Fitness for Fat Nerds: GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAL

I learned pretty early on in the exercise process that having goals is one of those necessary things, like drinking plenty of water and eating peanut butter straight from the jar. (Just kidding about the last one (mostly).) Anything you can possibly do to help yourself get motivated and stay there is important. For me, having specific goals works really well because I have a competitive personality, and that keys in to it. I don't have to be competing with someone else. I can compete with myself.

That said, setting goals can sometimes be a trickier prospect than you think. Here's what I've learned:

They have to be reasonable and attainable
This was actually the hardest lesson for me. I don't like being reasonable. If I want to do something, my default setting is balls to the wall, take no prisoners. This might work when it involves staying up to three in the morning trying to make some kind of ridiculous word count, but the sad truth is your body is not a well-oiled machine that can take that kind of abuse right out of the gate. Physical limitations exist, and there's not a lot we can do about it as mere mortals. As much as that pisses me off on occasion.

So how do you make a reasonable, attainable goal? That's something you have to learn over time, since your rate of improvement is going to be different from mine. We've all got different walls we have to get past, different challenges when it comes to getting this thing done.

What I can suggest is start slow. Give yourself a short-term goal that isn't too far ahead of where you are currently. If you hit that goal easily and early, crank it up next time. Keep doing that until you figure out what amounts to challenging, but not impossible.

They can't be too easy, either
You might as well just pat yourself on the ass and have done with it, really.

Have more than one goal, with different time spans
I like having a bunch of short term goals, where I set a new one as soon as I knock the previous one down. But I also like having a long-term goal. For running, my current long-term goal is to run a 5k, because how cool would that be?

Short term goals normally last a week or two, and I tend to go for distance - I want to run four miles three times a week, for example. Short term goals should be things that ratchet up slowly, each one just a little tougher than the last. And ultimately, all those short term goals should add up to get you to your long term goal.

Reward yourself
Mostly, it should just be the warm feeling of 'fuck yeah' when you hit a goal and get to set a new one. Because that means you're working hard and getting somewhere. But I also think that when you hit some kind of milestone, or hit a major goal, you should reward yourself.

The reward is up to you. You know what kind of treat will motivate you to keep pushing even when your muscles are burning and you just want to lay down under a tree and die. Make it a fun thing that you normally don't get to do, a break in your routine. Go see a movie, pick up some new running music, or get that video game you've been needing an excuse to buy. Heck, go to the pet store and look at the kittens if that's enough to keep you going. The last major goal I hit, I bought a Kinect for the Xbox so I could play dance games.

Two things I'd add:
1) Don't reward yourself with time off. You want this to be a routine, and it should also be fun. Hitting a goal so you can have a day off of doing this awful, agonizing thing probably means you need to find something more fun to do.

2) Personally, I prefer not to make food into a reward. I've already got an unhealthy enough relationship with what I eat. I've been trying to make food into a normal thing, not an obsession, and promising myself a chocolate bar or ice cream really doesn't help that. If you don't have my food issues, though, and having a pint of Americone Dream waiting for you at the end of a major run keeps you going, more power to you.

Make like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Once you've hit a certain point of Fit Fat Nerdness that's currently beyond where I'm at, you can probably chuck this one out of the window if you want. But generally for running (or bike rides) I like to pick either a set time or a set distance to make, not both. I don't like picking a hard number for how fast I have to be, since that can mean pushing yourself a lot harder than you necessarily should. Be as fast as you are and call it good.

By preference, I like setting distance goals and just letting the time be whatever it's going to be. Rest assured, as you hit the same distance over and over again, you will eventually get faster.

For goodness sake, don't make it a weight
There is a lot I could say about the entire weight issue in terms of fitness, and even more in terms of diet. And I plan to, at length, some day soon once my rantypants get back from the cleaners. Considering I'm already 900 words into this, I'm going to keep it simple here.

1) You should be doing this because you want to be fit. That is not the same thing as your weight equaling a particular number. Ever. Full stop. Done. Discussion over.

2) If you are losing weight - and it's honestly likely you will if you go from being a couch surfer to someone that partakes in regular exercise - your weight loss will not be constant, or predictable. For the first 10% or so of your body weight it'll likely fall away pretty fast. After that, it gets a lot more squirrely, and trying to set your sights on an unpredictable number that changes throughout the day is the path to madness.

3) Your actual weight is not going to say anything about how much you've progressed as a runner, biker, or whatever. Being able to, say, hit five miles without stopping will.

4) When you miss a goal, you should shrug, maybe frown a little, and move on, ready to try again. If you're concerned enough about your weight that you're even thinking making goals about it, I sincerely doubt that missing a weight goal will be something you can just shrug over and go on with your day. I've been there. It's crushing, depressing, and a lot of other very unhappy verbs. This is supposed to be fun, not a way for you to destroy your own self esteem.

The most important thing: Don't torture yourself
Because hey kids, torture isn't fun. All of this is supposed to ultimately help you. So if you're the type that gets down about goals when you miss them, toss all this advice out the window and move on to something more useful.

Consider it a corollary to Wheaton's Law: Don't be a dick. That also means don't be a dick to yourself.

Hi, I'm Rachael. I'm a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I'm not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I'm writing this because I've got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I'm hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I'm also writing this because it's a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

Fitness for Fat Nerds: Ohmygod Shoes!

