So in the news recently it came to light that Trijicon has been embossing bible verses within the serial numbers on gun scopes distributed to military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I can only shake my head. It’s easy for everyone in America to call bullshit when Islamic leaders profess their religion as being one of peace while at the same time their more zealous members strap bombs to their bodies and get on airplanes. But when you try and point out that Christianity is a bloody minded cult as well…folks are either confused or in rabid denial.
Bible verses on gun sights.
In a funny way, I find that worse than the muslim suicide bombers. These are gun sights being used to target people. And not just people...
A.
Single.
Person.
You don’t use a gun sight to take out a whole crowd at once. You use it to focus on a single person. A person. Not a deer or a bunny…our guys overseas are not out there to bring home the meat. Their targets are specifically human.
A shooter has time to see the face of his victim. They may have just heard a really good joke, or were just thinking about their family, and that final expression is what the shooter sees before ending his life.
It is part of war and no, it’s not pretty, but some assfucker at Trijicon wanted a product stamped with a bible verse to be part of that gruesome process!
What is really messed up are the folks who think this practice helps support our troops. Um…how? Only by attaching magical thinking and superstition to the presence of these verses on military equipment. How is this different from rubbing a rabbit’s foot, or tossing a penny in a well hoping for good fortune? This type of thinking is discouraged in the bible (look it up yourself)…but these folks think it is okay to treat the bible like its magic.
And with all this circular reasoning and hypocrisy…I’m supposed to have respect for religious people?
Not going to happen.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Getting Myself Under Control
Weight loss is a frequent New Year’s resolution. People joining gyms, and for a month of two, are pretty dedicated at the attempt.
Problem is, they’ve often shocked their system, and or are engaged in dieting behavior, and not lifestyle behavior.
What is the difference?
Dieting behavior is extreme. People don’t intend to diet forever…just until they get to where they want to be. And that is part of why diets utterly FAIL.
Dieting is not complementary to life. And it’s not obvious at first. A couple weeks go by…and you are sticking to the plan feeling pretty proud of yourself. Then it happens.
Life.
And by life, I mean something happens to jostle or upset the routine. Humans are not machines. We are alive, and as a result…life happens. Your friend has a birthday party (cake is not part of the diet plan), or your work schedule gets changed (now you have to pick a new workout time). And even if you don’t eat a bite of cake at the party, and you can re-schedule your gym workout without a hitch…something has still happened emotionally. A mild, almost unnoticeable sensation of aggravation or maybe annoyance because the Plan was threatened.
And guess what? Life is going to happen again. And it will wear your resolve away. Your car breaks down, and you miss a workout. Your boss brings in warm cinnamon rolls and it’s been a crap day. Or you start emotionally compensating to make up for how you’ve been depriving yourself…you had your workout…you’ve earned a hamburger!
And without meaning to, you’ve slowly slid off the wagon. Diet Fail. You have to try again, only now you are discouraged by the failure, so guess what’s probably going to happen again?
A change in Lifestyle behavior is a better goal. Successful weight loss, weight that comes off and stays off, does not happen quickly.
The first question than must be answered is: How “in shape” am I satisfied with being?
That really is an important question. Because what you have to accept, is the lifestyle that goes along with your notion of the “ideal” body might not be compatible with your own life. If you want to look like an Olympic athlete, you have to dedicate yourself to the athletic lifestyle. There’s no way around that, and there are only so many hours in the day.
The first level of “in shape” you should consider as a goal, is one your doctor is less worried about. This means losing enough weight to get your blood pressure into the normal zone. Lifestyle goals are reasonable goals. This is not about a tv show where you lose 50 pounds in 3 months. If you were getting paid to get in shape, yeah fast weight loss would be a reasonable goal, but most of us can’t afford to quit our jobs for three months for some kind of Booty Boot Camp, we have to make do with what time we have.
A lifestyle change does not have to happen quickly. That is the good thing about it. You don’t start your lifestyle on Monday (that’s a diet mentality). It's also not about becoming "thin". Define thin. If you are pointing at a picture that is not of you, you are already making an error. Chances are, whoever you are pointing at has a completely different body type. And if you picked a professional photo...that image has been airbrushed and altered more than you probably realize. It is not real. This is about a real body, to go with your real life.
I started with getting my sugar under control. This doesn’t mean sugar never passes my lips, it means I’m aware of the sugar passing my lips, as well as what type of sugar it is. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), is off the menu for me. I find that foods containing it do less to make me feel full, so I keep eating them.
I’d also decided to try and steer clear of overly processed foods in general. While the makers of HFCS and other modern food products like to loudly proclaim their products do not contribute to obesity, the fact is people were thinner before highly processed foods hit the market.
