Family Fitness

When I was a kid, my father played squash almost every workday and tennis every weekend. He was fortunate. Working in the Pentagon, he was immersed in a culture that rewarded physical fitness, and he had access to a world-class fitness facility. This was the early 1970s. The "workout" craze of the ‘80s – Aerobics, Bally's Health Clubs, the running boom – was a decade away. But in my house, active adults were the norm. Not so for my friends. Few of the other adults in my neighborhood did much of anything.

On the other hand, kids were always active. We lived in a neighborhood with several large families on each block. Every third house had a basketball hoop and pickup football games were a daily occurrence. Packs of kids roamed the neighborhood on bicycles and there was ample wooded space to explore.

Today's world is very different. If I see someone running or bicycling around my block, it is much more likely to be an adult than a child. Many of the kids in town are active, but typically on sports teams in scheduled practices or games. Packs of kids don't roam. The woods behind my house are deserted. I rarely see kids in "pickup" activities, mine included.

Neither of my kids is inclined to play team sports. This is not too surprising, my wife and I gravitate towards solitary activities like running, cycling and swimming. Like it or not, kids learn from their parents. When parents do nothing, kids are more likely to do nothing as well.

Life-habits are learned as children, and I want my kids, all kids, to learn the habit of physical fitness. There are some bright spots. In my daughter's middle-school gym class, they start every session with a one-mile run. But gym class is only every fourth day. And kids are NEVER assigned gym class homework. I'm not sure why this is, but an assignment to lead their family in a few fitness activities each week would be a great way to keep kids moving through the week.

This isn't just about kids. County statistics show that kids are half as likely to be overweight as the adults around them. All kids and adults need to settle into a regular fitness habit. It doesn't have to be boring and it doesn't have to be the same every time. A fitness routine is an excellent opportunity to do something as a family – you know, "quality time with the kids".

For example, all through the summer, my wife and I, along with our two grade school kids, go for a walk around the neighborhood just about every evening. During the warm weather months, we try to spend at least one weekend morning riding bikes through the local park. Throughout the year we take time to go swimming at the Y's indoor pool. And regardless of the weather, we seek out interesting places to go hiking. When the snow starts falling, my kids start talking about hiking. It is impossible to determine what will develop into fond childhood memories, but I have a hard time believing that my kids' memories will not include hiking through snowy woods with their parents.

Wintertime can be tricky. With shorter days and polar vortexes, it can be hard to find a warm or lighted place to exercise. Fortunately, my family has a Y membership that provides us access to indoor space. This winter, our weekend focus has been "family bootcamp". We set up a series of exercises – each of us pick a couple -- and we each do the ones we want. Some are more adult, some are more kid oriented, but all get us breathing, sweating and building muscle mass. I can't remember the last time I did a 'crab-walk' but I now find it to be as good a triceps exercise as dips. When was the last time you did a wheelbarrow – remember that? Someone holds your legs and you walk on your hands. Pushups, shuttle-runs, broad-jumps, sprints. Often my kids are better at these activities than I am.

Initially, I thought this was going to be one of those activities that the adults want to do and the kids think of as a chore. But every weekend, I hear the same thing: "When are we going to do bootcamp?" They have truly embraced this as a fun activity to do with their parents. And all of us come home spent. The best work out of the week.

Because every family is different, each will come up with different fitness activities. Touch football, Frisbee, whiffle ball, hula-hooping, skating. Really the list is endless. It just comes down to commitment and sometimes a bit of compromise. Try out some of your kids' games. They may wind up being more fun and more challenging than you think. The important thing is to get moving, and to get moving as a group.

10K

Last Fall, I ran a 10K. I'm really surprised by myself, proud of myself. I hear people make comments like this all the time. "I just ran a half." "I've decided to train for a marathon." The community center where I work is ground-zero for area runners. I am continually surrounded by running talk. Marathoners, Ultra-runners, trail-runners, and people training for their first 5K. With many of these proclamations, people are taking about their first half, their first marathon. What makes my statement different is that I've run scores of 10Ks, and countless longer races, longer runs. The achievement of my race was that I opted for an easier, shorter distance. By-passed the 10 Mile race that started simultaneously. And I had fun.

