Refuse To Regain

794

By Barbara Berkeley

I must admit to sleeping poorly on Saturday night. Earlier in the day, I had dragged Don along to the Holden Arboretum where I was to pick up the registration materials for my first 5K. The informational package didn’t amount to much. A trail map, a T-shirt, a rectangle of white paper with a number and four safety pins. On Sunday morning, I was to become number 794.

I was fearful about the course. Up until now, my running had been confined to flat, black-top roads. Worse, I avoided all hills and often tended to pick a downhill stretch for my final mile. The next day’s race was to be run on dirt and gravel trails and might have uphill sections. Don and I tried in vain to follow the meandering course map but we were soon hopelessly lost. The arboretum trails crisscrossed between bogs, lakes and forests. Try as we might, we could not figure out where the race would be run. One thing was obvious. The terrain rose and fell. Some of the race would have to go uphill.

On Sunday morning I awoke a little later than I would have liked. It seemed like I’d been running all night. I had slept in short bursts, a series of sprints, and then had overslept the alarm. I ran around the house trying to make last minute decisions. Should I carry my cell phone? (An extra few ounces). Should I wear my headphones? (Better acoustics than ear buds, but heavy and a bit geeky looking). As Don and I drove to the arboretum I started to feel seriously nervous. So silly, I thought. If I can’t do it I can just stop and walk. But I found that I was frightened of other things. Really dumb things like not knowing how to check in, not being sure how to line up to start the race, not knowing whether my number went in front or in back.

Soon we were in the crowded parking lot and one of my questions was quickly answered. The number went in the front. Clumsily, I attached the 794 to my shirt.

Several hundred people were milling around. I was comforted by the fact that the serious runners were mixed with an equal number of people who seemed to be walkers. The runners were already jogging all around the starting area and were wearing mini-shorts and sleeveless shirts. The walkers were in long casual shorts and T-shirts. Everyone seemed very friendly but kind of serious. It was chilly. That wasn’t the only reason I was shivering.

Then, from over a small hill, I saw a familiar figure. Don’s junior partner, Greg, was strolling toward us. I smiled and relaxed for the first time. Greg is a serious runner so I hadn’t thought he’d be doing a 5K. Here was the perfect person to pepper with my dumb questions. Where did the run start? Did everyone start together? Were there separate groups? How would they figure out our times? I did not ask Greg if the course was hilly. It was too late for that now. I would find out soon enough.

Soon we saw all the participants heading toward the starting line. I had not stretched or even walked more than a few steps since leaving our car. As I thought about this and wondered if I should jog in place, a shrill bell sounded. This was it! I was completely unprepared. Everyone around me took off . My iPod wasn’t turned on and my headphones were still bouncing around my neck… I found myself drawn along at a much faster speed than I would normally run.

Around the first turn we went and immediately my fears were realized. A hill lay ahead. Up I went. My lungs burned and we were no more than a few tenths of a mile into the race. I fixed my eyes on a couple who were running together about 20 feet ahead of me. They seemed to be holding an easy pace and I determined to stay with them. We were soon descending through a rocky stretch which gave me time to catch my breath. It was exhilarating to imagine that I was actually running in a group. I tried to forget the fact that I was already hurting. My goal was not to walk. I could do it. The music that had accompanied me for the past nine weeks seemed to sparkle in these new surroundings. Caribbean soca, Rick James, disco. I realized I was smiling at my own discomfort.

We ran and ran for what seemed like an endless time. I tried to imagine where I would be at this point on my runs near home. Probably about mile two, I thought. I was probably headed into the home stretch. Several long minutes later, we rounded a curve and I saw a woman holding a large oaktag sign. Mile One! Another lady clicked something in her hand and shouted something at me. My time. Of course, I couldn’t hear her because I was listening to Smooth Criminal.

It was just the very start of mile two and I was feeling spent. My breathing was ragged from the hill climbing and my legs felt wobbly from the uneven surface. I tried to focus hard on my goal. No walking. Just then I started to notice something. The pack I had been running with had thinned. The fast runners were by now far ahead and the slow ones were way behind. I was running in a loose group of about 10 people and suddenly I realized that I was gaining on a number of them. A woman who I had been trailing for some minutes pulled up, put her hands on her hips and began to walk. I passed her. I also passed the couple who had been pacing me earlier. They too were walking. I saw a long downhill ahead and I tried to make the most of it. Running downhill had become easy for me during my practices. Soon I was running just behind a dark-haired woman of about 30. As we came out onto the flat, we approached the mile two marker. My goal had changed. I was going to try to go the final mile at the same pace as the woman with the black hair.

