Mindset

 After having gone through a year's worth of unexplained symptoms and puzzled doctors, in October of 2009, I finally received a frantic call from my primary care physician, telling me to go to the hospital as soon as I possibly could. I arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon, and was rushed through a series of interviews I can barely remember now. There seem to have been a couple of triage points, several conversations with a nurse practitioner, a lot of waiting around, and then finally a rather anti-climactic visit from an endocrine specialist.

In her Irish accent, she told me, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but you're diabetic, and..." She trailed off briefly, probably considering whether there was anything emotionally helpful she could provide for me in that moment. Then, apparently deciding that there wasn't, she continued, "We're going to give you an insulin shot today, and--and you're going to be on insulin for the rest of your life."

"What?!"

"Yeah..." she told me. Then she said something that I don't remember, which somewhat conveyed empathy, but which also conveyed the urgency with which she needed to inject insulin into me.

From there, I was led into another room, where another nurse introduced me to my first insulin pen. I hadn't had time to process what was happening to me. This had all happened within about 30 minutes, and the part where I found out that I was henceforth an insulin-dependent diabetic had only happened a couple of minutes ago. These people wouldn't let me catch my breath. I was being rushed from one end of the ward to the next, from room to room, person to person, each one hurrying through a set of instructions that I don't remember; that I never had any chance of ever remembering in the first place. 

The nurse who showed me the insulin pen quickly went through instructions on how to give myself an injection. The tutorial was over in less than a minute, at which point she sort of gestured toward all the paraphernalia in between us and said, "Do you want me to help you with your first shot?"

That was it.

The confusion in my mind suddenly melted away. Everything sort of melted away, everything except a sense of purpose. I said, "Well, I might as well get used to it now. I'll be doing it for the rest of my life." I took the needle and the insulin pen, pulled off the seal, screwed the needle onto the pen, dialed in my dose, jabbed it into my stomach, and pressed the button.

I've been a diabetic ever since.

*        *        *

While I didn't know everything there was to know about managing my diet as a type 1 diabetic, a similar shift happened to me when I got home that evening. One day, I was eating ice cream cake and jalapeno poppers, the next day I was meticulously counting my carbohydrates and denying myself anything that required an injection. 

I don't know how it works for other people, but that's how it worked for me. There was no use crying about every meal I was going to eat from then on. There was no use complaining about it. There was no use comparing my new diet to the freedom and decadence I had enjoyed as a normal, healthy twenty-something only a few hours before. Once my mind had absorbed the fact that I was a type 1 diabetic, my behavior followed. 

Adjusting to a new chronic condition isn't easy, especially if you really enjoyed the life you had lead up to that point. But my thinking was, what other choice do I have? It wasn't as if I could go back to living in a world in which I wasn't diabetic. The task at that point was to figure out how to thrive under my current set of conditions, not despair over what those conditions were. It did take me a long time to fully emotionally accept my condition, but that was a grieving process, not a struggle against reality.

Grief itself is a natural part of human existence. We all grieve. For most people, grief - however emotionally significant it is - does not put a halt to the other aspects of our lives. Grief makes us sad, and causes us to think carefully about the present state of our lives. It isn't a denial of reality, but rather an acknowledgement of it: the person we loved is now gone, the life we led is now impossible, the precious thing we had is now lost. Whatever the cause, grief is a transition from one set of circumstances to another. If someone fails to make the transition, that failure isn't caused by the grief, but by our own refusal to evolve.

*        *        *

Granted, some transitions are easier than others. When a man becomes a diabetic, he transitions from a general identity, like "I am a man," to a new identity that involves the condition: "I am a diabetic man." Seeking out that new identity and discovering what it means on a personal level is a large part of the journey itself. Strange as it may sound to some, I consider this to be an easier transition than when we lose a loved one. I can become a diabetic man, but a man who loses a father cannot become a man without a father. Once you have a father, you are always a person with a father, even after you lose him. 

So, I do understand that some transitions are harder than others, that some grief is more uniquely difficult to overcome, and that one person's struggles don't always map with parity to another person's struggles.

Even so, grief is a transition. No matter how difficult, and no matter how long it takes to fully process, grief is a doorway into another room, a next chapter of life. (Luckily for us, not every new chapter of life requires that we grieve to make the transition!) What some struggle with is acknowledging that the previous chapter has already ended; that room no longer exists. Either we step through our grief, into the new room, or we try to exist in a nothing-space, an emotional nether-region.

What we can't do is go backwards.

*        *        *

A friend of mine recently committed to making a positive change toward better health and fitness. He made his commitment public in a bid to keep himself accountable. I congratulated him and made myself available to him; after all, I do happen to know a few things about health and fitness. He confessed that he felt a little intimidated by me, and said, "Anyone who has run 30+ miles has a different set of mental skills than me."

This is a good friend, but clearly he doesn't read my blog, ha ha...

I wanted to tell him about the power of mindset. I wanted to tell him about my firm belief, confirmed again and again in a variety of different experiences, that everyone has all the same stuff. After all, we are all human beings. While our genetics all differ slightly, none of us is so different that he has a completely different mental skill set. 

I also wanted to explain to him that this very notion, the idea that something immutable between us has caused me to pursue a lifetime of fitness while causing him to pursue something else entirely, is the belief that limits his progress. The worst thing we can ever tell ourselves as we pursue a goal is that we are fundamentally incapable of being the kind of person who excels at such goals. 

No, the first step toward achieving any goal is acknowledging the reality that such a goal is achievable by people like us. Why pursue something if, by definition, you're not the kind of person who can attain it? Instead, we must reach for our aspirations under the belief that, truly, we can do it. That doesn't mean for certain that we will, but isn't it nice to know that it's possible? Indeed, isn't it necessary to know that it's possible? Has anyone ever achieved the impossible?

I don't recall ever hearing an Olympian explain in an interview, "I knew all along that everyone else was faster than I am and that I didn't have the right stuff to win an Olympic gold medal, but by the end of the race - gee whiz! - I had won!"

*        *        *

Of course, mindset isn't merely about achieving something. The reason that sorting out your mindset has the effect of helping you achieve something is because if we fixate on our limiting beliefs or on transitions we haven't been able to make, then new things we want to do are just off the table. In a way, it's less about having a "positive mindset" than it is about not having a negative one. 

Any pessimist realist will tell you that positive thinking isn't enough to get you where you want to be. You also have to put in all the hard work, and get a few lucky breaks along the way, and eventually serendipity happens. However, negative thinking will definitely screw you over before you even get started. 

And if that's what negative thinking does to your attempts at achieving something, think about what it does for your daily life. We don't always want to get up and get ready for work in the morning, but who do you think is going to have a better day: the man who groans and grumbles and frowns and complains the whole time, or the man who focuses his attention on whatever he has to look forward to that day? 

I can tell you from experience that my days pass a lot more quickly when I get to drive my daughter to her ballet class once a week. Those are simply wonderful days. We hurry to get ready, and then we drive together, just the two of us, to her class; we listen to our favorite music as we drive, or else we have a nice conversation together. Then she goes to class, and I go for a walk around the scenic neighborhoods surrounding her dance studio. When it's over, we drive home, she tells me about her class, and then we get takeout from a favorite restaurant and everybody sits upstairs eating and watching our favorite TV shows. It's become a whole ritual, one that we all look forward to, and one that we all find very satisfying. 

Not every day can be that fun, but simply by virtue of the fact that my Wednesday evenings are so nice, my Wednesday work days pass by quickly and happily. That's a positive mindset for you.

You might have had a "divorced friend," a friend who went through a particularly bad break-up, and it soured his or her perspective on everything. So every time you talk with your friend about your own spouse or partner, your comments are met with derision, or sarcasm, or else steered toward a rant about your friend's ex and how bad they made everything. How much fun is it to spend time with these people? 

A few days ago, I wrote about how, after going through my own break up, I decided to turn myself into the kind of person who my ideal partner would want to date; unlike other people I knew, who allowed their break-ups to make them cynical. I think the results speak for themselves.

*        *        *

All of these things come down to having the right mindset. Whether you're trying to overcome a bad situation, trying to achieve something remarkable, trying to lose weight, trying to find the love of your life, or just trying to make it through Wednesday, having the right mindset is the power that will carry you through.

And if it doesn't? You're still not out anything, because you will have spent most of the day thinking positive things and being happy, rather than thinking negative things and being sad. I'm not a fan of Pascal's Wager, but in this case I think it works. If you maintain a positive mindset, and things don't go your way, then you haven't really lost anything. If you maintain a negative mindset, things still might not go your way, but what you've lost is the happiness you could have felt if you had a better attitude. And in the meantime, that positive thinking really could end up paying off, and then you have both the happiness your attitude brought you, along with whatever victory you were hoping for at the end of the day. 

