Eight Days in the Grand Canyon (Supplement 1): My Physical Take-Away

A few months ago, I was texting with a friend of mine and I mentioned that I'd been working on getting in shape for our trip to the Grand Canyon. (See previous post for a full account of the adventure.) He immediately made fun of me: he had seen the trip and knew it was motorized -- not a paddling trip like one we had taken on the pretty deadly Upper Gauley river in West Virginia, a few decades ago -- so he good-naturedly accused me of being dramatic. I shared a laugh at the joke; but I told him that I really wanted to be in shape for the side-hikes and other physical challenges of the trip. And the heat. (Though, there really was no preparing for that heat.) 

For a few months, I went, every day, to a three mile system of trails near my New Jersey home. I'd wait for the hottest time of the day (or, at least, not worry about how hot it was) and I would walk my usual paths and then speed-climb a central hill (the lazily-named "Blueberry Hill") two or three times before going back to the trail head.

On the Canyon trip, as a result, I was pretty proud of how I held up. I felt strong on the trails, the whole time. My back was good (occasional issues there, in the past) and I suffered no aches and pains. (I had started out taking Advil, preemptively, at night, but I stopped that on the third of eight days.) My cardio was pretty solid the whole time: no excessive panting with climbs and camp setups/breakdowns; no insane heart-thumping. 

It all raises the question of the connection between weight and fitness -- a question that has been a central one for my wife and me for the past year or so. 

I am simply not at a weight I want to be. I'm at least twenty pounds over, by my standards. Maybe, at this point, I have to admit that I have been telling myself a lie for years: that wanting to be thin is not out of vanity. I think it may be, but I also think that might be okay.

I used to say that my desire to be thin is a result of two things: 1) How I feel. 2) Having this notion that I have a "thin mind," so I want my body to follow suit. It just helps with social clarity. 

Well, when it comes to No. 1: I feel pretty good now and it is because I have been moving. I'm 54. My joints and muscles feel good. My back is fine. I can motor along on a trail or scramble up rocks with the best of them... If I keep my regimen of hiking and stretching up, I should keep feeling this way. 

Then, I see myself in pictures, and I think: Who the heck is that? He looks neither like the guy in my head nor the guy in the mirror. (I can only hope that it's true about pictures adding ten pounds and some quick research shows it is probably true, so I got that going for me...) Sometimes I look at pictures of myself and tell my wife that I look like Peter Griffin, from Family Guy. I say this to be funny, but it also kind of hurts the old pride.

I do have thin mind. That, I keep in shape with constant exercise. I may not be a genius, but there is certainly no belly flab in the old mellon. 

Maybe I need to see all of this as a prompt for a separation of thought. I used to look at diet and exercise the way we are told to: as partnered weight-loss efforts. For me, it's better to think of them as separate goals: Exercise makes me feel good, physically; weight loss makes me feel good mentally. 

And both are important, right?

In the end, I guess it is more important to be strong than to be pretty. We'll see where that takes me. 

Pleasant Medicines

What we all need to do is find pleasant medicines. This is a little north of the whole idea of a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down. The things that are good for us can be pleasant.

People have found this, but very few talk about it. Devoted runners, for instance, almost always love running. Some athletes are forced to run for their sports, but runners do it out of love for the process.

But I hate running.

I also hate lifting weights. And most other forms of physical exertion. So, not pleasant medicines.

I was inspired to write this as I finished my last sip of cold green tea a few moments ago. I brew it each week and I drink it throughout my work day. Since I started this, my weight loss per week (something I have been working hard on) has doubled. The health benefits of green tea are almost universally supported by research. And I like it. Pleasant medicine.

I have also been practicing yoga. It is making me stronger and more flexible. I could get stronger and more flexible in a million unpleasant ways, but yoga actually feels good when I am doing it. I look forward to it each day. I have never looked forward to any form of exercise. WhemI was an athlete, it was just something that came with the territory, as it were. I did it because I was forced to.

Can't we all find pleasant things to do that make us more healthy? I sure can't be easy, because it took me forty-nine years to latch on to a mere two "pleasant medicines." But I intend to look for more ways to do things that are good for me that I actually enjoy.

Everyone talks about healthful living as if it is a burden. It really does not have to be. But, as I find with most things, you need to be philosophical about it to be happy and consistent.

Who's the Fat Guy Wearing My Hat?

I have no doubt that obese people know that they are obese. When one is obese, one finds it hard to breathe or to put on one’s own shoes. One doesn’t fit into roller-coaster seats – that sort of thing. But, sometimes, I look at chubby people and I wonder if they know they are chubby.

The reason I wonder this is because I know I have a pretty inaccurate concept of how I look, at times. Apparently, I have a lean mind. In my head, I look a particular way. But, sometimes, I will catch a glimpse of myself in a convenience store video monitor or I will see my reflection in a display case and I will wonder, for a moment, when the hell I put on those extra pounds. Who’s the fat guy wearing my hat?