The final mile seemed endless. I had discovered during my training runs that knowing the end of the run was coming made it much harder to continue. Now I found myself checking my watch and looking for the finish line around every turn. I knew that the course ended with a short stretch on the road, but the road never appeared. At one point, it seemed that we were about to turn onto the asphalt, but we were directed to go the other way and sent on a long loop around a pond. That pond was a killer. The only time I’d ever felt my heart beating like that was the time my doctor sent me for a stress test. I decided to slow down and try to save something for the final sprint but I was already going so slowly that any less speed would have meant walking. I kind of hopped from foot to foot jogging blindly forward while sweat ran into my eyes.

But wait. The black-haired woman was walking! I lurched forward and passed her!! And just as I did, I saw the road ahead. The asphalt felt familiar and welcoming and a long downward slope headed toward the finish. I was so happy that I didn’t even care that the black-haired woman had started running again and sprinted past me a few yards from the shute. Falling through the finish, I pulled up gasping. Hands ripped off the bottom of my number, the part that would be kept to tally results. I couldn’t believe it! Just two months ago I could barely run for 60 seconds. I had wanted to be a runner and now…well, I kind of was.

Greg and Don met me at the finish line. We talked about the things runners discuss: the course, the pace. Stuff like that. Greg showed us the fancy watch he has that keeps track of his heart rate and times his runs. (He did the whole course in 22 minutes). Then there were the simple rewards for the runners: bananas, oranges, nuts, M&Ms and various drinks. We watched a few more people fall through the finish line and soon it was time to head home. Just like that. The results of the race wouldn’t be out for a day or so. And what would you do with them anyway? Just try to get better and faster according to Greg.

Still, it was beyond thrilling to pull up the race results tonight and find out that I had come in second in my age group. I had run the course in 32 minutes, which was about 5 minutes faster than my training times. That was progress! And something to build on.

And after we left the arboretum on Sunday, Don wondered whether we could stop at the New Balance store. We did and he bought a pair of running shoes. Tomorrow morning we’re going out at 6:30 am. He’s ready to move from couch to 5 K and I’m just the runner to show him how.

Fighting "Nature"

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I have a compulsive, neurotic, massive Golden Retriever named Jake. Jake is 12 years old, arthritic, almost completely gray, going deaf, and he follows me everywhere, especially when he thinks I’m going to the kitchen for food. Jake lays in every doorway I need to walk through and bolts up and down every step I need to go up or down. I’ve learned to pause and let him pass and to step over him with giant steps, lest he rear his head and trip me up.

This is Jake sleeping squeezed between my bed, nightstand and desk chair after a thunderstorm a few nights ago. He assumes, as he has since he was a pup, that by sleeping as close as he can to me, he will be safe.

They say the things we find most annoying or irritating about other people are the things we find most annoying about ourselves, only we either don’t see those things in ourselves, or if we do, we don’t think we’re “as bad.”

The older Jake gets, the more Jake personifies many of the things I find annoying about myself, particularly as it pertains to my weight issues. I’m often compulsive, neurotic, afraid of “storms,” and move too quickly, both metaphorically and literally. I sometimes form an opinion too quickly after studying some new health research, or hop on the latest exercise bandwagon, or dismiss differing opinions about weight maintenance without exploring their merits (in other words, I’m Miss Know-It-All).

As I live each day perched precariously on the maintenance high wire, I wonder if I’ll ever develop a balanced, almost non-thinking approach to food and exercise. Will my food and exercise planning become second nature or even natural?

Some days I feel like I’m trying to turn a frog into a prince or water into wine. My “nature” is to eat whatever and move whenever. Even as I type this, I’m debating whether to go to the gym or just stay home and write. I know I’ll eventually convince myself to go to the gym, that my writing will be here when I get back, but why does it so often have to be such a thought-filled process?

I want to be like my petunias, cosmos, straw flowers, clematis and lilies. They   were pounded by three inches of rain last week and yet when the sun came out, they dried off, perked up and even multiplied. They didn’t think about it, plan it, convince themselves it was best. They just kept on doing what nature told them to do.

But flowers (nor to any great extent, Jake) aren’t “blessed” with consciousness. Their only choice is to grow to the best of their biological ability based on environmental impacts. My “nature” can be molded because I have the choice to learn and grow or to not learn and not grow. I can eat willy-nilly and weigh 300 pounds again or I can plan and make good choices and go to the gym and remain the same weight as I am now. You’d think I’d want to stay the same, but to be honest, I often hear the phrase, “What’s an extra five pounds?” whispered in my head. I think, ‘Oh, what’s one chocolate chip cookie?’ or ‘I’ll be good the rest of the week if I eat this baked potato loaded with butter and sour cream’ or ‘I’ll hit the gym really hard tomorrow.’