Life In A Global Pandemic, Part 12

I received the Moderrna COVID-19 vaccine.

Instead of selling it on the open market, the world's largest capitalist economy has decided to use central planning to distribute the vaccines. I wish I could say I didn't see that coming, but the global response to this virus has been a disaster of central planning from the very beginning. It stands to reason that the "end" (?) of the pandemic should unfold the same way.

Tarrant County provided a website, distributed mainly by word-of-mouth as far as I can tell, through which residents could register to receive the vaccine. It is not first come, first served. Instead, patients were linked to an electronic form, in which we disclosed our age, race, sex, and so on, along with any "preexisting conditions" we might have. This is to ensure that the vaccine goes first to the sick and the weak, rather than to the young, strong, socially active people who are probably responsible for transmitting the virus so widely. That said, I do think the old and the at-risk ought to have first crack at the vaccine.

"Luckily" for me, I acquired type 1 diabetes more than a decade ago. (Tempus fugit!) The county's electronic form doesn't differentiate between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and of course it is only type 2 diabetes that is listed as the kind of "preexisting condition" that puts one at risk of death from COVID-19. Since I can't go on the open market and buy myself a shot, though, I didn't feel too badly about answering truthfully that I have "diabetes" and letting the health department sort out the details. Within a week, I had my appointment for receiving the vaccine scheduled.

The health department called me three times on Friday. I didn't recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail. In any case, it was an automated call all three times. They also sent me three identical emails the text of which was verbatim to the phone calls I received. The emails contained a link to confirm my appointment, and so I did. The appointment was scheduled for the following day "between 9 AM and 11 AM."

I showed up at about 8:45 AM, and there was already a long lineup of cars waiting to park. Police split traffic up into four separate queues, which eventually merged back into two separate lines. Once we found a parking space, we lined up again inside the building - two separate lines this time. I waited in line for perhaps 40 minutes, during which time volunteers checked my paperwork no less than five times. Finally, I arrived at a registration table, where my paperwork was checked again, my driver's license and insurance information were taken down, and then I was directed into an all-new queue. This queue happened to split into two lines for about 20 yards, before merging back into one queue again. Central planning is wonderful, isn't it?

At last, I was allowed inside a conference room, where I sat at a table and someone administered the vaccine. I was then directed to a second person who gave me my "vaccine card," along with a memorized set of instructions that I will never be able to remember. The gist of it was that I needed my "vaccine card" to get my second vaccine dose, which I will be able to receive in four weeks' time. She also told me, despite CDC information to the contrary, that I cannot mix vaccines, meaning that since I received the Moderna vaccine, I should only get the Moderna vaccine for my second dose, otherwise it won't work. Finally, she gave me a sticky-note with a time written on it: 10:14 AM, the time when I would be allowed to leave the building. Apparently they make people wait in the conference room for 20 minutes to ensure that nobody has an adverse reaction to the vaccine.

Then I went home.

My sister had received the Moderna vaccine a few weeks before I did. By her account, the vaccine causes muscle cramps, tiredness, feverishness, and so on. I expected to have a similar experience, so I quickly went for a nice, hard run when I got home. I figured that if I was going to be out of commission for a day or two, I should get a good workout in before I started feeling down.

None of those adverse reactions happened for me. The injection site became about as sore as it would be for a tetanus or DTAP vaccine. I did not experience tiredness, pain, fever, or anything else. I feel perfectly fine.

I would recommend the vaccine to others. Hopefully, most everyone will eventually receive an effective vaccine, and the spread of this disease can be minimized as much as possible. I understand that this is one of the first widely used mRNA vaccines ever made. I was curious about it for that reason. This is a new mechanism of action, one that has not previously received widespread federal approval. (According to a handout I received when I was given my vaccine, the Moderna vaccine is "not FDA-approved." They want everyone to know that they are getting an unapproved vaccine, presumably so that no one will ever think to blame the FDA if something goes wrong. Nothing says "accountability" quite like government.) I think now that the concept has essentially been proven, we can expect to see more mRNA vaccines in the future. This could mean a cure for the common cold, to say nothing about all the other, more serious, diseases we might be able to cure with new vaccine technology. 

If there is anything positive about any of this, that's it. It's exciting to be a part of medical history. I'll let you know if I grow a demonic hand or something, but at this point I am expecting it to be smooth-sailing from here.

Life In A Global Pandemic, Part 4

When I was about 13 years old, I had an odd and scary dream.

I was walking through the halls of my junior high school sometime during the late winter months. The sun was shining outside, but it was still cold, with snow on the ground that had begun to melt, making the ground muddy, but still hard from being frozen. In my mind, I had the sense that the world outside the schoolhouse was radioactive; one could go out there for a few moments, but after that the radioactivity would being to corrode the body and kill a person within minutes. Still, I decided to take a shortcut from one hallway to another by going outside. I walked out one of the doors, crossed the muddy, sludgy ground, found the next door and... discovered that it was locked. Then, reality set in and I realized that I didn’t have time to get back to the other door. I awoke from my dream knowing that I was going to die from the radiation.

This was a vivid dream that always stuck with me, presumably only because the dream itself was so vivid. I remembered this dream yesterday when I went to Costco yesterday to do some grocery shopping.

They had us all lined up outside, and were only letting us in the store a few at a time. I did my best to keep six feet of distance between myself and the person in line in front of me, but the person behind me kept scooting up closer and closer to me — even despite my dirty looks and obvious discomfort. Waiting in lines like those is essentially a ticking time bomb. As in my dream, too much time spent in that kind of crowd may eventually kill me. It’s an awful feeling.

My trip to Costco only got more surreal when I made it inside. I had shown up early to try to “beat the crowds,” but unbeknownst to me, Costco had decided to open early. The only people who walked out of the store with toilet paper were those who had shown up in time for the early opening. Still, I was able to get most of the things I wanted. The clerks in the store ushered us toward a specific path; we all had to shop in the same direction. That, too, felt odd and restrictive.

Seeing all my fellow shoppers inside, it started to become obvious to me which people were going to definitely get this disease, and which perhaps had a shot at avoiding it. I’d say about half of us did a good job of keeping our distance from each other, politely letting people go ahead, and giving folks a wide berth as they shopped. Others had brought the whole family to the store — both parents and multiple children, with everyone crowding around the shopping cart. They’d talk loudly, spend a lot of time standing in one place, sort of “occupying” a location of the store, discussing and debating items on the shopping list. They looked exactly as they might have looked on a “normal” day. The cashiers were all wearing protective gloves, but I noticed that one of them was scratching her nose with her gloved hand.

I’m not faulting or criticizing these people. I’m not suggesting that they’re not taking the situation seriously. Rather, it seems that some people’s habits are too hard to break, even in light of the severity of the circumstances. And these habits may well prove deadly for them.

It’s been a roller-coaster of emotions these past few days. At times, I feel crushing fear for a pandemic that seems utterly inevitable. I expect it to kill some of my dear loved ones. I am terrified that it could kill me, and then what would my poor daughter do without me? I am committed to remaining disease-free for the sake of my family; and yet, at the same time, I am rational and I know what the evidence says. The evidence says that the majority of us will get COVID-19. The evidence says that people with pre-existing conditions like diabetes have a much higher death rate; and that even those who don’t die must often spend weeks in the hospital with tubes stuck down their throats and breathing with the aid of a respirator. Images of the polio patients in iron lungs haunt me before I go to sleep.

But, at other times, I’m impressed by the beauty of Spring. The leaves are coming out on the trees, and Texas is becoming warm and green again. There are birds everywhere. People, ostensibly practicing “social distancing,” have decided to spend more time outside with their families, in local parks, being active. The pace of life is quite a bit slower, which is nice. I am treasuring my time with my daughter. We have been bonding a lot lately. She spends her evenings cuddled up close to me, I with my arm around her, holding her tightly. Then there is the medical news — stories of potential antiviral treatments, and vaccine tests, and technological solutions to various medical shortages. These give me hope.

Of course, all hope borrows against time. It all ultimately comes down to whether the vaccines and treatments will be ready and available if and when this virus strikes me. Can I hold out that long? Can I continue to live like this? Will I lose my job? In the worst-case scenario, what must I tell my family before I succumb?

The emotional toll of life in a pandemic is much higher than I realized. The fear is real. You can see it on people. I hope most of us can pull through this.

