Me and My Calories

A short while back I had to go through a bit of a wringer in the form of a hospital rotation. I worked for 3.5 weeks at Madigan Army Medical Center, partially to maintain currency as a medic, but mostly as part of my civilian education. At the same time I was doing 11 credits of college coursework online, and preparing for a deployment with my unit. During one of those weeks I clocked 100 hours at work!

I noticed a strange thing during that time, and in the months since. I did not have time to work out, but I kept eating as I always did and my weight went up. It crept up from 210-ish, to 215, then 220, and finally topped off at 225 right before I deployed. More interestingly still, it did not spontaneously drop on its own!

Now, I have always despised dieting. I have never needed it before. When I was 19 in Korea, I used to order a 21 inch, 6 topping meat lover’s pizza and a dozen wings from Anthony’s Pizza on post, eat the whole thing in one sitting, and then go out and run six miles the next morning like it was nothing. I did this every weekend, and never weighed more than 205.

Now at 28, almost 29, I do not have that ability anymore. Ironically, I would not for anything in the world go back to being the 19 year old me. 19-year-old Ryan was a bit of an idiot.

However, now I have to think about things realistically. I have diabetes, hypertension and high-cholesterol on both sides of my family, with a tendency towards overweightness I get from my mother’s side. My fiancée keeps insisting that I am not allowed to die at 55 or 60. Additionally, I have always been active, and I enjoy being active. I like to be able to run up a mountain to see the view at the top, I like to be able to pick up heavy things without breaking my back, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be caught in a tight spot and not be able to give a good account of myself without passing out from exhaustion. All this to say, I have had it easy up to now, but from here on out if I want to be healthy and active for the long haul, I am going to have to pay for it.

So I have started counting calories. L

It isn’t as bad as all that. Wouldn’t you know, there is an app for that! I simply type in what I eat, use the drop down menu to select the closest match, and all the calories and most of the nutritional data are added for me. If it has a US barcode I can scan that, but not many things in the Philippines come with US barcodes. I guesstimate a lot. I can also add my workouts, and that gives me a ballpark of how many calories I am burning. Having used it for a month now I have gone from 225 to 220, while also bulking up quite a bit from heavy lifting. It is neither as difficult nor as time consuming as I thought it would be. The only downside is the hit to my pride, but as my mother would say, a little “humbilification” never hurt anyone.

There are two things I have learned from it so far. As Aristotle would say, errors come in pairs. On the one hand it would be very easy for me just to let it slide a little here and there and eat a little bit, and not plug it into the app, as if I was fooling anyone but myself, but in the end my body doesn’t lie. It either is a lean, strong 215, or it is not. The iPhone does not control that.

On the other hand, it is also easy for me to get obsessed with things, and start looking at food as simply numbers, just nourishment to be shoveled into my mouth. It’s like budgeting money. I can become obsessed with budgeting to the point where I become stingy.

As with everything, this has a spiritual dimension as well. The old monks used to practice asceticism in food by eating only enough to maintain life, but denying themselves any pleasures of the sense by eating not one scrap more, and denying themselves anything tastier than dry bread, bitter herbs, gruel and so forth.

There was a touch of Manicheaism among some of those practices. The notorious contempt for the body and physical creation so often caricatured was more of a remnant of old pagan notions than an authentic Christian tradition. However there is some truth in their philosophy. The body should master food, and not be mastered by it. (I am not talking about fasting. I am talking about establishing a baseline daily diet that is mastered by reason.) The idea of a daily calorie and nutritional allotment is a way of tailoring their spiritual discipline to my personal vocation. I eat enough to maintain my bodily health and strength, and then I say “No.”

On the other hand it is also true that the pleasure of eating is a legitimate gift of God which we ought to take care not to despise on the grounds that it is “unspiritual.” We may choose to give it up for a time, short or long, but, I think it should only be because we hope to receive a greater gift. This is why the Church calendar revolves around both fasts and feasts. But we are a Resurrection people, so the feasts outnumber the fasts.

