Skipping Dessert … and taking the stairs

Sorry to be so predictable, but the obvious choice for this Five-Things Ash Wednesday is … five things to give up for Lent.  So here are five things I’ve given up over the past year + in my quest to live healthier that might work for you as well.  Pick one, give it a try for the next 40 days and see how it works for you …

1.)  Artificial Sweeteners.  Top of the list, without question.  You know what they make Sweet-n-Low from?  Petroleum.  Put that stuff in your car, not your belly.  Not NutraSweet, not Splenda.  Just use sugar, preferably as unrefined as possible.  Taste the calories, just try not to use too much.

2.)  Elevators.  Take the stairs, learn the benefits of passive exercise (as opposed to the contrived kind).  Bonus benefit:  Assuming you don’t work on, like, the 10th floor, you’ll actually save time.  Instead of standing around pushing the up button over and over while somebody on the 2nd floor loads a desk onto the elevator, you’ll getting healthier.  (If you actually do work on the 10th floor, I don’t recommend this one.)

3.)  Bleached Flour.  Yeah, I’m still giving this up.  Not all the way there yet.  Not because I miss it – not at all – but most restaurants haven’t bought into an all-whole-wheat menu yet.  This is actually a pretty easy one, and whole-wheat pasta, bread, etc. actually has flavor.

4.)  Margarine.  I don’t think margarine is necessarily bad for you in and of itself, but for me at least, it doesn’t effectively replace butter, and it leaves me wanting more … so I end up eating more of it than I would if I just used real butter.

5.)  Good Parking Spaces.  I know, that sounds silly.  It works like number 2 above.  Don’t sit and wait for the closest spot to open up, take the one over by the fence and (gasp) walk.  You’ll save the time you used to spend waiting for the spot, you’ll be less annoyed at your fellow parkers, and you’ll accidentally exercise.

What am I giving up you ask?  Well, as I think I mentioned earlier, fried food.  Not just for Lent, for good.  Tougher than it sounds.  I don’t necessarily crave fried food, but it’s inconvenient to give it up, ’cause it’s everywhere.  Except for my plate.

What I didn’t share with you yet is that I promised Sprightly Daughter Number One that if she would work hard on getting dressed and ready for school every morning without extensive prodding for Lent, I’d work hard on not yelling at her so much in the mornings.  For Lent.

Thanks for reading!

What do you do?

That one’s not an easy question.  It’s the question we all ask when we’re introduced.

And how do we normally answer?  With our job.  “I’m an accountant/teacher/lawyer/electrician/etc.”

Is that the right answer?

Maybe, maybe not.  That’s the point I want to make here.  What do you do? With your time, your talent, your treasure?

I don’t mean a list of everything you do from the time you get out of bed until you get back in, I mean if you took time to think about the question, how would you answer it?  Privately, in your most secure moment.

Is your job what you do?  That’s not a loaded question, there’s nothing wrong with it if your work is where your heart is.  As long as you’re honest with yourself about it.

Most of us aren’t particularly honest with ourselves about what we do.  The easy answer is usually “job,” but now and then I run across someone who gives a more thoughtful-sounding answer.  Usually that’s the result of having read an article ridiculing the “job” answer.

So let’s put the trite answer aside for now and figure this out.  Let’s understand what you do.  What I do.  I’ll start.

My career is in non-profit management and fundraising.  When I answer “fundraiser” people aren’t entirely sure what to do with it, because to some people fundraising means walking your kid door-to-door selling Girl Scout Cookies.  Which is ok, because it gives me a chance to talk about it.  And I like talking about it.

But I do a lot more than that.  For instance, I write this blog, which takes a fair bit of my time each week.  But I’m not just blog writer.

I spend quite a lot of time thinking and acting on healthier living and eating.  But that’s not what I do either.

If I responded “I’m a dad” or “I’m a husband,” that would be trite.  The truth is I spend more time and passion on those duties than all the others combined.  So maybe family is the answer.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a dad and a husband.”

Hmmm ….  Is the next question, “oh, how’s the job search going?”  Probably.

I’m not going to tell you that you and I are going to go redefine the practice of how we respond to that question socially.  We’re not.  Polite conversation is just that.  We are going to change how we think about it, however.  And that’s going to change how we act.

I’ll ask again, what do you do?  How can you better understand what you do?