I've been a 'runner' since 1984. I ran cross-country in high school in the late seventies, but it didn't stick, it just planted a seed. Through college, I went running with friends a few times a year, but this was usually after getting high and feeling bored and restless. A few times I got stoned just so I could put on a walkman with spacey, psychedelic music and run around the inside of the field house late at night and all alone. But over 4 years of college, I doubt if I even knocked out 50 miles.

My recent race was a trail-run. This was the "4th annual", and it is becoming a "thing". Catching on as a brutal event to cap-off the local running season. Held in a nearby nature preserve, it covers some pretty rough terrain – rocks, roots, logs, creeks. But by far, the biggest challenge is the hills. There are 2 of them in the 10K and one more in the 10 Mile. Well actually, both races are all hills – there is no flat, but these three hills are bigger and steeper than any other hills I've run. Last year I ran the 10 Mile. When I hit the hill at mile 5, I actually stopped for a couple of seconds to contemplate it. I had already been running up a fairly steep grade for over a mile. Coming around a bend, I saw what is essentially a tilted wall to run up. Fortunately, from the bottom, you can only see half of the hill. If I saw the whole thing, I might have quit right there.

Last year, my race-time sucked. While I ran in the middle of my age group (50 – 100), I was clearly a back of the pack runner. Unfamiliar territory for me. I was happy to have completed the race - serious distance runners give it the deferential respect of a marathon - but I was also embarrassed by how badly beaten I was by several of my peers, people I see around my workplace. Because of the terrain, mile splits are meaningless. Times are completely incomparable to road races or even many other trail-runs. The only gauge to track your achievement is how you stack up against others. For me, this isn't optimum. A large part of why I'm drawn to running is the ability to compete against myself. Train to a goal, achieve that goal. In theory, I try to avoid comparisons with other runners. Try to banish the thought of age-grouping from my mind. If it happens, great. But chasing a winning time, trying to out-run specific people, for me, that is the birth-place of injuries. When I focus solely on myself, I'm more likely stay healthy and injury free.

Theory and reality collide infrequently. Not only does the specter of age-grouping pop into my mind frequently as a race approaches, and so does the knowledge that my time will be posted on the internet. Others will see my performance, see my place. A bad race impacts my credibility as a runner, as a spin instructor. Getting stomped by my peers, my friends, just makes me look bad. So like too many runners, I take a very individual sport, a sport designed for self-actualization, a sport that uses the holistic term 'personal record', and I turn it into a competition against everyone else.

Although I consider myself a runner first and foremost, I actually spend very little time running. Over the past year, I've run a little less than once per week – and for me, that's a lot. For years, my typical yearly training would be to pick a fall or spring race, put in about six runs leading up to that race, perform reasonably well and then knock off all running until the next year. My lack of running is not laziness; it is injury, knee pain. Not an ACL tear like most people have. Simply bursitis. Anytime my weekly mileage creeps up to 8 or 10 miles, my knee hurts. Then it takes 2 weeks of rest and handfuls of ibuprofen for the swelling to abate enough to start up running again. This has been going on for 20 years.

But I also have a tendency to over-reach and push myself to extremes. Every few years, I convince myself that if I try again, this time it will be different. I'll add mileage slowly; never go beyond two runs per week. Never more than 6 miles at a time. I'll beat the bursitis. And every time I wind up frustrated and limping. Last year's 10 Mile race was a great example. I used my typical training routine. Six weeks before the race I tried out a seven mile run and it went well. Two weeks later I ran ten or eleven miles without injury so I signed up for the race. Two months later I was injured again, limping, angry, bummed. For the umpteenth time in my life, I swore-off running.

And then I read 'Born to Run.'