So I try to eat plenty of real foods. If I can’t pronounce it, why should I eat it? But that actually increases my awareness of what I eat, because frankly the food tastes fuller (and better). Taste is part of how we start to feel full. If we eat something with very little flavor, we end up eating a lot more of it. My food tastes good, and I KNOW I just put a pat of real butter on there...so I watch how much of it I eat.
A real food goal for me was a challenge that took a long time to start being successful at. Mostly because when I started that goal, I did not yet have a working stove or oven. I ate out of the microwave. I do have a working range now, but since it’s usually just me, I have little interest in spending more than 20 minutes preparing a meal.
Next was getting control of how MUCH I ate. This meant re-training my eating habits. I stopped eating with the tv on for the time it took to re-train (I do eat with it on now, but my attention is on my food now). The American meal training is thus “As fast and as much as possible, in the time you have”, which is not what you want. The way I eat now involves eating slowly enough to taste my food. Part of why having full flavored food is important…you will notice the flavor of your low-fat diet meal is not up to par if you are still eating that crap. Eating slowly means my body has time to get full and tell me it’s full. And full means satisfied…not barely able to move.
Next came the calorie calculator. I use this one. I’m not the type of person who has any interest in counting every damn calorie (that’s a dieting behavior). But having an idea of how many calories I eat to maintain my current weight…and trying to eat a couple hundred calories below it each day…that is fairly reasonable.
It became pretty clear at this point that increasing my activity level was required. The calorie calculator I’d picked wouldn’t go below a certain number of recommended calories per day, but my body was compensating by dropping my metabolism down a hole and making me feel like crap. Sure, it would mean I had to eat more, but more physical activity meant raising my metabolism. Notice, I don’t call it “exercise”. Exercise means different things to different people. To me it sounds like an arduous punishment. That’s not something I want in my lifestyle. My main physical activity is something I enjoy.
Walking. I like walking. I just happen to do it faster and more often than I used to. I also make an effort to do a lot more of it on the treadmill while I watch something on tv.
Now…it probably doesn’t sound like I’m doing all that much. But I also walk during my breaks at work, I take the stairs whenever and wherever I can, and I park far from the door when I go somewhere. I make physical activity happen as part of my life.
Here is the result. I started working on these changes back in April of 09 and continued (with gradual increases in speed and duration of walking) up to the middle of October 09. During that time I went from weighing 157 pounds to weighing 140.
I then went on vacation, and really have not been on the treadmill regularly…except just enough to keep me at 140 (weight maintenance is easy compared to losing it). It is now time to increase my physical activity again to continue what I’d started. I’d met the goal, my blood pressure is well down and my doctor is happy.
So now I’m setting a teeny goal. The reason its teeny…is because it’s a weight loss goal which is a dieting behavior. But small is doable. I’m going to drop to 135 and see if I can maintain that (which I’m sure I probably can). What is NOT a dieting behavior...I'm not setting a strong time limit on myself to get down to 135. Let's say...before spring-ish. Here is the thing...even if I don't reach my goal, I figure so long as my weight doesn't go up, I'm doing good.
A bathroom scale is obviously mandatory. I figure that was a big contributor to my original weight gain in the first place, that and living out of the microwave and eating lot's of restaurant food....but the biggie was that scale. I did not KNOW I was gaining in the first place, so it was able to get out of control.
Notice what is critically different about a lifestyle plan yet? There are no eating restrictions that could result in negative emotions, or poor self-image. I do not miss fat or sugar, because I eat fats and sugars. I make sure to eat more good fats, and I stick to sweet things made with cane sugar when I do eat them.
So far...it works!
Problem is, they’ve often shocked their system, and or are engaged in dieting behavior, and not lifestyle behavior.
What is the difference?
Dieting behavior is extreme. People don’t intend to diet forever…just until they get to where they want to be. And that is part of why diets utterly FAIL.
Dieting is not complementary to life. And it’s not obvious at first. A couple weeks go by…and you are sticking to the plan feeling pretty proud of yourself. Then it happens.
Life.
And by life, I mean something happens to jostle or upset the routine. Humans are not machines. We are alive, and as a result…life happens. Your friend has a birthday party (cake is not part of the diet plan), or your work schedule gets changed (now you have to pick a new workout time). And even if you don’t eat a bite of cake at the party, and you can re-schedule your gym workout without a hitch…something has still happened emotionally. A mild, almost unnoticeable sensation of aggravation or maybe annoyance because the Plan was threatened.
