Category Archives: health

On starting over

Posted on by

As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On starting over

Posted on by

As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On Thanksgiving dinner

Posted on by

The crush is on in the supermarkets to buy the food for Thanksgiving. This seems rather ironic for me because most of these people don’t cook during the rest of the year. They not only don’t cook on a regular basis, they don’t even eat at home, ever. Although there is nothing morally superior to making your own food, it is certainly better and cheaper, if not healthier. People who eat in restaurants all the time tend to overeat on a regular basis, which leads, of course, to obesity. So the crush is on. Let me guess, pumpkin pie, cranberries, the ubiquitous turkey, dressing, gravy, green bean casserole, lots of whipped cream, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes. To say that Americans are totally unimaginative would be to underestimate the situation. The Thanksgiving Day menu is a cliché at best. Cooked by people who never cook, I would be so afraid to try a turkey cooked by an inexperienced cook who doesn’t know what they are doing, much less know how to handle a turkey. Most of the menu is either baked or boiled, so ruining it might take some initiative, but I know people who have. I’ve seen burned turkey, raw turkey, frozen turkey, tanned turkey, exploded turkey, underdone turkey, dry turkey, tasteless turkey and inedible turkey. Turkey is one of those dishes which takes a lot of culinary know-how, and most people don’t have the street creds for getting the job done correctly. Do people really know how to handle a raw cranberry? And opening a can of pre-cooked cranberries is for wimps and pretenders. Let’s not talk about dressing. Most people just don’t cook enough to develop the experience necessary to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. So they buy all this stuff–flour, shortening, mince meat, sugar, spices, bread crumbs, croutons–and they think that just because mom used to cook all this stuff that they can do it too. Actually, I’m amused by all this cooking activity because I think we would all be served by more home cooking even if it affected the national restaurant economy. When one eats at home, one eats less, one eats less bad fats, one eats less starch, one eats less sugar, and one stays healthier. I know a lot of pigging out is going to occur this week across the country, but there is very little reason for it. By eating less, we stay healthier, we feel better, we have fewer aches and pains, climbing the stairs is easier as is just about any other task we perform on a daily basis. Our interaction with food is complex and chaotic, but the over-abundance of food, our horn of plenty, is almost as a much a curse as it is a blessing. Since the only thing we cannot resist is temptation itself, we fall into the trap of overeating and suffering because of it. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a holiday best served by humility and moderation, but eating less and walking more, by not focusing on how much turkey and dressing we might eat, by not focusing on how much dessert we show down our gullets. What if we didn’t make pigs of ourselves, ate sensibly, exercised more, and forgot about putting a ton of food on the table that we never needed in the first place? If you don’t put it on the table in the first place you will never know that you ever missed it. With so much of the world starving, it seems like a shame to gorge ourselves on food we don’t even need.