So I find it is best if I maintain two simple rules:

1)   Eat tasty food. Do not sacrifice taste for quantity, i.e. go by the “I can eat as much as I want as long as it tastes like cardboard” mentality. Instead I look at it as a spiritual exercise. I eat good tasting food, I enjoy it as much as I can, and try to glorify God in my enjoyment of it.

2)   Just like with my financial budget, it is important deliberately to blow the budget once in a while. Once a week I have a day, usually the Sunday, where I celebrate by eating whatever I like (although still within moderation for spiritual reasons.) When I get back to the states I will still be throwing pizza parties, and I will still be making my pizza with all the verve and pizzazz I can muster, serving the best beer I can afford, and rejoicing in the magnificent prodigality of gifts God has given me.

On the whole, so far it seems to be a sensible and maintainable habit to build. We will see how I modify it as time goes on.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:32

Run Harder, not Smarter

Today I started a course in Mountaineering. The very first event of this course was a timed four mile ruckmarch with a 45 pound ruck, dryweight. (Dryweight means the ruck is weighed before you add water, snacks etc.)

The stepoff time was at 6:00 A.M. and the altitude is about 6400 feet above sea level. The instructor pointed out the course for us, "You're just going to start off down this hill, and follow this dirt trail until you come to a 'T' intersection. There you are going to take a left and follow the fenceline until you hit a hardball road. That will take you up the first of those two hills over there. You will go across that first ridgeline, down the saddle and back up the other ridge. Follow that hill down the spurr until you come to another hardball road. That will take you back to this dirt trail, which will bring you back around here and you'll finish up over there. There will be vans at all the intersections to point out which way to go. The course is 4 miles, you have an hour and fifteen minutes. We are giving you that extra fifteen minutes because we know some of you come from sea level, and you'll be surprised how bad the elevation will hit you. Ready? Begin."

So I started. Straight out of the gate I had a Forrest Gump moment. I just felt like running. So I took off down the first hill, planning on using the downhill to warm up and make up some time. I hit a semi 'T' shaped intersection (it really looked more like a "Y") and I took the left, and ran around a couple of small hills until I came to a wide open spot with a fence right in front of me. There was no van in sight, but the trail went to the right and followed the fenceline, so I headed that way at a pretty blistering trot.

It was a pleasent running trail, and I followed it for about a mile, walking up a pretty decent hill before I decided to turn and look to see how far behind everyone was.

There was no one in sight. I ran back around the bend and still there was no one in sight. I could see almost a mile along the trail, and there was no way I was that far ahead. Must have missed a turn somewhere, so I turned and ran back down that hill as fast as I could. When I got to the place where the trail turned right along the fence, sure enough, there was a van out in the distance along the left hand side. I found out later that the van hadn't even arrived until after a couple of guys had already passed that spot. It wasn't really a running trail to the left, just some old tire tracks, and now a whole bunch of boot prints. And way off in the distance, about a mile and a half away, I could see the main group of guys just cresting the top of the second hill.

:-(

Nothing to do but run for it.

So I ran. I followed the tire tracks until I found a road (a dirt road, not a hardball.) I passed the van with the cadre member sitting silent and stoic in the driver's seat. I walked the up slope, which was pretty stiff, ran the ridge and tried to control the fall down the other side. Walked up one more hill, and then after that it was just straight running. No road, no trail, not even bootprints any more, just me running for all I am worth along the top of this ridgeline and down the spur on the otherside of the hill. I could see the next van off in the distance with one tiny figure just barely arriving. I pushed it out and caught up with him, and hit a hardball road (a real hardball road this time.) A bunch of regular army guys was running up behind me in shorts and t-shirts and I raced them for about a quarter of a mile (stupid move. Burned too much energy.)