Stationary Waves And Coronavirus

The concept of temperance has been a feature of this blog for many years. When I talk about temperance, I'm not talking about eschewing alcohol, but the two ideas do have commonalities. Temperance, broadly construed, means having enough restraint to not just do, you know, whatever the hell you want to do, whenever the hell you want to do it. Temperance means keeping your hedonic urges in check long enough to make sensible decisions in accordance with your longer cognitive time-horizon. See this old post on the issue for a brief primer.

There are many articles and blog posts out there discussing the matter of what is the correct policy response to the coronavirus epi/pan-demic. There is plenty of criticism to go around. Who did what, and did they do it how soon? What aspect of testing or messaging did the CDC botch, what can be learned from the mass quarantines in other countries?

In one sense, I think it's natural that people want to look at it from those angles. I can sympathize with that inclination. It's much easier to have a debate about public policy and to get worked up about all the wrong things someone else did than it is to simply acknowledge that pandemics occur approximately once every one hundred years, and that using political machinery to stop the spread of viruses is ultimately a futile endeavor. We'd have better luck stopping an incoming asteroid.

The fact of the matter is that there is nothing that the government can do to protect you from communicable viruses. They will spread, because that's what viruses do. It's the circle of life.

On a personal note, most readers will probably have nothing to worry about with respect to COVID-19, anyway; the death rate for most people appears to be somewhere between 0.1% and 1.0%. Those are very good odds for a virus like this. But for me, it's different. I'm "immuno-compromised." I'm a type 1 diabetic. For me, the death rate might be something more like 9%, and the rate of hospitalization independent of death is much higher for me than it is for the population at large.

This thing can kill me.

On the one hand, we could say that coronavirus is a public health emergency. On the other hand, we should probably say that the public health emergency already exists. I see just how much other human beings spread their germs around on a daily basis. You people are absolutely filthy. I see multiple people per day walk out of public restrooms without washing their hands. I see people playing with their noses, mouths, eyes, and then putting their hands all over public surfaces. I see people cough without covering their mouths, I see people spit out of their car windows, I see people blow their noses by plugging one nostril, leaning to the side, and blasting debris onto the sidewalk. It's disgusting. And these aren't low-brow "others" in some "other" part of town. These are the middle and upper class people in "nice" neighborhoods. These are the normies. And they're filthy, filthy people.

Earlier this morning, I saw a Facebook advertisement for a bidet. The comments under the ad were everything I've come to expect from filthy Americans. They expressed incredulity and skepticism, they laughed, they mocked, they teased... This is happening during a global pandemic. Here we have a centuries-old device that can vastly improve American hygiene and reduce the spread of communicable illness, and even during a global pandemic Americans' response is one of mockery and skepticism.

That mockery and skepticism, combined with Americans' refusal to wash their hands, cover their mouths, and avoid blowing their noses on the sidewalk, is what will ultimately be to blame for the spread of coronavirus and diseases like it. It's easy to point fingers at the CDC for botching "testing," but the demand for "testing" would be decidedly low if Americans knew how to wash their hands, backsides, and faces, and knew how to keep public surfaces clean and disease-free.

Naturally, there's nothing I can do from my perch above my keyboard, writing on an unread blog about how Americans are a travesty of public filth. But maybe things could get a little bit better on the margins if we all thought a little bit more about temperance.

If you find it tempting to blow your nose on the sidewalk, exercise a little temperance. Find your way to the nearest tissue, and use that instead. If you find it somewhat of a hassle to wash your hands every time you use the bathroom, exercise a little temperance. The expedient thing is to skip the hand-washing step, but the right thing to do is to wash your hands. You might not see the point of covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze in the privacy of your own work cubicle, but I urge you to exercise a little temperance on the margins. Cover your mouth, then go wash your hands. And, for god's sake, get a bidet. They are $15 and install in seconds. Jesus.

Practically speaking, it's unlikely that you'll be able to prevent every cough, sneeze, and itch that needs scratching. You won't always be able to find your way to a bathroom in time to wash your hands or do whatever else you need to do. But if you can exercise a little temperance on the margins, then there's a slightly better chance that people like me won't die.

Please, I beg you, exercise a little temperance. Be a little bit more hygienic. This disease does not really need to spread widely in an environment in which people practice good hygiene.

Information Asymmetries

If there's one thing everyone knows about diabetics, it's that we eat artificial sweeteners. Judge us if you must, but we find that artificial sweeteners make life tolerable. As a normal person, you have access to all kinds of tasty treats. Not us. We pretty much only have access to artificial sweeteners.

I knew I had completely embraced my condition the day I started buying artificial sweetener in bulk. A big, bulk box of artificial sweetener packets costs something reasonable and lasts for something like two years, plus or minus the scale of my hyperbole. It is stunning how many little packets fit in a shoe-sized bulk box. I use two to three packets per day: one for my morning oatmeal, one for my morning yogurt, and one for a cup of tea I have at some point during the day.

No one else in the house eats the stuff, so it was a mystery when I looked in my pantry one day and noticed a big bag of artificial sweetener.

For the uninitiated, let me explain. Artificial sweeteners come in four different format.

The first format is liquid. To my knowledge, the only people who use liquid artificial sweetener are industrial food producers in factories, and people who like to light dollar bills on fire for fun. That's my way of saying that liquid artificial sweetener is very expensive.

The second format for artificial sweeteners is tablet. The sweetener is compressed into a little pill-sized cookie, and a few dozen of them are poured into a plastic bottle. When you want a little sweet treat, you drop a tablet or two into your tea or coffee, and then wait for seventeen hours while the tablet fails to dissolve. Finally, you lose patience and stab the undissolved tablet with a teaspoon until it becomes several shards of undissolved tablet. You drink the unsweetened tea or coffee with a grimace on your face until you reach the last few drops at the bottom, containing all of the undissolved shards. They slip into your mouth with the final drops of tea, forcing you to chew them up, gag, and ultimately hate yourself. It should not surprise you to learn that the tablet form of artificial sweeteners is a favorite among seniors.

The third format for artificial sweeteners is my personal favorite, paper packets full of powder. The packets are pre-measured by weight to ensure that each one contains exactly the equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar. Taking a sachet by the topmost seam, you can give it a vigorous little shake, producing a satisfying percussive sound, not unlike maracas. Doing so forces all of the powder to the opposite end of the sachet, at which point you can tear the packet at the top seam and pour the powder wherever you need it to be. The sachet is small enough that it can be precisely aimed; spilling is minimal. The powder dissolves instantly, so instantly, in fact, that if you pour it over a steaming cup of tea it sometimes dissolves in the vapor itself without ever reaching the cup. For this reason, I typically opt to pour the sweetener in alongside the tea bag, prior to pouring in the water. Perhaps the only drawback to artificial sweetener in paper packets is the fact that it is usually mixed with dextrose, which is a sugar. Why industrial manufacturers of artificial sweetener have chosen to mix real sugar in with fake sugar as a bulking agent is beyond me. I wish they wouldn't. Still, there is no superior format for artificial sweeteners than paper packets.

Fourthly and finally, artificial sweetener comes in large, plastic, resealable bags of powder. Near as I can tell, this format was developed for people who like to bake with artificial sweeteners, and who have developed an emotional attachment to scooping raw ingredients out of bags. When folks make cookies, they scoop sugar and flour out of bags. If you find this sort of thing comforting, the food industry has provided a solution for you: artificial sweetener in large, plastic, resealable bags. A second advantage of this format is the absence of dextrose bulking agents. A teaspoon of sweetener is a teaspoon of sweetener. On the detrimental side of the picture, artificial sweeteners weigh much less than sugar granules. Consequently, when you open the large bag, air enters the bag along with your scooping implement. When you then proceed to close the bag, the air escapes, and with it a thick cloud of sweet, white dust, which coats the lungs. To my knowledge, the health impacts of inhaling artificial sweeteners have never been studied. We diabetics are a living experiment.

With that in mind, we can return to my pantry, where, for years, there contained the selfsame bulk box of paper packets from which I drew my artificial sweetener. On this particular day, though, I noticed the addition of a big plastic bag of raw sweetener. My mind effervesced with questions. Where did it come from? Who would buy such a thing? When would I ever use it? Within moments, I had dismissed its very existence. I had my paper packets, which I would continue to use at my leisure. No need to worry about an irrelevant and useless thing.

I should have known at the time that I would one day run out of paper packets and need to purchase a new box. I should also have been more self-aware, for when do I ever buy what I need before it's too late? So it was; the day came when I inevitably ran out of paper packets and was forced to scoop my sweetener out of a bulk bag, inhale the white cloud of dust springing forth as the bag closed, and so forth.