Tomorrow, rest of the week, just one….all phrases that are part of my “nature,” part of my consciousness, part of what I face day in and day out as I maintain my weight. Just like Jake, who finds comfort in being close to me, I want to find comfort in my own ability to find a balance so that I stop passing over so often into the compulsive and worried side of maintenance.

Special Request: Send Us Your Favorite Internet Support Sites

Hi to all! Hope you are enjoying a happy, healthy start to summer.

I just got a request to appear on our NBC affiliate in Cleveland in order to discuss the topic of support sites for weight loss and maintenance on the web. Since I’d like to give the best information to viewers, and since you are all internet experts, would you be willing to share a few of your favorite sites? Your responses can include general informational sites, personal blogs, exercise and fitness sites, calorie management sites, etc... Please let me know which ones you particularly like, what’s special about each and should give a short description of what the site offers. Email me at refusetoregain@gmail.com or post a comment. I’ll spread the word.

Barbara

America’s Lifestyle Report Card

By Barbara Berkeley

Second only to the current turmoil in Iran, the state of American healthcare has assumed center stage in our national consciousness…as well it should. Our system is clearly in need of major overhaul. While most European countries spend around 10% of GDP to provide universal health care, we spend 17%, have 16 million citizens uninsured, and are facing escalating costs. These figures are unsustainable. The inefficiencies and failures of our system are multifactorial and will require changes in many different areas. While much of the talk focuses on digitizing medical records, developing a government-backed insurance alternative and creating more efficiency in care, I am particularly interested in the least-discussed cost-saver: the creation of a population that values and practices wellness.

President Obama has promised to bring a new focus on prevention to his health care agenda. It is plainly obvious that preventing diseases before they begin has the potential to be the greatest cost-saver of all. It also gets to the very core of what health care should be: a system that both treats disease and encourages its avoidance. But there is a problem. Americans do not seem to respond to calls for wellness. Lectures, public service messages, exhortations of all types don’t make much of a dent. What do we respond to? Well, we are certainly influenced by the pleasure-seeking messages so carefully crafted by Madison Avenue. Perhaps what we need is a really good ad exec who wants to put together a great wellness campaign.

We certainly talk a lot about getting healthy. We sure have a lot of gyms, fitness facilities, storefront weight loss clinics, yoga tapes, products labeled with little hearts and low fat proclamations. This glut of health equipment and talk reminds me of the old question my father used to ask about our family’s soap consumption. “Boy, we used a lot this month,” he’d say. “Does that mean we’re very clean or very dirty?” Having a world full of fitness equipment doesn’t necessarily mean we’re fit. It more likely means we have a real problem.

This week’s Time magazine is the “Health Issue” and it is subtitled, “It’s All About Prevention.” Here’s how Time introduces the topic.

“One way to cure illness is with pills and procedures. Another is not to get sick in the first place. The great thing about the latter: it’s cheaper, easier, and more likely to save your life.” (italics mine)

Easier? Certainly not in my experience! Changing behaviors and encouraging people to be healthy is nearly impossible. Believe me, after years of working one on one with people, I can tell you that it’s a Sisyphisean task. (You remember Sisyphus. He was the guy who was doomed by the Greek gods to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to have it fall back down once it reached the top.)

Time devotes a good-sized section of its health issue to a new lifestyle program being run by the Cleveland Clinic. In an attempt to motivate change, this program offers intensive education and counseling. Participants take cooking classes, learn exercise and yoga, and get nutritional and stress management training while being personally supervised by many specialty personnel and a program physician. The down side? The program requires a commitment of 8 hours per week for 6 weeks. Currently, the $1500 charge is paid by the individual or by an employer. To its credit, the Cleveland Clinic will pay for its own employees to participate. It is too early to tell what long-term outcomes will be, but the Cleveland Clinic has given its employees a fighting chance at continuing healthy behaviors. Its cafeteria has been purged of bad food choices, it offers free exercise classes to all, it has a farmer’s market on site and it pays for weight loss. It also has ceased hiring anyone who smokes and has become a fully smoke-free campus. Immersion in this type of supportive environment makes permanent behavior change more likely. But most Americans, unfortunately, are immersed in something quite different.

Coincident to Time’s health issue, the American Journal of Medicine published a study on how well our country is doing with lifestyle behaviors. Brace yourselves. Over the past 18 years, while gyms have sprouted like mushrooms and diet books have broken bookshelves with their weight, Americans have gotten increasingly worse at being well. This study examined just 5 moderate healthy behaviors: eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day, exercising at least 3 times per week, maintaining a body weight that is not obese (BMI less than 30), drinking no more than 1 drink per day for women and 2 for men, and not smoking. Since 1988, three of these five behaviors have become less common than they used to be. More of us are obese, fewer of us exercise at minimum levels (43% vs. 53%), and fruit and veggie eaters have plummeted from 42% to 26%. Smoking rates have remained the same. Moderate alcohol consumption is up from 40 to 51%, but there are a number of doctors (myself included) who don’t buy the idea that drinking is the best way to good health. All in all, adherence to all five of these fairly moderate health habits has gone from 15% of the population to just 8%!