Is your job/career/occupation worthy of being your “what you do?”  Whether it is or not, do you treat it that way?

Maybe your work – or mine – is what you (or I) do, and we just haven’t given it the intentional effort it deserves.  I know there are days I show up and go through the motions, and I’ll bet you do the same.  Imagine the work we could all produce if we gave our occupations our full effort.

Imagine the families we could produce if we gave parenting our full effort.

But we can’t give any one thing our full effort, can we?  At least most of us can’t.  What we can do is – as we’ve talked about before – be where we are and trust that by being completely intentional great things will happen.

The first step toward understanding what we do is just what we’re doing right now.  Thinking about it.  Living with intention.  Doing what we do.

This week make an intentional effort to do what you do.  Do your job.  With effort and intention.  Whatever you’re doing – cooking dinner, cleaning the house, volunteering, working … do it with intention.  Let yourself build an answer to the question, whether you share that answer with anyone else in polite conversation or not.

Understand what you do.  And do it.

Yep, it’s Wednesday already, and that means it’s time for our weekly list of five things.  This week, five things I never thought I’d say, or rather, write about my health and food.

1.)  I don’t miss Diet Coke.  But seriously, I don’t.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but you might have missed it.  I used to drink about a half a gallon of the stuff a day.  I don’t think I feel a lot different since I gave up diet soda – all soda – on Christmas Eve 2010, but I save a lot of money and every time I see that long list of ingredients I know I made a fine choice.

2.)  No Thanks, I don’t eat onion rings.  Fried food.  Out and gone for good.

3.)  Just water for me, thanks.  See number one above.  Doesn’t leave a lot of room for anything different, and at some point I got used to it.

4.)  A salad sure would hit the spot.  No, really, I’ve said that.  Stop laughing at me.

5.)  No, I never use the elevator.  As you may surmise from the subtitle of this blog I take the stairs whenever possible.  Passive exercise, you know.

Thanks for reading – as always, don’t be shy about sharing.

For those of you wondering, yes, I managed to get through Sprightly Daughter Number One’s birthday party without tasting the cake.  Not even the icing.  Actually, I made it all the way through the weekend and the cake is all gone.

And yes, my shoulder is killing me from patting myself on the back about it.

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Moving on, and speaking of cake, this article from the research department is a fine list of food groups you really should keep your favorite kids … and yourself … away from.  We’ve covered much of this before, but it’s a fine reminder. (Kidding about cake.  If you can eat just a slice or two, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with cake. )

Now, if you’re trying hard to eat healthy but you’re having trouble noodling out all the stuff on the label, this piece is a nice primer regarding label claims that should scare you.

And to tie back into the Sunday Intention series, here’s a piece on yoga.  I’ve been hearing more and more about yoga, and if I could figure out how to fit some of it into my schedule I’d give it a try.  Which means I should be able to sign up for a class sometime around 2029.

Thanks for reading!

“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

– Jesus of Nazareth

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“Greed is good.”

– Gordon Gecko

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Understand what you want.

I know, I keep tossing out these obvious statements.  But it’s not really so obvious, is it?

As important as it is to understand what you already have, you’re a human being.  And human beings want things.  Stuff.  Status.  Respect.  More stuff.  Etc.

Every religious and/or wisdom tradition I know of will tell you the same thing as the Jesus quote above:  Leave your stuff behind.  Let go of your status.  Relinquish what you treasure and store up spiritual treasure instead.

And that is something to which we should all aspire.

But that Gordon Gecko character was a pretty accurate representation of the direction most of us take instead of following that advice.  No, most of us aren’t nearly as egregious in our pursuit of conspicuous consumption as the bad guy from Wall Street, but we’re all a little reassured when we hear somebody say something like that.

Let me reassure you a little more:  It’s OK to be a little materialistic.  We live in this world, not the spiritual one.  I’m not saying you should dream of slicking-back your hair and walking down the beach with an old Motorola brick-phone, or that you should in any other way hold the Gordon Gecko character in high esteem.

I’m saying that Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi … guys like that are pretty rare.  You’re not one of them and you’re not going to be.  Neither am I.  Some pretty amazing people have lived pretty fulfilling lives while still living in this materialistic world to one degree or another. Aspire to leaving it all behind, but recognize that you live in this world and strike a balance.

