by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
Just when I thought I wasn't going to have a politics based blowout this week, Facebook struck again this morning, and I am off to the races.
My target this week is once again the Democratic Party's Presidential Race. I'd pick on the Republicans, but frankly that's WAY too easy, plus, they're doing a much better job of making themselves look ridiculous than I could ever do, so I'll pass on that job, at least for this week. And just to remind everyone where I'm coming from, I was born and raised a moderate, "Rockefeller Republican" ... a group of people who were very unceremoniously exorcised and kicked out by the religious right/neo-conservative movement because, well, basically because we weren't batshit crazy enough for them. There are quite a few of us, and we're now called conservative Democrats but, as you can imagine, it's a marriage that isn't without its disagreements ... which brings us nicely to this week's PROW (Political Rant Of the Week).
The supporters of Bernie Sanders are, at the moment, riding high and being quite "loud and proud" about their candidate in the race. I'd like to first go on record as saying that, like most Americans, I like Senator Sanders. He has a kind of "America's nice grandfather " quality to him. In this way, Sanders is not unlike our current Vice President, although Biden is more like America's slightly crazy Uncle. You know the one, he's the one you love dearly and always want to sit next to at Thanksgiving and whose heart is always in the right place, but who also occasionally says things that are "off the reservation" in strange and usually hilarious ways (which, let's face it, is a big part of why you want to be sitting next to him). But, with no disrespect to Biden, Sanders is different; he's far more of a policy wonk. He also comes off as smarter and, more importantly, he combines that intellect with an overt passion for his ideals. Agree with him or not (and I actually agree with him quite a bit), there is much to like and respect about Bernie Sanders as a politician and a person.
But with that said, I have a real problem with the Sanders campaign. Well, no I don't. I don't have a problem with the Sanders campaign, I have a problem with a lot of the campaign's supporters. What bothers me is how a candidate who is obviously this smart can have supporters, many of whom are otherwise also thoughtful and intelligent people, who can somehow simultaneously be so naive, ignorant and just plain stupid when it comes to the political realities of how our system works. This is especially strange to me because, again, many of them are otherwise pretty bright folks who hold well thought out and logical positions on a variety of issues that we actually agree on. But when you put them in a room with Sanders, or you place them in front of a news feed story showing Sanders addressing a crowd of thousands, it's like they all switch off a huge part of their brains.
To be specific, I'm already incredibly tired of hearing about how Sanders could win and how much Secretary Clinton is "just like those big bad Republicans." Is it possible for Sanders to win? Of course it is. It's also possible that I could decide to run and win. But in order to get from "could" to "will," you need something that America's political left has been short on lately; votes.
Elections are about who gets the most votes. Fortunately, there's not a single Sanders supporter I know who would argue that particular point with me. Now, as I noted in last week's PROW, the 2016 Election comes down to 270 electoral votes, and given that New England and the west coast will certainly go all blue and that the "heartland" and deep south will certainly go all red, in order to be the next President, Sanders would need a majority of the votes in enough of the remaining swing states to reach 270. And here we see the biggest problem the Sanders campaign faces: they lack the money, the organization, and most importantly, they lack the VOTES to win in those states. And, in some cases, it's not because there aren't enough potential voters out there, it's because the overwhelming majority of those potential voters DON'T VOTE. In fact, only about half of the eligible voters in this country bother to even register, and only about half of those people vote. Remember Reagan's win in 1984? Biggest Electoral blowout in history. Well, keep in mind when you think about that victory that about SEVENTY PERCENT of America's eligible voters DIDN'T vote for him. So the bottom line is that those people got the government they deserve (sadly, so did the rest of us, but that's another rant).
The fact is that our system ISN'T broken, at all. It CAN function just fine the way it is. It too often DOESN'T function properly due entirely to the manner in which it is taken advantage of (or, much more accurately, the manner in which it is NOT taken advantage of) by the people.
Since we don't disagree that elections are won with votes and that most people don't vote, hopefully we can all agree that it follows that politicians, in order to get elected, have to appeal to the majority of people who ACTUALLY VOTE. They DON'T have to espouse certain policies so that they will excite the public and get them to vote, that's LITERALLY BACKWARDS to how the system works. This may feel counterintuitive to the way things are or "should be" to many people (including a lot of my Sanders supporting friends), but here in the real world and not in the make believe, fictitious world of how things should be, in order to get elected and change anything for the better (and that doesn't mean all the way, that's in increments, that's "two steps forward, one step back", THAT is how Republics WORK), you have to get a majority of the "highly likely" voters to turn out and vote for you. THAT is what politicians have to do.
The problem facing the Sanders campaign right now is that the people who show up to rallies and cheer on Sanders and complain about Clinton are not in these swing states and are not high likelihood voters (if they were, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in). And the problem for the Democrats as a whole is that the Sanders campaign, contrary to the stated (and I believe VERY sincere) wishes of the candidate himself, stands a far better chance of dividing the party than uniting it. My liberal friends are ALWAYS upset and always complaining about having to "hold their nose" and/or going with the "least worst" option when voting ... but that's literally a necessary reality of living in a society like ours ... because not everyone thinks like we do (and/or not enough people who do think that way vote). Also, while I'm ranting on this particular subtopic, let me add that the argument that "people don't vote because they don't feel they have anything to vote for" is about the dumbest f***ing thing I've ever heard and is a 100% GUARANTEED way to end up in a dictatorship.
So this is what we get back to: liberals want to change the world, but they refuse to understand that elections are about votes and Republics are about compromise. They also have a HUGE problem with understanding that voting once every four years (which is what far too many of them do ... and you can "not like" that fact all you want, but statistics and election results don't lie) and winning the White House is, in the grand scheme, a LOT less important than controlling City Councils, School Boards and, most importantly, State Legislatures (you know, the ones that are currently gerrymandering the shit out of our Congressional districts and are responsible for the lopsided and dysfunctional mess we currently call Congress). The Republicans figured that out a long time ago, and that is how they're screwing up our country. I spent a LOT of time during my last run for the US Congress in 2006 screaming about how important it was to take the State House (and I remain especially grateful to those who credited me with helping some of those people who were "downballot" from me and won while I did not), but the Democratic Party has consistently showed that, when it comes to arrogance and ignorance, the Republicans aren't the only game in town.
Anyway, where liberals go SERIOUSLY astray is when they get all whipped up by the idea that Sanders can win. Senator Sanders has very little chance of winning the nomination and essentially ZERO chance of getting elected. And that's not because of ideas or rallies or anything else, that's because, in order to be President, you need to win 270 electoral votes, and to do that you have to win the majority of votes in battleground states ... and (again, as I went over last week) there's NO political mathematician (e.g. Nate Silver, who called 49 of 50 states correctly in 2008 and FIFTY of 50 states correctly in 2012) out there who thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. Sanders DOESN'T now have and isn't ever likely to have the money, the organization, the support or the VOTES (of the majority of high likelihood voters) to win in those states.
So the problem for the Democrats is that when the Sanders supporters eventually get smacked in the face by reality, many of them will become disillusioned and depressed and say "Clinton is no different from the Republicans" (a statement which is, incidentally, about the biggest load of bullshit I've heard lately ... Secretary Clinton is FAR from my ideal candidate and she has some very real negatives that her campaign seems to have a dangerous blind eye about, but she's certainly not in favor of turning our nation into some sort of twisted oligarchical theocracy, and I am CERTAIN that we would be FAR worse off with whichever Republican nominee emerges). And then, as the completely dysfunctional and backwards result of their reality induced depression, they quiet down and stay home ... and then, before you know it, you really are living in a dictatorship.
So, if you want to support Sanders for the nomination, vote your conscience, go for it, have a great time ... but be ready to hold your nose later and support Clinton as the party's nominee. She IS, statistically, VERY likely to be your nominee, she IS better than the alternative, and failing to get on board with those facts WILL leave you worse off than you are now.
I feel like Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men; these are the facts, and they are not in dispute.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
How I lost 50 pounds and kept it off
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
I had no idea what to write about this week, and then a friend of mine suggested that I tell this story. For those who don't know me personally, while I have never been obese, I struggled with my weight for many years and was rarely happy with my appearance. Fortunately for me, like many young people, I could simply work out more and work out harder to keep my weight under control (and merely be classified as "slightly overweight" for my height etc.). That plan worked well for me until my late 20s (which is when my metabolism slowed down and I learned the painful lesson that we all learn about having to start giving a crap about what we put in our bodies). To give you exact numbers, I maxed out my height just barely short of 6' 2" (I'm now, thanks to age and compressing discs, back to 6' 1") and, at my heaviest, I weighed in at about 232 pounds. So, to be clear, I was not in anywhere near the condition that too many Americans find themselves in today, but I was far from healthy too.
I was further "lucky" in that I needed life saving surgery at 32 (early 1998). The "lucky" part of this was that the illness which preceded my surgery caused me to fall to just 187 pounds. Following that surgery I managed to mostly keep my weight under 200 for the next 13 years.