Right now, you may be thinking "What? This is just another 'Born to Run' testimonial?" Well, yes. One night at a party, my friend Annie gave me a copy of the book. At first I was dismissive to the point of rudeness. "The barefoot running book? I'm not going to read that." I thought she was passing on a copy she had read. When she told me that it was a gift she had bought me, I shut-up, thanked her and dove into the book. I was instantly hooked. I loved the story, the voice, and the author's need to run through injury. The characters were engaging, the race segments were motivating. And for whatever reason, the sections on proper running form, stuff I've heard and read dozens of time, finally made an impression on me.

I finished the book, and I started running again. This time, my running was all about form. After 30 years of heel-striking and foot slapping – a style so obnoxious that people frequently complain to me about how loud a runner I am – I knocked out 3 miles with a mid-sole strike. It took me over 30 minutes. For years, I've been running an 8 minute pace, a bit faster on shorter runs, so I assumed that I messed up on the mileage and ran longer than I planned. But the biggest surprise of my run was the pain in my calves the next day. The pain reminded me of the day after my first cross-country practice in high school – the first time I ever 'went running'. Over the next few months, I tried longer runs, increasing a half mile every couple of weeks. And every run was the same. 10 minute pace, sore calves. No bursitis.

As part of my devotion to 'Born to Run,' I've become a trail runner. I've always loved the solitude of running through the woods. It always seemed more 'real,' and more private. Like I was running for myself. But it was always much easier to head out my front door rather than drive to a trail head. My town has 10 miles of horse trails surrounding a public park. And while the park backs up to my house, there was no trail. Just a swampy mess of poison ivy and thorn bushes.

So like any obsessed runner, I cut a path. I've lived in this house for 9 years, and while I always wished we had direct park access, it never once occurred to me to make a path. In the winters, my family has gone on countless snowy hikes across iced over swamps, but once spring hit, the park was always off-limits. But after weeks of cutting and scraping, mulching and scratching at poison ivy rashes, we have a path of our own... And I have ten miles of running trails starting at my back door.

Over my decades of running, I've learned that many runners have obsessive tendencies. This is a large part of what takes a moderately athletic person and creates an unusually strong runner. Without a deeper glimpse into others lives, I can't tell if their obsessions extend beyond running and into other aspects of their lives. Mine do. I'm obsessive about running, and just about everything else. Once I decide that I want something, my mind dwells on that topic. I lay awake at night planning. I research, and slowly, I act. I'm thankful that my obsessive tendencies don't translate into compulsive behavior. My approach to all things is deliberate and well planned. I rarely start anything without a clear path to completion.

My recent 10K was no different. More than a half a year ago, I decided that I was going to repeat my trail race, the 10 Mile, but I was going to post a much stronger time. Some thing I could be proud of, something I could show off. For five months, I slowly increased my mileage and worked to push my pace back into eights. Holding myself to one weekly run, I determined the only way I could meet my goal was to rework the format of my spin classes. Every class was designed to focus on active recovery. Push to exhaustion, back off just enough to catch my breath, and then push some more. And in my training runs, I could see slow progress. My pace was picking up, and after hill-attacks, I could settle back into a tempo run with even-breath. The only problem was that every time I hit 7 miles, my knee would start to hurt. Not my bursa, not even the same knee. This was a totally different problem.

30 years of soccer, running and cycling have left me with obnoxiously tight Iliotibial (IT) Bands. For years, my only symptom was an annoying habit of punching at my thighs with the heal of my hand – an attempt to loosen my IT bands. My running form change seems to have sparked a full-blown case of IT Band Syndrome. And every time my run exceeded 7 miles, I was stopped cold by pain. Sometimes miles from home.

And then something surprising happened. I decided that I would skip the 10 Mile race and sign-up for the 10K instead. To most, this would seem an obvious move. To me, this was one of the more mature, thoughtful decisions I've made. An underlying subplot in 'Born to Run' is finding joy in running. Changing races gave me a chance to do this. It took the stress out of the event. Now I wasn't racing to finish, pushing through pain for a respectable time. Now I was set up to excel at a comfortable distance. I could go out and have fun with my 'brutal end to the racing season'.