It was a livable situation, but not a lengthy one. I replenished my stock of paper packets soon enough, but in the interim an ecological thought occurred to me. Paper packets come in a cardboard box, so after the sweetener itself is dispensed, all that remains is completely biodegradable packaging. By contrast, the plastic bulk bag involves less overall packaging waste, thanks to the absence of individual, per-portion sachets; but that packaging it does have is not biodegradable. Paper products require lumber, which must be forested. Or should I say deforested? Plastic products are extracted from the ground and refined with ample carbon footprint, deep and wide.

As a consumer, I have no insight into the comparative merits of either form of packaging. The price difference is negligible, and I can be trained not to inhale stevia dust. My point here is that I would like to make the most environmentally sound choice at the margin, but I have no knowledge of which option is the more ecological. I can see benefits and drawbacks to either choice. An informed consumer could make an informed choice, but the finer points of the effects of packaging materials on the environment are complex enough that I doubt any consumer - or, indeed, any lone person on earth - knows the answer to this question with certainty.

With better information, we could all make more informed choices. Not all of us would choose artificial sweeteners based on their environmental impacts, but some of us would, and that would represent a more efficient marketplace. It's hard to say that the asymmetrical information of packaging represents an enormous deadweight loss, but life can, and does, get better over time. If somehow this kind of information could be gathered and delivered to people making simple every-day decisions at the grocery store, then there's no telling what kind of improvements could be made to the environment, or to life in general.

The problem, at least in this case, is our inability to fuse together the relevant facts in a way that informs market decisions. I'm cynical enough to guess that any such attempt would quickly become politicized to the point of uselessness, but wouldn't it be great if humans could find a way, anyhow? 

The Old Days Versus These Days

Running in the Icelandic summer weather was almost pure bliss. This summer's exceptionally high humidity and seasonal heat made training in Texas a real struggle. My pace times decreased by a minute per mile, speed work was practically out of the question, and anything longer than a five-mile run was a chore. By the time I hit the roads and walking paths around the suburbs of Reykjavik, I was ready for anything cooler than 95 degrees. The pleasant high-60s, combined with the coastal winds and the cool cloud cover, were like a barrier had been lifted from in front of me. Quite literally overnight, I was running ten or more miles at per-mile paces in the low 6:30s.

In was not particularly surprising, then, that when cooler weather finally found its way to Texas in the Fall, my paces and distances improved accordingly. For example, I went for a 13-mile long run and very nearly set a new personal best half-marathon time. I built my long runs up to 14, 15, 16... even 18 miles. (No 20-mile long runs yet, but it's not a fitness challenge so much as it is a diabetic-logistic challenge.) This was very encouraging.

So encouraging was it that I soon found myself running as much as ten miles during a weekday run and up to eighteen miles on the weekend. That included two speed workouts per week. And recently, I even add form drills to my repertoire. It felt great.

Still, one can only train so hard for so long. I started training for a half marathon in February, and without exception I have been training like a relatively serious runner every week since then, taking time off only for illness or heavily extenuating circumstances. Now heading into December and my tenth consecutive month of hard training, my body is starting to feel the strain, in the form of little aches and pains, whispers of shin splints, muscle shortening, sore feet, and an overall lack of confidence during movements that require balance.

In the old days, I would have simply powered through all this. The pain means the training is doing its job. I would have doubled-down, running perhaps more miles and looking for ways to add even more time to my workouts. That was then, this is now.

Today, I need to figure out how to become a stronger runner without compromising a pretty good running streak. Not only that, I've discovered that no other activity gives me better control of my blood glucose levels than running, which means that whatever time I spend on other activities may ultimately come at the cost of better blood sugar control. Even so, what I'm doing isn't sustainable. My body is getting tired, and I'm starting to detect evidence of muscle imbalances which could cause injuries if they're not corrected.

As much as it disappoints me to have to say so, I might need to replace some of this running with strength training, to rehabilitate my muscle imbalances and allow my running muscles to rest and reset. 

A Word Of Caution

Incredibly, it is now 2019. I've been blogging for over a decade, and my life has undergone many changes since I started. I've now reached middle age, and so I suppose there's no shame in blogging about middle-aged things. Perhaps you can benefit from reading this.

For most of my life, my blood pressure has been on the low side of the normal range. Regular readers will understand why that is: I'm an enthusiastic and borderline-obsessive fitness nut and distance runner. Imagine my surprise, then, when a routine medical checkup resulted in a reading of "State 2 hypertension," 140/90. That's high blood pressure.

Well, I thought, it's just one reading. Besides that, my blood sugar was high that day; it stands to reason that my blood pressure may have temporarily spiked. I wrote it off. Then, a couple of weeks back, I was at the pharmacy and got curious, so I strapped myself into one of those blood pressure kiosks and took another test. The result was the same. I took a few deep breaths, relaxed, and tried again. The result was confirmed again.

For a moment I started to worry. When otherwise-healthy people get hypertension, it's usually indicative of very serious health problems. When otherwise-healthy diabetics get hypertension, it usually means kidney failure. I admit it, I was scared.

My mind raced back to events from the past few months. What could cause sudden hypertension? What would have indicated kidney failure? The thing was, I felt perfectly fine. Still, there were some very odd things that had happened recently. The most jarring of those was this: One day my urine was an absolutely bizarre dark brown color. Upon seeing it, I frantically googled every conceivable health and medical website and deemed that I was either severely dehydrated, or indeed, I had kidney failure. I spent the next twenty-four hours drinking as much of every possible fluid as I could. I downed two cans of chicken broth, a pot of coffee, a liter of sparkling water, multiple cups of tea, and who knows -- possibly a gallon of water.

The next time I went to the bathroom, everything had returned to normal. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I was fine. But, was I? Suddenly, a few weeks later, I had hypertension.

I decided to approach this new situation the same way as the other one. Rather than accept that I had kidney failure, I decided to make incremental changes to see what impact that would have. So I went from drinking about four cups of coffee per day (two with breakfast, and one or two during the workday at the office) to drinking a cup of tea for breakfast, and perhaps another in the evening. Basically, I eliminated caffeine from my diet almost entirely. I also reduced my alcohol intake.

The result of eliminating caffeine was that my blood pressure returned to normal within three days. Three days.

I never would have guessed that a coffee habit -- something that I've been maintaining for twenty years or more -- would cause high blood pressure suddenly. I figured if it ever happened, it would happen gradually if at all. So the first thing I'd like my readers to know is that caffeine can cause high blood pressure "all of a sudden," even if you've been drinking it for years. The second thing I'd like my readers to know is that your blood pressure will become completely normal again if you stop drinking caffeine.

Now a word on withdrawal. I've never been someone who was highly stimulated by caffeine. It never kept me up at night, and never gave me the jitters. I could drink one cup or eight cups and feel pretty much the same in all cases. In light of this, I was not expecting to experience withdrawal symptoms from quitting coffee. I was wrong. While I didn't get the headaches that other people report, I was overwhelmed by fatigue, which lasted about three days. I was falling asleep in the early afternoon while hard at work. I had to take two days off from exercising because my body wouldn't physically move. It was bearable, but unpleasant. I was so tired that I almost felt drunk.

I hate to admit it, but my body feels a lot better now. I do miss the taste of a great cup of coffee, but I'm tolerant of the decaf they give us at the office, and there is no way that I would trade the way I feel now for a cup of coffee. After years of believing that coffee was just a great-tasting way to enhance life, I've suddenly discovered that being uncaffeinated actually feels better. So, I'd like my readers to know that if you ever have the chance to stop drinking coffee, go for it. I think you might discover, like I did, that it feels good to be caffeine free.

I did drink a diet Coke yesterday. It didn't give me jitters, nor did it elevate my blood pressure. I think it's probably okay to drink one caffeinated beverage per day and still enjoy the benefits of being caffeine-free. As for me, I'll try to avoid it from now on.

Click!

Ineffective training is hard. It leaves the athlete feeling tired and sore, as any tough training regimen will, but it also leaves the athlete feeling mentally drained, frustrated, and dispirited. It's difficult to keep following an ineffective plan because the athlete keeps giving more and more to his or her training, while the regimen continues to ask for more and gives nothing in return. It's awful.

Effective training is another matter entirely. Every workout seems to build on the one before it, even when the athlete doesn't have 100% to give that day. One still gets tired and sore, but the pain and fatigue feel manageable. Even as the athlete takes his or her first few strides in the workout, muscles and ligaments start to limber up, and within seconds, one feels like pushing harder. The more the athlete gives, the more the training regimen seems to give back. Everything seems light, fun, and easy. Arguably, there is no better feeling in life.