In 2011, I traveled to Europe to have multiple, Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (this surgery followed a long and very painful few years as Degenerative Disc Disease first destroyed my L5/S1 disc (2008) and then my L4/L5 disc (2010) ... but that, is a different story all on its own).
As I laid on the cart waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room for surgery that morning, I came to grips with the small (about 1 in 200 apparently) chance that I might die during the procedure (ADR surgery is pretty amazing stuff and requires slicing you open, removing all of your internal organs that are in the way (so they can access the spine), then putting everything back in ... hopefully in the right places and in the right order ... I assume they make a list or something). Anyway, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that morning was wondering what I would regret if today was "it" and I didn't survive the surgery. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but my mind can be a little goofy, and it's big on using humor as a means of alleviating stress. As a result, one of the first thoughts that came to me when I asked myself that question was, "man, I wish I'd had more milkshakes." The thought amused me and lightened my mood in those last minutes of consciousness, and I resolved that, if I survived, I would take the time to have more milkshakes.
Obviously, I survived the surgery, and my "time of milkshakes" began (the hospital nurses in the UK were really wonderful and even made a makeshift one as best they could for me before I left).
Flash forward to a conference I was at in Minneapolis the following spring (May 2012). I woke up early and headed to the conference center's fitness room and got on the treadmill. I had noticed that it had been getting more difficult to do some things (like put my pants on) in the last few months and frankly I was starting to feel some pain in my artificial discs and associated areas (I would later learn that this was directly related to my weight gain). When I finished my workout, I went over to the scale and found that I was tipping the needle at about 215 pounds. I wondered for about half a second how that was possible and then, in the back of my mind, a voice said, "you're kidding right? Time of milkshakes. Remember?" Well, it was suddenly obvious where that was getting me, and I knew I needed to knock that shit off right now.
Now, all of us have moments in our lives where we say, "no more." Many of us mean it too. I'm different (in many ways obviously), and what I mean by different is that I'm one of those driven, focused, disciplined "A type" personalities who can and has made 100% shifts in lifestyle or habits in a single moment (there are, of course, other adjectives to describe this ability of mine ... these include stubborn, anal, maniacal ... but these are merely semantical differences).
So my first steps towards weight loss were the easiest. No more milkshakes, reduced frequency of desserts, portion control, obvious things to lower my caloric intake (my back limits the amount of caloric burn work I can do, but I found ways to increase my burn later as well). I also started doing research into losing weight. One of the "tricks" I employed early on (that really seemed to work for me) was to eat an apple about 20-30 minutes before lunch and dinner meals. The article I read noted that the bulk of the apple in your stomach essentially tricks your brain and body into believing that you're already more full than you are when mealtime comes around. Basically, the apple performs like an artificial portion control assistant. A month later, with virtually no other effort, I had lost just over 5 pounds.
Like many parents, I am blessed in that I have wonderful kids. My kids have been very supportive and helpful with everything I do, and losing weight was no exception. They saw me make the effort, and for Father's Day they went out and bought me a special, "Biggest Loser" scale that measures height and weight, tracks what your caloric equilibrium should be for that weight, etc. etc. Well this was the "Game On" moment for me. I am German by descent. In fact, my wife calls many of the characteristics I refer to above as "the German in me." And if you give that part of me something to measure and track? Oh boy, get out of the way, because here come the spreadsheets and I am into it now!
Suddenly, my effort to lose a little weight became a series of hyper-specific, quantifiable goals with timeframes and schedules (these things make me happy in a very strange way). My diet got addressed first. In March of 2009 my "cooking gene" turned on, quite literally overnight (with NO prior cooking experience or real interest in the field, I very suddenly began waking up in the middle of the night, every night, after dreaming of preparing elaborate meals ... I quickly took to sleeping with a pad of paper and pen at my bedside so I could turn the light on, write the meal idea out, and then go back to sleep ... it was the only way I could go back to sleep). I had always enjoyed baking (cookies, my brownie recipe), but suddenly I went from kind of being afraid of regular cooking (and, when I had to, militantly following recipes and instructions in great fear of doing anything wrong) to frankly needing to cook (and in fact getting grumpy when I didn't) every day. I would read through and then mercilessly change recipes I'd never made before because I just suddenly knew how to amend them in ways that would be different and fun and better. I also just plain made stuff up based on groups of completely different recipes I would find online.
Understandably, my wife was thrilled. To this day, her joke is that she got to do the cooking for the first 20 years of our marriage, and now I have the next 20, which makes both of us very happy.
It was in this time that I started to realize that there were things in my diet that I thought were healthy that might not be (e.g. soy milk), so I eliminated them. I was also cognizant that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but I was frequently in too much of a rush at that time of day to eat adequately. I stumbled on a brilliant solution that I use every morning to this day. My breakfast is
1 Banana (sliced)
4-6 Strawberries (sliced)
1 handful of frozen blueberries (fresh when cheap enough and in season)
1 small Apple or half of a large one (in slices)
(in season I add raspberries or peach or other fruit here)
1 glass of orange juice
A splash (several tablespoons) of Bolthouse Farms "Blue Goodness" (which, incidentally, is an AWESOME post workout drink for me, I can literally FEEL the nutrients plowing through my body)
2 *large* spoonfuls of lowfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup (roughly) of Kellogg's SmartStart cereal
1 Sprig of Kale
1 small handful of walnuts
NOW, put all of that in a bender and blend the beejeebies out of it. This is your complete breakfast, now in an "easy to take with you" liquid form.
For lunch, I would have an all veggie salad (lettuce, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot) with an either low fat or no fat dressing. And for dinner, a light and small serving of protein (never beef or pork, always bird or fish) and a non-starch veggie medley (frozen green beans, peas, spinach, cauliflower, etc., all cooked in about a tablespoon of butter with onion salt, black pepper, and McCormick's Veggie Delight spice mix sprinkled in while cooking). For snacks, I had extra carrots or a small bowl of dry SmartStart (which I would munch on like nuts or chips).
I militantly avoided processed foods (I cooked my own food using fresh or frozen ingredients (NOTHING pre-prepared), steered away from breads (though wraps were OK), and anything that was high in artificial fats (candy, ice cream, etc.). NO FAST FOOD EVER (in fact, I rarely eat out ever anymore). I drank ONLY water, at least 80 oz per day (which was about right for my height and weight). And for exercise, I walked every day (usually twice/day), and I swam at least 3 miles/week (which I also still do).
Now, let's be clear about this next fact; the first six weeks of this routine were really hell. I was very grumpy and hungry basically 24 hours/day. I frequently felt like actually gnawing on my own desk at work sometimes ... but I stayed with it and I did so for one incredibly obvious reason; I began consistently losing weight. My original goal had been to lose 20 pounds and get safely under 200, with a stretch goal of losing about 25 and getting back to the weight I had when I had surgery in 1998. But by the end of the summer (Labor Day), I was blowing through even my stretch goal and suddenly I had visions of losing 30, maybe even 40 pounds (to get back to a weight near where I was in the Navy ... that, I thought, would be cool).
I need to note one other thing about the late summer. My body reached a point where I had been treating it well enough for long enough that a lot of the bad stuff that it had been holding on to for a long time needed to go ... including a significant amount of bile that my liver had apparently been storing for God knows how long. I include this detail only to prevent others from being afraid of a large, one time expulsion from the body that is decidedly, well, green in nature. If that happens regularly, see a Doctor right away because it can be an indicator of a very serious problem, but if you're dieting and losing a significant amount of weight and it happens once, and after that your whole body seems to be telling you, "damn! I feel better now!" then it's a good thing.
As summer became fall, my weight fell into the low 180s and then, in November, into the high 170s, a weight I hadn't seen since shortly after graduating from college. I maintained a fairly militant adherence to my diet (I did have a nice meal at each holiday, and a piece of pie etc.) and by New Years, I was in the low 170s.
For many years, one of my companies had a store on the Big Island of Hawaii. One of my wife's sisters and her husband also lived there, so we had business and personal reasons to visit every year. As was normally the case, my wife and kids would stay for a shorter time than I would (and I would stick around to do additional work for the company and to enjoy a couple of extra weeks on the island after the kids had to return for school. While in Hawaii, not surprisingly, my caloric burn rate took off (there's good news and bad news about working on a mainland business while in Hawaii ... the bad news is that you have to be up and working by 6am, because that's already 11am on the east coast and 10am in the midwest (where our HQ was) ... but the good news is that, by 2pm every day, the business basically shuts down and you have half the day to go swimming, diving, etc.). With my diet in tact and my caloric burn going off the charts, my weight continued to drop until I reached a low point of 162 pounds, literally lighter than my high school graduation weight ... and this was the moment when my body said, "umm hey, this is too far." I began to feel pain again because I was now at the lower limit of what my weight should be to be healthy. Fortunately, that was pretty obvious, and it led very quickly to the pattern I've been living with for the last two and a half years; maintaining.
The first thing I did when I reached the lowpoint and my body clearly reacted badly, was to significantly increase my caloric intake (eat more). Fortunately, that's a pretty easy thing to do, and I gained 6 pounds (to168) very rapidly.
