Never Say Diet

I don't believe in diets. I don't believe in the guilt and denial, and I know intuitively and inherently that they don't work. Here's the inescapable truth of most diets: cut calories, lower metabolism, return to normal, rebound. It's a negative cycle, a myth, a lie promulgated by an entire industry of quick fixes, foods and pills and plans. Diets don't work. They never have. There's no secret to weight loss, and no magic fix.

Only one thing works: eat a little less, and increase your activity. It's common sense.

I love to eat. I love chocolate, cereal, fruit, ice cream, pork chops, potato chips, grilled cheese sandwiches, nuts, pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, cottage cheese, soup, beans, tomatoes, cake, peanut butter sandwiches, cheetos, cheezits, green beans, bacon, steak, hamburger, bagels, rolls, aspargus, milk, stir fry, pizza, spaghetti, cookies, and a 5,000 other things that don't come immediately to mind. I love food. I enjoy eating, and logically and realistically, I'm not the kind who could wake up one day and say, okay, rice cake and kiwi fruit for breakfast, cottage cheese and tuna for lunch, 4 oz. steak for dinner. It's just not happening.

I worked out five times this week. I tried to eat a little slower and a little less. I lost about 2 pounds. Tonight I had a big meal and probably gained it back.

They say your metabolism slows down every seven years. I'm not eating more than I used to, and I've been walking and bicycling 20 miles a week, but in the last three months I've gained 15 pounds.

Part of it, I'm sure, is stress. I started a Duck football blog that I'm writing 1500 words a day for. Work is stressful. My wife lost her job. I worry constantly about money. I need to start meditating again, regularly. It calms me. It slows me down. It keeps me in a better place.

I don't think I've really accepted the seriousness of what I'm up against. I hit 240. That's too much. It isn't vanity that is driving my concern about this (although that's a factor). It's the knowledge I will hit 250 or 260 if I don't change something.

Dr. Phil says you can't change what you don't acknowledge. Acknowledgement is one thing. Real change is another.

Freed From a Mineshaft of Our Own

The world is watching as the Chilean miners are rescued after being trapped for 69 days under 700,000 tons of rock, and I can't help but feel as I scan the news reports that we find the story so compelling because it foretells our own.

Sometimes we feel as trapped as the miners, sweltering in a cramped space of debt or uncertainty. We worry about foreclosure or loved ones far from home, about losing our jobs or losing our battle against loneliness or fear.

Each man emerges from the slender capsule and reunites with family or clutches the flag and our hearts leap with him, knowing it's a story of courage and triumph, a reminder that almost anything can be endured, that within the hearts and minds of ordinary people there is a fierceness and a will that can overcome circumstances, uncertainty, and an agony of waiting.

They made it. They stayed unified and faithful and focused forward, and they made it through 69 days without knowing and 17 days with no contact with the outside world. They worked together. They made 48 hours of rations last two and half weeks. They endured the ordeal of confinement and the risk of rescue, and they did with faith and courage and will, simple men in a great, almost impossible trial.

For once, the news on the front page was good. And it taught us something unforgettable about ourselves.

I Can't Change What I Don't Acknowledge.

Dr. Phil always says you can't change what you don't acknowledge, so here goes: I'm getting fat. I eat too much, my metabolism has slowed down, and I don't exercise enough, although I do walk and bicycle about 20 miles a week to work.

I have to make lasting changes in my habits, and stop letting the Duck blog rule my life and swallow up my time.

Beginning today I'm going to eat differently, take time to do stretching and relaxation exercises to lower my stress, and I'm going to the gym four days a week. I need to go in a different direction before these bad habits get out of control and the weight gain becomes permanent. I got on the scale at the doctor yesterday and I weighed 241 in street clothes. Enough. It stops now. I am going to make conscious changes and stick with them.

The first thing I noticed is that my tee shirt rides up over my belly when I'm sleeping. I hate feeling uncomfortable in my own body, and I'm going to fix it.

What I've Come to Believe, A Few Weeks Shy of 55

In this life, you've got to believe in something or you'll fall for anything.
----variously attributed to
Alexander Hamilton, G.K. Chesterton or Malcolm X

Live like you were dying.
----Tim McGraw, in a country song

Life can be brutal and sorrowful and discouraging. Yet there are moments that surprise you with their mercy and grace. I have lived an unwise life with many unthoughtful moments and wrong turns, wrong choices and self-inflicted miseries. but there are moments that stand out for tenderness and beauty and redemption, and I would not have missed a moment of it.

You come to a place where good enough has to be good enough, here you stop comparing yourself to the crowd or counting your bank balance as a measure of your worth, and simply breathe. Simply turn to the one next to you and hold her in your arms and declare your love, and let all the anxious striving melt away like an idol carved in ice. The striving has no permanence. It has no power to save you.

In the end we are what we choose to be, what we believed in, what we lived for. There isn't any need to justify our choices to anyone outside our precious circle, and within that circle every moment is sacred.