In an attempt to race against myself rather than others, I set a time-goal of 60 minutes for the race. Without much to go on, I looked at last year's winning time and made some adjustments for myself. I missed my goal by 30 seconds, but I finished the race perfectly spent. I raced hard the whole way, and I had nothing left when I was done. It was the most enjoyable race I've run. And while I try not to care, I do. I'm happy to say that I won my age group.

Credibility

Mr. G is stronger than you. Mr. G is a real runner. I've been hearing this for years now. As my kids grow into opinionated humans, I'm forced to listen to comparisons with other adults, and repeatedly, with Mr. G, their popular gym teacher. Mr. G is 20 years younger than me. He probably is stronger than me. I know that he's a faster runner, I've heard him talking about his half-marathon time. Remember, 20 years younger! My response is typically "Mr. G should take my spin class, then we'll talk." 20 years ago, I could run a full marathon at a faster mile pace than Mr. G's half, but my kids aren’t impressed by the past.

If this seems like an immature topic to write about, well it probably is. But also, if it seems immature, it's likely that you’re not a runner. This isn't really just about Mr. G's running pace or comparing athleticism, but about garnering credibility from my kids in areas where I am actually credible. I hear it all this time. A guy bikes past my family looking like an advertisement for Pearl Izumi and Sophie says "Dad, that guys a real biker". As if fashion makes the athlete. Perhaps it does.

Each year, my kids' school holds a "Race for Education". It's a fund-raiser that culminates in the kids running laps around the school track – I like that part. The rest of the fund-raiser is particularly annoying. There are several incentives that keep the kids actively asking for money for weeks. It is so prominently discussed during the school day that Eli, 8 years old, wants to donate his own money to ensure that his school meets their goal and earns a bounce-house party after the race.

Last year, Eli ran the whole “race” with Mrs. W, his second-grade teacher. Mrs. W was a brand new runner. She had been at it for about 6 months, after she got the idea that she and her husband should run a half-marathon. A week or so after the fund-raiser, Eli and I were running around our neighborhood; I complimented him on his sustainable pace, and he said that Mrs. W, the real runner, taught him how he should pace himself. Never mind that I had given him the same advice 20 times. I could go on and on with these stories, but you get the point. For some reason, everyone else is a real runner, a real cyclist, and I'm a hack.

At 51, I've been a 'runner' for 35 years. Cycling seriously for 30 years. I've participated in running races of all distances up to a marathon – aged grouped many of the smaller ones, raced biathlons, ridden my bike across the United States, commuted to work for years. As a spin instructor, I research cycling and running workouts to help my participants grow and develop. Dammit, I would think I'm about as real as it gets. But my kids don't see it.

It wasn't always like this. Several years ago, I was discussing the Tour de France with my kids' babysitter. After listening for a few minutes, Sophie asked me why I wasn't in the race. Ah, those were the days when Dad could do anything. So how did I fall from world class athlete to beginner in a few short years?

I'm starting to learn that everyone else's parent seems nicer, cooler, worldly, exotic. Coaches and teachers are the ultimate authority on everything. It stands to reason. These other adults aren't harping on my kids to clean their rooms, eat their vegetables. My kids only see them at their best. Never under the sink working on a clogged drain. Trying to figure out how to assemble a new toy. If familiarity breeds contempt, it is surprising that our kids take anything we say seriously.

While I want my kids to respect the adults in their lives, I do get concerned about them giving too much credibility to those adult's beliefs. Many ideas my kids bring home from their teachers are in direct conflict with the belief system I've developed. I'm not trying to mold my kids (probably), but I want them to consider both sides of every issue, not be told what to think. A couple of weeks ago, one of Sophie's middle school teachers was ranting on the debate to change the Washington Redskins name. Mrs. H, a Skins fan, pointed out that only one in ten American Indians are offended by the name – obviously not enough to worry about. Sophie came home parroting this statistic, seemingly in agreement with Mrs. H.