Once you've hit your weight target, maintaining your weight is easy, and you can "cheat" (have a donut, have some ice cream, have some fries) whenever your weight is on the low end of your range, and then simply dial back to your diet routine when you hit the high end of your range. I have a four pound range (two pounds on either side of a center line) that I have been sitting in since I lost the weight that I did. And I have found recipes that allow me to enjoy things (tastes) that I used to love without the caloric or fat overhead (e.g. a cauliflower crust pizza ... where you cook a cauliflower head in a microwave for 4-5 minutes, then put the florets in a cuisinart with a couple of eggs and some spices and whip it into a dough like mixture (that's your crust ... a carb free and healthy crust BTW) cook it, then add sauce and fresh toppings (mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, tomato, onion, etc. etc. ... and yes, cheese), and cook it).
I understand that weight loss is far more difficult for some people than it was for me, and I have great compassion and understanding for those who have pituitary gland issues or other genetic issues that make weight loss extremely difficult ... but for the significant majority of us, at the end of the day, losing weight comes down to a pretty simple formula; you have to burn more calories than you take in. Most of us have a limit to the amount of exercise we can do (we're constrained by time or age or, in my case, the limits of my artificial parts), but we should do what we can do, and for the rest, we simply need to adopt a diet that's less than the amount of calories burned, and if we do that then we WILL lose weight.
There's no feeling in the world like the feeling you get when you step on a scale and see the number you've been working for, or look in the mirror and see the person you want to see. If you're reading this essay and you want to get there, I have good news; for the vast majority of people, you can do it! Please feel free to comment or write me. I'm happy to be your cheerleader and happier still to see your success. All you need to do is start.
©2015
I had no idea what to write about this week, and then a friend of mine suggested that I tell this story. For those who don't know me personally, while I have never been obese, I struggled with my weight for many years and was rarely happy with my appearance. Fortunately for me, like many young people, I could simply work out more and work out harder to keep my weight under control (and merely be classified as "slightly overweight" for my height etc.). That plan worked well for me until my late 20s (which is when my metabolism slowed down and I learned the painful lesson that we all learn about having to start giving a crap about what we put in our bodies). To give you exact numbers, I maxed out my height just barely short of 6' 2" (I'm now, thanks to age and compressing discs, back to 6' 1") and, at my heaviest, I weighed in at about 232 pounds. So, to be clear, I was not in anywhere near the condition that too many Americans find themselves in today, but I was far from healthy too.
I was further "lucky" in that I needed life saving surgery at 32 (early 1998). The "lucky" part of this was that the illness which preceded my surgery caused me to fall to just 187 pounds. Following that surgery I managed to mostly keep my weight under 200 for the next 13 years.
In 2011, I traveled to Europe to have multiple, Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (this surgery followed a long and very painful few years as Degenerative Disc Disease first destroyed my L5/S1 disc (2008) and then my L4/L5 disc (2010) ... but that, is a different story all on its own).
As I laid on the cart waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room for surgery that morning, I came to grips with the small (about 1 in 200 apparently) chance that I might die during the procedure (ADR surgery is pretty amazing stuff and requires slicing you open, removing all of your internal organs that are in the way (so they can access the spine), then putting everything back in ... hopefully in the right places and in the right order ... I assume they make a list or something). Anyway, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that morning was wondering what I would regret if today was "it" and I didn't survive the surgery. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but my mind can be a little goofy, and it's big on using humor as a means of alleviating stress. As a result, one of the first thoughts that came to me when I asked myself that question was, "man, I wish I'd had more milkshakes." The thought amused me and lightened my mood in those last minutes of consciousness, and I resolved that, if I survived, I would take the time to have more milkshakes.
Obviously, I survived the surgery, and my "time of milkshakes" began (the hospital nurses in the UK were really wonderful and even made a makeshift one as best they could for me before I left).
Flash forward to a conference I was at in Minneapolis the following spring (May 2012). I woke up early and headed to the conference center's fitness room and got on the treadmill. I had noticed that it had been getting more difficult to do some things (like put my pants on) in the last few months and frankly I was starting to feel some pain in my artificial discs and associated areas (I would later learn that this was directly related to my weight gain). When I finished my workout, I went over to the scale and found that I was tipping the needle at about 215 pounds. I wondered for about half a second how that was possible and then, in the back of my mind, a voice said, "you're kidding right? Time of milkshakes. Remember?" Well, it was suddenly obvious where that was getting me, and I knew I needed to knock that shit off right now.
Now, all of us have moments in our lives where we say, "no more." Many of us mean it too. I'm different (in many ways obviously), and what I mean by different is that I'm one of those driven, focused, disciplined "A type" personalities who can and has made 100% shifts in lifestyle or habits in a single moment (there are, of course, other adjectives to describe this ability of mine ... these include stubborn, anal, maniacal ... but these are merely semantical differences).
So my first steps towards weight loss were the easiest. No more milkshakes, reduced frequency of desserts, portion control, obvious things to lower my caloric intake (my back limits the amount of caloric burn work I can do, but I found ways to increase my burn later as well). I also started doing research into losing weight. One of the "tricks" I employed early on (that really seemed to work for me) was to eat an apple about 20-30 minutes before lunch and dinner meals. The article I read noted that the bulk of the apple in your stomach essentially tricks your brain and body into believing that you're already more full than you are when mealtime comes around. Basically, the apple performs like an artificial portion control assistant. A month later, with virtually no other effort, I had lost just over 5 pounds.
Like many parents, I am blessed in that I have wonderful kids. My kids have been very supportive and helpful with everything I do, and losing weight was no exception. They saw me make the effort, and for Father's Day they went out and bought me a special, "Biggest Loser" scale that measures height and weight, tracks what your caloric equilibrium should be for that weight, etc. etc. Well this was the "Game On" moment for me. I am German by descent. In fact, my wife calls many of the characteristics I refer to above as "the German in me." And if you give that part of me something to measure and track? Oh boy, get out of the way, because here come the spreadsheets and I am into it now!
Suddenly, my effort to lose a little weight became a series of hyper-specific, quantifiable goals with timeframes and schedules (these things make me happy in a very strange way). My diet got addressed first. In March of 2009 my "cooking gene" turned on, quite literally overnight (with NO prior cooking experience or real interest in the field, I very suddenly began waking up in the middle of the night, every night, after dreaming of preparing elaborate meals ... I quickly took to sleeping with a pad of paper and pen at my bedside so I could turn the light on, write the meal idea out, and then go back to sleep ... it was the only way I could go back to sleep). I had always enjoyed baking (cookies, my brownie recipe), but suddenly I went from kind of being afraid of regular cooking (and, when I had to, militantly following recipes and instructions in great fear of doing anything wrong) to frankly needing to cook (and in fact getting grumpy when I didn't) every day. I would read through and then mercilessly change recipes I'd never made before because I just suddenly knew how to amend them in ways that would be different and fun and better. I also just plain made stuff up based on groups of completely different recipes I would find online.
Understandably, my wife was thrilled. To this day, her joke is that she got to do the cooking for the first 20 years of our marriage, and now I have the next 20, which makes both of us very happy.
It was in this time that I started to realize that there were things in my diet that I thought were healthy that might not be (e.g. soy milk), so I eliminated them. I was also cognizant that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but I was frequently in too much of a rush at that time of day to eat adequately. I stumbled on a brilliant solution that I use every morning to this day. My breakfast is
1 Banana (sliced)
4-6 Strawberries (sliced)
1 handful of frozen blueberries (fresh when cheap enough and in season)
1 small Apple or half of a large one (in slices)
(in season I add raspberries or peach or other fruit here)
1 glass of orange juice
A splash (several tablespoons) of Bolthouse Farms "Blue Goodness" (which, incidentally, is an AWESOME post workout drink for me, I can literally FEEL the nutrients plowing through my body)
2 *large* spoonfuls of lowfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup (roughly) of Kellogg's SmartStart cereal
1 Sprig of Kale
1 small handful of walnuts
NOW, put all of that in a bender and blend the beejeebies out of it. This is your complete breakfast, now in an "easy to take with you" liquid form.
For lunch, I would have an all veggie salad (lettuce, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot) with an either low fat or no fat dressing. And for dinner, a light and small serving of protein (never beef or pork, always bird or fish) and a non-starch veggie medley (frozen green beans, peas, spinach, cauliflower, etc., all cooked in about a tablespoon of butter with onion salt, black pepper, and McCormick's Veggie Delight spice mix sprinkled in while cooking). For snacks, I had extra carrots or a small bowl of dry SmartStart (which I would munch on like nuts or chips).
I militantly avoided processed foods (I cooked my own food using fresh or frozen ingredients (NOTHING pre-prepared), steered away from breads (though wraps were OK), and anything that was high in artificial fats (candy, ice cream, etc.). NO FAST FOOD EVER (in fact, I rarely eat out ever anymore). I drank ONLY water, at least 80 oz per day (which was about right for my height and weight). And for exercise, I walked every day (usually twice/day), and I swam at least 3 miles/week (which I also still do).