And guess what? Life is going to happen again. And it will wear your resolve away. Your car breaks down, and you miss a workout. Your boss brings in warm cinnamon rolls and it’s been a crap day. Or you start emotionally compensating to make up for how you’ve been depriving yourself…you had your workout…you’ve earned a hamburger!
And without meaning to, you’ve slowly slid off the wagon. Diet Fail. You have to try again, only now you are discouraged by the failure, so guess what’s probably going to happen again?
A change in Lifestyle behavior is a better goal. Successful weight loss, weight that comes off and stays off, does not happen quickly.
The first question than must be answered is: How “in shape” am I satisfied with being?
That really is an important question. Because what you have to accept, is the lifestyle that goes along with your notion of the “ideal” body might not be compatible with your own life. If you want to look like an Olympic athlete, you have to dedicate yourself to the athletic lifestyle. There’s no way around that, and there are only so many hours in the day.
The first level of “in shape” you should consider as a goal, is one your doctor is less worried about. This means losing enough weight to get your blood pressure into the normal zone. Lifestyle goals are reasonable goals. This is not about a tv show where you lose 50 pounds in 3 months. If you were getting paid to get in shape, yeah fast weight loss would be a reasonable goal, but most of us can’t afford to quit our jobs for three months for some kind of Booty Boot Camp, we have to make do with what time we have.
A lifestyle change does not have to happen quickly. That is the good thing about it. You don’t start your lifestyle on Monday (that’s a diet mentality). It's also not about becoming "thin". Define thin. If you are pointing at a picture that is not of you, you are already making an error. Chances are, whoever you are pointing at has a completely different body type. And if you picked a professional photo...that image has been airbrushed and altered more than you probably realize. It is not real. This is about a real body, to go with your real life.
I started with getting my sugar under control. This doesn’t mean sugar never passes my lips, it means I’m aware of the sugar passing my lips, as well as what type of sugar it is. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), is off the menu for me. I find that foods containing it do less to make me feel full, so I keep eating them.
I’d also decided to try and steer clear of overly processed foods in general. While the makers of HFCS and other modern food products like to loudly proclaim their products do not contribute to obesity, the fact is people were thinner before highly processed foods hit the market.
So I try to eat plenty of real foods. If I can’t pronounce it, why should I eat it? But that actually increases my awareness of what I eat, because frankly the food tastes fuller (and better). Taste is part of how we start to feel full. If we eat something with very little flavor, we end up eating a lot more of it. My food tastes good, and I KNOW I just put a pat of real butter on there...so I watch how much of it I eat.
A real food goal for me was a challenge that took a long time to start being successful at. Mostly because when I started that goal, I did not yet have a working stove or oven. I ate out of the microwave. I do have a working range now, but since it’s usually just me, I have little interest in spending more than 20 minutes preparing a meal.
Next was getting control of how MUCH I ate. This meant re-training my eating habits. I stopped eating with the tv on for the time it took to re-train (I do eat with it on now, but my attention is on my food now). The American meal training is thus “As fast and as much as possible, in the time you have”, which is not what you want. The way I eat now involves eating slowly enough to taste my food. Part of why having full flavored food is important…you will notice the flavor of your low-fat diet meal is not up to par if you are still eating that crap. Eating slowly means my body has time to get full and tell me it’s full. And full means satisfied…not barely able to move.
Next came the calorie calculator. I use this one. I’m not the type of person who has any interest in counting every damn calorie (that’s a dieting behavior). But having an idea of how many calories I eat to maintain my current weight…and trying to eat a couple hundred calories below it each day…that is fairly reasonable.
It became pretty clear at this point that increasing my activity level was required. The calorie calculator I’d picked wouldn’t go below a certain number of recommended calories per day, but my body was compensating by dropping my metabolism down a hole and making me feel like crap. Sure, it would mean I had to eat more, but more physical activity meant raising my metabolism. Notice, I don’t call it “exercise”. Exercise means different things to different people. To me it sounds like an arduous punishment. That’s not something I want in my lifestyle. My main physical activity is something I enjoy.
Walking. I like walking. I just happen to do it faster and more often than I used to. I also make an effort to do a lot more of it on the treadmill while I watch something on tv.
Now…it probably doesn’t sound like I’m doing all that much. But I also walk during my breaks at work, I take the stairs whenever and wherever I can, and I park far from the door when I go somewhere. I make physical activity happen as part of my life.
Here is the result. I started working on these changes back in April of 09 and continued (with gradual increases in speed and duration of walking) up to the middle of October 09. During that time I went from weighing 157 pounds to weighing 140.