I pointed out that one in ten didn't seem like a big deal, but 100 of 1,000 started to sound like a real opposition group, and that got Sophie thinking. By the time I researched some numbers on the internet and I found that 10% of all American Indians equals 38,000,000, that the fan base of the Redskins probably didn't exceed15 million people, Sophie had altogether lost interest in discussing the topic. Wished she never brought it up at all. Maybe some of it stuck.

I first seriously started questioning the credibility of adults around me in 10^th grade. I had a Human Development teacher (remember, this was the 70s), who was primarily interested in looking good in front of the class. Everyone called him Ken. Class "lessons" would involve breaking into small groups to discuss various topics and issues. At the end of the period, we would report what we learned to the rest of the class. Ken always joined a group with the popular kids, and the popular group always presented the funniest, the most intelligent responses. All of the other kids would listen with the feeling that they somehow didn't measure up.

Once, towards the end of the year, I wound up as part of Ken's group. As my group-mates and I tried to participate in the exercise, Ken would shut us down and force in responses that he knew were winners from previous years. He did the exercise, and we watched. As we gave our responses to the class, everyone was howling with laughter, nodding at our insightful understanding of human nature. I felt dirty, fraudulent. Ken ultimately lost his job due to an inappropriate relationship with a teen-age girl, and I was left with a growing disdain for authority figures.

From discussions with my father, I know that I had a rebellious streak from the start. A desire to do my own thing, be my own person. Question everything. As I matured, it solidified into a cynical, counter-cultural ethos. This wasn't a conscious decision. I didn't strive to be unique or unusual. I just felt that I was different from everyone else. As I looked around, anything that seemed normal, established, conventional, was beneath me. The jocks, the brains, the popular kids were sheep, following a societal shepherd telling them where to go, how to act. I even harbored contempt for the stoners, living their stereotype. By making myself different from everyone else, I could not, cannot be compared, cannot be measured. I still do this today.

As I sink into middle-age, I appear more bourgeois. A senior manager at a mid-sized non-profit, a husband, father, home-owner, scout-leader. It is hard to consider myself anything but normal – until I notice how my opinions differ so radically from those around me. I think the conservative trappings of Scouting are ridiculous, narrow, constricting. I harbor a natural distrust for work-place authority figures (even though I am definitely one of them). I am a socialist thinker in a libertarian town. And for my kids, I want the opinions of teachers, coaches, and even their parents to be questioned, analyzed.

A friend suggested that when Sophie brought up the Redskins topic to me, she may have, consciously or subconsciously, been uncomfortable with the conclusion. With the hundreds of events and conversations that take place during the school day, possibly it wasn't chance that she would bring up a topic that would set me off, send me to internet-research to prove my point. Possibly, my kids give my opinion a bit more credence than I suspect.

While they no longer believe I'm capable of joining the Tour de France, my kids do still come to my races and cheer. And they genuinely like spending time with me, hearing me tell stories from my childhood, listening to my thoughts on various topics. I know they will be exposed to ideas and opinions throughout entire lives. As they grow, their ethos will form into something unique. I don't want them to turn into me – fueled by skepticism, hobbled by feelings of outsiderness. But I want them to develop the tools to filter the information they receive, To determine if it requires more thought, more research. And in the meantime, I'd like them to let me coach their running – at least a little bit.

Mix Tape

Becoming a young adult in the 1980s gave me a front row seat to a unique and short lived societal phenomenon – the mix tape. Typically 90 minutes on two sides of a cassette. 20 to 30 carefully chosen songs. Each side a unique theme.

In an era of digital music where playlists are created in a matter of minutes, where an 80 minute CD can be burned with minimal effort by any 10 year old, and individual songs are readily available for purchase (cheap) or for swapping (free), the mix tape concept loses its short-live glory. Or, maybe it doesn't.