Now, let's be clear about this next fact; the first six weeks of this routine were really hell. I was very grumpy and hungry basically 24 hours/day. I frequently felt like actually gnawing on my own desk at work sometimes ... but I stayed with it and I did so for one incredibly obvious reason; I began consistently losing weight. My original goal had been to lose 20 pounds and get safely under 200, with a stretch goal of losing about 25 and getting back to the weight I had when I had surgery in 1998. But by the end of the summer (Labor Day), I was blowing through even my stretch goal and suddenly I had visions of losing 30, maybe even 40 pounds (to get back to a weight near where I was in the Navy ... that, I thought, would be cool).
I need to note one other thing about the late summer. My body reached a point where I had been treating it well enough for long enough that a lot of the bad stuff that it had been holding on to for a long time needed to go ... including a significant amount of bile that my liver had apparently been storing for God knows how long. I include this detail only to prevent others from being afraid of a large, one time expulsion from the body that is decidedly, well, green in nature. If that happens regularly, see a Doctor right away because it can be an indicator of a very serious problem, but if you're dieting and losing a significant amount of weight and it happens once, and after that your whole body seems to be telling you, "damn! I feel better now!" then it's a good thing.
As summer became fall, my weight fell into the low 180s and then, in November, into the high 170s, a weight I hadn't seen since shortly after graduating from college. I maintained a fairly militant adherence to my diet (I did have a nice meal at each holiday, and a piece of pie etc.) and by New Years, I was in the low 170s.
For many years, one of my companies had a store on the Big Island of Hawaii. One of my wife's sisters and her husband also lived there, so we had business and personal reasons to visit every year. As was normally the case, my wife and kids would stay for a shorter time than I would (and I would stick around to do additional work for the company and to enjoy a couple of extra weeks on the island after the kids had to return for school. While in Hawaii, not surprisingly, my caloric burn rate took off (there's good news and bad news about working on a mainland business while in Hawaii ... the bad news is that you have to be up and working by 6am, because that's already 11am on the east coast and 10am in the midwest (where our HQ was) ... but the good news is that, by 2pm every day, the business basically shuts down and you have half the day to go swimming, diving, etc.). With my diet in tact and my caloric burn going off the charts, my weight continued to drop until I reached a low point of 162 pounds, literally lighter than my high school graduation weight ... and this was the moment when my body said, "umm hey, this is too far." I began to feel pain again because I was now at the lower limit of what my weight should be to be healthy. Fortunately, that was pretty obvious, and it led very quickly to the pattern I've been living with for the last two and a half years; maintaining.
The first thing I did when I reached the lowpoint and my body clearly reacted badly, was to significantly increase my caloric intake (eat more). Fortunately, that's a pretty easy thing to do, and I gained 6 pounds (to168) very rapidly.
Once you've hit your weight target, maintaining your weight is easy, and you can "cheat" (have a donut, have some ice cream, have some fries) whenever your weight is on the low end of your range, and then simply dial back to your diet routine when you hit the high end of your range. I have a four pound range (two pounds on either side of a center line) that I have been sitting in since I lost the weight that I did. And I have found recipes that allow me to enjoy things (tastes) that I used to love without the caloric or fat overhead (e.g. a cauliflower crust pizza ... where you cook a cauliflower head in a microwave for 4-5 minutes, then put the florets in a cuisinart with a couple of eggs and some spices and whip it into a dough like mixture (that's your crust ... a carb free and healthy crust BTW) cook it, then add sauce and fresh toppings (mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, tomato, onion, etc. etc. ... and yes, cheese), and cook it).
I understand that weight loss is far more difficult for some people than it was for me, and I have great compassion and understanding for those who have pituitary gland issues or other genetic issues that make weight loss extremely difficult ... but for the significant majority of us, at the end of the day, losing weight comes down to a pretty simple formula; you have to burn more calories than you take in. Most of us have a limit to the amount of exercise we can do (we're constrained by time or age or, in my case, the limits of my artificial parts), but we should do what we can do, and for the rest, we simply need to adopt a diet that's less than the amount of calories burned, and if we do that then we WILL lose weight.
There's no feeling in the world like the feeling you get when you step on a scale and see the number you've been working for, or look in the mirror and see the person you want to see. If you're reading this essay and you want to get there, I have good news; for the vast majority of people, you can do it! Please feel free to comment or write me. I'm happy to be your cheerleader and happier still to see your success. All you need to do is start.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Political Rant Of The Week: The 2016 Election, The Democrats, and Jim Webb
by Duane N. Burghard
© 2015
So I've been thinking about doing this sort of thing with my blog for some time now, and today is the day. Periodically I see or hear something on the news or on Facebook (or in this case, both) that really gets me going for a few moments, and I have to say something in response. It's not REALLY related to the sorts of things that I write about on my blog, but it needs to be said. To make it easier on my regular readers, I'm going to call these posts "Political Rant Of The Week" (which I will almost certainly eventually shorten to "PROW" ... because I was in the military and we're contractually obligated to abbreviate almost everything for the rest of our lives). It is my intent to make these posts "in addition to" my regular writing, but we'll see how that goes.
So what sent me over the edge this week? The 2016 Election. Now I know that many of you were hoping that we could avoid this topic until, oh say, NEXT YEAR, but obviously the media is having none of that so I'm conceding defeat and hopping in.
The first thing that sent me around the bend was an article about how one particular group of voters (in the case of the article in question, black voters) was likely to be the critical factor in the 2016 Presidential Election. This statement/assertion shows a depressing lack of understanding of how Presidents are elected, so, at the risk of boring the crap out of the rest of you, let me be clear about the ONLY thing, and by that I mean, quite literally THE ONLY THING that is important in a Presidential election.
270.
That's it. There's nothing else. The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes or more wins the Presidency. Period. There are no other measures, NOTHING else matters. Now, with that as "2016 Election Fact #1," let's move on to Fact #2: Pretty much no matter what happens between now and Election Day 2016, the outcome of the Presidential election in MOST of the United States is essentially a foregone conclusion (it's VERY unlikely (statistically) that the outcome isn't already known). To be clear, you could essentially run a used beer can as a Republican or Democrat as your candidate in most states and that beer can would defeat the nominee of the other party. And why? Because the politics of the majority of people in that state are such that they will NOT elect a candidate from the other party in 2016.
Those are the facts, and if you're going to dispute them then you should stop reading right now and go do something else because we already have a zero percent chance of having an intelligent conversation on this topic (because you're out there with climate deniers and people who think Adam and Eve were out riding dinosaurs 6K years ago).
As a result of these facts, we can conclude that, for all intents and purposes, the 2016 Election IS ALREADY OVER in the majority of the United States. It's "turn out the lights the party is over" done. The Democrats are NOT going to win in states like the Dakotas, Idaho, Oklahoma or Alabama, and the Republicans have ZERO chance of winning basically any state in New England or the west coast.
So the path to 270 is already well underway, and when you look at the cold, hard political realities, the fact is that the Democrats already have a significantly easier (though far from guaranteed) path to 270 than the Republicans do. And THAT, is where the facts end. Now, there's nothing wrong with political speculation and opinion (per se, although it's a little troubling that the industry around this field seems to be so heavily populated with idiots), but to me, speculation that doesn't start with the above facts and work outward from them is FAR more likely to quickly veer into the stupid or absurd ... so I'm going to work my way out from what we know and see where that leads us.
The Republicans, by most educated guesses, have NO path to 270 that doesn't include winning the state of Ohio. Now, obviously this is national politics we're talking about, and things do change, but these numbers don't change THAT much and, right now, there's not a single mathematician in the country that I'm aware of that has ANY (realistic) Electoral College map for the Republicans reaching 270 in 2016 that does NOT include the GOP taking the state of Ohio (it's obviously not impossible, just statistically very unlikely as there are far fewer realistic combinations of states). The majority of Republicans these days are many things (and I should quickly add that, for many of the early years of my life, I was one of them and, as a result, I'm particularly critical of the neo-conservative, religious right, theological oligarchs who have, in my opinion, destroyed the party). You could (and I occasionally do) argue that they are short sighted, sold out ideologues who are hell bent on nothing less than the end of our Republic as we know it and replacing it with some sort of twisted, disgusting theological oligarchy. HOWEVER, they ... which is to say their political strategists, are NOT stupid. They are VERY aware that they have basically NO chance of winning back the White House in 2016 without Ohio ... and they, like the rest of us who can look at polling data and add, have known this fact for some time. That's why the GOP convention in 2016 is going to be in Ohio, and that's why the party is (and we switch here from fact to my opinion again) carefully grooming Governor Kasich (a reasonably popular Ohio Republican with massive statewide name recognition) to be the Vice Presidential pick of virtually anyone who becomes the nominee (and, on the topic of the nominee, let me quickly quiet all the "harumphing" going on about Donald Trump ... I'm sorry to disappoint all the paid Trump fans and late night talk show hosts out there, but it isn't going to be Trump ... don't get me wrong, I love what Trump is doing to divide, polarize, disrupt and cost the Republicans money right now, but it can't and won't last).