I then went on vacation, and really have not been on the treadmill regularly…except just enough to keep me at 140 (weight maintenance is easy compared to losing it). It is now time to increase my physical activity again to continue what I’d started. I’d met the goal, my blood pressure is well down and my doctor is happy.
So now I’m setting a teeny goal. The reason its teeny…is because it’s a weight loss goal which is a dieting behavior. But small is doable. I’m going to drop to 135 and see if I can maintain that (which I’m sure I probably can). What is NOT a dieting behavior...I'm not setting a strong time limit on myself to get down to 135. Let's say...before spring-ish. Here is the thing...even if I don't reach my goal, I figure so long as my weight doesn't go up, I'm doing good.
A bathroom scale is obviously mandatory. I figure that was a big contributor to my original weight gain in the first place, that and living out of the microwave and eating lot's of restaurant food....but the biggie was that scale. I did not KNOW I was gaining in the first place, so it was able to get out of control.
Notice what is critically different about a lifestyle plan yet? There are no eating restrictions that could result in negative emotions, or poor self-image. I do not miss fat or sugar, because I eat fats and sugars. I make sure to eat more good fats, and I stick to sweet things made with cane sugar when I do eat them.
So far...it works!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Happy New Year!
Well, it was a busy season. December 23rd saw me in the ER for abdominal pains. I was useless for the five days following. No idea as to the cause.
New Year’s was nice and quiet. Played some dominoes and finally started eating some holiday foods (had been eating “carefully” since the ER trip).
I’m not sure what it is about New Year’s, for me it’s always the forgotten holiday every year. I spend two months planning and getting ready for Christmas…and then after that holiday is over, someone asks me what my plans are for New Year’s and I’m like: “Oh! New Year’s! Umm…”
Every damn year I forget New Year’s! So often, I wind up really not doing anything because I forget about it until a day or two before. And it is such an intensely social holiday, I need all the time after Christmas to emotionally prepare myself for the partying. So if I forget (which I always do) until too late, by that time I REALLY have no desire to do the New Year’s thing at all so I do something quiet instead.
And as other peace-lovers know, doing something quiet for New Year’s is not looked on favorably by our more social family members and friends. Admit to someone you spent that evening at home enjoying a good book while watching the ball drop in Times Square on tv, and folks wonder what is wrong with you.
I do have some good news though, I bought a camera. Never been much into taking pictures, because I figured I wasn’t really that good at it. But then, I don’t think I’ve really put any more effort into the activity beyond point-and-shoot…and randomly guessing whether or not I need to use a flash (often taking the same pic with, and without flash), and somehow hoping that my photos are going to turn out good. If anyone reading this really is into photography, you can likely guess how often my pictures have disappointed me. Especially since I’ve always been super frugal about my shots, and never adjust anything on the camera other than the auto-zoom feature.
Now I’m going to take a real stab at TAKING good pictures, instead of hoping my pictures wind up looking good (I’m going to figure out what all those other buttons really do!). The reason this is good news of course is that this blog is likely to get some pictures on it.
Fingers Crossed!
New Year’s was nice and quiet. Played some dominoes and finally started eating some holiday foods (had been eating “carefully” since the ER trip).
I’m not sure what it is about New Year’s, for me it’s always the forgotten holiday every year. I spend two months planning and getting ready for Christmas…and then after that holiday is over, someone asks me what my plans are for New Year’s and I’m like: “Oh! New Year’s! Umm…”
Every damn year I forget New Year’s! So often, I wind up really not doing anything because I forget about it until a day or two before. And it is such an intensely social holiday, I need all the time after Christmas to emotionally prepare myself for the partying. So if I forget (which I always do) until too late, by that time I REALLY have no desire to do the New Year’s thing at all so I do something quiet instead.
And as other peace-lovers know, doing something quiet for New Year’s is not looked on favorably by our more social family members and friends. Admit to someone you spent that evening at home enjoying a good book while watching the ball drop in Times Square on tv, and folks wonder what is wrong with you.
I do have some good news though, I bought a camera. Never been much into taking pictures, because I figured I wasn’t really that good at it. But then, I don’t think I’ve really put any more effort into the activity beyond point-and-shoot…and randomly guessing whether or not I need to use a flash (often taking the same pic with, and without flash), and somehow hoping that my photos are going to turn out good. If anyone reading this really is into photography, you can likely guess how often my pictures have disappointed me. Especially since I’ve always been super frugal about my shots, and never adjust anything on the camera other than the auto-zoom feature.
Now I’m going to take a real stab at TAKING good pictures, instead of hoping my pictures wind up looking good (I’m going to figure out what all those other buttons really do!). The reason this is good news of course is that this blog is likely to get some pictures on it.
Fingers Crossed!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)