On Thanksgiving dinner

Posted on by

The crush is on in the supermarkets to buy the food for Thanksgiving. This seems rather ironic for me because most of these people don’t cook during the rest of the year. They not only don’t cook on a regular basis, they don’t even eat at home, ever. Although there is nothing morally superior to making your own food, it is certainly better and cheaper, if not healthier. People who eat in restaurants all the time tend to overeat on a regular basis, which leads, of course, to obesity. So the crush is on. Let me guess, pumpkin pie, cranberries, the ubiquitous turkey, dressing, gravy, green bean casserole, lots of whipped cream, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes. To say that Americans are totally unimaginative would be to underestimate the situation. The Thanksgiving Day menu is a cliché at best. Cooked by people who never cook, I would be so afraid to try a turkey cooked by an inexperienced cook who doesn’t know what they are doing, much less know how to handle a turkey. Most of the menu is either baked or boiled, so ruining it might take some initiative, but I know people who have. I’ve seen burned turkey, raw turkey, frozen turkey, tanned turkey, exploded turkey, underdone turkey, dry turkey, tasteless turkey and inedible turkey. Turkey is one of those dishes which takes a lot of culinary know-how, and most people don’t have the street creds for getting the job done correctly. Do people really know how to handle a raw cranberry? And opening a can of pre-cooked cranberries is for wimps and pretenders. Let’s not talk about dressing. Most people just don’t cook enough to develop the experience necessary to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. So they buy all this stuff–flour, shortening, mince meat, sugar, spices, bread crumbs, croutons–and they think that just because mom used to cook all this stuff that they can do it too. Actually, I’m amused by all this cooking activity because I think we would all be served by more home cooking even if it affected the national restaurant economy. When one eats at home, one eats less, one eats less bad fats, one eats less starch, one eats less sugar, and one stays healthier. I know a lot of pigging out is going to occur this week across the country, but there is very little reason for it. By eating less, we stay healthier, we feel better, we have fewer aches and pains, climbing the stairs is easier as is just about any other task we perform on a daily basis. Our interaction with food is complex and chaotic, but the over-abundance of food, our horn of plenty, is almost as a much a curse as it is a blessing. Since the only thing we cannot resist is temptation itself, we fall into the trap of overeating and suffering because of it. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a holiday best served by humility and moderation, but eating less and walking more, by not focusing on how much turkey and dressing we might eat, by not focusing on how much dessert we show down our gullets. What if we didn’t make pigs of ourselves, ate sensibly, exercised more, and forgot about putting a ton of food on the table that we never needed in the first place? If you don’t put it on the table in the first place you will never know that you ever missed it. With so much of the world starving, it seems like a shame to gorge ourselves on food we don’t even need.

On blood pressure

Posted on by

My blood pressure was normal this morning, which is what I want it to be. My grandfather, a lovely, kind-hearted generous man, died of a stroke at the young age of 62 years. I can’t help but think that he had uncontrolled high blood pressure and that it was also uncontrolled. There were probably other factors that contributed to his death at a young age, but the blood pressure thing haunts me to this day. So when I was going through a courtesy screening process for high blood pressure at my church a few years ago, I took heed when the nurse told me I should get my high blood pressure checked out. I needed medication. I had inherited high blood pressure, and I needed to do something about it. Beside medication, I have changed my eating habits, lost some weight, and made exercise a daily part of my life. I don’t smoke, and although I occasionally have a few non-standard beverages, drinking is not a part of my life. I was pleased that this morning, in spite of driving in crappy traffic conditions on I35, my blood pressure was well within the normal range. This is encouraging. Our modern life style of over-commitment, jammed schedules, poor sleep habits, questionable eating habits and choices, and stress does not lend itself to having naturally normal blood pressure. The heart, lungs, veins, and arteries all work in tandem to keep us upright and moving in a consistent manner, but even the slightest problem can cause the blood pressure to go up which increases everyone’s chances of having some other vital system fail: kidneys, liver, brain. I suffered from headaches as a child, and today I am headache free unless the headache is a synecdoche for something or someone else—especially if it involves putting furniture together. Sometimes I would like to blame our fast-paced consumer society that puts a huge emphasis on buying and consuming to the detriment of all of considerations and factors. Black Friday, a real blood pressure buster, is looming on the horizon and will whip people into a lathered frenzy of hysterical consumers and blind irrational spending. At other times I’d like to blame our bizarre addiction to digital communication—email, texts, social networks, blogs, television, movie services, and eight other things yet to be imagined. Desire, to be liked, to want, to covet, to envy, drives a lot of things that make us have high blood pressure. Schedules, bookings, travel, meetings, deadlines don’t help either. I’m not sure that the instant communication networks to which millions subscribe really help anyone at all. We like hectic lives, shrouded in quiet desperation as we wait for the weekend or the next vacation. And, of course, we suffer and our collective blood pressure goes up, and frankly, I don’t see any relief in site.