I have experienced both kinds of training this year. My heart rate zone half marathon training was a well-documented and colossal failure. Almost nothing about that training regimen felt right. I gave plenty of effort, and received little in return. I did manage, however, to re-acclimate myself to longer runs and twice-a-day running, both of which were important building blocks for what's been happening since.

What's been happening since has been wonderful. I took a little time off to gather my bearings; not a ton of off-time, really, but a few weeks of just getting miles in without bothering to train, per se. Then, I unwittingly stumbled upon a highly effective training strategy, and it's been reinvigorating my body to quite an unexpected degree.

What's different?

First of all, I've dedicated myself to one long bicycle workout per week. I've been doing this on Sunday mornings, first thing. These are three-hour rides or longer, so while the aerobic intensity is lower than I'd get with a long run, the duration is actually much longer. Cycling also works out different muscles than running does. This cross-training allows my running muscles to rest all day Sunday, despite more than three-hours of training. My legs and lungs feel fresh on Mondays even though I am still getting an amazing workout.

Second, I've decided to incorporate treadmill running into my weekly regimen. The hot and humid Texas summer prevents me from running much more than six miles at a time, without only about three or four of those miles available for speed work, before my body overheats and quits. Two weeks back, I started doing speed and tempo work indoors, on a treadmill, allowing me to crank up the intensity of my hard training days without having to fight the heat and inevitably lose. Since I still run outside on my easy days, I'm not compromising my outdoor running form. It's the best of both worlds.

I also don't feel too bad if I have to lose a running day to jumping rope, which is another activity I can do indoors or in the outdoor shade. It's not a running workout, but it's better than nothing, and it does my body a lot of good. Giving myself "permission" to do non-running workouts while still training as a runner has freed me of a lot of mental anguish and opened up a lot of training possibilities for me.

Finally, doing calisthenics at work has enabled me to actually ramp-up my strength training without having to dedicate an hour before or after work to a big second workout. I can drop and do 50 push-ups pretty much whenever I want, and as I've been working out, I've been writing down my repetitions and focusing on consistent forward progress. It's been working.

Sample Workout Week

• Monday: 45 push-ups every hour from 6:30 to 1:30; 1-mile brisk walk at 10:00 AM; 6-mile easy run at noon.
• Tuesday: 15 pull-ups every hour from 6:30 to 1:30; 1-mile brisk walk at 10:00 AM; 8-mile threshold run on the treadmill at noon.
• Wednesday: 45 push-ups every hour from 6:30 to 1:30; 1-mile brisk walk at 10:00 AM; 6-mile easy run at noon.
• Thursday: 15 pull-ups every hour from 6:30 to 1:30; 1-mile brisk walk at 10:00 AM; 10-mile tempo run on the treadmill at noon.
• Friday: 45 push-ups every hour from 6:30 to 1:30; 1-mile brisk walk at 10:00 AM; 6-mile easy run at noon.
• Saturday: 8-10 mile easy run early in the morning; walking or light swimming in the afternoon.
• Sunday: 40-mile bicycle ride early in the morning in HRZ 1 or 2; rest and hydration in the afternoon.

Focus On What You Control

Needless to say, it was devastating to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes after living thirty years of healthy, active life, but I woke up the following morning and proceeded to live, not as a "newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic," but as someone who was living with diabetes. What I mean is that I didn't carve out adjustment time for myself, I simply switched "cold turkey" to a lower-carb diet and a more routine lifestyle. I credit this decision for insulating me from some of the depression that many other diabetics often grapple with.

What worked about this wasn't that I made a quick adjustment, and therefore everything turned out fine. Rather, I employed a well-known trick for fostering resilience: focusing on what I control. My diagnosis and my new state as a disabled person with a chronic, life-changing illness was beyond my control. Grieving for that kind of change is worthwhile, but ruminating on it is bad for resilience. What I could control was my diet and my lifestyle habits. I could control which foods I decide to put in my body, what and how much exercise I got, what time I went to bed and got up in the morning, how to plan my insulin doses, and so on. By making these control points the focus of my new diagnosis, I adapted quickly and avoided emotional pitfalls that could have been a real challenge for me, and that have understandably been a serious challenge for others like me.

Quite obviously, this concept applies to all aspects of life, not just chronic disease. In fact, it applies to small discomforts every bit as much as it applies to major life-changes.

The other day, for example, I was driving in rush hour traffic when another motorist suddenly decided to do something inconsiderate of me. The fact that I don't even remember what happened is strong evidence to me that my reaction was precisely as it should have been. Rather than getting upset, swearing, and thinking of all the reasons the other motorist shouldn't have done what he did and should have done something else instead, I told myself the following: "Rather than thinking something negative, why not think of three positive things instead?" I'll admit that it was difficult to think of three positive things about an unpleasant traffic situation, but I managed to do it. (One of things was pretty thinly positive, but positive nonetheless: "I'm happy that I'm raising my daughter to be a more considerate person than that.")

Sometimes, at work, I'm asked to compensate for the poor work of someone on another team. This could be really frustrating, and in the past I've grumbled to myself about it quite a bit. In truth, however, there isn't much I can control about a situation like this. If my boss tells me to work on something, I generally have to work on it. I can't fully control my work assignments, so I'm better off not ruminating on whether certain assignments "should" fall to me or not. Instead, I can invest that energy in thinking of the things I can control: my personal scheduling, my ability to take advantage of peripheral opportunities, the extent to which I can delegate some tasks, and so on. By focusing on these things, I can avoid dwelling too long on the emotional sunk costs of "unfairness" and keep my work moving in a positive direction.

I imagine that something similar will crop up next week, when my daughter starts school for the first time. I'll have to rearrange my work hours so that I can pick her up on time. Working earlier, and then watching over her in the afternoon, means that I'll have fewer viable hours during which I can exercise, so I'll need to think of a way to stay as fit as I want to while still meeting my responsibilities to my daughter. I could waste a lot of mental energy mourning the loss of my current routine, or I could focus on the things I can control to maximize the time I'll have. I mentioned calisthenics at work, but I have more options. I can go to the gym on my lunch hour, I can jump rope at home. If I can't sneak out for a run or a bike ride, I can use an indoor trainer to get a good ride in. I can re-vamp my breakfast so that it takes less time to prepare. I can work out with my daughter, too.

Well, these are all examples from my own life. What examples from your life can you think of? 

Tiny Steps Forward, Huge Steps Back?

For some people, I think there is value in completely eschewing alcohol. For most people, I think alcohol generally contributes positively to a person's quality of life. Social atmospheres and celebrations that involve alcohol consumption with food tend to bring people closer together, in my experience. It's not merely that alcohol is a "social lubricant." It's a social lubricant that tastes good and can enhance the sensory quality of a meal. Physiologically, alcohol can improve digestion and reduce the risk of certain kinds of cancer when it is consumed with meat, especially red meat. So it's natural that alcohol would enjoy its special place in the human social experience.

In terms of overall human health, however, alcohol does vastly more harm than good. Even as the aforementioned digestive aid, alcohol can be replaced by a vinegar-based marinade, and all of the benefits can be had without alcohol itself. As for resveratrol, the supposed miracle compound in red wine, the best research indicates that it is basically a placebo pill. Meanwhile, alcohol increases the risk of all sorts of cancers, most notably mouth and stomach cancers; it kills brain cells, dehydrates the drinker, promotes obesity, and increases triglycerides in the bloodstream, which then go on to further promote high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and obesity.

In short, alcohol is a slow poison whose only real benefits are social, not physical. And if I really wanted to make the case against alcohol, I'd dedicate this paragraph to discussing all the social detriments caused by alcohol, including death and maiming on the roadways, workplace accidents, rapes, assaults, addictions, domestic abuse, and so on.

The simple fact of the matter is, in light of objective cost-benefit analysis, the case against alcohol consumption is much stronger than the case for alcohol consumption.

Of course, one could easily say the same thing about french fries. Well, aside from the physical impairment alcohol causes, anyway, french fries do just as much physical damage, and their only redeeming qualities involve the decadent pleasure of consuming food that tastes good despite universally understood health detriments.

I bring up french fries here because I don't want the reader to make the mistake of believing that I'm against alcohol consumption. I'm not, nor am I against the consumption of french fries. Hilariously enough, I grew up in conservative Utah, where the consumption of alcohol was considered verboten and sinful, and yet giving oneself organ failure via frosting and bacon was not frowned upon at all. It's very interesting, the social mores that surround what is "acceptable" poison and what is "unacceptable poison."

As for most sane people with a modicum of self-regulation, there is no harm in drinking alcohol or eating french fries occasionally.