So, having established that, let’s talk about recognizing and understanding exactly what it is we want.  For instance, I’m kinda thirsty and want a glass of water right now.

…

I’m kidding.  I actually am a little thirsty, but I hope you know that’s not the level of “want” I’m talking about here.

You’ve thought about where you are, who you are, what you have, I hope.  What is it you want?  What do you want to have?  Where do you want to be?  Who do you want to be?

Tomorrow, next week, next year, a decade from now?

It’s one thing to say, “I want a new house.”  It’s entirely a different thing to understand what house you want, why you want it and how you intend to get it.

It’s one things to say, “I want a master’s degree.”  It’s entirely a different thing to understand why you want it and how that process is going to work.

(And yes, those are both personal examples.  Feel free to insert your own.)

Here’s the thing:  Most of what we “want” … we just think we want.  When we take the time to be intentional about our desires, to understand them instead of leaping into a full-blown plan to achieve them, it’s amazing how often we learn we don’t really want them after all.

Let’s talk cars as an example.  For a long time I was really certain about the kinds of vehicles I wanted.  Then I started actually thinking about what I want in a car.  It’s really so much simpler than I used to believe:  A car needs to get me from Point A to Point B safely, reliably, comfortably and inexpensively with some degree of style.  I need room for a couple of car seats in the back, three if possible.

That’s it.  I don’t need a particular logo on the hood.  I don’t need extra storage space – I don’t haul stuff – and I don’t need a great big engine.  I’ve owned relatively fast cars, and you know what?  I never had the chance to drive them fast.

So I drive a Honda Civic.  A hybrid.  Cheap, safe, reliable, decent-looking, and with exactly as much space as I need.  I can only fit two car seats in the back, but we have a family minivan when all five of us are headed to the same place.

I spent a lot of money on Thunderbirds, Mustangs and Explorers buying my understanding of what I want in a vehicle.

Maybe a big or fast car is what you want.  That’s great – as long you understand the desire.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting whatever car you want.  There is something wrong with not being intentional and honest with yourself about the why’s and how’s of the process.

Understand what you want.

It applies to every major desire in your life.  Maybe the minor ones as well.

I can’t stress enough that there’s nothing wrong with wanting stuff, status, etc.  We’re humans.  We’re kind of hard-wired to a certain amount of need for accumulation.

What’s wrong is accumulation for the sake of accumulation, whether it be stuff, degrees, memberships, relationships or anything else.

Aspire to better than that.  Aspire to not wanting anything at all.

But start with understanding what you want and let it flow from there.

Now, about that glass of water …

261.  Which is better than last week.  Still doing the right stuff, just waiting for it to catch up with me.  Next week will be interesting.  I’ll be out of town on Friday (weigh-in day)so  I’m planning to weigh-in on Thursday.  Which throws off the whole dynamic.  Or not.

Tomorrow is Sprightly* Daughter Number One’s birthday party (Seven, thanks for asking.  Her birthday was actually Wednesday, but Saturday lends itself to first-grade birthday parties a bit more, no?).  Which will be lots of fun, but will present a double-edged issue for me:  I don’t know how many seven-year-old birthday parties you’ve hosted, but they involve a fair bit of stress for the host parents  (in all honesty, my Lovely Wife will do all the hard work, but I’ll still lay claim to some stress).

And cake.  They involve cake.

So I, a stress-eater, will be presented with both stress and cake.  The trick is to not take the first bite.  Will report back on the festivities and my success or failure in staying on-program.

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* – There is an ongoing conversation (OK, it’s mostly ongoing in my head) about whether they are “sprightly” or “spritely” daughters.  Commenters tend to go with “spritely,” and I’ve used both.

In an effort to achieve consistency, I sought reference assistance.  Dictionary.com tells me “sprightly,” used as an adjective means, “animated, vivacious, or gay; lively.”  It tells me that, “spritely,” on the other hand, is not a word.  “Sprite-like” is an adjective meaning “like a sprite, elf or fairy.”  This leaves me in a tough spot.  I like the definition of “sprite-like,” but it doesn’t exactly flow trippingly on the tongue, you know?  And “sprightly” should be good for longer than they’ll all be elfin.

So … much as I hate to bend to convention, and as much as I believe the greatest strength of English is that it lives and grows … I’m going with sprightly.  So let it be written, so let it be done.

