Monthly Archives: October 2009

Just the Fats (sic)

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When I was in High School I had the pleasure to take a course in journalism.

It was taught by a woman whose name escapes me. She was quite a character. Complete with cat’s eye horn rim glasses, Ann Lander’s lacquer encrusted upswept hairdo, and specks of white “stuff” that built up in the corners of her mouth when she spoke; all 5 feet of her loved lording it over the class driving home the who, what, when ,where, why and how of journalism.

She loved to name drop too. She’d tell long stories peppered with names of folks, I assume, she felt were important in the field. Unfortunately, she hung out in a very small circle so the glitterati she spoke of were just a bunch of small town newspaper people, 99% of whom none of the 16 year olds in the class had ever heard of.

She loved journalism, though. And I guess that made her somewhat of a good teacher. The kind of journalism she taught doesn’t exist any more. She taught the difference between news and human interest and press releases; the lines of which simply don’t exist now.

I thought of her this morning when I was having my coffee and the lead story on the local morning news was about a funeral in Florida. Last time I checked Hawaii and Florida are two different places. We aren’t even Florida adjacent. Yet this was presented to me as the most important local news story of my morning. It was quickly followed by the box office receipts for the weekend. Again: not in Hollywood here folks.

I wondered if this woman was still alive and what she thought about the state of media in America.

One of the most amusing things about her was the way she spoke. For all the proper things about her, some areas of her speech just seemed uncharacteristic and out of place. Here she was driving home the point day after day how journalism and news reporting is all about the facts, and yet she couldn’t even pronounce the word.

“Just the fats.” she would say.

“It’s all about the fats.”

“Fat’s are fat’s”

You may often hear me screaming that at the TV screen when I am trapped by marathon coverage of a non-story. Balloon boy ring a bell?

People who don’t know me must be awfully puzzled by the old man yelling “Just give me fats!” at Wolf Blitzer.

So thanks to her, whatever her name was. I’m sure it will come to me but right now her image is burned in my memory far more than her name is. She taught me many things. Chief among which is the ability to write a pretty decent lead paragraph when I have to, and that rock hard big hair is a look best left to girls at the Grand Old Opry.

The Numbers Game

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I know I am not the only one who has a love/hate relationship with the gadgets in our lives. The ones I hate most are the ones that I have accumulated most recently; the ones associated with weight loss and fitness.

The one most of us learn to hate first is the scale. No one makes a good one. They are inaccurate at best and hugely unreliable. Yet if you have ever had any type of weight issue at all, you probably have been addicted to one at some point. We know the evil shortcomings of this gadget, yet we give it so much power over us. What can make a sunny day turn immediately to crap? A bad reading on the scale of course!

Sometimes I think using Medifast just accentuates the crazed relationship between human and scale. You tend to lose weight so quickly on Medifast that weighing yourself can become your favorite spectator sport. Dropping 5 pounds over night can do that to you.

But woe unto you the day the scale doesn’t tell you what you want to see. You have been on track and are losing a pound a day….but suddenly it’s only half a pound! GASP! Never mind you are still losing and never mind that you are on plan…all you know is your random target wasn’t met and life has turned sad and grey.

Truth is you’d be one happy camper if you didn’t give that stupid piece of equipment so much power.

It gets even worse if you deviate even a little from Medifast. I’ve mentioned it before; something I call “the Medifast bounce”. That bounce being the 5-10 pounds you seem to put on over night the minute you eat more than the amount of carbs suggested by Medifast (<100 grams a day). I can’t be the only one this happens to. Logically you know that it is not 5-10 pounds of fat but that really offers no solace when you see the scale go up. But the scale draws you in once again as that phantom weight melts off the minute you stick to the program again.