Yet, once again, I repeat: whether or not we're religious teetotallers, the case for drinking alcohol is extremely weak, objectively speaking.

So, if you're a person like me, always making micro-adjustments to your personal health regimen, experimenting with supplements and fine-tuning the fitness process in an effort to optimize your physical health to the greatest extent possible, eventually you have to ask yourself a question. If you're willing to spend $40 per month on nicotinamide riboside supplements because they might improve cellular health, if you're willing to subscribe to Strava Summit in order to gain access to deeper analytics on your athletic performance, if you're willing to spend hundreds of dollars on fancy shoes and workout clothes, subscribe to Beachbody On Demand, wake up early to cook a highly nutritious breakfast garnished with seeds and spices curated to optimize dietary health, if you're willing to switch from inexpensive turkey sausage to gourmet smoked salmon for breakfast because it's healthier, if you almost religiously consume fruits and vegetables at every meal, count calories to determine the ideal daily distribution, monitor your blood sugar virtually in real time, take brisk walks on your coffee breaks at work, time your water consumption, and so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad infinitum...

...If you're willing to do all of that, and yet still persist in drinking alcohol regularly, counteracting many of the benefits that drive all of your other health and fitness decisions, then that's a contradiction. It's an untenable contradiction. Alcohol is much more harmful than the marginal benefits of each of the other decisions I make about my own health every minute of every day.

And for that reason, I've reduced my alcohol consumption to a decided minimum. Why would I make a point to live so clean and so healthy, and then reverse all those positive decisions with beer?

For me, it makes little sense. Your life may be a little different, and so you might come to a different conclusion.

The End, Plus Epilogue

As I mentioned last time, I've come down with another cold, and that makes three colds in five months. Because I have diabetes, it takes me a little extra time to get over these things, and they tax my body a little more heavily than they might tax yours. My half marathon being two and a half weeks away, one week of which will be a taper week to rest my muscles for the main event, this effectively ends my training schedule here and now.

I'll still run the race, of course, but I won't push for my goal time. I'll run relaxed and just try to have some fun. I am disappointed that my months of training fell far short of my expectations, of course; first because I sunk two months into an ineffective heart-rate based training regimen, and second because I managed to avoid injury only to fall victim to virus after virus. I wanted to get my body back into some serious running shape after a long time, and I had some good early indicators that it was working. But that's bad luck for you. Some years, you get lots of colds; other years, you don't get any. It was my turn to draw the short straw, and my bad luck that I drew it while attempting to train for a race.

Any undertaking like this, no matter how unsuccessful, is bound to teach you something, and indeed I learned. Let's review a few important things I learned this year so far.

First, I learned that using heart rate as the primary driver of training is not a good idea. I think it's okay to reference heart rate as one data point among many while you train. But to force yourself into a particular pace - especially a slower pace - merely to adhere to heart rate guidelines is, I think, very foolish. The result of this kind of thing can only ever be slower pace times.

Second, I learned the value of making hard days hard and easy days easy. In part, I stumbled upon this accidentally. My training schedule, like many I've used throughout the years, made interval and fartlek days "two-a-days." That is, I had to go for an easy run in the morning on those days, and a faster/harder workout in the afternoons. That was okay, but I think in the future I'll modify my training so that I run two-a-days on easy days. That way, I'll get the benefit of higher mileage without taxing my muscles overmuch; and meanwhile, I'll be able to dedicate all of the day's energy to my speed workout on a proper speed day. (If you look at the space between workouts as a span of hours, rather than a span of days, this isn't even that large of a change. It just amounts to a little extra recovery time prior to the more difficult workout, which is precisely what I'd want.)

Third, I learned how to run very long runs again. My training schedule required me to go for runs up to two hours long. That's a long time, and I haven't gone running like that really since my diabetes diagnosis. This year, I finally worked up the fitness level and the guts to give it a try, and I discovered that if I take glucose tablets at the right intervals, and also take them when I start to experience certain physical sensations, I can usually last the whole duration of the long run. This is a huge victory and it actually opens up the possibility that maybe, perhaps, some day, I'll be able to run a full marathon. For me, that's huge.

Fourth, I rediscovered that running ten miles at a time, and more than ten miles in a given day, is relatively easy for me. This is another one of those things that was true prior to my diabetes diagnosis, but which I hadn't really tested since then. I like running ten miles at a time. Ten miles is more than just a nice, round number. It's a distance that feels good to me, one that I've always had an affinity for, at least as long as I've been capable of running ten miles at a time.

Fifth, I learned something about my body composition. Going into this training program, I had been doing a lot of P90X, and I eventually ditched that because I wanted to shed some pounds so that I could run faster. I successfully shed those pounds, and I think losing that weight really did help me run faster. But it was a few pounds of muscle mass, not a few pounds of fat, so it did come at the cost of some "all-around fitness." I am not so interested in proclaiming which kind of fitness is "better" here. In the past, I've spent a lot of time discussing the fact that people who never get in amazing shape have no idea what their bodies are supposed to really look like, much less how they're actually supposed to feel. Even among those who have been in great shape, most of them only know the difference between being in shape and being out of shape. Not very many people know what it feels like to be in different kinds of being in shape. What is it like to be in great shape for distance-running? What is it like being in shape with more muscle mass? How does your body respond to the various tasks of physical exercise under different "shape conditions?" This is invaluable insight into my own body.

Sixth, I learned the variety of cross-training. I haven't done much of that lately, and I miss it. I miss the refreshing fun of going out for a bike ride instead of a run; it might not be as good for the body as a running workout, but it's great for the mind, and that's actually worth something, too. I think people also feel a little better when they train with the objective of having lots of fun at the possible expense of a superior workout. I don't mean that people should switch out hard or annoying workouts in favor of having lots of fun, of course. I just mean that, especially as we age, it becomes more important to foster an all-around, always-exercising, joy-of-motion mentality - what I have called "fostering a culture of activity" - than it is to ensure that each workout inches you closer to a personal record. Put another way, if you always have something to look forward to in working out, you'll work out a lot more effectively than you would if you just mindlessly cranked through a schedule of workouts.

Seventh, speaking of a schedule of workouts, I learned the benefit of actually scheduling workouts, rather than flying by the seat of your pants. Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, this doesn't actually work against the previous point. It's nice to know what's coming. It's nice to know what you're doing, not just today or tomorrow, but next Thursday. It helps you plan activities around your workouts; it helps you keep your diet and your bedtime on track. It also helps you add more variety to your training. Humans are creatures of habit and if we don't make a deliberate attempt to break out of our ruts, we will tend to stay within them. Planning on breaking your rut is a great way to succeed in breaking it.

Well, I probably learned a bit more than all of this, too, but I think the list is long enough for one day. Looking back over it, I am feeling pretty good about my year thus far, even if I'm not necessarily in a position to improve my half marathon PR. I feel well prepared for my fitness future, whether or not that includes a great race next month. In the end, I'm quite happy about it.

The Three-Thousand-Calorie Meal You Didn't Know You Ate

I recently had dinner at Chili's. (To steal a line from Bill Hicks, "I'm not proud of it, but I was hungry.")

Although it isn't the best restaurant in the world, there are many good things to say about Chili's. So, let me begin by listing a few qualities I genuinely appreciate as a Chili's customer. First, I almost never have to wait a long time to get a table, and it's not necessarily because Chili's is unpopular. More likely, there are enough Chili's restaurants, and their subsidiary restaurants, On the Border, in a given geographic region to service their clientele without making us wait. Second, Chili's restaurants aren't merely ubiquitous, they are often located in attractive locations within close proximity of other establishments I want to be near: movie theaters, shopping centers, and so on. I don't have to make two separate trips -- one to go shopping, and one to get dinner, for example -- because Chili's is always nearby wherever else I want to be. Third, their loyalty program regularly provides valuable coupons that help my family minimize costs and maximize value. Fourth, they are an unabashedly kid-friendly restaurant chain that has always been welcoming of my daughter, starting from infancy and continuing to the present day. Finally, there is enough variety on their menu that, no matter how I feel, I can almost always find something I want to eat at Chili's, and so can the rest of the family. I've been there for casual and impromptu outings, date nights, daddy-daughter dates, celebrations, happy hours, and so on.

Considering all of the above, it's no surprise that Chili's has been as commercially successful as it has been.

With that out of the way, let's make one thing absolutely clear: Chili's will never be a health food restaurant. During my most recent visit, I paid close attention to the calorie count on all the menu items. I have to do this in order to properly manage my blood sugar, because a meal's total calories is one of the things that plays a role in my blood glucose control. (All other things being equal, a higher calorie count means a higher postprandial blood glucose level.) With very few exceptions, all of the main menu items were more than 1,000 calories apiece. There is a calorie-conscious section of the menu, featuring items that are about 400 calories each, but 400 calories is a little on the low extreme for me.