In the mid-eighties through the early-nineties, tape mixing was an all evening affair. It would often take 2, 3 hours or more, lots of planning, erasing and re-recording. Because of the time investment, much more thought went into the song choice and order than a playlist of today. The mood of an entire side of music could be scuttled by a poorly chosen song. A sloppy recording job – missing an intro or cutting off a fade-out – could take a brilliant tape and turn it into a hack-job.

By the mid-nineties, most adults' music collections had not transferred completely to CDs, and certainly not to MP3s. Songs were often recorded off of LPs (now referred to as 'vinyl'). Because individual songs were not readily available, one needed access to the entire album that contained the wanted song. This usually entailed borrowing albums from friends, buying 12 inch singles, and in some cases buying entire albums to record one or 2 songs to tape.

In movies made after the 1990s, there are from time to time disparaging references to mix tapes. They are viewed as a relic of a bygone era and seem worthy of disdain. In truth, the mix tape was at times a modern equivalent of a suitor writing poetry. A several hour introspective commitment scouring your music collection, looking for songs that demonstrate where your relationship is now and where you want it to go. The songs must be ordered to flow well for listenability and of course there needs to be the perfect blend of pop & edge.

Prior to the mid-seventies, the fidelity of cassette tapes just wasn't up to the task of capturing the music in a form worth recording. As a result, the length of tapes available for purchase was generally more geared to other activities. Being an early adopter of the mix tape phenomenon, I first started packing my favorite Beatles and Doors songs on 60 minute Memorex tapes. Initially, my motivation was to cut out the 'clutter', simply flooding the tape with my favorite songs, the hits. But quickly, I learned that 20 hit songs in a row becomes boring. Carefully chosen clutter improves the tape immensely. Eventually, my tapes would include only a handful of favorites. These songs became the pinnacle, the apex. The rest of the tape was the art. The intentional backdrop required to elevate the pinnacle songs to soaring new heights.

As I became more adept at tape mixing, I began to record a brief snippet of a song to enhance the tape. My most impressive tape introduced Sonic Youth's "Youth Against Fascism" with Frank Black's brilliant and bizarre "you f---ing die" diatribe, and I plugged Public Enemy's "You're Quite Hostile" refrain into the silence after Fugazi's "Waiting Room" introduction. The power of the mix tape. You engineer the music better than the producer. And then you listen to it so many times that 20 to 25 years later, the songs still seem to belong together.

I have a paid hobby as a spin instructor. Because of this, I still have the opportunity to mix 60 minutes of music twice a week. Obviously, this is all done digitally now, and decorum requires that I avoid phrases like "you f---ing die". While I still pay attention to song combinations, I'm often looking for contrast in addition to flow. Where my mix tapes would be rolling hills of sound, mood and energy, my spin mixes are much more likely to resemble plateaus and valleys. Slower, more mellow songs often followed by fast, angry songs. The idea is to shake up the workout with the music. Irony helps lighten the mood. I'll throw in an odd, old pop song – Afternoon Delight or Summer Loving – just to get a laugh and give people a break after a long segment of hard-driving beat and tempo.

The shuffle features common with digital music, first with CDs and now MP3 files, have made us desensitized to music flow. I suppose the radio has always been guilty of throwing disjointed songs together, but the artists' LPs were often carefully crafted to create a mood, to tell a story. Unlike the hours of effort to create a mix tape, the ease of working with digital music has made us lazy. While taping, the time investment made us want to be sure we got it right the first time. When burning a CD, or simply dumping music onto an MP3 player for a run or a workout, it is so simple and cheap (free) that if a song doesn't fit into the mix, we can either re-burn the CD or delete the song from the playlist and get it right second time around.

For years now, I have wanted to learn the ins and outs of music engineering. Essentially giving myself a skillset that I had with cassette tapes. There are so many things that I want to do, so many
songs I want to blend, trim, edit. Fade-outs & fade-ins, eliminate F-Bombs. Here's one of my "things" – I am almost completely incapable of reading directions to learn how to do something. I either need to work through trial and error, or someone needs to show me how to do it.