On blood pressure

Posted on by

My blood pressure was normal this morning, which is what I want it to be. My grandfather, a lovely, kind-hearted generous man, died of a stroke at the young age of 62 years. I can’t help but think that he had uncontrolled high blood pressure and that it was also uncontrolled. There were probably other factors that contributed to his death at a young age, but the blood pressure thing haunts me to this day. So when I was going through a courtesy screening process for high blood pressure at my church a few years ago, I took heed when the nurse told me I should get my high blood pressure checked out. I needed medication. I had inherited high blood pressure, and I needed to do something about it. Beside medication, I have changed my eating habits, lost some weight, and made exercise a daily part of my life. I don’t smoke, and although I occasionally have a few non-standard beverages, drinking is not a part of my life. I was pleased that this morning, in spite of driving in crappy traffic conditions on I35, my blood pressure was well within the normal range. This is encouraging. Our modern life style of over-commitment, jammed schedules, poor sleep habits, questionable eating habits and choices, and stress does not lend itself to having naturally normal blood pressure. The heart, lungs, veins, and arteries all work in tandem to keep us upright and moving in a consistent manner, but even the slightest problem can cause the blood pressure to go up which increases everyone’s chances of having some other vital system fail: kidneys, liver, brain. I suffered from headaches as a child, and today I am headache free unless the headache is a synecdoche for something or someone else—especially if it involves putting furniture together. Sometimes I would like to blame our fast-paced consumer society that puts a huge emphasis on buying and consuming to the detriment of all of considerations and factors. Black Friday, a real blood pressure buster, is looming on the horizon and will whip people into a lathered frenzy of hysterical consumers and blind irrational spending. At other times I’d like to blame our bizarre addiction to digital communication—email, texts, social networks, blogs, television, movie services, and eight other things yet to be imagined. Desire, to be liked, to want, to covet, to envy, drives a lot of things that make us have high blood pressure. Schedules, bookings, travel, meetings, deadlines don’t help either. I’m not sure that the instant communication networks to which millions subscribe really help anyone at all. We like hectic lives, shrouded in quiet desperation as we wait for the weekend or the next vacation. And, of course, we suffer and our collective blood pressure goes up, and frankly, I don’t see any relief in site.

On buffets

Posted on by

Is the ubiquitous all-you-can-eat buffet a symbol for the demise of modern civilization? Buffets are as popular as ever in our society, and they show no sign of slowing down, disappearing, or changing. You have been there: you pay one price for your plate and drink, and you can eat until you either pass out from a diabetic coma, your stomach ruptures, or you throw up. Chinese buffets are the most fun, but I find all buffets to be both sinister and creepy as we serve ourselves out of aluminum bins. Buffets seem like a good idea, but they seldom, if ever, are. For most people the idea of the buffet, unlimited food for just one price, seems like a real good deal, but the buffet is just a sign of the times: in a land of plenty where many poor people go hungry, those who have ten dollars in their pocket can pig out to their heart’s content, eating until their stomachs protrude and good taste and manners have left by a rear door. Obesity is a serious problem in our country, and buffets do nothing but feed the problem. Having experienced several buffets I must say that the buffet actually works against a person’s self-interest. The actual amount of food that any person should eat in any given sitting should not really exceed the volume of one closed fist or one cup, eight ounces. Overeating then becomes a national pastime, and the results are ugly and unhealthy. Success has made us fat and sassy, and we all overeat all the time. Our waistlines show it. Now when I go to a buffet, I pick my favorite food and get one portion. I will later add a few fruits and vegetables to accompany whatever protein I might be eating that day. I eat that food and stop. There is nothing cost-effective about me going to a buffet because I don’t take seconds, don’t stuff myself, don’t exercise my gluttony ghost. I’m no saint, but lately I come to realize that a balanced diet combined with portion control is a blueprint for a healthier lifestyle even if I don’t get to eat a lot of sweets and desserts. Just because we have the food does not mean we should eat it. Stuffing ourselves to the point of blindness is, in the long term, unhealthy and detrimental. The buffet is symbolic of the paradox that industrial and agricultural success has brought to our nation and cultural. We have more than we can ever, or should ever, eat. As our waistlines expand, instead of thinking about why that is happening, we just buy bigger clothing, baggy shirts and stretchy waistbands. We lack self-control in the face of delicious luxurious food, and we are willing to sacrifice our collective health. Temptation lies at the heart of the buffet, and buffet owners know that the only thing we cannot collectively resist is temptation itself, ergo, buffets proliferate and are successful, and type-two diabetes becomes a bigger and bigger problem. There is nothing ethically wrong with the buffet, but it does bring out the worst in people who consume too much food, too much sugar, too much starch, too much fat. Buffets are everything in excess, and too much of a good thing, as they say, is a very bad thing even if we are trying to get the most for our dollar. Here the dollar is just as traitorous as Judas or Brutus.