Is there any way to turn this tide? I believe it will require a complete reversal on two fronts.

First: our new health care policies will need to support and reward specific healthy behaviors. Currently, for example, our hospital is considering a program that will allow employees to benefit if they can demonstrate certain health markers. These will include not only acceptable levels of blood pressure, cholesterol and so on, but proof that they are exercising, attending educational events, etc. Those who rack up wellness points will receive a variety of rewards, including discounts at local businesses and financial incentives. These types of programs place a value on staying well that is more motivating than the small, internal voice that says, “I know I should change my ways.”

Second: we have to find a way to make wellness cool. This will need to come through an intensive educational campaign that begins in early childhood and is continued throughout the life cyle. All of this will need to be reinforced by prominent role models and by advertising. Like most powerful cultural trends, the “cool” of eating clean, staying lean and being super-fit will probably need to take hold among young people first.

Is it possible that in time we can take a more European attitude toward weight, food and wellness? Will we ever be a more restrained culture? One that is less in pursuit of the immediate gratification of a cheeseburger? One that views real food as the equivalent of fine wine and processed foods as the equivalent of oversweetened cola? If the recent events in Iran have taught us anything, it has been to respect the enormous power of our interconnected, socially-networked world. Ideas and new themes, what some have called “cultural memes,” have the ability to take root almost instantly if the time is right. The question remains, is now the moment for a wellness revolution in America? And if not now, when?

Impermanence

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I had an immaculately clean kitchen floor for a minute yesterday. But like everything in life, clean is impermanent. As soon as I let the dogs in from the back yard, my sparkly clean floor was gone.

As many of you know from my Lynn’s Weigh blog, I’ve been studying Buddhist teachings and practicing vipassana meditation for a few years. One of the most difficult concepts I am working to accept and not fear is impermanence, particularly as it relates to my body, and specifically as it relates to weight and physical ability.

(I’ll be using quotes throughout this blog entry from a talk on impermanence given by Buddhist teacher Gil Fronsdal of the Insight Meditation Center.)

“Buddhist practice points us toward becoming equanimous in the midst of change and wiser in how we respond to what comes and goes.”

Last week, I went to see my knee doctor to see if there was anything more I could do to improve the health of my knees and continue to stave off knee replacement surgery. I’ve been having significant issues with my sciatic nerve in both glutes and I suspected the problem stemmed from the physiology of my knees. He said yes, my gait has changed and will continue to change. Arthritic deterioration is a process, and while my knees don’t hurt much, their changes influence the changes in other parts of my body. Nothing’s permanent.

He said I should adjust my cardio routine(s) to less resistance and longer sets, and to lay off power walking. Hearing this, I immediately thought, “But I’ll gain weight!” 

“We may not resist aging as much as we resist letting go of cherished concepts of ourselves and our bodies. One of our most ingrained attachments is to self, self-image, and self-identity.”

The street I live on has on a barely noticeable incline (or decline, depending on which direction you’re looking). When I weighed 300 pounds, I could barely walk a block and I had to take several breaks if I walked the entire length – two blocks.

I didn’t begin a formal exercise regimen until I lost more than 100 pounds, and when I did, I chose to walk. I wanted to walk because I wanted to slay that dragon, to prove I could do it and not have to stop every 500 feet to stretch out the pain in my back. I attacked walking voraciously, walking every time like it was the last time. I got really good at it, and fast. I can (well, could) do a 5K in 38 minutes. Not bad for a woman who was told when she developed osteoarthritis at 18 that she’d be in a wheelchair by the time she was 40.

So for the last three years I’ve identified myself as someone who exercises fast and hard. After learning to walk fast and hard, I went on to bike fast and hard, and work out on the elliptical and arc trainer fast and hard. I convinced myself that in order to maintain my weight loss, I must cling to this identity. But my body is asking (actually, it’s begging) me to soften a bit, think it all through, and to change and work with what it can still give me.

To resist the impermanence of a fully functioning knee (or any other body part) is to risk further pain (or, in Buddhist terms, suffering). The question is: How do I contribute to my own suffering? Answer: By clinging to a self-identity that depends on what her body used to be able to do and not what it can do now.