I've downloaded DJ programs and tried to work through the process of engineering a song, and I just can't do it, I can't figure it out. And as a 50ish adult, I don't know anyone who can show me how. Because my kids are almost teens, in a few years they will likely possess an innate ability to navigate these software programs. If I can just hold off a couple more years, maybe they can show me how. But without this skill, I will never fully recapture the music mixing style of my early adult years.

Like so many of the conveniences of the modern world, something special is lost when activities become too easy to do. Tape mixing was truly an art form, and it has become lost to all but a few – including me.

Possibly, I'm overthinking this – a habit of mine. In the eighties, cassette tapes were the best technology available. The Sony Walkman was the iPod of the time. A few years earlier, we were still listening to AM frequencies on transistor radios. Tape mixing was our attempt to control the flow and order of music – something only a DJ could previously do. But the medium grew. Tape mixers truly cared about the final product. And to this day, I've yet to hear a home-crafted CD that comes close to the top five tapes I’ve mixed.

The Elephant in the Room

This essay was written in January 2010 -

Public option, death panels, Blue Dogs, rationing, Group of Six… A recent Google search on “Health Care Reform” returned 27 million results. Like many Americans, I’ve reached my saturation point on this issue, but at the same time, I know that reform is crucial to the budgets of middle class Americans.

As the finance manager of a large community center, I spend an excessive amount of my time and energy worrying about and working around the high cost of medical plan premiums. I appreciate the efforts of our government representatives, and I truly hope that reform provides better quality and less expensive insurance for more Americans.

But throughout this whole health care debate, public officials are avoiding the elephant in the room. No one is talking about the most controllable driving force in our escalating health care costs… Health.  

Most adults understand what it takes to live a healthy lifestyle. We’ve been hearing it our entire lives: eat your vegetables, minimize alcohol use, don’t smoke, buckle-up, exercise. More recent messages include: monitor your blood pressure and cholesterol, minimize stress, lose weight, maintain a healthy Body Mass Index.  

Americans are a pretty savvy bunch. Two-thirds of us own our own homes; we hold down jobs; manage our households; get kids to school, soccer games and birthday parties on time; and despite financial pressures, we find ways to enjoy luxury items like gaming systems and HDTV. Yet most of us are unable to take care of ourselves.  

More than two-thirds of all American adults are overweight, and half of those are categorized as obese. One-fifth of adults smoke cigarettes. One sixth of us still don’t use seat belts. The list goes on.  

These behaviors have a direct impact on the cost of health care. Being more than 10 pounds over the optimum weight range increases one’s chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, musculoskeletal conditions and a several other health problems. Smoking promotes cancer, high blood pressure, weakens bones, increases the risk of diabetes and can even contribute to male impotence. Meanwhile, only one-third of adults get the minimum recommended weekly amount of exercise.  

I believe that many people don’t make an effort to improve their health because they are overwhelmed by the number of changes they feel they need to make to live a healthy lifestyle. But instead of swinging for a homerun, I believe that by making small, incremental changes, one at a time over the course of a year, each one of us can totally transform our own health.  

Fifteen months ago, I decided it was time to work on some of the issues that plagued me for years. Through diet and exercise, I was able to lower my blood pressure and cholesterol, both slightly elevated, into the healthy range. I also lost 15 pounds that brought me squarely into the center of my optimum BMI range.   

I didn’t do this all at once, and I didn’t do anything radical. To lose weight, I ate less, exercised more and went to bed a little bit hungry every night. To lower my cholesterol and blood pressure, I took the things out of my diet that everyone knows are unhealthy – chips, fast food, egg yolks, excessive coffee, and pretty much all of the excess salt. Also, by working with a holistic health practitioner, I added some foods that promote health – more filtered water, herbal teas, a high fiber diet, certain supplements and enough almonds and walnuts to keep a family of squirrels smiling for years.  

Through this process, I found that most of these changes are just habits. After a few weeks, it became reflex to reach for nuts instead of pretzels, for celery instead of chips. I found that I really could live with just one cup of coffee each day.  