On the other side of the race, unlike the Republicans, the Democrats CAN win the Presidency without winning Ohio, it's just harder (there are a higher number of possible combinations for the Democrats to reach 270 without Ohio than there are for the Republicans). Like the Republicans, the Democrats are also many things (and you'll hear me use words like disappointing and frustrating a lot here), but they (and by "they" I again mean their high level, intelligent political strategists) are also NOT stupid. They have been staring at the same political maps that their Republican counterparts have been staring at for a long time too, and they know that Ohio is going to be an incredibly expensive and close slugfest, and one which, particularly given its importance to the GOP, they could definitely lose. Since losing Ohio is a legitimate possibility, without conceding that race in any way, it makes a great deal of sense for them to be working hard on a backup plan.
And this is where Jim Webb comes in.
Webb's entrance into the race (and some of the things he's said to separate himself from the left wing of the party) have already caused many in the party to cast aspersions at him. Many are calling him names, saying he's a "DINO," calling for him to drop out, etc. This reaction is, to me, beyond stupid and shows again that many Democrats also lack the kind of pragmatism that is NEEDED in any successful Democratic Republic. For the record, I think that, like Gov Kasich, Senator Webb's entry into the Presidential race is largely symbolic. It's about generating name recognition and putting him in a position to be the Vice Presidential nominee (in fact, I would argue that Webb is already the de facto VP pick for whoever the Democratic nominee is). Why? Because Webb is a popular southern Democrat who can likely deliver Virginia (which is REALLY important if the Democrats lose Ohio) and places North Carolina squarely back in play (in case any of the only 5 people left on Earth who don't know how to use Google are reading this article, Obama barely won NC in 2008 and Romney barely won it in 2012). So left leaning Democrats can call Webb names as much as they like, but when they do, they should be prepared to add "Vice President" to the list.
Webb is particularly important to the Democrats if Secretary Clinton is the nominee as he can pick up at least some support with middle aged, Democratic leaning southern white males (a group that is something of an endangered species at this point, but they're out there and they are "high likelihood" voters, and in a very close state like North Carolina, if enough of them vote for the Democrats, that could change the outcome) ... and this brings us back to the original article about constituencies. As I hope I've demonstrated, the question of whether or not black voters or women voters or "insert demographic group here" voters come out for one candidate or another IN GENERAL is largely irrelevant. For example, if every black voter in Massachusetts stayed home, Clinton (or, again, a used beer can running as a Democrat in that state) would almost certainly still win MA. This is not, of course, to say that black voters are irrelevant. In fact, black voters in Ohio (if they turn out and vote in significant numbers) could VERY easily all but guarantee a Presidential victory for the Democrats. My point is that this election isn't about ANY demographic group overall, it's about a BUNCH of those groups IN (and ONLY in) key battleground states. So the REAL question is whether or not enough historically lower turnout voters (whether that's black voters, women, hispanics, whatever) come out in the very few key battleground states and vote.
So what have we learned today. Well first off, we've learned that, if you live in Ohio, you should either be preparing to move out of the state or at least be canceling your cable subscription and removing your mailbox now ... because you are about to be at "Ground Zero" for the biggest, most expensive and most intrusive political war of our lifetimes. So stock up on dry goods, get those "No Soliciting" signs plastered all over your property, get a Netflix account and know that the rest of us (with no offense) are just happy it's you and not us.
The second thing we've learned is that people (in this case, Democrats on my left) who get all riled up about ideological purity fill me with a mixture of amusement and depression. I am amused because their ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the pragmatic realities of our political processes, especially when combined with the fact that this is a democratic REPUBLIC, which means that EVERYTHING is about COMPROMISE and NOT about getting what you want, causes them to advocate things that will almost guarantee that they will lose more than their "side" would gain if they would simply pursue a more pragmatic solution. And I am depressed because, to be honest, I often find at least some of what they seek to accomplish as laudable and worthwhile, and it's depressing to watch them fail (for themselves and those they advocate for) because they allow their religious devotion to their ideology to interfere with the accomplishing of at least some of their goals ... and the fact that this makes them similar to the people they most despise is just an extra bit of ironic pain to throw on the top.
/End PoliticalRantOfTheWeek
© 2015
So I've been thinking about doing this sort of thing with my blog for some time now, and today is the day. Periodically I see or hear something on the news or on Facebook (or in this case, both) that really gets me going for a few moments, and I have to say something in response. It's not REALLY related to the sorts of things that I write about on my blog, but it needs to be said. To make it easier on my regular readers, I'm going to call these posts "Political Rant Of The Week" (which I will almost certainly eventually shorten to "PROW" ... because I was in the military and we're contractually obligated to abbreviate almost everything for the rest of our lives). It is my intent to make these posts "in addition to" my regular writing, but we'll see how that goes.
So what sent me over the edge this week? The 2016 Election. Now I know that many of you were hoping that we could avoid this topic until, oh say, NEXT YEAR, but obviously the media is having none of that so I'm conceding defeat and hopping in.
The first thing that sent me around the bend was an article about how one particular group of voters (in the case of the article in question, black voters) was likely to be the critical factor in the 2016 Presidential Election. This statement/assertion shows a depressing lack of understanding of how Presidents are elected, so, at the risk of boring the crap out of the rest of you, let me be clear about the ONLY thing, and by that I mean, quite literally THE ONLY THING that is important in a Presidential election.
270.
That's it. There's nothing else. The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes or more wins the Presidency. Period. There are no other measures, NOTHING else matters. Now, with that as "2016 Election Fact #1," let's move on to Fact #2: Pretty much no matter what happens between now and Election Day 2016, the outcome of the Presidential election in MOST of the United States is essentially a foregone conclusion (it's VERY unlikely (statistically) that the outcome isn't already known). To be clear, you could essentially run a used beer can as a Republican or Democrat as your candidate in most states and that beer can would defeat the nominee of the other party. And why? Because the politics of the majority of people in that state are such that they will NOT elect a candidate from the other party in 2016.
Those are the facts, and if you're going to dispute them then you should stop reading right now and go do something else because we already have a zero percent chance of having an intelligent conversation on this topic (because you're out there with climate deniers and people who think Adam and Eve were out riding dinosaurs 6K years ago).
As a result of these facts, we can conclude that, for all intents and purposes, the 2016 Election IS ALREADY OVER in the majority of the United States. It's "turn out the lights the party is over" done. The Democrats are NOT going to win in states like the Dakotas, Idaho, Oklahoma or Alabama, and the Republicans have ZERO chance of winning basically any state in New England or the west coast.
So the path to 270 is already well underway, and when you look at the cold, hard political realities, the fact is that the Democrats already have a significantly easier (though far from guaranteed) path to 270 than the Republicans do. And THAT, is where the facts end. Now, there's nothing wrong with political speculation and opinion (per se, although it's a little troubling that the industry around this field seems to be so heavily populated with idiots), but to me, speculation that doesn't start with the above facts and work outward from them is FAR more likely to quickly veer into the stupid or absurd ... so I'm going to work my way out from what we know and see where that leads us.
The Republicans, by most educated guesses, have NO path to 270 that doesn't include winning the state of Ohio. Now, obviously this is national politics we're talking about, and things do change, but these numbers don't change THAT much and, right now, there's not a single mathematician in the country that I'm aware of that has ANY (realistic) Electoral College map for the Republicans reaching 270 in 2016 that does NOT include the GOP taking the state of Ohio (it's obviously not impossible, just statistically very unlikely as there are far fewer realistic combinations of states). The majority of Republicans these days are many things (and I should quickly add that, for many of the early years of my life, I was one of them and, as a result, I'm particularly critical of the neo-conservative, religious right, theological oligarchs who have, in my opinion, destroyed the party). You could (and I occasionally do) argue that they are short sighted, sold out ideologues who are hell bent on nothing less than the end of our Republic as we know it and replacing it with some sort of twisted, disgusting theological oligarchy. HOWEVER, they ... which is to say their political strategists, are NOT stupid. They are VERY aware that they have basically NO chance of winning back the White House in 2016 without Ohio ... and they, like the rest of us who can look at polling data and add, have known this fact for some time. That's why the GOP convention in 2016 is going to be in Ohio, and that's why the party is (and we switch here from fact to my opinion again) carefully grooming Governor Kasich (a reasonably popular Ohio Republican with massive statewide name recognition) to be the Vice Presidential pick of virtually anyone who becomes the nominee (and, on the topic of the nominee, let me quickly quiet all the "harumphing" going on about Donald Trump ... I'm sorry to disappoint all the paid Trump fans and late night talk show hosts out there, but it isn't going to be Trump ... don't get me wrong, I love what Trump is doing to divide, polarize, disrupt and cost the Republicans money right now, but it can't and won't last).
On the other side of the race, unlike the Republicans, the Democrats CAN win the Presidency without winning Ohio, it's just harder (there are a higher number of possible combinations for the Democrats to reach 270 without Ohio than there are for the Republicans). Like the Republicans, the Democrats are also many things (and you'll hear me use words like disappointing and frustrating a lot here), but they (and by "they" I again mean their high level, intelligent political strategists) are also NOT stupid. They have been staring at the same political maps that their Republican counterparts have been staring at for a long time too, and they know that Ohio is going to be an incredibly expensive and close slugfest, and one which, particularly given its importance to the GOP, they could definitely lose. Since losing Ohio is a legitimate possibility, without conceding that race in any way, it makes a great deal of sense for them to be working hard on a backup plan.