I hit the trail again and ran until I hit the last little uphill stretch into the compound. The latter half of the main group was barely 200 meters ahead of me now. When I broke over the hill they were just walking away from the finish line. I stretched out into a nice, easy lope, down the last hill to the finish, with a final time of one hour and two minutes.

Dead last.

The moral of this story is, you don't need to know where you are going, you just need to RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN. You're bound to end up somewhere eventually.

How Boys Become Men

This evening, after I finished my kickboxing routine, I decided to go out and enjoy a little kettlebelling before I was done for the night. Accordingly I went out to the truck, unstrapped the 44kg kettlebell I keep in the back of it, and started doing swings. My goal was 20 sets of 10, although I got a little froggy in the middle of the workout and threw in two sets of twenty (took the frogginess right out of me.)


As I was nearing the end of my workout a little boy came out of one of the nearby apartments. He was small enough to be about seven, but spoke well enough to be about ten, so I’m not sure how old he was. He was wearing black jeans and a black coat and carrying a power-ranger’s sword and I’d seen him running around the complex with other kids before. This time he walked right up to me, bold as brass, and said, point blank, “Are you strong?”

I chuckled (under my breath) and said, “Strong enough to lift this thing.” I nudged the kettlebell with my toe.

The young feller looked down at the ugly chunk of metal and strode over to it with a swagger practically oozing testosterone. He seized the iron handle in his two small but mighty hands (they didn’t even come close to wrapping all the way around) and heaved. He heaved with vigor. He heaved with vim. The kettlebell scraped on the sidewalk as it slid a little, but it weighed, I would guess, roughly twice what he did. He let go with a gasp, “Whoa! That’s heavy!”

I laughed a little bit, not in an unkind way, but he wasn’t finished yet. He manfully stepped back up to the plate, as it were, and once again gripped the iron beast with determined mitts. He pulled and pulled and pulled, and this time managed to tip it a little to one side. “Don’t hurt yourself,” I said, momentarily falling into my obligatory role as responsible adult. He let go, huffing and puffing.

“You’re a bit small for that, kiddo,” I told him, sympathetically. “You’ll have to grow into it.”

But he ignored my condescending remark with righteous scorn, and undaunted, seized hold of his enemy one more time. His face was focused, his miniscule fingers were clenched, his every fiber rocked with masculinity. Mighty was the struggle! He tipped it, he tilted it, he rolled it, and dragged it, but still one stubborn corner would not come off the ground. With a final, all-or-nothing effort, he pulled it on top of his bootlace (which was completely untied) and let go of it. “Whoosh,” he said. “I almost got it.”

“Yeah you did,” I agreed, because he had.

He turned to walk away, but it was the kettlebell’s turn now, and it yanked back on his bootlace and would not let go. “What the…” He exclaimed, glaring at his nemesis. I lifted it up so he could run away, calling over his shoulder, “I almost got it!”

A few minutes later he came running back out of his apartment. This time he had added a hood and some sort of face wrap, transforming his coat into a ninja suit. He was tearing across the yard for all he was worth, but he spared enough breath as he went by to say, “Sorry, buddy, but I got to go. See you.” And he was gone.

That is a kid who is practically made of greatness. Blessings on him!

Ruck

“Tramp!” goes the boot as it crushes the ground,

“Stomp!” goes the heel, and “Slap” goes the toe.

The rucksack creaks and squeaks, the ponderous sounds

Of overloaded canvas, in time with the slow,

Slow, agonizing pace of too many pounds

At least a hundred, sagging from my spine.

I feel it in my shoulders, I feel it in my feet

Slapping down and down and yet again down,

Always slapping down.

With shockwaves like a hammer on hamburger meat

Plodding on clay, on shale, on grass, weed and bush

Trudging in the dust of the field or echoing on the street.

Pain from toe to heel, pain from heel to knee and then

Shooting up in grinding vibrations to hips and lumbar spine

As every one of these weary, dogged men

Stoop and limp and plod under the weight of the ruck;

That damned unwieldy tick that we’ve strapped on again;

To carry across the land.