I am in the socially fortunate but medically unfortunate position of being perceived favorably when I gain weight. People routinely ask me if I have been lifting weights when I put on a few. So, you can see how I sort of get lead into a leaner perception of myself than is, strictly speaking, accurate.

From "Wackiki Wabbit," Warner Bros, 1943

Even when I am at my thinnest, I’m always fighting a battle. I keep myself under control, but my “fightin’ weight” is about twenty pounds below where I am now. So, I empathize with those struggling with their blubberosity; I’ve been doing it for years.

But, the other day, I was in a store and I saw a chubby guy. He was decked-out stylishly. He carried himself with a swagger. His hair, not unlike some werewolves in London, was perfect. For some reason, I almost asked him if he knows he is chubby. I resisted, ever the consummate gentledude.

The Sweating Anomaly

I had the strangest experience today.

I was standing in a Wawa -- it's a convenience store in this neck of the world; there are so many of them in my state that you tend, while driving, to say, "Mah -- that one's on the wrong side of the road; I'll wait for the next Wawa." There's always a next Wawa; always, and hard upon the last. I don't doubt that they're connected by underground tunnels hung with oil lanterns.

Anyway, I was standing (leaning, really) in one of these ubiquitous Wawas, waiting for the young woman behind the counter to grudgingly slap together the sandwiches that I had ordered as part of dinner -- the unhealthy composition of which more or less negates any good thing I have ever done as a father or husband -- for the family. (My, I'm feeling parenthetical today.)

It's been near one-hundred degrees for a few days 'round here. Sweating people trudged wetly in and out, buying sports drinks, chips, cookies, cigarettes, beef-jerky, milk, bread and queso dips of various hues. The tired plastic bags in their tired hands were loaded with little packages of death-hastening treats. And they didn't care, because life is busy and it is hot and they just want something nice in the midst of a day that sucked fat ostrich eggs.


Leave me alone, each face said, in weary silence. Just leave me the hell alone! What more do you want from me? It's been a long, hot day. My children are chittering little dung beetles and my spouse is a soul-eating extraterrestrial. I NEED this brownie and I am going to wash it down with this ice-cold Coke and when I'm done, I might lick sugar cubes until the entire box is gone and my wrists drip with stickiness! So, BACK OFF!"


Really. That's what they wordlessly said.

The Biggest Loser?

I watch The Biggest Loser sometimes. I usually watch it while enjoying snacks. Fatty snacks. Delicious snacks. But as a person who has to work hard to keep his Olympian figure (hey, you can't see me, so what the hell -- I look like Brad Pitt and I am built like the Bowflex guy), I understand what it means to deal with weight issues, as do the rest of the people in my family, so I can certainly empathize with obese America; I'd be right there with them if not for at least intermittent attention to my diet and exercise. But something about The Biggest Loser bothers me. In fact, it rends me asunder. It makes my superficial Jeckyll deeply critical of my secretly sadistic hide.

Can't we just be nice? Surely, the show has a heart to it and it chases a socially helpful goal. But why can't we stand to watch a show that isn't tainted with scheming and ax-dropping? Must these people be made to eliminate each other? What's with our fascination with "elimination" on our reality TV shows? Can't it just be a contest to see who loses the most weight, in the end? No, it can't. That wouldn't hold the dark appeal that morphs people into cathode ray bathed, TV watching zombies who eagerly devour the rubber-necking, car-wreck gaping joy we all share as if it were freshly harvested brain stew. It seems there is nothing more satisfying than watching fast friends, dripping rivulets of maudlin tears, voting each other out of the only situation that can save their overweight lives.

Stephen King wrote an essay called "Why We Crave Horror Movies" in which he gives his position on our dark natures and how they manifest themselves in creepy behavior. He attempts to explain -- quite well, I might add -- why we are drawn toward death and gruesomeness. Well, my topic is not as extreme, but what I see does throw devil horn shadows on the wall behind us as the blue light from the screen dances around us.

We enjoy seeing people succeed, sure, but we also enjoy seeing people fail. Alarmingly, we enjoy seeing friends getting forced to kick each other out of Camp Salvation. There are paradoxes galore around the show. Even the title implies this with its multiple meanings: He's a loser because he is big; he loses the most pounds, so he is the biggest loser of weight; he fails in his attempt to lose weight, so he is a big loser. Et-freaking-cetera.

When all is said and done, the show wants to help its cast, unless the rest of the cast is forced, by the design of the show, to cut off the help for some big loser who couldn't lose enough that week. (In fairness, I am not sure how much the show sticks with the contestants after they are "kicked off" -- if anyone knows, let me know.)