So go ahead and stress about the cost of health insurance, but at the same time, do something to reduce it. Quit smoking, wear your seatbelt, alter your diet, or start exercising. It may be the most patriotic thing you can do for your country.

 

The Food Fight

This Cartoon was a family effort - my concept (pun really), my daughter's art, and my son's idea to use hamburgers and hot dogs,

 

The Worst Generation?

“To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” Franklin D. Roosevelt said this in 1936 as the primary elements of World War II were falling into place. The generation to whom FDR spoke has become known as the Greatest Generation. Sometimes I worry that we will be known as the “Worst Generation”.

If generations can be classified as givers and takers, we are clearly the biggest takers in the history of the nation. Sixty years of American prosperity taught us some ugly habits. We value “stuff”. We feel entitled to luxury. And we try to emulate the rich and famous. We fight any effort to raise taxes, yet we continually expect additional services and benefits from our governments. Rather than looking out for our neighbors, we grasp what we can for ourselves. While this is not exactly a new American trait, it has become pronounced, even respected. As the nation's financial resources become more scarce, the rhetoric becomes more hateful. We are truly a nation of us v. them. Again, not a new phenomenon, but more evident, especially from our elected leaders. The nation known for its safety net of social security and medicare has now decided that it no longer wants to afford it.

Further, we seem completely incapable of tightening our belts to weather a tough time. Like an irresponsible family, we continue to rack up debt with no thought to when, let alone how, we can pay it back. From 1980 – 2008 our deficit spending averaged more than 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product. Since 2008, 8.5%. Clearly, this trend is building. Many, including me, believe that the on-going economic stimulus is needed to help those who are hurting, but no one seems willing to pay for it.

Beyond debt, the United States has wracked up trillions in deferred maintenance. Our highway system alone, with its decaying bridges and crumbling roads, needs to be addressed in the next handful of years, but the American populace reacts with knee-jerk instincts whenever additional taxes on gas are suggested as a funding source.

We are experiencing first-hand one of the great events in American history. The financial meltdown of 2008, and the resulting economic turmoil, gave our country an opportunity to shine. This is our rendezvous with destiny. And our rendezvous, so far, has been fully squandered. Rather than soldiering through a truly difficult period, we point fingers at those less fortunate in our own society. We demonize those requiring help, and we cry 'foul' whenever we are asked to give more. 

At some point, we as a nation will need to sacrifice to pay back the debt. The trillions of dollars that we have borrowed has a steep price tag. The interest on our debt in 2012 was $360 billion. Compare this with the much publicized and universally maligned annual sequestration savings of $85 billion per year, and it is almost laughable. We continue to put off big decisions with finger-pointing rhetoric because taking action is too painful. Social Security, Medicare, and our national debt all need attention, and need that attention now. Each year we put off action on these compounding issues exacerbates the problem in the future.

Our grandparents' demons, Hirohito, Mussolini and Hitler, were despised en mass by the American public. It should have been relatively easy to generate a national response against fascism, yet even then, it took an attack on our Naval fleet to generate the necessary popular and political support to enter WWII. But once committed, the United States was unstoppable. We instituted laws that ensured the basic necessities to those in need. We raised taxes, significantly, on almost all Americans – with the highest tax rates topping 90%. Everyone rationed goods regardless of their ability to afford them, and consumerism, buying goods just to own them, was virtually non-existent.

Our national 'can-do' mood lasted decades. We built the United States into the global model of what a nation can achieve. But over time, we seemed to lose our focus. What started as a concern for the national, and even the global, good subtly shifted to concern for individual good. By the 1980s, yuppies, junk bonds and the 'me-generation' dominated the headlines.

Pre-WWII, the Greatest Generation doesn't strike me as all that different from who we are today. Although when pushed, they sprang into action and impressed the world. Today, we are being pushed from all sides. Rather than wring our hands, too fearful to take action, let's follow the example set by our grandparents and great-grandparents. It is time for collective sacrifice; time to stop the long slide we are experiencing; time for all citizens contribute what they can.