true that day instead of what's true most days.
Always speak your mind, the advice says. Sometimes the more generous move is to ask one more question and let someone else finish their thought first.
The advice for anyone approaching retirement is to keep the job, keep the paycheck, keep contributing to the account until the number is unquestionably right. That's a good rule. But I've watched people ride it two or three years past the point where the reason for it — security — had already been secured, because stopping felt like breaking a rule instead of finishing one.
None of these are permission to ignore whatever's inconvenient. That's not what happened with the banana either — I didn't decide the rule was dumb and eat one anyway. I understood why it existed well enough to see that this particular case wasn't the one it was built for.
I've always believed rules exist for a reason beyond convenience — public safety, my health, protecting people from a decision they can't take back. That's most of why I follow them so readily. I've spent most of my life being the person who follows the rule because the rule is usually right, and there's benefit in not re-litigating every decision from scratch. But "usually right" and "always right" aren't the same claim, and I think I've been collapsing them for a long time — treating every rule like a law instead of like a good guess that was true when someone made it, under conditions that may or may not still hold.
I don't know yet how far this actually extends. It's tempting to turn it into a tidy principle — know the reason, then you'll know the exception — and call it done. But I've had this insight for less than a day, and the real test is whether eating my next banana feels different than I expect.
I'm curious what your version of the banana is — a rule you've followed so long you stopped asking why. Share in the comments below.