It's not that Chili's coats all of their food in cheese, bacon, and/or barbecue sauce (although there sure is a lot of that going on at Chili's, too). Some of the calorie counts are downright inexplicable. I cannot understand how, for example, half a dozen buffalo wings could amount to 1,000 calories. I'm under no illusions about the health status of buffalo wings, but six pieces of bone-in wings involve a lot of inedible mass in the form of bone and cartilage, and less than a serving of real chicken meat. This would suggest that Chili's' chefs have somehow found a way to more than double the caloric content of chicken.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that Chili's' salads are over a thousand calories, too. A bowl of lettuce and vegetables, no matter how large, should never add up to 1,000 calories. That's just… odd. I understand that salad dressing is a calorie-dense food, but there is about 50 calories in an entire head of iceberg lettuce, which means that Chili's adds 950 calories' worth of condiments to their salads. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the salad comes with 400 calories' worth of chicken on top; then, that's 50 calories for the lettuce and a remainder of 550 calories of salad dressing. Compare this to a serving of a best-selling brand of ranch dressing here in America: two tablespoons of which amounts to 130 calories. This seems to suggest that Chili's uses half a cup of salad dressing on its salads.

Mind-boggling.

Well, in light of all these 1,000-calorie foods, I opted for one of the lowest-calorie items on the standard menu: a 10-ounce sirloin steak. I repeat, ten ounces of pan-seared sirloin steak with an enormous pat of butter on top and a cup of cheese-and-bacon drenched mashed potatoes is one of the lowest-calorie items on the standard menu.

The truth is, my steak was tasty, even if it was slathered in garlic butter and pan-seared in probable vegetable oil. And I was able to find a menu option that worked for me both in terms of overall nutrition and blood-glucose control. So I really shouldn't be complaining.

Still, it's important to be aware of what we're putting into our bodies. I had to do some careful menu analysis to find something that worked for me. The average diner, especially in my area, will be more inclined to choose something that looks tasty and rich, add a beer or two, perhaps an appetizer, and finish it off with dessert. If so, that person could very easily consume more than 2,000 calories in a single sitting; perhaps even 3,000 calories.

When we talk about America's "obesity epidemic," it exists in the context of inexpensive, highly convenient, family-friendly restaurants that serve 3,000-calorie meals.

Felicitous Circumstances

I was talking to someone this past week about what it’s like to increase your running mileage, or your commitment to exercise in general. The two metaphors I came up with were spinning plates and shifting gears in a car.

Let me begin with shifting gears. When you’re driving (or even riding a bike), you don’t even think about shifting gears until you’ve pretty much maxed-out the current gear. You get going as fast as you can efficiently travel in one gear, and then you shift up to the next gear. If you try to shift too early, it’s far more work than you can handle. As you travel down the road, there’s nothing demanding that you work toward a higher gear. If you’re comfortable in your current gear and it’s getting you where you want to go and matches your commitment level, then stick to your current gear and be happy. Sometimes, though, you might find yourself in a situation where it just makes sense to shift to a higher gear. Go for it, and see how it goes.

The comparison to running mileage is fairly obvious. Don’t shift into higher-geared running until you’re ready for it; and, if you never want to be ready for it, fine, just stick to your current gear and enjoy yourself.

Now, regarding spinning plates. The comparison is similar, but the analogy has some slightly different implications. Living your life is a lot like spinning plates. You have obligations at home, and that’s one plate. You have obligations at work, that’s another plate. Going for daily exercise is another plate. A good diet. Spending time with your kids. A second daily workout. And so on. A lot of us get comfortable managing some number of plates — one or two plates. That’s fine, and that is where their comfort level is. Over time, you may find that you’re interested in adding another plate. You may find that an additional plate is manageable, or you may find that you have to drop one plate in place of the one you added. Whatever works for you is what you should do.

I think that analogy is relatively clear. There is a supposition baked in that “it’s better to spin more plates.” It is, but only because I’m assuming that each plate is one that you genuinely want to spin. If you find yourself spinning a plate you hate to spin, drop it. You don’t need unwanted crap in your life. Replace it with something that brings your life joy.

As a faithful reader, you already know that I’m finishing up my third week of half-marathon training today. Taking on that challenge was like taking on another spinning plate or shifting into a new gear. It’s been manageable, and thus fun. I’m really enjoying it. But I was already exercising a lot and running almost every day, so in terms of commitment, it hasn’t been all that much more than my previous status quo.

But committing to all this running has changed my diabetes management a little bit. I have to think through my meals a little more carefully. I have to make sure I’m eating enough, and taking the right insulin doses. Also, as I previously mentioned, the demands of my training regimen have altered the content of my diet. I can no longer seem to tolerate beer or spirits, and I can no longer seem to drink much more than a glass or two of wine with dinner. I drink a lot more water and a lot more tea. While this has been happening, I coincidentally ran out of diet soda and when I went to the grocery store, I simply opted for flavored soda water instead. My in-laws came for a visit, so we bought a ton of extra vegetables. All these factors came together all at the same time, and I suddenly find myself running 60 miles this week (!!!), drinking far less alcohol and diet soda than ever before, eating more vegetables.

Sometimes circumstances come together in such a way that it enables you to shift into a higher gear, or to spin more plates in your life. You don’t have to, but if you want to, it’s nice to be able to take advantage of some confluence of events that enables you to start doing a lot of new, productive things.

The trick isn’t so much in taking on new projects; the trick is in recognizing a good opportunity when you see one, and seizing it. If you notice your body rejecting beer, then take that opportunity to buy something else at the grocery store instead, and ditto soda. If you happen to notice that you have some extra time, why not get in an exit ra workout and see how it goes? Maybe you buy a new watch, like I did, and take on a new training regimen, like I did, just to find out how your watch works.

These are felicitous circumstances. Recognized them, and avail yourself of them. See how it goes. 

New Year's Wishes, And My Resolution

I had an offhand thought this morning. For a long time, I've simply assumed that "the flu season" exists primarily because flu viruses peak at a certain time of year, much the same way that pollen peaks at certain times of year. I can't say why I thought so; I just sort of took it for granted.

This morning, however, it occurred to me that one reason people get the flu in the wintertime is because we tend to spend more time cooped-up indoors. This leaves us essentially locked up with people who carry the viruses. Of course you're more likely to fall ill if you're quarantined in the same airtight box as someone already infected with the virus!

Curious, I spent a few moments with an internet search engine before discovering an article that more or less confirmed my suspicions:

Here are the most popular theories about why the flu strikes in winter: 

1) During the winter, people spend more time indoors with the windows sealed, so they are more likely to breathe the same air as someone who has the flu and thus contract the virus.

The article didn't stop there, however. Most of the latter half of the article actually confirms my prior belief, that the flu simply thrives in wintertime. The author of the article discusses research that confirms exactly that; the flu is more communicable in cold, dry weather.

This might be a matter of the-chicken-and-the-egg. After all, if the flu season is generally caused by people staying indoors, then we might expect flu viruses to evolve such that cold-and-dry-preferring viruses are naturally selected, while flu viruses that favor warmer and more humid weather would tend to die out, at least in regions that are further away from the equator.

*        *        *

I was thinking about flu viruses in the first place because I fell ill last week. I don't know if what I had was a flu or a cold, but it laid me out most of Christmas Day and the day after. I felt generally miserable for two days on either side of Christmas, too, and am only now starting to feel more like my old self again.

Colds and flus are very hard on diabetics. We have weaker immune systems to begin with, and then on top of that our blood glucose levels tend to skyrocket whenever we get sick, making our immune systems even weaker, and thus rendering it even more difficult to kick the bug. What for most people would be a three-day bug ends up being at least a week-long bug for diabetics. Sometimes non-diabetics have colds or flus that are so vicious that they last a week or two. Imagine how long it takes us diabetics to get over that kind of illness.

The sheer length of time we spend fighting off these illnesses, combined with the increase in blood glucose, tends to make us -- or at least tends to make me -- shed pounds like crazy. I'm about 155-160 pounds, depending on the day. I easily drop five to ten pounds whenever I get sick, and that's five to ten pounds of body mass, not five to ten pounds of unwanted fat. The flu doesn't care about what weight you want to keep or lose. It all goes.

What keeps my blood sugar down? What keeps my body healthy and able to easily fight off infections? Exercise. What keeps my body full of lean muscle mass and with minimal amounts of excess body fat? Exercise. What's the last thing anyone can or wants to do when they're laid up in bed with a bad cold or flu? Exercise.