Whatever time I have left, I am going to spend it living and loving without regret. I'll remark on the world's follies with passing interest, but I won't share in them. I'm happy right here where I am.

If the bastards want to fire me or shoot me or take the bed I sleep in, that's just fine. There's nothing they can take from me I haven't already let go of, and the sacred things they could never touch. My love and my hope are beyond bargaining, and stronger than all fear.

The Worst Words in All the World

Mandatory Overtime.

The edict came from the director of operations a couple of weeks ago. Everyone on the floor had to complete ten hours of overtime by the end of the month. I worked last night until midnight, and had to return this morning by 8, walking home an hour last night and riding the bike this morning. I stuffed a loaf of cheese bread in the side pocket of my cargo pants for breakfast.

This is my day off. It's a perfect Indian Summer Day and my other blog has gotten 12,500 hits for the month.

There are a hundred other places I'd rather be than here. They couldn't pay me enough to make this worthwhile, and they don't. Uncle Sam takes half the money anyway.

The Growing List of Things I Don't Understand

When I was 20 I knew everything, but now I'm five years from being three times that there's a growing list of things I don't understand.

Why do women ask questions when they don't really want an answer? Why do people say bad things about themselves when you give them a compliment?

How come no one knows how to merge? Why do people lead by being rude and nasty, when if they simply asked courteously I'd do everything I could to help them? Does this work well in other areas of their life?

Why does my favorite football coach antagonize the media every day on every question? He persists in his East Coast brusqueness when they are just doing their job, and their job promotes his job, and earns him the cushy corner office with the carpet and leather-bound chairs.

We pulled out all the combat troops out of Iraq, but left behind 50,000 in non-combat roles. Isn't there a strong likelihood that 50,000 Americans, in an unstable country with a history of 5000 years of mayhem and religious fanaticism, are likely to become a target for insurgents, that retaliation, sabotage, terrorism, hostage-taking and suicide bombings are a certainty, and within a year there'll be a act of reprisal so horrific it's likely to pull us back into this mess? The war in Iraq has been the longest in U.S. history. It has cost 4,000 American lives and billions of dollars. It plunged us into centuries-old hatreds and sealed the fate of the world. If we're leaving we ought to leave. It seems to me we should have left the day after Saddam Hussein was captured. I don't understand global politics. Most days I don't want to.

Why do I pull all my putts to the right, and if work really hard at correcting this, I start pushing them to the left? How can a hole four feet away be so hard to reach? If it exasperates me so much, why do I always come back tomorrow? It's a game for fools, which explains my fascination with it.

The list grows daily and is inexhaustible. Why does my family leave a quarter cup of milk in the bottom of the jug? Why do we fall asleep with the light on and kick off the covers? Why does everyone charge a fee to make a payment, and answer the phone with annoying recorded voices that ask a dozen irritating questions before you can get to a real person?

In a just world, lemon meringue pie would be good for you, and all the vitamins would be in a bacon. To reach 60 you have to let go of foolish hopes for justice and logic and consistency. Just tap the brakes until everyone joins the stream of traffic. Eventually we'll all get where we're going, and someone will wake up and turn off the lights.

Grumpy Old Man III

I'm rapidly becoming the old man I vowed never to be. When I wake up in the morning I take a silent inventory of what hurts. My back. My shoulder. My hip. I clear my throat with that same disgusting suck of snot my father used to do. I'm cranky and irritable. I'd just as soon go back to sleep.

Even into my forties I was an athlete. I played a 150 games of softball a summer and when I stopped doing that I practiced golf four hours a day. Although you'd never tell from the current state of my game. I ran. I lifted weights. I felt a dozen years younger than my age.

Yesterday we went out to the nine-hole pasture where we play our casual rounds, and everything hurt. It hurt to sit or stand or swing a club. I left a four-foot putt an inch short. My chips skittered short of the green. I made 34, a decent score for my skill level, but didn't enjoy a single moment. My mindset sucked. The other day at work I had chest pains and a stabbing pain on the right side of my face. I called my wife at lunch and she urged me to go to the doctor. I told I couldn't, because I'd get an occurence for leaving shift. My boss is a peach of a guy. We take 2000 calls a month, many of them from cranks and abusers and fools. When he does our monthly evaluation he pulls out our very worst customer survey of the month, and bases his evaluation on that. He's a head hunter, a despot, a fat man with tiny hands and a small mind. I'd like to choke him. I'd go real slow.

I should go to the gym and stretch my aches and wounds, but I'm going to go to bed and start this day over. This time I'll try to wake up on the right side of the bed. I'll have a little dish of ice cream and flip off a cop on the way to work. Maybe he'll shoot me.

Don't mind me, I'm only kidding. After all I'm just a grumpy old man. I have four days off starting tomorrow. Maybe I'll go hiking and clear my head.