On buffets

Posted on by

Is the ubiquitous all-you-can-eat buffet a symbol for the demise of modern civilization? Buffets are as popular as ever in our society, and they show no sign of slowing down, disappearing, or changing. You have been there: you pay one price for your plate and drink, and you can eat until you either pass out from a diabetic coma, your stomach ruptures, or you throw up. Chinese buffets are the most fun, but I find all buffets to be both sinister and creepy as we serve ourselves out of aluminum bins. Buffets seem like a good idea, but they seldom, if ever, are. For most people the idea of the buffet, unlimited food for just one price, seems like a real good deal, but the buffet is just a sign of the times: in a land of plenty where many poor people go hungry, those who have ten dollars in their pocket can pig out to their heart’s content, eating until their stomachs protrude and good taste and manners have left by a rear door. Obesity is a serious problem in our country, and buffets do nothing but feed the problem. Having experienced several buffets I must say that the buffet actually works against a person’s self-interest. The actual amount of food that any person should eat in any given sitting should not really exceed the volume of one closed fist or one cup, eight ounces. Overeating then becomes a national pastime, and the results are ugly and unhealthy. Success has made us fat and sassy, and we all overeat all the time. Our waistlines show it. Now when I go to a buffet, I pick my favorite food and get one portion. I will later add a few fruits and vegetables to accompany whatever protein I might be eating that day. I eat that food and stop. There is nothing cost-effective about me going to a buffet because I don’t take seconds, don’t stuff myself, don’t exercise my gluttony ghost. I’m no saint, but lately I come to realize that a balanced diet combined with portion control is a blueprint for a healthier lifestyle even if I don’t get to eat a lot of sweets and desserts. Just because we have the food does not mean we should eat it. Stuffing ourselves to the point of blindness is, in the long term, unhealthy and detrimental. The buffet is symbolic of the paradox that industrial and agricultural success has brought to our nation and cultural. We have more than we can ever, or should ever, eat. As our waistlines expand, instead of thinking about why that is happening, we just buy bigger clothing, baggy shirts and stretchy waistbands. We lack self-control in the face of delicious luxurious food, and we are willing to sacrifice our collective health. Temptation lies at the heart of the buffet, and buffet owners know that the only thing we cannot collectively resist is temptation itself, ergo, buffets proliferate and are successful, and type-two diabetes becomes a bigger and bigger problem. There is nothing ethically wrong with the buffet, but it does bring out the worst in people who consume too much food, too much sugar, too much starch, too much fat. Buffets are everything in excess, and too much of a good thing, as they say, is a very bad thing even if we are trying to get the most for our dollar. Here the dollar is just as traitorous as Judas or Brutus.

