Month: August 2005

I know it’s probably pedantic, and too late to change this particular meme, but here goes my tiny little attempt.

It’s come up at work a couple of times recently, so I wanted to point out that what was served by Jim Jones to his followers was not Kool-Aid.

It was Flavor-Aid. OK?

People who are blindly following the orders of a charismatic cult leader are drinking the Flavor-Aid. Got it? Are we clear?

And, no, Kraft Foods did not pay me to make this statement.

This post is for a friend of mine who is currently struggling with her weight. She called me in a bit of a panic because, after being pretty good on her diet for a while, she went out and splurged and overate. She was discouraged enough to feel like quitting her diet and exercise all together. I want to point out that the math of calories means that one day doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, but it’s the slow steady grind that can bring either health or obesity.

For instance, we’ll start with the scenario my friend was in. Weeks of good habits, and then, maybe you overdo things one day. But, think about it. One pound, either to gain or to lose, takes 3500 calories – and that’s over and above what your body requires just for daily living. So to gain a single pound in one day, you’d have to eat your daily needs (around 2000 calories) plus another 3500 calories. You’d have to eat all day long (or boxes and boxes of donuts) to gain a single pound in a day. If, after making bad choices one day, you just go back to your diet, first you shouldn’t feel guilty, and second, you’re going to be OK. A dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, just the basic glazed ones, are 2400 calories. Even if you ate your daily needs and a whole box of Krispy Kreme donuts, you still wouldn’t gain a pound. You may feel like you’re several pounds heavier, but that’s temporary; the permanent weight gain would be less than a pound.

But on the other hand, just going a little over every single day is how people become overweight. Just an extra 200 calories, which is about a single Hershey’s chocolate bar or a 12 oz. can of Pepsi, every day, over time, adds up to 104 pounds of excess weight in just 5 years. Think about how easy it is to go over 200 calories a day. That’s why the slow grind of overeating is so dangerous, and why it’s so important to manage your calories daily.

My third scenario is one I call “eat your cake and have it, too”, the one my friend might find herself in as she attempts to manage her health and her weight. Eat at, or under your daily needs (maybe giving yourself some wiggle room by being more active and therefore burning more calories) but, once in a while, splurge and have an ice cream cone or a giant chocolate chip cookie. Assuming you’re eating no more than what your body requires, but every week you have a “treat” of 500 calories, in 5 years you will have only gained 37 pounds in 5 years. Which is troublesome, but nowhere near the 100+ pounds you would have gained if you had gone over every day, as my second scenario above, and could be easily countered by simple eating 100 calories under every other “non-treat” day – in fact, in that situation, you would be losing weight, at 100 calories per week, or about a pound and a half a year.

So, take heart. Occasional days of splurging are OK, as long as you try to be good the rest of the time. And since maintaining weight, once you strip out all of the emotions attached to the food (difficult but not impossible for most of us), is just a matter of numbers, once you understand the numbers you have all the tools you need to take control.

Ran my brand-new 6-mile loop last night. It’s a good one, a couple of hills (the stretch along Holgate, at the far end, is very up-and-down), and lots of scenery. Through Westmoreland Park, along the Eastmoreland golf course, by the Rhododendron Gardens, over the Brooklyn train yards, down through Oaks Bottom Wetlands, and back along the river. Very nice. From the starting point at SE 19th and Linn, to the finish line at SE 10th and Linn, it’s just a shade over 6 miles (6.03, according to Google Earth).

I ran that loop in almost the same time I ran the Nike Run Hit Wonder: 1:06:12. It was hot, I did better than I thought I would, but still kinda slow.

“Portland is a ‘made’ town.”

That phrase stuck in my head when I woke up. I had a cool dream last night. In it, I was walking around a (fictional) part of (real) Portland, OR. This section was called Bilton Hills, and was a very steep area near the river, curving into a cresent shaped shoreline. The sides of the hills were covered in slums and tenement houses in various states of disrepair, clinging to the slopes at crazy angles. The streetcar I was riding slowly made its way down the main thoroughfare of the Bilton Hills section of town.

I was with a friend who was much younger than myself, and I was pointing out areas of the neighborhood with connections to past history. For instance, there was a fire station that had been burnt to the ground and rebuilt in the mid-1950s. Or there was an arcade section, with a small roller-coaster and Ferris wheel, that was known for being a place where anyone could buy or sell anything. It was a center for the underground market. In fact, I explained to my young friend, this whole section of town was overrun with a criminal element, but around fifty years ago, this was actually a very rich part of town. Mobsters and crime lords lived here, and there was a lot of nightlife and clubs and drinking and boozing and whoring going on… My friend didn’t believe me, and as I looked over the poverty-stricken area, I could see why.

But (still in my dream) I could imagine what it looked like fifty years ago… and just like that, I was in a diner in 1950s-era Bilton Hills. I wore a snappy suit and hat, and was catching a little refreshment, while flirting with the cute blonde waitress. My young friend sat at the red-vinyl upholstered booth, also in suit and tie. We sat near a large window looking out towards the river down hill; we were about halfway up and could see most of the area.

As we drank, we could see the old fire station – and, as we watched, in broad daylight, a series of sudden explosions rocked the building and sent fireballs into the skies! The patrons of the diner screamed and I shouted to my friend that we had to leave. “Obviously it’s going to take a while for other fire engines to respond, and if the fire reaches the arcade,” and here I pointed to the all-wooden structure of the roller-coaster, “then this whole section of town is going to become an inferno!” We joined the crowd of people leaving the diner, pausing only allow women and children out ahead of us (people were more polite in those days). I reflected that the explosions were obviously man-made and couldn’t fathom a reason why someone would want to hit the fire station, unless it was specifically to cause this whole section of town to disappear and simultaneously prevent any rapid response. It had to be the mobsters…

As my friend and I tried to find (or steal; he was a ‘mechanic’ with knowledge of hot-wiring cars) transportation out of Bilton Hills, I reflected that “Portland was a ‘made’ town…”

And then I woke up.