And this is where Jim Webb comes in.
Webb's entrance into the race (and some of the things he's said to separate himself from the left wing of the party) have already caused many in the party to cast aspersions at him. Many are calling him names, saying he's a "DINO," calling for him to drop out, etc. This reaction is, to me, beyond stupid and shows again that many Democrats also lack the kind of pragmatism that is NEEDED in any successful Democratic Republic. For the record, I think that, like Gov Kasich, Senator Webb's entry into the Presidential race is largely symbolic. It's about generating name recognition and putting him in a position to be the Vice Presidential nominee (in fact, I would argue that Webb is already the de facto VP pick for whoever the Democratic nominee is). Why? Because Webb is a popular southern Democrat who can likely deliver Virginia (which is REALLY important if the Democrats lose Ohio) and places North Carolina squarely back in play (in case any of the only 5 people left on Earth who don't know how to use Google are reading this article, Obama barely won NC in 2008 and Romney barely won it in 2012). So left leaning Democrats can call Webb names as much as they like, but when they do, they should be prepared to add "Vice President" to the list.
Webb is particularly important to the Democrats if Secretary Clinton is the nominee as he can pick up at least some support with middle aged, Democratic leaning southern white males (a group that is something of an endangered species at this point, but they're out there and they are "high likelihood" voters, and in a very close state like North Carolina, if enough of them vote for the Democrats, that could change the outcome) ... and this brings us back to the original article about constituencies. As I hope I've demonstrated, the question of whether or not black voters or women voters or "insert demographic group here" voters come out for one candidate or another IN GENERAL is largely irrelevant. For example, if every black voter in Massachusetts stayed home, Clinton (or, again, a used beer can running as a Democrat in that state) would almost certainly still win MA. This is not, of course, to say that black voters are irrelevant. In fact, black voters in Ohio (if they turn out and vote in significant numbers) could VERY easily all but guarantee a Presidential victory for the Democrats. My point is that this election isn't about ANY demographic group overall, it's about a BUNCH of those groups IN (and ONLY in) key battleground states. So the REAL question is whether or not enough historically lower turnout voters (whether that's black voters, women, hispanics, whatever) come out in the very few key battleground states and vote.
So what have we learned today. Well first off, we've learned that, if you live in Ohio, you should either be preparing to move out of the state or at least be canceling your cable subscription and removing your mailbox now ... because you are about to be at "Ground Zero" for the biggest, most expensive and most intrusive political war of our lifetimes. So stock up on dry goods, get those "No Soliciting" signs plastered all over your property, get a Netflix account and know that the rest of us (with no offense) are just happy it's you and not us.
The second thing we've learned is that people (in this case, Democrats on my left) who get all riled up about ideological purity fill me with a mixture of amusement and depression. I am amused because their ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the pragmatic realities of our political processes, especially when combined with the fact that this is a democratic REPUBLIC, which means that EVERYTHING is about COMPROMISE and NOT about getting what you want, causes them to advocate things that will almost guarantee that they will lose more than their "side" would gain if they would simply pursue a more pragmatic solution. And I am depressed because, to be honest, I often find at least some of what they seek to accomplish as laudable and worthwhile, and it's depressing to watch them fail (for themselves and those they advocate for) because they allow their religious devotion to their ideology to interfere with the accomplishing of at least some of their goals ... and the fact that this makes them similar to the people they most despise is just an extra bit of ironic pain to throw on the top.
/End PoliticalRantOfTheWeek
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Lessons at the Half Century Mark
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
This past was a big week for birthdays in our family. Last Saturday, the United States turned 239. I have no idea what an appropriate gift is for a 239 year old Republic, but the Supreme Court appears to have given it an excellent one in the end of gerrymandered districts. If I could afford it, I’d take away SuperPACs and give it publicly funded elections too … but evidently none of us can afford that (sigh).
Also celebrating a birthday on July 4 was my Mom (so, Happy Birthday Mom). And then on Sunday, July 5, I completed my 50th solar orbit and celebrated birthday number 50. Since this is my 50th birthday, and since I was apparently supposed to have learned some important and valuable lessons by this point in my life (whoops), I understand that it’s appropriate for me to stop here, reflect back, and see if there’s anything I can share that will be of value. So, in no particular order (and with a staggering lack of premeditated forethought), here are some of my random thoughts on life on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
One of the rules that my Mom had for us growing up (one that I really didn’t like at the time but have since come to genuinely appreciate) was that my younger sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV (other than the rare instructional TV show and the Sunday night routine of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by the Wonderful World of Disney). We were, however, allowed to read as much as we wanted to (and did, voraciously plowing through a fairly ridiculous number of books). This “no TV” rule lasted until I was 10 years old (at age 10 I was allowed to choose a show to watch … I chose the Six Million Dollar Man because … well because Steve Austin is cool that’s why). As a result, I spent the first decade of my life having to make a lot of my own entertainment as opposed to being fed it. Mom was also a big believer in the “get out” method of parenting (as in, “get out of the house and don’t come back until I ring the bell for dinner”). As a result, I had a LOT of time in the backyard and in our neighborhood to run around and entertain myself. There’s no question in my mind that the imagination I have today is a direct result of this rule and the time I spent wandering around and just making stuff up to pass the time.
So here’s one of those totally obvious things about life that most people REALLY don’t pick up on until about age 30; you know that body you were born with? Yeah, well it’s the only one you get, and it has limits. Sadly, I was NOT a child who had respect for my body. My attitude was that it was a tool to be used and abused as needed to accomplish whatever it was I thought I wanted to do. And, to paraphrase the Emperor, I have paid quite the price for my lack of vision. As I noted in my blog some weeks ago (while writing about my business life), you can in fact work yourself nearly to the point of death … at 32. All it takes is overwork, poor diet and punishing workouts and you will be right there on the Operating Room table just like me. Of course, this is not entirely our fault. Most of us are born with bodies that can take a lot of punishment, especially early on. This is because nature has been making young humans for quite a while now and it’s gotten pretty good at making most of them pretty durable. Unfortunately, many of us take that gift from nature and incorrectly learn that it’s OK to punish and abuse our bodies because they will recover (we can simply work out harder to lose that weight or take some extra time off later to recoup and start over). For most of human history, this mistake wasn’t terribly costly because, well, we tended to die before what were doing to ourselves came back to bite us in the butt. But lately (which is to say in just the last couple of centuries, and really in the last 100 years in particular), a funny thing has happened; our bodies have suddenly been called on to last far longer than nature is used to having to keep them around. The good news is that nature made us incredibly adaptable, and given the speed of this change, we’re doing remarkably well. But nature needs your help. If you’re a young person reading this essay, know that there’s an increasing likelihood that you’re going to live to be far older than you may think and the ability your body has to just recover and rebuild itself? Yeah, that slows down … a LOT, and everything you’re doing to it now will make it harder for it later. Plus, there are going to be things you can’t predict. You might end up with Degenerative Disc Disease that’s so bad that you end up needing multiple artificial disc replacement surgery (that would be me again). Fortunately for me and some of you, science is doing an impressive job of helping us out. I have an awful lot of titanium holding my lower spine together these days, and there are many things that, at 50, I’ll never do again, but the fact is that, as a result, I take a walk around my neighborhood every morning and not a wheel around it. Bottom line; science can help, but no one can do more for your health than you.
Along the same lines, as you grow up, try to remember that you only get to be each age once, so try to take advantage of as many opportunities as you can at each stage. I don’t know anyone who was in more of a rush to grow up than I was. Until recently, no matter what age I was, I always wanted to be older, but in my rush to “skip to the end” I missed a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. As I’ve gotten older, I find that I admire friends who did things that seemed totally crazy at the time. One high school friend left a promising career on Wall Street and went into the mountains of South America to teach math to poor children for a few years. Another friend who is a teacher left his job and decided to teach English to prison inmates. And in one of the craziest yet coolest examples, I have another friend who just decided to go to Thailand for a year, and when she got tired of that, signed on to a cargo carrier as a crewman so she could get to Australia. There were a lot of reasons that most of those things wouldn’t have worked for me when I was younger, but if I could be younger now, I have to say, the ideas are a LOT more interesting to me. The bottom line to this point is that getting going right away on money and a career etc. is nice, but you can’t buy certain experiences, so have a few.
Few humans are more of a “creature of habit” than I am. I dig routines. I’m not afraid to experiment, but when I find what I like I tend to stick with it. The problem is things constantly change. That restaurant you love? It won’t be there forever, or if it is, there will come a time when it won’t be the same anymore. When cool stuff happens, when you find that place, that moment, that group of friends, make sure to appreciate it in that moment, because it is in the nature of things that it is temporary. I have a lot of “food” based examples of this lesson. I’ll never forget the dessert cart that American Airlines experimented with on the Chicago to Portland run over a decade ago. Seriously, this was a thing (I have no idea if it was sponsored by the Portland Chamber or something, but what an AWESOME idea). They literally had a cart that they brought down the aisle, and every passenger who wanted one, got a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little bowl with whatever toppings they wanted (the cart had chocolate, caramel, strawberry). It was a crazy good idea, and as much as I wanted it to, I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy every bite. Life is full of cool moments that won’t happen again. You can be sad about that fact later if you want, but when you’re there, love it.