On gluttony

Posted on by

We are probably only kidding ourselves if we don’t think that we eat too much. I have come very close to writing this note on several occasions, but I have always stopped because for most people, not all, the decision to overeat is theirs. Living in a land of plenty, we have an opportunity at every meal to eat too much. The food is plentiful, nutritious, and tasty. Modern science has solved most of the issues surrounding safe food conservation, and between refrigeration and chemical food additives, food does not spoil before we eat it. The result of all this success and plenty are supermarkets, restaurants, and big box retailers that are loaded to the brim with lots of food. During the medieval period, food was less safe and less plentiful, and gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Staying trim was less an effort because there was less food and lots of work. Obesity was not common and most people did not have weight problems. Sugar was a very scarce commodity and uncommon in the diets of most normal people. Today, sugar is everywhere, and even the mayor of New York City is concerned about people buying 64 ounce soft drinks to suck on all day. I do not think it is the governments job to legislate eating habits, which does not work anyway. Most people suffer from gluttony because they are really quite unaware that they don’t need about half of the food they are eating at any given sitting. Most adults can probably get by with two small meals a day unless they are involved in heavy physical labor such as construction or farming. Sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen all day does not qualify as physical work. We all eat too much because it’s very pleasurable, it’s very plentiful, and we exercise no self-control. Eating turns into a nervous habit that we do for fun, not for nutrition. The result is obesity, and (no puns intended) it’s a growing problem. Ask yourself this: have you had to buy larger and larger clothes to contain your expanding girth? Have you supersized anything in the past month? The simple truth is that most people are eating about twice what they really need. Gluttony is almost an accidental byproduct of a society wallowing in its own success. Our economy is driven by the food industry which spends billions on advertising, product development, packaging, transportation, and labor, and millions of hard-working men and women depend on the food industry for their daily bread. It is very hard to tell people to eat less when eating is a status symbol of financial success. Other generations do us no favors by encouraging us to clean our plates or eat as much as we can. “If you don’t eat, you’re going to dry up and blow away!” The sad truth is that we can eat a whole lot, and if we do those things on a consistent basis we are going to be as big a blimp, victims of our own excess. Every person has the right to choose how much they don’t eat, but almost no one has the ability to recognize themselves as a glutton and put down their forks and push away from the table. The sad truth about gluttony is that we no longer see it as a sin, and since we exercise no self-control concern food and eating habits, we are slowly, but surely, killing ourselves.

On gluttony

Posted on by

We are probably only kidding ourselves if we don’t think that we eat too much. I have come very close to writing this note on several occasions, but I have always stopped because for most people, not all, the decision to overeat is theirs. Living in a land of plenty, we have an opportunity at every meal to eat too much. The food is plentiful, nutritious, and tasty. Modern science has solved most of the issues surrounding safe food conservation, and between refrigeration and chemical food additives, food does not spoil before we eat it. The result of all this success and plenty are supermarkets, restaurants, and big box retailers that are loaded to the brim with lots of food. During the medieval period, food was less safe and less plentiful, and gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Staying trim was less an effort because there was less food and lots of work. Obesity was not common and most people did not have weight problems. Sugar was a very scarce commodity and uncommon in the diets of most normal people. Today, sugar is everywhere, and even the mayor of New York City is concerned about people buying 64 ounce soft drinks to suck on all day. I do not think it is the governments job to legislate eating habits, which does not work anyway. Most people suffer from gluttony because they are really quite unaware that they don’t need about half of the food they are eating at any given sitting. Most adults can probably get by with two small meals a day unless they are involved in heavy physical labor such as construction or farming. Sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen all day does not qualify as physical work. We all eat too much because it’s very pleasurable, it’s very plentiful, and we exercise no self-control. Eating turns into a nervous habit that we do for fun, not for nutrition. The result is obesity, and (no puns intended) it’s a growing problem. Ask yourself this: have you had to buy larger and larger clothes to contain your expanding girth? Have you supersized anything in the past month? The simple truth is that most people are eating about twice what they really need. Gluttony is almost an accidental byproduct of a society wallowing in its own success. Our economy is driven by the food industry which spends billions on advertising, product development, packaging, transportation, and labor, and millions of hard-working men and women depend on the food industry for their daily bread. It is very hard to tell people to eat less when eating is a status symbol of financial success. Other generations do us no favors by encouraging us to clean our plates or eat as much as we can. “If you don’t eat, you’re going to dry up and blow away!” The sad truth is that we can eat a whole lot, and if we do those things on a consistent basis we are going to be as big a blimp, victims of our own excess. Every person has the right to choose how much they don’t eat, but almost no one has the ability to recognize themselves as a glutton and put down their forks and push away from the table. The sad truth about gluttony is that we no longer see it as a sin, and since we exercise no self-control concern food and eating habits, we are slowly, but surely, killing ourselves.