“We also realize that our clinging and resistance have very little to do with the experience itself. We mostly cling to ideas and concepts, not things or experiences in and of themselves.”

It’s the idea of walking 5-miles-per-hour or cranking the resistance up to 75 percent that I’m clinging to more than the actual experience. The idea says, “If you do this, you will not gain weight.” The actual experience says, “Umm….this kind of hurts, Lynn. Let’s talk about this.”

“As we see impermanence clearly, we see that there is nothing real that we can actually cling to. Our deep-seated tendency to grasp is challenged, and so may begin to relax. We see that our experiences don't correspond to our fixed categories, ideas, or images. We realize that reality is more fluid than any of our ideas about it.”

How will this new workout reality play out? Will I gain weight? How will my body respond? I don’t know. I need to give this new experience of less resistance and more time a chance. Who knows? I might not gain weight and I might not have any more extreme pain from my sciatic nerve. By not clinging to the body that could do it all a few years ago and accepting its impermanence just might promote better health (or in Buddhist terms, happiness).

“The final, liberative level of impermanence is the movement towards letting go at the deepest level of our psyche. Ajahn Chah once said, ‘If you let go a little, you’ll have a little peace. If you let go a lot you’ll have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you’ll have complete peace.’”

I want that peace. I want to let go. I want to become equanimous and wiser. It’s certainly better than sore glute muscles. But wanting isn’t doing. It takes a lot of work to do the things we want.

And so I will work to accept the impermanent nature of my body and find a way to work within its current parameters in order to maintain my weight. What I did two years ago I can’t do so well now. What I do now I’ll probably not be able to do so well two years from now. But it doesn’t mean I have to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a path to accepting this bodily impermanence, and if I can lose 170 pounds and walk a 5K in 38 minutes, I can find that path, too.

Maintainers: The Wellness Experts

By Barbara Berkeley

There has been a lot of talk about prevention and wellness lately, but where do we go for information on how to be the healthiest we can be?

This morning I was surfing the Internet for maintenance insights as I often do. I love reading what you guys write. The insights, the inspiration, the fire-in-the-belly that drives you to succeed day after day; it’s just great. On one site I was looking at pictures of formerly heavy people in their running clothes. On another, I was reading about farmer’s markets and local produce. Still others were writing about their elimination of processed foods.

All of these maintenance sites pivoted around weight. Their creators had gotten on the Internet because they wanted to conquer obesity and saw an opportunity in public declaration. They remained staunchly focused on fat-avoidance. Yet, as I read on, I came to the realization that none of these bloggers was actually writing about weight. Perhaps without realizing it, each was writing about achieving perfect wellness. As it turns out, few Americans have done such a good job of focusing on health, nor have become as skilled at it, as weight maintainers.

I believe that significant excess poundage is a visible manifestation of something gone wrong in the body. Our bodies know what to do with extra calories, just as they know what to do with extra potassium (release it via kidneys), extra heat (release it via sweat) and extra carbon dioxide (release it via rapid breathing). Unlike fat, other metabolic malfunctions sneak up on us silently and destroy us quietly from the inside. High blood pressure can’t be felt, but it weakens and beats up our arteries. High blood sugar is physically quiet, yet it acts as a caustic irritant to the parts of us that are vascular…our kidneys, retinas and heart arteries. Elevated cholesterol and triglycerides don’t feel like much, but cause potentially fatal damage through clogs, heart attacks and strokes.

When people who suffer from these “silent” metabolic problems are given medication, they tend to have a false sense of security. The underlying problem hasn’t been fixed, it has simply been controlled by a chemical manipulation. There is a big difference between having blood pressure that reads normal because it is treated and blood pressure that is normal all on its own. But medication tends to lull us into the belief that all is well, even that the problem no longer exists. I can’t tell you how frequently I have had a new patient say that he has no medical problems whatsoever. Then, when I go through a detailed history, the same person tells me he is taking three medications. “But you said you didn’t have high blood pressure, cholesterol or sugar,” I say. “I don’t have them,” is the answer.” The medicine takes care of all that.” Well, sort of.

In an odd way, we are lucky that fat is not silent. In fact, it shouts at us every day in a most annoying and unsightly way. We can’t ignore it or take a pill to make us believe it’s gone. Since large fat accumulations are one of the manifestations of a web of metabolic disorder, the behaviors that control and vanquish fat turn out to be the same ones that create overall health. Maintainers, with their determined ferocity about preventing regain have discovered valuable secrets. They have learned how to be healthy by using the scale as a kind of thermometer that takes the temperature of their general well-being. When weight starts to rise, a return to cleaner eating, brisker physical activity, better relaxation, longer sleep, and increased mindfulness will lower not only pant size, but blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol as well.