This one is pretty obvious so I don’t have to say a lot about it. As an adult, I’ve become one of those people who is a gatherer of past friends, and knowing where they are and that they’re OK is important to me. Perhaps the single coolest thing to me about Facebook and other social media is its ability to create a sort of virtual room where all of our friends can be found. It’s a place where they periodically check in and say hi. You know that they’re alive and safe (or having a challenge and need you to reach out to them), you see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking about, every now and then you see a picture, it’s a good thing. But having friends that you can and do talk to and listen to is an incredibly important part of being human. Don’t miss that part.
This is a tough one because you can succeed or fail at marriage without that success or failure necessarily having that much to do with you. I will have known my wife for 32 years next month, and we’re only a few months from our 26th Anniversary. Our marriage has, at this point, “worked.” But why it worked is the thing I want to get at. There’s a saying that “women marry men thinking they’ll change and they don’t, and men marry women thinking they won’t change and they do.” In my observation of people over time, I find that it isn’t so much that we were all lying to each other about who we were (when we got married in our 20s), it’s more that we had no idea (and had no way of knowing) who we were going to be as people decades later. The truth, of course, is that we ALL grow and change over time. And the further truth is that here are, in fact, lots of things you CAN do to help your marriage. One of the best pieces of advice my wife and I ever got came from our interview with the Minister who married us. We both did a bit of an eye roll when he insisted on this meeting (we’d known each other for over 6 years already, had lived together for over 2 years, we kind of figured we had all that worked out and that it was a waste of time), but we were wrong. One of the things the Minister talked about was using “I” messages. For example when you’re upset about something … so you don’t say “you did this,” or “you make me feel terrible when…” but rather, “I feel like this when that happens.” It may seem like a subtle change in semantics, but we’ve found it to be a really helpful tool in getting through difficult conversations. But while there are things you can do (and by the way, if you get married, DO THEM), ultimately, when you get married you really are just making your “best guess” and hoping that the two of you change and grow in ways that are compatible. So make your best guess possible and then hope you grow together.
Have you ever gotten a little cut or something that stings like a sonofabitch and then you look at it and there’s basically no blood and no mark at all. This always depresses me and makes me feel like a wimp for complaining (or just feeling pain). I prefer the accidents where there’s a scar, this way I have a story to tell. But what I really mean by this lesson is that, especially if you’re like me, crazy crap IS going to happen to you. Readers of this blog know that, in the Navy alone, I was nearly killed by helicopters twice, and I ended up being part of a nuclear weapons mishap and a riot in the same 24 hours. None of those experiences seemed particularly fun at the time, but they sure do make great stories now. Basically, the point is that life is often FULL of adventures, and at this point I’ve gotten better at recognizing that today’s disaster stands an excellent chance of becoming tomorrow night’s harrowing, exciting and interesting dinner story.
I kind of assume that everyone has a little voice, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far. My little voice has been talking to me since I was a child. I don’t always listen to it, but I’m ALWAYS sorry when I don’t. My little voice told me that I should move to the desert southwest when I left the Navy half a lifetime ago. I didn’t listen (until two years ago, which was long after I nearly died from exposure to stacchybotrys and subsequently discovered that the desert is where my body is healthiest and happiest). My little voice told me to get out of the stock market in October of 2007. I didn’t listen. That little voice inside you, the one that knows whether you should or shouldn’t say or do something … it’s almost always right, and NOT listening to it can even cost you your life. When I was 15, I was walking to school on a snowy day and, being the rather careless idiot that teenagers often are, I was amusing myself (as I walked under the Winnetka Ave. train underpass) by walking with my right foot on the sidewalk and my left foot in the road. As I got to the far side of the underpass my little voice shouted at me “STEP UP!” It was so forceful that I did so. About one second later a skidding station wagon came up from behind me and hit the curb at about 25 mph. The car came so close to me that one of the rivets (that had held the missing detailing on the side of the station wagon’s doors) actually grabbed and tore a whole in the left leg of my jeans. The force of the interaction also spun me and threw me into a snowdrift immediately in front of me. My friend who was walking with me to school that day (E.B. Dangerfield) was a few steps behind me and saw the whole thing (I, obviously, didn’t) and was amazed I wasn’t killed. Not all of the things the little voice tells us to do are so life and death of course. Many times the little voice is just your “gut instinct.” Well, my advice is to go with it. In my experience, your instinct about the right thing to do is going to be right a LOT more often than any other input you have. This is especially true when you’re contemplating a big decision and seeking advice and input from others. Most of the time, you already have an idea about what you should do, but you’re not sure, so you seek out “experts” and others to either confirm or deny what you think. If you truly have no idea what to do, that’s fine, but most of the time, somewhere in that process, your little voice will start talking to you. When it does, LISTEN TO IT.
If you’re like me, you punish yourself for your mistakes. You relive them a ridiculous number of times and wish more than anything for a time machine so you can undo them. I am still learning that this effort is a complete waste of time, but at this point in life, even if I haven’t quite learned to stop beating myself up entirely, I at least intellectually understand the futility and stupidity of doing so. You WILL make mistakes. Some of them will be BIG ones. If you’re like me, some of them may render you permanently disabled in some way. Others may cost you a literal fortune. They’re valuable lessons (provided you don’t repeat them) and I’m saying you should forget them, but even if you think they’re your “fault,” try to let them go and let yourself up (see lesson 7 above).
This is another HARD one that I’m still working on, but as you hit my age and mortality starts to become more real and you start to realize that “this is it,” the importance of NOT waiting for some later time to enjoy your life starts to really hit you. It’s a good thing to have a bucket list, but it should be a “living document” that changes, and it changes because you’re occasionally knocking stuff off of it. I don’t want you to blow your entire savings account tomorrow or to be completely irresponsible, but don’t wait for “someday” … because someday is TODAY.
©2015
This past was a big week for birthdays in our family. Last Saturday, the United States turned 239. I have no idea what an appropriate gift is for a 239 year old Republic, but the Supreme Court appears to have given it an excellent one in the end of gerrymandered districts. If I could afford it, I’d take away SuperPACs and give it publicly funded elections too … but evidently none of us can afford that (sigh).
Also celebrating a birthday on July 4 was my Mom (so, Happy Birthday Mom). And then on Sunday, July 5, I completed my 50th solar orbit and celebrated birthday number 50. Since this is my 50th birthday, and since I was apparently supposed to have learned some important and valuable lessons by this point in my life (whoops), I understand that it’s appropriate for me to stop here, reflect back, and see if there’s anything I can share that will be of value. So, in no particular order (and with a staggering lack of premeditated forethought), here are some of my random thoughts on life on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
1. Develop and Use Your Imagination
One of the rules that my Mom had for us growing up (one that I really didn’t like at the time but have since come to genuinely appreciate) was that my younger sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV (other than the rare instructional TV show and the Sunday night routine of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by the Wonderful World of Disney). We were, however, allowed to read as much as we wanted to (and did, voraciously plowing through a fairly ridiculous number of books). This “no TV” rule lasted until I was 10 years old (at age 10 I was allowed to choose a show to watch … I chose the Six Million Dollar Man because … well because Steve Austin is cool that’s why). As a result, I spent the first decade of my life having to make a lot of my own entertainment as opposed to being fed it. Mom was also a big believer in the “get out” method of parenting (as in, “get out of the house and don’t come back until I ring the bell for dinner”). As a result, I had a LOT of time in the backyard and in our neighborhood to run around and entertain myself. There’s no question in my mind that the imagination I have today is a direct result of this rule and the time I spent wandering around and just making stuff up to pass the time.
2. Take Care of Yourself
So here’s one of those totally obvious things about life that most people REALLY don’t pick up on until about age 30; you know that body you were born with? Yeah, well it’s the only one you get, and it has limits. Sadly, I was NOT a child who had respect for my body. My attitude was that it was a tool to be used and abused as needed to accomplish whatever it was I thought I wanted to do. And, to paraphrase the Emperor, I have paid quite the price for my lack of vision. As I noted in my blog some weeks ago (while writing about my business life), you can in fact work yourself nearly to the point of death … at 32. All it takes is overwork, poor diet and punishing workouts and you will be right there on the Operating Room table just like me. Of course, this is not entirely our fault. Most of us are born with bodies that can take a lot of punishment, especially early on. This is because nature has been making young humans for quite a while now and it’s gotten pretty good at making most of them pretty durable. Unfortunately, many of us take that gift from nature and incorrectly learn that it’s OK to punish and abuse our bodies because they will recover (we can simply work out harder to lose that weight or take some extra time off later to recoup and start over). For most of human history, this mistake wasn’t terribly costly because, well, we tended to die before what were doing to ourselves came back to bite us in the butt. But lately (which is to say in just the last couple of centuries, and really in the last 100 years in particular), a funny thing has happened; our bodies have suddenly been called on to last far longer than nature is used to having to keep them around. The good news is that nature made us incredibly adaptable, and given the speed of this change, we’re doing remarkably well. But nature needs your help. If you’re a young person reading this essay, know that there’s an increasing likelihood that you’re going to live to be far older than you may think and the ability your body has to just recover and rebuild itself? Yeah, that slows down … a LOT, and everything you’re doing to it now will make it harder for it later. Plus, there are going to be things you can’t predict. You might end up with Degenerative Disc Disease that’s so bad that you end up needing multiple artificial disc replacement surgery (that would be me again). Fortunately for me and some of you, science is doing an impressive job of helping us out. I have an awful lot of titanium holding my lower spine together these days, and there are many things that, at 50, I’ll never do again, but the fact is that, as a result, I take a walk around my neighborhood every morning and not a wheel around it. Bottom line; science can help, but no one can do more for your health than you.