                                        Through the night, through the rain,

Through the draws and hills and swamps and thorn;

Pitch black sticks in the pitch black night

That stab you in the eye with careless scorn.

The “wait-a-minute” vines that claw and clutch and drag

And lie in wait for our heels, in the dark before the morn,

As we curse our way onwards in pitch black

Sans moon and stars, and wish we were never born,

Or if born, at least born normal people, not the sort

Who volunteer for this tomfoolery!

                                                      But that awful ruck!

All else is really an afterthought, my mind always returns

To that creaking, sagging, soul crushing bundle of suck

Ninety pounds of gear on my back: ammo, water, food

Clothes, med bag, and explosives just for luck;

Then, to top it off a 25lb necklace! The iron pig,

Swinging in front of me by its sling.

80 clinking rounds in the feed tray, to start with,

“Carry as much ammo as you can bring.”

And then a bandoleer of 120 more, because hey, you never know!

Muzzle and bipod stick out like a broken wing,

Catching the brush and shifting, sliding canvas on my collar,

After a few hours that will start to sting.

But someone has to carry it, right?

                                                     It’s really just the weight.

I carry it, not on my spine, but on my soul like a brick.

My spirits sink as hour after painful hour drags on,

And from twenty-two to zero-two we’ve moved barely a klick

And left half our mojo behind, somewhere in the draw.

The wait-a-minute vines got it. The bush was just too thick.

We hit the tracks and make up some time,

Urging speed from battered limbs and trying our best

Not to twist our ankles between the ties,

Or in the gravel. Pushing on. Only a minute for a rest.

Behind schedule. Forget security, out on the road,

And run. We need to make link-up, so haul butt

With dogged, shuffling, comical steps under the load,

For half a mile of open blacktop,

Ready to dive into the brush if a glimmer showed.

Of headlight, but nothing comes. Civilized people

Are all asleep right now. We run

Praying there’s a ride at the end of this one.

But no.

             Alas, only an angry, nervous face,

And a stream, and a quick, “Follow us.”

Then lights running off into the darkness.

“Awww. Sad face.” Someone says, but no more fuss.

These guys are running light, and they know the way,

And they’re fresh. We barely have breath to cuss

And we have a guy with a sprained ankle.

Little things like that, you know, they add up.

Who’d have thought?

                                  The lights go on, and on, and on

Up the ravine. We fall behind, get separated.

Link back up, move out again, fall behind

And half our element moves on without us.

If it weren’t for the injured guy I wouldn’t mind.

I swear I’d still smoke half of them even now.

But this guy can barely limp, and I can’t find

The slightest glimmer of light ahead, just black.

“Crossload his gear.” Everyone gets something.

They wait for us, we link up again, move back out.

Farther and farther, up and down, on and on.

This is not much fun, I think, with a slight pout.

No one can see my face, so I’ll pout if I like,

I just want to be rid, once and for all, of this

Terrible,

Hideous,

Malignant,

Sneering

Hateful

Ruck!

But here we are.

Forming a perimeter, facing out, catching a breath

A quick meeting in the center and the word comes out,

“We’re stopping here tonight. Rucksack flop.”

Tonight, indeed? All two hours of it before it’s light?

But at least we can stop,

Face inward,

Crouch down,

And let the ruck do the work:

Sag,

Sway,

Pull,

Fall over backwards

And rest on the ground, leaning against that beast

Like a lazyboy recliner, as all the stress

And tension drift away and are released.

Every muscle and sinew are totally relaxed,

And light and warmth and pure endorphin high

Flood every corner of my being in a rushing flow

Of pure, unbridled bliss.

A bliss which, without the rucksack, I would never know.

Punching Bag Woes

So this is a complaining post. I’m complaining about the fact that there are no good punching bags in any of the gyms I’ve been in on Fort Bragg, and I’ve been in most of them.