I now have a similar relationship with my MIO watch. This baby is my exercise secret weapon. It monitors my heart rate and in doing so calculates my caloric burn for any activity. What a joy it can be, especially when you feel you might have had a bad workout. It can be a wonderful pat on the back to know even the lousy workout you just had burned 600 plus calories,

But MIO can also be incredibly frustrating and counter productive. It is far from being 100% accurate and as such can really mess with your numbers crunching. All too often it cannot get a reading on your heart rate. There is no way to discard the bad reading and take another one. So if you just swam 10 laps and attempt to get a reading and it is wrong or won’t take one at all you are screwed. Well of course you aren’t really. You swam those laps no matter what MIO says. But oh boy does that take the wind out of your sails.

I once thought about getting a BodyBugg or one of its iterations. You wear this gizmo 24/7 and it measures your metabolic rate throughout the scope of your daily activities. I can’t believe I actually thought that would be a good idea! I can only imagine how neurotic I’d become with that kind of information at my fingertips. That would just be far too many standards to live up to.

And for Pete’s sake don’t get me started on body fat monitors, BMI charts, target heart rate calculators, and blood pressure monitors!!!

I realize we don’t have too much of a choice. We have to be able to gauge our successes somehow in real time so these numbers and measurers are the most direct way to do that. I’m just saying, I could live without the agita.

The Other “F” Word

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I had quite an interesting week, last week. Well more crappy than interesting, really.

I ate more junk last week than I have since the last few weeks of 2008.

As I said in my last entry, I was just feeling a lot of “I just don’t care”. Well of course I cared, but still couldn’t find the gumption to stop myself. Lots of junk was consumed and drank.

Maybe it is what I needed? Maybe it is the kind of episode that we all need once in a while? I dunno. But just like the end of 2008 when I made the decision to relax my discipline for the holidays, I actually got tired of NOT being disciplined.

After consuming what is probably a months worth of calories over the course of only a few days, I just wasn’t enjoying it any more. What helped there was the sudden awareness of why they call junk food, junk food. It is called such because there is no nutrition in it. It simply has calories, but insofar as actually feeding your body: zilch.

Maybe I am just rationalizing my binging, but I really feel it has taught me a great lesson.

I feel great after I eat things like my favorite: apple and hummus. Or yogurt or oatmeal. Real food makes a real difference in how I feel. It FEELS healthy to eat whole, clean foods. When I eat junk, it may taste great but it generally stops there. The only thing I feel after eating junk is the need to eat more junk. My body is craving nutrition and that bag of FUNYONS isn’t cutting it.

Ah, but there. I said it. The other “f” word. FUNYONS. My crispy yellow mistress: Funyons. You are the epitome of empty calories and yet I am so strangely drawn to you. Crispy rings of salty oniony goodness. Right up there in the pantheon of salty junk that still calls my name: Fritos, Cheetos, Pringles, Funyons. You have fed my cravings but not my body. I scarfed a bag of you but for now my desire has been sated. But being a human and a serial overeater, I know more junky binges will be in my future I just hope and pray that vigilance and common sense will continue to limit their longevity.

The good news is I did manage to meet my workout goals so far this week. There is no way I could have exercised enough to counteract all of the calories I was consuming, but at least I just didn’t sit on the couch and do nothing.

I did my Pilates routine as planned on Friday and happily did find the discipline to be down in that pool every morning of the 3 day weekend and I swam like mad.

In fact, I had 3 personal bests this weekend as my swimming sessions were all over 1 hour. One hour! I frakkin swam for an hour each day and felt great doing it. I certainly had the fuel to do it!  The funny part was it really was unintentional on my part.

While I am swimming I mentally count the laps. I usually do 56. Well I lost count on Saturday I suppose and just kept swimming. It was tough, but I just kept going until I reached 56 in my head but instead of the 53 minutes it usually takes me, my watch read over an hour. And somehow I managed to do the same for the next 2 days after that.

It may not sound like much adding the extra 7 minutes, but for me it is huge.

Amazingly those 3 swimming sessions coupled with the Pilates burned about 2500 calories. Again, only a small dent in my binge but way better than nothing.

I’ll weigh myself on Sunday because I really don’t want to face the damage right now.

I’m continuing my workouts and I’m eating much more sensibly and if I can even be just a little more on track consistently as the holidays approach I will be one happy camper.