Put it all together, and it adds up to this: When I get sick, I lose a lot of my physical fitness. It's a race to fight off the infection before my body wastes away to a 145-pound skeleton with no muscle to speak of.

*        *        *

Thus, in the middle of wintertime -- generally around New Year's Day -- and despite my best efforts, I am generally at the point where I feel weak and unfit, ready to get back into shape, put muscle back on my frame, take on a new challenge. For most people, "New year, new you" is the order of the day. Not for me, though. I just want the old me back, the fit guy who can run 15 miles without think about it and who can do a bunch of push-ups and pull-ups.

Nor am I getting any younger. I'll finish up my fortieth year on earth this year. Don't get me wrong, I look and feel great for my age. Still, I remember seeing the photos of my old classmates at the ten-year high school reunion. Even at age 28, many of them looked middle aged for failing to take care of their bodies. They were visibly carrying extra weight, both physically around their waists, and mentally. Take it from a goddamn diabetic, it feels just awful to be unhealthy. You can see it in a person's eyes.

That was twelve years ago. Ten years of unhealthy living had already caught up to people who should have been physiologically peaking. (The last estimates I've seen for average physiological peak were ~28 years for men and ~32 years for women.) And, I hasten to add, this is among a cohort of people who by and large eschew alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Twelve additional years of unhealthy living has surely caught up to these folks even further. Meanwhile, I can generally pass for someone who is at least ten years younger than I really am.

So, I firmly believe that when it comes to being in shape and looking younger, it's use it or lose it. Be steadfast. Stop exercising even for a moment, and you may be leaving years on the table, withering like a bouquet of gas station roses.

That's the urgency I feel after having been ill: My body just lost a ton of muscle mass and I have to cut my weekly running mileage down in order to build back up again. I've lost some conditioning; I need to get it back. Use it, or lose it. I can rest when I'm dead. That's the idea.

And it always happens around New Year's Day. It always tends to be that I'm at my lowest point around the start of the new year, having been ransacked by some virus.

This year, however, I did a little extra. With all that P90X-ing I did, I managed to build a little more muscle mass, make my muscles a little more flexible, bring myself up to even greater levels of physical conditioning. I have still preserved a great deal of that, and I'm going into the new year with a new exercise regimen and a good, solid VO2 max in the upper fifties.

In 2019, by my fortieth birthday, I might well be as fit as ever.

*        *        *

Wisely (for once), I didn't spend my sick time idly staring at a computer or television screen. I didn't spend my time in bed, trying to sleep away my feelings. I spent my time reading.

I'm already three books deep in the Wheel of Time series, as readers know, and wrapping up the fourth book in the next two days or so. Consider the scope of that, though: each one of these books is over seven hundred pages long. The one I'm reading now is over a thousand. That's well over a thousand pages of reading per week, since I started on my vacation earlier this month. Prior to that, I was barely reading at all. I had the impression that I had no time to read at all, but I found time to read by stealing it from time wasted on social media. That's a good trade-off.

I remember the last time I read as much as I'm currently reading. That was the year I got rid of my television. But that was 2008, ten and a half years ago, when social media was a strong presence, but not nearly as strong as it is now. I spent lots of time online back then, and used to joke that I had "read the entire internet. All of it." Back then, though, reading the internet was time not completely wasted. A person could read all kinds of ideologically neutral information about almost anything in 2008. Nowadays, advertising has undermined a person's ability to get unbiased and useful information from the internet. Gotta monetize, amirite?

So, the internet has become what television was ten years ago: A complete waste of time. Almost a complete waste, anyway. One can still study and learn with the internet, but one has to be deliberate about it now; just as with television.

And, anyway, books are cheap. Because everything is online now, or in "Kindle format," the relative price of an actual, physical book (or an actual, physical CD, or etc.) is so low that anyone with a thirst for knowledge or of entertainment that doesn't constantly scream advertisements at you all the time can get it on any budget. Best of all, it can be had used, i.e. for even cheaper.

Market forces, sociological forces, personal preferences, and finally a bad cold all conspired to drive me back into the world of books, the beautiful world of books, and I am reading again. And writing again.

There will be much more of this, too, in 2019.

*        *        *

A strange calm came over this past year. No, calm isn't quite the right word. Enlightenment is closer, but too grandiose…

It could have been as simple as leaving my former workplace, a vicious, ugly place full of vicious, ugly people; racists, back-stabbers, social climbers, sycophants… and a few really nice people that I truly enjoyed knowing. It's easy for such an environment to bring a person down into a bad headspace. I'm the kind of person who desperately wants to be friends with people, albeit in my quixotic and uncompromising way. Consequently, it's easy for such an environment to riddle me with self-doubt, even shame.

But it wasn't really as simple as getting out of a bad work environment. As I've grown my hair out, I've started to become a long-haired kind of a guy. It's difficult to explain why exactly, but I feel more like my own true self with longer hair, even if I'm not quite sure I look better. People certainly treat me more like myself. I even play the guitar differently, more self-assuredly, more expressively.

The world becomes a much clearer place when you feel self-confident. 

That's another slightly inaccurate phrase, "self-confident." It's the right phrase, although I've never before understood what it really means. For years, I think I've believed self-confidence to be a feeling or an emotional state. I felt self-confident when I dressed in a nice suit. I felt self-confident when I stepped up to the starting line of a road race. I felt self-confident when solved a tough problem at work.

That is no longer how I experience "self-confidence." Now, to me, self-confidence is a plain acknowledgement of the reality of one's own being. (Hmm, I might have to add that definition to the lexicon.) Self-confidence means knowing that when I try to solve a statistical problem, I'll likely succeed. Self-confidence means that I'm a guitar-playing guy with long hair who likes to wear dress slacks and ties, not because I think people "should" dress that way, but because I like it for me. I like the way I look. My daughter likes the way I look. And my wife.

My gorgeous wife! I still get butterflies. People in the office see photographs of her and they're rightly impressed. They pat me on the back for being able to land myself a beautiful woman like that, and that's well before they learn about her career success and her brain. She has stop-the-world caliber beauty, truly, with rich, dark hair and eyes like liquid obsidian; her skin is like smooth, soft caramel and her voice like velvet. And on top of a beauty like that, she has the ability to do seemingly anything. She speaks three languages fluently, holds advanced degrees, she completed both Hyperfitness and P90X with relative ease. She once learned professional-level cake decorating just to prove a point. And in her career, she is seemingly unstoppable. (I could go on and on, here; I seldom do, on the blog anyway, because for some reason people get turned off when a guy spends too much time singing his own wife's praises. But it's worth elaborating a bit here, because it is directly relevant to my point.)

No fool could ever take a woman like that for granted, but at the same time, I have to admit that it fills me with self-confidence to know that she is mine. The plain acknowledgement of who she is is likewise a comment about me: That a woman like that took my last name means something about me, too. I am grateful for what I have. I am also deserving of it.

I am. I don't want to be arrogant, but my life is what it is. It's a good life, and I'm surrounded by good people, not the least of whom includes my beautiful wife and a daughter who is, I'm half-convinced, literally magic. My choices brought me to where I am today. Self-confidence means simply acknowledging and being comfortable with that fact.

I'm comfortable with all of it. The shirtless running in the rain. The P90X. The guitar-playing, the prog rock. The nerdy books. The libertarianism. The fact that I mostly want to be left alone on the weekend and not see anyone except my wife and my daughter. The coffee consumption, the love of beer. The electric bike. The large words that few understand, and the peculiar sense of humor that nobody understands. The oatmeal, by god! My favorite food is oatmeal!

I am what I am, and being what I am has resulted in a fine life indeed. I'm happy about that. I'm self-confident in it. I never expected to feel this way, and I never really did anything to try to cultivate that feeling. But in 2018, I somehow managed to achieve it. In 2019, I might just be able to channel it somehow.

*        *        *

Working out, reading, playing music, being self-confident. I guess 2019 will end up being a lot like 2018, but just marginally better. That's what I'm aiming for. That's my New Year's resolution, to live one more year of the good life, but to live it better than I did last year. And so I shall.

I wish the same for all of my readers, even if the only ones still "reading" are Russian spam-bots. May you be the best damn Russian spam-bots you can be; may you be better spam-bots than you were the previous year. May you find ever more comfort and self-actualization in your life as Russian spam-bots.

But seriously, to any and all still reading after all these years -- and those of you who just accidentally stumbled upon this post while you were searching Google to figure out how to sync up Google Fit with Strava -- may you have a healthy, happy, and deeply satisfying 2019. Happy New Year.