I’m serious, this is an issue to me.

You would think, on a military installation a punching bag, in fact, multiple punching bags, would be standard equipment. They had one hanging up in the student gym at the medic school, but it was pretty worthless. It was one of the kind that hangs up on the metal frame with the two support pipes running to the floor on either side of it. Perfect for breaking your foot on if you do a round house kick just a little off target. It needed to be weighed down with several hundred pounds worth of weight plates just to keep it flying across the floor. But it was better than nothing. Then the cadre got angry at us for denting the floor by dropping weights on it so the closed the gym to students and it became the cadre gym.

So then I brought my own personal punching bag in and hung it up in the quad by the barracks. It was a perfect set up. Alas, there was a small cut on one surface of the bag, and with too many people abusing it and not using it properly and constant exposure to the elements, it ripped open. I took it down planning on repairing it, but the Sergeant Major had it thrown away because it was an “eye-sore”. My punching bag! The one that I paid good money for.

A gym just across the street came to my rescue, though, They opened up a boxing room and a grappling room. The grappling room is a 20’ x 20’padded room with good quality matts, and the boxing room had six short bags and two long bags hanging from two stands. As soon as I saw the stands, I knew they wouldn’t last long. Each stand consisted of a single steel post going straight up into the air and branching into a four sided frame. It stood on a 12” x 12” metal plate, held in place by four bolts into the concrete. The leverage was so obviously too great for the bolts that I couldn’t believe anyone had seriously paid money for it. Some fat civilian contractor who has never thrown a punch in his (or her) life probably okayed that purchase. At any rate I used the heck out of it for about a month and a half before the kicking accumulated, and then came the one kick so hard that the bolts ripped clean out of the concrete. After that the gym took down the bag stands and has not responded to any of my inquiries about when they will replace them. The people at the desk tell me I should, “Take it up with the committee.” Something about budgeting. Please! They have the bags. I’ll go down to Lowes and pick up all the stuff I need to hang them so that they will never break, and it would cost me about fifty bucks.

I bought another punching bag and hung it up again in the quad, and I did a lot of good training on it. Then somebody took it down while I was on clinical rotation, and I have no idea what happened to it. Probably another “barracks cleanup”. How by any stretch of the imagination does a punching bag constitute a non-military appearance? A barracks without a decent punching bag is the disgrace, in my opinion.

The gym tried to set up a punching bag stand with a water filled base, but I kicked the top off of it with my third kick. It was a lousy design.

Now they have fallen back on the muscle guy dummies. These are not as good as a bag for hitting because of two flaws. The rubber they are made out of is too soft, and if you hit them too hard they fall over and you have to pick them back up again. Still, better than nothing.

So yesterday I threw 800 punches on one of those dummies. My left hand is a little bloodied. The space between the knuckles of my pointer and middle fingers blistered and ripped, and I got a small rip on the knuckle of my pinky. That’s the problem with punching rubber, it creates more friction, and my left hand wasn’t ready for it, but my right hand is still like a rock.

I sometimes say that the perfect fitness program requires very little equipment. At a minimum you need something to lift, something to hang from, and something to hit. Of those three, hitting things is possibly the most satisfying. There is just something about a solid, perfectly placed punch that pleases me. Deep down inside I enjoy it. When every muscle and bone in my body works together as a single unit, all contracting, twisting, tightening and cracking like a whip, in perfect cooperation as fast as you could blink, and the whole force and weight of my 210 lbs smacks into the leather focused behind the point of a single knuckle, it’s just satisfying. It really is. You have to experience it to understand it.

But it is important to me, both as an esoteric exercise and as a practical skill. I firmly believe that every man needs to know how to throw a proper punch at a bare minimum. How much more every soldier? Can you, then, explain to me why a punching bag is not a standard fixture in every barracks in the army?

I can’t.