I get the feeling that many of you have already crossed the line that divides those who are merely on a crusade against fat from those who recognize that they’ve entered a whole new world of healthfulness. This is the world I like roaming: fascinating in its opportunities, interesting to negotiate and fairly limitless. Once someone starts reframing the question, “How do I keep from regaining my weight?” to read “How to do I stay optimally healthy?” their chances of long-term success soar.
 
Recently, I have started to tell my patients that dieting is like “deflating the balloon.” The process of losing weight is actually quite a simple one. If we unplug ourselves from our external fuel source (the grocery store), we’ll be forced to use up our battery (our fat). The diet part of a permanent weight control journey has little, if anything, to do with what comes next. Again, this is because succeeding at maintenance involves figuring out the guidelines of general wellness; a bigger proposition than simply limiting calories.

For those of you readers who are still in the “deflation” stage, take heart in the knowledge that many successful maintainers precede you. All of them are gurus of healthy living. Their words of wisdom, techniques and vibrant health can lead you to a new place. Learn to be well and you will learn to be the right size for your body.

Automation Overload: How Long Before We Don't Have To Move At All?

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Weekends are really noisy in my neighborhood. Not from loud parties, but lawn care.

It’s the same all across the country. People have the weekend off and so the sunny ones are often dedicated to mowing the lawn or cutting the grass, depending on what part of the country you’re from.  Some people love it and others dread it, but mowing the lawn, at least in town, is a necessary evil if you don’t want to face the ire of your neighborhood association or town council, or have skunks and other critters take up residence in your back yard.

Watching someone mow the lawn is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but if you observe how people choose to mow their lawns, it gets a little interesting, at least from a weight-maintenance perspective.

There are the extremes and then there’s the middle in individual lawn mowing preferences. On the he-man side, my neighbor across the alley mows his postage-sized lawn with a tractor. On the tree-hugging side, my neighbor across the street mows his slightly larger postage-sized lawn with a manual lawn mower. Most people use a push power mower, including my next-door neighbor, who’s nearly as big as her mower.

Gaining in popularity on the tree-hugging side is the automatic mower. CNN has a video article called “Sit on porch, watch lawnmower go.” I watched it with some sadness, wondering how far humans will go to avoid physical activity in the future.

Last week, I bought an ’07 Jeep Liberty on Friday because my ’95 Jeep Cherokee bit the dust. The old Cherokee was all manual everything except the transmission. I rolled down my windows with a handle and leaned over the back seat to unlock the back doors. Now I have automatic everything – windows, door locks, seat adjuster…even radio controls on the steering wheel. All I have to do is move my arms a little to make a turn, and I wonder how long before car manufacturers figure out how to relieve us of that simple movement!

We don’t have to vacuum anymore, thanks to robotic vacuums. Dishwashers have been around a long time, but most of the new ones don’t even require you to scrape food off the plate before loading. Shopping malls feature valet parking, and even if you’re not physically challenged, you can use a motorized cart at most grocery stores.

I have this image in my head of our bodies evolving into nothing more than heads with fingers.

No wonder exercise has become a chore for so many people. Since the industrial revolution, our work and even our play requires less and less physical exertion. I’m beginning to understand why it is so difficult to convince people that it is in their best interest to move around before a big day at work or after a day of thinking and sitting (and using the drive-through for food, prescriptions, banking and even purchasing liquor). Being physical used to be a necessity. Now it is a luxury.

Automation certainly has its place in our lives, and it has improved the lives of many people who would otherwise not be able to drive or shop or live independently. I admit I love the keyless entry on my new Jeep. It was getting increasingly difficult to unlock the old Cherokee because of my arthritic wrists, so much so that I usually left it unlocked and hoped nothing got stolen.

Although I’m not suggesting we replace our cars with horses, I do believe it would be in our best interest to open public dialogue to address just how far we want to take this no-physical-effort-required trend we are in. There is value in mowing the lawn and running the vacuum and walking from the parking lot into a store. Physical and mental value. Gardening can be relaxing despite the sweat. Scrubbing the tub can be very Zen.

There’s a time and a place for relaxing on the porch, but I’m not sure watching a machine mow the yard is it.

Takes a Licking…..Keeps on Ticking

By Barbara Berkeley

When I was a kid and my family used to watch the antique form of television that was around in those days, there used to be a well-known ad for Timex watches. John Cameron Swayze, an authoritative announcer-type, would strap a $5 Timex onto an outboard motor. The motor would then be lowered into the water and the watch would be dragged around some lake until it was thoroughly abused. Amazingly, when Swayze unhooked the unfortunate watch it was still keeping perfect time. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” Swayze would say.