Thanks for reading!

Yep, it’s Five Things Wednesday again.  Last week, you’ll recall, we discussed ways to get the food you want on your local supermarket shelves.  If that didn’t work for you, or if you’re feeling brave enough to move beyond the supermarket, here are five ways to get closer to to where your food originates (without having to actually farm).

1.)  The CSA.  No, not the Confederate States of America, Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you contract with a local farm (or group of farms) to pre-pay for a share of their crop.  No, that does not make either you or them a sharecropper.  It means that whatever comes out of the ground every week during growing season gets delivered to you (or you go pick up at a designated location).

2.)  Co-Op.  Community Owned Market.  A funky little grocery store (usually) that you get to own a piece of.  Generally a non-profit, your co-op is (or should be) focused on working with local farms, ranches and other food producers – bakers, etc. – to put local food on their shelves at the best possible price.

3.)  Farmers Market.  I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about here.  You should be able to find one or more close to you, although they tend to be inconvenient in that you have to show up on the one or two days a week they are open, and you’ll have to figure out the rhythm of your favorite vendors to figure out when they are most likely to be there and ready to do business.  By the way, farmers markets are often “drop points” for CSA’s.

4.)  Locally-Owned Small Grocers.  Think outside the chain.  Here’s a hint:  If you can do all your shopping there – including paper goods, pharmacy items and ten-packs of ballpoint pens, you’re unlikely to find quality local produce.  The thing that separates this from a co-op is that you don’t own it, and the people who do are actually trying to make a buck.  Which means they’re probably (but not always) more organized and professional, with an easier shopping experience than a co-op.

5.)  The Internet.  You may be familiar with this thing they call The Google.  You can type words like “local produce Gainesville Florida” into it and – get this – it will go find websites that tell you where to find local produce in Gainesville, Florida.  I know, crazy talk.

Finding local food isn’t easy, but it’s something you should do, if for no other reason than to know what’s in your food.  You don’t get to ask anybody at Tyson Chicken what they feed their chickens.  If you buy chicken from the guy at the farmers market you can ask him anything you want, and you probably won’t be able to get him to stop talking about his chickens.  That’s a good thing.

You’ll find out all sorts of weird things about food if you source it fresh.  Did you know food is supposed to be colorful?  That’s a hard lesson to learn if you’re buying your produce from the Wal-Mart SuperCenter.  You’ll find out that food doesn’t come out of the ground pre-washed.  And that it tastes better. But that might only be because you had to work harder to get it to your table.

As I may have mentioned here before, I don’t always make the best choices about any of this stuff.  But our family is working toward it.  It’s worth it, and I recommend that you do the same.  It’s good for your body and for the world we all live in.

Thanks for reading – don’t be shy about sharing!

Did you know February is American Heart Month?  Me neither.

And no, I don’t know if “American,” in this case includes our continental neighbors to the north and south, nor do I know if there is a “Brazilian Hearth Month” or a “Czech Heart Month,” etc.  Focus, please.

The link above, from the CDC, in addition to telling you all the stuff you expect in a pay-attention-to-heart-health piece, makes the point that

“Cardiovascular disease is also very expensive—together heart disease and stroke hospitalizations in 2010 cost the nation more than $444 billion in health care expenses and lost productivity. “

$444 billion?  Good gracious that’s a lot of money (I think. To be honest I can’t even comprehend a figure like that.).

So save a billion here or there and wise-up on your heart habits.  Or at least keep after me to do so.  ‘Cause frankly I don’t have that kind of coin to play around with.

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Here’s a painfully-accurate article from HuffPo Health about food addiction.  I’ve long thought that food addiction, if there was such a thing, had a lot in common with other, more commonly-recognized (or at least more commonly taken seriously) addictions.  This article drives that point home.  I know not all of my readers have the same relationship with food I do, but see if you recognize yourself in these passages:

“Food addicts … tend to taste only the first few bites and then go into a food-induced haze. The chosen food is generally a high-fat, high-salt and/or high-sugar food. As long as they keep eating, the high lasts and will last for a few minutes after eating. Generally the food addict will keep eating until they are past the point of full and often to the point of feeling physically ill.  … Then there is the uncomfortable stuffed feeling and the guilt of having over-eaten the unhealthy food.