Then you have, as on other reality shows, reoccurring criticism, by both cast and home viewers, of the person who is doing too much "game playing". This, I do not get. You go on a show to win, right? I mean, the dangling carrot (besides not dying, someday, of cardiac arrest while clipping your toenails) is $250, 000. So, now, we let you on this show and offer you lots of money if you win and we offer you a shot at a new life if you lose lots of weight -- a task that is clearly made easier by the twenty-four hour assistance of the two most famous, successful trainers in the world --  but we expect you not to try too hard to win, because that is mean. Adam, meet the serpent. Serpent, Adam. The rest of us will decide if you continue to deserve this chance to live a long healthy life, thank you oodles and oodles.

(Did someone say "noodles"? Or cupcakes for that matter! Eat twelve of them and you can have a big weight advantage reward. Forget the fact that, every season, you have watched people eat them and then cry because of guilt and because Jillian then scratches out their eyes with a salty pretzel rod in a fit of righteous rage. Stuff those cheeks, pal. It is all a game and this gives you the advantage. Oh, wait -- that's wrong -- it is not a game -- or it shouldn't be. You are here to lose weight and to help your chubby chums do the same thing. So -- I guess don't eat the cupcakes. And hug that poor girl hard before you push her out the door.)

After all is said and done, perhaps it is good enough that when the sappy MIDI music plays at the end of the show and we watch an encapsulated video summary of all of the flab of the past (bouncing and wobbling in dramatic, deeply disturbing slow-motion) turning into the muscles of the bright future, it is all forgotten that, for an entire season, we simultaneously enjoyed seeing people lose ridiculous amounts of weight while dismantling each other's chances of winning (and criticizing them for doing this) all whilst spooning Ben and Jerry's into our gaping, critical, head-shaking, teary-eyed, empathetic faces.

Perhaps we, the audience, are the biggest losers? (In a bad way.)

WHADDAYOU THINK?

Power Primping

Brothers!  Fellow warriors!  Don't fall for it.  I tell you, there looms a secret conspiracy against all that is hairy and gruff and it wafts through our culture like a dog fart on the breeze.  There is a clandestine effort going on out there to make soft what should be rough; to take those who traditionally have been noted, favorably, for the age-old ability to beat others senseless and to inject us with a poison designed to release its toxic sensitivity into our testosterone rivers, thereby turning the subterranean piranhas of aggression into insipid guppies.  Beware! Whence comes this insidious, dark force?  From advertising, the media and . . . women.

(Ladies . . . stick with me here, please. I realize this an artless way to appeal to one's audience, but I'm reasonably desperate.)

Where has gone the sword?  Where, the battle-axe (yes, with an "e" at the end, dammit)?  Where is the noble stench of grunting contention?  I'll tell you where: scrubbed off or our unnecessarily moisturized skin with a loofah and whirling, perfumed with body wash, down the drains of the full, sloshing tub of glorious blubber that we all once were.  That's where.  But it is not too late.  The power to return us all to our former forest-chested glory is in your (MANICURED?) hands.  Let me lift the veil from your eyes, my bewitched pal . . .

Perfuming and moisturizing, for example.  Would you do this voluntarily?  Of course not.  It's silly.  So the advertisers use manipulative language to smokescreen us.  They seduce our warrior natures with phrases like: "power away dirt" and "defeat dry skin" with "active hydrators".  They bid us to "unleash" the power that lies dormant, as if it were a sleeping dragon's conflagratory breath, in our showers.  For the love of God!  However they package it, you wind up with soft skin.  Do you hear this?  Don't fall for the lies, my friends.  Next thing you know, we'll be tweezing stuff.  (I know, I know -- some dudes already do that.  It's just too horrifying for me to ponder.)

And the women in our lives? (Just to be safe, let's not tell my wife about this post.) These plotting flibbertigibbets want to recreate us in their own image.  I can feel it.  Do you know what I did this morning?  I ate yogurt with fruit in it and a little granola sprinkled on top.  Fruit, I said.  And my wife? She blends stuff up and puts it into milkshakes. (Actually, she blends up just about everything and drinks it.  Check out her site to the right if you don't believe me. I'm thinking of trying it with a hamburger -- no pickles.) Anyway, I enjoyed the most delicious chocolate milkshake the other day, only to discover, afterward, that the scheming wench had blended spinach into it.  I mean, getting me to clean my own crumbs off of the counter is one thing, but slipping nutrition into what remains decadent, mindless yumminess is downright evil.  Just when you think you can trust a girl.  It's affecting me like a drug.  I'm slipping.  I'm playing right into that suburban Circe's hands.  Parfaits, indeed.

But I will not give in.  Nor should the rest of you, my stinking brethren.  If we start softening up, the world could become an unrecognizable place.  Millions of military employees will be out of work.  (Do you think Patton moisturized?) If we wind up healthy, we could very well lose our chance to face cancer with bravado.  If we start caring about personal aesthetics, we could easily wind up doing lunatic crap like buying art or listening to La Boheme.  Danger lurks around every corner, bub.  Beware.  And don't say I didn't warn you when you find yourself giggling as the cuddly puppy of social conditioning licks you into submission.