The same can be said of my poor, bedraggled 61-year-old body. Week Seven of Couch to 5K and I’m still going. This morning I completed my second 25 minute run. In the interest of complete disclosure, I do have to admit one slight cheat. My run takes me into our small town and the last five minutes or so slope sharply downhill. But hey....I never would have believed I could go for 25 minutes straight whether it was uphill, downhill, or on a pogo stick. At the end of the run, I cool down by walking back into the center of town for coffee from our local Starbucks. I am too sweated up to sit inside, so I perch on one of the wooden steps next door. I find that my mind is in a pleasantly dazed state so it’s just as well that I’m sitting alone without the opportunity for conversation.

When I read other people’s blogs about running, they always say that the first mile of their run is difficult and that things become “effortless” after that. I haven’t gotten to effortless yet, but I do notice a phenomenon that occurs after about 15 minutes of running. In my own mind I call it “Tootsie Roll legs”. When I first start running, my legs feel like inflexible sticks and I’m uncomfortably aware of my joints and muscles. After a while, I suppose it’s because of blood flow into the area, my legs start to feel more like firm-bendable Tootsie Rolls. Once that happens, it’s a lot easier to let my mind wander and just keep on going.

This week, I decided to try departing from the Robert Ullrey podcasts and running with my own Ipod selection. That didn’t turn out so well. I’m finding that I like music that is continuous and not necessarily all that familiar. That kind of selection lets my mind go outside of my body. Although I really love listening to Rick James and my work -out version of “Rock the Casbah,” I get too caught up in what’s coming up next. I also find that I really miss the cues that Ullrey puts into his podcasts. He interrupts the music to tell you when you’ve gone half way or when you’ve got a few minutes to go. And then he congratulates you at the end. It’s so ridiculous, but that canned congratulations means a lot!! Do any of you runners out there have suggestions for finding good music for longer runs?

So, I’ve gotten all the way to Week Seven. For those of you who are following this saga, let me assure you that it is do-able. If you have not been very active before starting C25K though, I would suggest that you take your time advancing through the various weeks. There’s no rule that says you can’t spend three weeks on “Week One” or two weeks on “Week Five,” a strategy that I believe would lead to more people successfully getting to goal.

Apart from my new running career, the other major event in our household has been the arrival of spring chicks. Don likes to raise turkeys that he free-ranges and gives away to friends at Thanksgiving. We haven’t had chickens on the farm for several years, but we decided to bring them back in order to get those nice organic eggs. We also constructed a raised bed garden this year in the hopes of getting better produce. Our gardens tend to be destroyed by rabbits, moles, raccoons and deer. We’ re hoping that elevating the beds will make that less likely. We also put the vegetables in an area where our dog Toby can easily patrol. As you see, he is quite frightening and almost any animal would be intimidated by him.

But back to the chicks. Don orders them by mail from a hatchery. When they arrive, I will receive a panicky 7 a.m. call from our local post office.

“You have a load of chickens here!” they will say. In the background, I can hear a cacophony of peeps. “Please come get them soon!!”

Then I drive to the post office and knock on a secret door in the back. They gratefully hand over the small brown box studded with airholes. It’s making a whole lot of noise. Returning home, I remove the tiny chicks one by one from their crowded prison. Holding each firmly, I dip their beaks into water to make sure they are hydrated. Then I set each one free. We have set up a heat lamp to keep the babies warm, but for the moment, they ignore the comfort zone. They jump and flutter their tiny wings and immediately start pecking the ground for food. By the time I leave them, they have finished exploring and are huddled in a warm, furry mass under the bulb.

As spring goes on, things will grow. The adorable yellow chicks will turn into enormous, demanding turkeys and clucking, self-righteous chickens. My tiny broccoli plants will become huge, my rows of spinach will bolt. The lawn will become unmanageable. And I will run further and perhaps enter my first 5K. Chances are there will be setbacks and injuries as I grow bigger as a runner. Spring brings the opportunity to start the cycle all over again. Even though we know that life is ultimately messy, we relish the chance to start once more. So drag your projects and challenges out into the June sunlight. Hose off your dreams and give them a chance to breathe anew.

Don’t Get Me Started

By Barbara Berkeley

For the past week or so, I’ve been reading David Kessler’s book called "The End of Overeating." Kessler is a doctor and the former director of the FDA. By his written admission, he is also a person who has had his own problems with food.

Most of the book exposes the endless effort and expense that industry devotes to creating food products that can’t be resisted. The brazen nature of this effort is pretty shocking, even to me. Kessler interviews a number of industry consultants who describe completely purposeful efforts to create “hyper-palatable” foods that will be addictive and irresistible. Doing this takes a whole lot of time, consultants, focus groups and so on. But success is worth it. Create a tastier, crunchier, fattier, sweeter food and it will be a money maker. The author himself can’t resist ordering some of these foods (just for scientific purposes of course) and describing their consumption with an almost lascivious attention to detail. There are points where this book approaches soft porn for food addicts.