… Also, similar to alcohol, one can have a food hangover. If you overeat at night, which most foodaholics tend to do, you can wake up sluggish, groggy and still full from the previous night’s binge.”

Raise your hand right here beside mine if that hits close to home.  But, as we discover on this here blog, there’s hope.  You can get on the other side of a bad relationship with food and use it the way it’s meant to be used.  Start with leaving fake food behind as often as possible, and be mindful -intentional – about how you approach food.

Good news:  You can still enjoy food- hell, you can enjoy it more – and treat it responsibly.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Yes, I just posted a nice long post.  That one kind of stands alone, but I needed to get a big “thanks” out to several of you.

First, many of you have written or mentioned in conversation your support and solidarity since I posted Friday about how frustrated I am at the weight plateau I’ve reached.  I very much appreciate your support.

Second,  several of you have sent new readers my way in the past week or two, and because of you, Skipping Dessert is reaching many new readers.  I appreciate the promotion!

And, as always, thank you to all of you who have made time to read this.

Understand what you have.

A couple of weeks ago we were making a grocery list and I was sure we needed brown sugar. My Lovely Wife said she didn’t think we did, but I was adamant. Brown sugar is important, because it goes on my oatmeal on Saturdays and Sundays, and if you’ve been reading this blog for long you know how highly I value my weekend oatmeal.

So we bought the brown sugar, and lo and behold, when we put the groceries away, sure enough, there was a half-pound of the stuff sitting right there in the cupboard.

I wanted that brown sugar. I could already taste it topping-off my oatmeal.

We didn’t need brown sugar. We had many weeks’ supply left.

It’s surprising how often what I need is already right there in the kitchen cupboard, just waiting for me to go look for it.

We – as a culture – are convinced that what we need isn’t here, it’s somewhere else, somewhere other than where we are. We need a better job, better grades, newer clothes, leather seats, a bigger screen.

And the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?

Wrong, of course. The guy on the other side of the fence thinks my grass is greener than his.

Sometimes, we really do need something bigger, faster … greener. But generally speaking, what we actually need is to understand what we already have.

Yes, I know there are those among us who do need more. And I’m by no means advocating slowing down your progress and settling for less than you can be. I’m just saying slow down (maybe even breathe) long enough to understand what you have.

This isn’t about cleaning out your closet and making a list of your stuff. Although that’s not a bad idea. No, I mean instead of worrying about what’s not working in your life and all the things you don’t have, take time to look at what’s going right for you. The things you’ve already accomplished. The people who already love you the way you are today.

Start with that last bit. Who loves you? Probably more people than you think. Right now, chances are you are the center of somebody’s world (besides your own). Stop and think about that. Sure, it’s a lot of responsibility, but isn’t it nice to know you’re loved?

And for every one of those people, there are many more who want the best for you, who want a better life for you. Maybe it’s time to give those people some credit for their love and support instead of worrying about gaining the love and respect of people who aren’t already on your side.

And what have you done that you can hang your hat on? Don’t tell me nothing. There’s something on your permanent record you can point to. Maybe it’s something as simple as a diploma hanging on the wall of your office. Do you know how small a percentage of the world hsa that degree? For that matter, do you know how many people would give everything for an office? Or even a wall?

It’s easy to take achievements for granted once you’ve achieved them. Finishing college was a big deal … while I was doing it. And then it was just something I did a while back. Of course, I never consider how big a deal it is to people who started and didn’t finish or who never had the chance to get started at all.

Do you have kids? You know what? Every day you help them move closer to responsible adulthood is an achievement. A day might slip right past you, but you achieved something that day if you helped your child grow.

Maybe you tended your garden, cut your grass, raked leaves. That took effort, and that effort helps your garden or your lawn grow and develop. You can be proud of that.

Something is going right in your life. It might not be the thing you most want to be going right, but if you take time to be honest with yourself something is working out for you.

You have something. Probably a whole list of somethings. And understanding that you have those achievements, and that love, on your side is a big step in preparing you for what comes next. When you know and can prove to yourself that you’re able to achieve, to be loved … to grow your own green, green grass … convincing yourself that you can do more is a lot less hard.

You might find that once you truly understand what you already have, you don’t need all the things you thought you needed.

Trust me. There’s some brown sugar hiding in your cupboard already. Look behind the peanut butter.