3. DON’T Be In A Hurry
Along the same lines, as you grow up, try to remember that you only get to be each age once, so try to take advantage of as many opportunities as you can at each stage. I don’t know anyone who was in more of a rush to grow up than I was. Until recently, no matter what age I was, I always wanted to be older, but in my rush to “skip to the end” I missed a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. As I’ve gotten older, I find that I admire friends who did things that seemed totally crazy at the time. One high school friend left a promising career on Wall Street and went into the mountains of South America to teach math to poor children for a few years. Another friend who is a teacher left his job and decided to teach English to prison inmates. And in one of the craziest yet coolest examples, I have another friend who just decided to go to Thailand for a year, and when she got tired of that, signed on to a cargo carrier as a crewman so she could get to Australia. There were a lot of reasons that most of those things wouldn’t have worked for me when I was younger, but if I could be younger now, I have to say, the ideas are a LOT more interesting to me. The bottom line to this point is that getting going right away on money and a career etc. is nice, but you can’t buy certain experiences, so have a few.
4. NOTHING Lasts Forever, So Enjoy It When You Have It
Few humans are more of a “creature of habit” than I am. I dig routines. I’m not afraid to experiment, but when I find what I like I tend to stick with it. The problem is things constantly change. That restaurant you love? It won’t be there forever, or if it is, there will come a time when it won’t be the same anymore. When cool stuff happens, when you find that place, that moment, that group of friends, make sure to appreciate it in that moment, because it is in the nature of things that it is temporary. I have a lot of “food” based examples of this lesson. I’ll never forget the dessert cart that American Airlines experimented with on the Chicago to Portland run over a decade ago. Seriously, this was a thing (I have no idea if it was sponsored by the Portland Chamber or something, but what an AWESOME idea). They literally had a cart that they brought down the aisle, and every passenger who wanted one, got a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little bowl with whatever toppings they wanted (the cart had chocolate, caramel, strawberry). It was a crazy good idea, and as much as I wanted it to, I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy every bite. Life is full of cool moments that won’t happen again. You can be sad about that fact later if you want, but when you’re there, love it.
5. Friends Are Important
This one is pretty obvious so I don’t have to say a lot about it. As an adult, I’ve become one of those people who is a gatherer of past friends, and knowing where they are and that they’re OK is important to me. Perhaps the single coolest thing to me about Facebook and other social media is its ability to create a sort of virtual room where all of our friends can be found. It’s a place where they periodically check in and say hi. You know that they’re alive and safe (or having a challenge and need you to reach out to them), you see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking about, every now and then you see a picture, it’s a good thing. But having friends that you can and do talk to and listen to is an incredibly important part of being human. Don’t miss that part.
6. Marry Well
This is a tough one because you can succeed or fail at marriage without that success or failure necessarily having that much to do with you. I will have known my wife for 32 years next month, and we’re only a few months from our 26th Anniversary. Our marriage has, at this point, “worked.” But why it worked is the thing I want to get at. There’s a saying that “women marry men thinking they’ll change and they don’t, and men marry women thinking they won’t change and they do.” In my observation of people over time, I find that it isn’t so much that we were all lying to each other about who we were (when we got married in our 20s), it’s more that we had no idea (and had no way of knowing) who we were going to be as people decades later. The truth, of course, is that we ALL grow and change over time. And the further truth is that here are, in fact, lots of things you CAN do to help your marriage. One of the best pieces of advice my wife and I ever got came from our interview with the Minister who married us. We both did a bit of an eye roll when he insisted on this meeting (we’d known each other for over 6 years already, had lived together for over 2 years, we kind of figured we had all that worked out and that it was a waste of time), but we were wrong. One of the things the Minister talked about was using “I” messages. For example when you’re upset about something … so you don’t say “you did this,” or “you make me feel terrible when…” but rather, “I feel like this when that happens.” It may seem like a subtle change in semantics, but we’ve found it to be a really helpful tool in getting through difficult conversations. But while there are things you can do (and by the way, if you get married, DO THEM), ultimately, when you get married you really are just making your “best guess” and hoping that the two of you change and grow in ways that are compatible. So make your best guess possible and then hope you grow together.
7. If it doesn’t kill you, it’s going to make a great story, (and either way, make sure it leaves a mark)
Have you ever gotten a little cut or something that stings like a sonofabitch and then you look at it and there’s basically no blood and no mark at all. This always depresses me and makes me feel like a wimp for complaining (or just feeling pain). I prefer the accidents where there’s a scar, this way I have a story to tell. But what I really mean by this lesson is that, especially if you’re like me, crazy crap IS going to happen to you. Readers of this blog know that, in the Navy alone, I was nearly killed by helicopters twice, and I ended up being part of a nuclear weapons mishap and a riot in the same 24 hours. None of those experiences seemed particularly fun at the time, but they sure do make great stories now. Basically, the point is that life is often FULL of adventures, and at this point I’ve gotten better at recognizing that today’s disaster stands an excellent chance of becoming tomorrow night’s harrowing, exciting and interesting dinner story.
8. ALWAYS Listen to your “little voice” (especially when it runs counter to “advice”)
I kind of assume that everyone has a little voice, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far. My little voice has been talking to me since I was a child. I don’t always listen to it, but I’m ALWAYS sorry when I don’t. My little voice told me that I should move to the desert southwest when I left the Navy half a lifetime ago. I didn’t listen (until two years ago, which was long after I nearly died from exposure to stacchybotrys and subsequently discovered that the desert is where my body is healthiest and happiest). My little voice told me to get out of the stock market in October of 2007. I didn’t listen. That little voice inside you, the one that knows whether you should or shouldn’t say or do something … it’s almost always right, and NOT listening to it can even cost you your life. When I was 15, I was walking to school on a snowy day and, being the rather careless idiot that teenagers often are, I was amusing myself (as I walked under the Winnetka Ave. train underpass) by walking with my right foot on the sidewalk and my left foot in the road. As I got to the far side of the underpass my little voice shouted at me “STEP UP!” It was so forceful that I did so. About one second later a skidding station wagon came up from behind me and hit the curb at about 25 mph. The car came so close to me that one of the rivets (that had held the missing detailing on the side of the station wagon’s doors) actually grabbed and tore a whole in the left leg of my jeans. The force of the interaction also spun me and threw me into a snowdrift immediately in front of me. My friend who was walking with me to school that day (E.B. Dangerfield) was a few steps behind me and saw the whole thing (I, obviously, didn’t) and was amazed I wasn’t killed. Not all of the things the little voice tells us to do are so life and death of course. Many times the little voice is just your “gut instinct.” Well, my advice is to go with it. In my experience, your instinct about the right thing to do is going to be right a LOT more often than any other input you have. This is especially true when you’re contemplating a big decision and seeking advice and input from others. Most of the time, you already have an idea about what you should do, but you’re not sure, so you seek out “experts” and others to either confirm or deny what you think. If you truly have no idea what to do, that’s fine, but most of the time, somewhere in that process, your little voice will start talking to you. When it does, LISTEN TO IT.
9. Let Yourself Off The Hook
If you’re like me, you punish yourself for your mistakes. You relive them a ridiculous number of times and wish more than anything for a time machine so you can undo them. I am still learning that this effort is a complete waste of time, but at this point in life, even if I haven’t quite learned to stop beating myself up entirely, I at least intellectually understand the futility and stupidity of doing so. You WILL make mistakes. Some of them will be BIG ones. If you’re like me, some of them may render you permanently disabled in some way. Others may cost you a literal fortune. They’re valuable lessons (provided you don’t repeat them) and I’m saying you should forget them, but even if you think they’re your “fault,” try to let them go and let yourself up (see lesson 7 above).
10. Enjoy it
This is another HARD one that I’m still working on, but as you hit my age and mortality starts to become more real and you start to realize that “this is it,” the importance of NOT waiting for some later time to enjoy your life starts to really hit you. It’s a good thing to have a bucket list, but it should be a “living document” that changes, and it changes because you’re occasionally knocking stuff off of it. I don’t want you to blow your entire savings account tomorrow or to be completely irresponsible, but don’t wait for “someday” … because someday is TODAY.
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