The last couple of chapters of the book detail ways in which overeaters can brainwash themselves into food avoidance. After the stunning descriptions of engineered foods and their extremely attractive and addictive nature, these familiar techniques seem pretty weak. What power can our poor attempts at thought-control have over zillions of dollars spent to defeat us? Kessler advises that we plan all meals, that we limit portion sizes, eat foods that occur in nature, avoid sugars and starches, eat foods we like, mentally rehearse food situations, understand our food triggers, limit our exposure to food, disable cravings by “thought stopping” (I love this one! Have you ever figured out how to stop your thoughts???), and exercise. All of this is pretty standard stuff. Not one of us would disagree with any of it.

But what is missing from Dr. Kessler’s book is any significant outrage. Why is it that we consumers are the ones who wind up bearing the burden of control? A small section toward the end of the book suggests that “we” must learn to redefine food and the people who make it. If we change the way we look at bad foods, Kessler suggests, and start to look at them as we now look at tobacco, society can change. The problem with the comparison of food and cigarettes is that the tobacco industry has always been a miniscule force when compared to the behemoth food industry.

An article in one of this month’s medical journals echoed similar themes to those laid out in Kessler’s book. “Recently,” it states, “there has been growing support for the idea that we can train our appetites to match our energy expenditure, overcoming physiologic and environmental urges to eat.” The article then goes on to poll various obesity experts and asks, “Can human beings retrain their appetite? If so, how?”

Here are their answers:

Expert 1: We eat too much because food is pleasurable. To make something like broccoli pleasurable “you’re going to want to have broccoli in a pleasurable experience---maybe raw broccoli as you watch your favorite TV program, or when you are having dinner parties. You make small changes that, in time, can condition your appetite.”

Comment: Somehow, I don’t think that eating broccoli while watching American Idol will do much to armor someone against an entire world of hyperstimulating food.

Expert 2: “How do we prevent people from going to food? It’s quite simple: If people have no access to food, then that will retrain their appetite. But, of course, that’s not realistic. So, people have to find ways to get themselves away from food. One option is just to go to bed, if you can fall asleep. However, the best way….is to do exercise. Very strenuous exercise like jogging or running significantly cuts your appetite. I suggest that people introduce exercise at the time in their day that they think they are going to be hungry.”

Comment: Go to bed? At 11 am??? Exercise, yes. But contrary to what this expert says, exercise makes many people hungry. And how many times a day can you exercise? This solution presupposes that you’re only hungry once daily.

Expert 3: “Understand the difference between appetite and hunger. Appetite is primarily psychological; hunger, physical….Appetite can be retrained by recognizing the difference between appetite and true hunger and learning to manage our emotions in more healthful ways.”

Comment: This line of reasoning has always been completely lost on me. Hunger occurs when signals deploy in your brain which convey powerful messages to gut peptides and a variety of hormones. Your mouth waters, you get ready to eat. You feel hungry. Whether this chain is set off by food deprivation (you’re really, truly hungry) or a steaming bowl of pasta on TV (hunger stimulated by sight) it’s still hunger. For me, there is no true or false.

All of these suggestions, all of these tricks, tips and machinations are in the service of giving us strategies to battle a food giant run amok. Worse, they suggest that our own weaknesses are to blame for the problem. I am completely bewildered by the fact that the responsibility of the food industry continues to be ignored. Its role in creating our current environment is so huge, so all-encompassing, that its invisibility in this discussion is almost incomprehensible.

Articles and books (including mine) suggest myriad ways for you to do the hard work of kicking food. Clean all the food out of your house. Stay out of contact with food. Change your thoughts. Get hypnotized. Exercise until your knee cartilage falls to shreds. Get therapy. Change your stress level. Become a better person. Buy a journal and write, write, write. Record every shred of every morsel that passes your lips.

I’m not suggesting that these are bad strategies, but we need them mainly because those who produce our food have not asked to be responsible for its effects. Until society gets mad about that, nothing will change. Very few individuals (you being the exceptions, dear readers) are strong enough to oppose the mass behaviors of an entire culture.

Perhaps our little community is far more important than we believed. Like a snowball picking up size as it rolls, our tiny individual voices have the potential to become big and booming. Once we get the volume, I hope we can direct it outward. Time to stop yelling at ourselves and bemoaning our weaknesses. Time to fix our sights on those who are drowning us, our children and our nations’ health in a salty, fatty, sweet sea of food.