This is a topic that's caused a lot of digital ink to be spilled on the internet. A lot. I'm not in this to start up an argument. As always, I'm just going to throw out there what works for me and hope you can gain something useful from it.

I will say one thing, though, particularly when the debate hits the shoes versus barefoot issue. I haven't really seen a convincing argument either way. I haven't done a pubmed search recently, but when I last did, I wasn't feeling all that compelled. If you google the topic, there's also a lot of anecdotes. Athelete A always ran barefoot until an injury happened and then had to wear shoes. Awesome Athlete B wears shoes even when asleep. Person F tried running barefoot and then GOT CANCER AND DIED.

Okay, you probably won't find all of those. Maybe. But you see where I'm going with this?

Unless you are Athlete A, B, or Person F, these stories don't necessarily mean anything. Once again, I'm back to my old refrain of you have to find what works for you. Your feet are probably different from mine, and you've probably got a different running gait. You probably also have different feet from Athletes A and B, and so on.

If running barefoot works for you, great! If you're like me and you have to wear fancy running shoes so your knees don't explode and shower innocent passers by with fragments of cartilage, also great!

Personally...

You should probably understand where I'm coming from on the shoe issue. I had severe problems with my knees for several years, which come back to the fact that I have very weak arches that collapse. I have to wear shoes with a lot of arch support, and expensive insoles. That change in my footwear, plus a lot of physical therapy fixed my knee problems.

I also have an old weightlifting injury that's messed up my right hip, which means my right leg gets rotated outward when I walk or run. That has the effect of making me limp depending on how I run. I changed my gait so that I'm now a "forefoot striker," which means that I run on the balls of my feet and my heels never touch down. That's actually fixed my limp.

So that's where I'm coming from.

Shoe Shopping



I would rather shop for shoes than eat ants, but it's kind of a near thing. I don't enjoy shopping in general, and when it involves anything I put on my body, it's even less pleasant.

That said, too bad. I learned the hard way that for me, shoes are important if I don't want to destroy my joints.

My shoes for kung fu, I just get at normal shoe stores. For running shoes, particularly if you're just trying to get into it, I really recommend going to a store that actually specializes. What you're looking for are:
a) Treadmills, preferably with TVs nearby so they can record you run and show it to you.
b) Salespeople that don't get paid on commission

I think it's worth being willing to shell out a little more for a pair of good running shoes than your average cross trainers that you just wear around wherever. But point B is important because running shoes can get ridiculously expensive, and if you're only doing 10 miles a week you're not going to need some top of the line solid gold shoe that comes with its own mini jetpack. It's best if the clerk you're going to work with isn't going to push you for something more expensive than you need.

I get my running shoes at Boulder Running Company. If you live in Colorado, I recommend them. One thing that impressed me is that the first time I went to their store to buy a pair of shoes, the clerk had me take off my shoes and socks and stand so he could get a look at my feet. It was exactly the same routine I'd gone through with my physical therapist a few months before.

Once you get a pair of shoes to try on, you should get to run on a treadmill, and even run outside. This is important. Shoes feel different between walking and running. Something that feels great to walk in may not be nearly as good for running. It's even better if they can actually record a video your feet while you run and then play it back in slow motion. This was how I discovered the source of my gait problem with my right leg.

The other reason it's important to trot around at least a little in a potential pair of shoes is that they should be comfortable out of the box. I think we're all used to the idea of needing to "break shoes in." What this really means is that the shoes don't fit you right. Yes, you don't want to buy a new pair of shoes and immediately go run a 5k in them, but they should feel good enough out of the box that you could put in a couple of miles and feel good about it.

It's this search for shoes that are comfortable out of the box that takes the most time. My first pair of decent running shoes took a solid hour of trying pairs on and swapping them around. After that, it gets easier because you can just take your defunct shoes in, brandish the carcass at the clerk, and ask for something similar.

Also, you need to make peace with the fact that you're going to have to go through the shopping and expense relatively often. With running shoes, it's not the years, it's the mileage. Normally the clerk can tell you about how many miles you should expect a shoe to be good for before it starts breaking down. My new ones? About 500 miles. So if I keep up with my current running regimen, they'll last a little less than a year.

I do have several friends who run barefoot, or run using what are basically foot gloves like these Vibrams since it's the next best thing to running without shoes and means you're not going to get cut by broken glass. One of my friends doesn't even run in those - he just wears them everywhere in place of sneakers. So if that's of interest to you, explore the possibility.

I would just encourage you to not become too wedded to any single idea until you've found what does work for you. Barefoot running might sound great, but if you start having problems with your heels, you may have to reexamine how to make things work. Those nice running shoes you just bought might be putting too much lateral force on your ankles and setting you up for an injury. If your shoes are hurting you, get rid of them.

My Shoes, because I know you totally care

I don't expect this to be nearly as useful as talking about the art of shoe shopping, but I thought I should throw these in here in case there's something useful to be gleaned.

For kung fu, it's taken me eight years to find a pair of shoes that I actually really like. A lot of guys at my school actually wear Sambas, which I tried out but found the arch to be way too high. The Puma Ligas were perfect for my foot type, and the insole peels out easily so it can be replaced. People at my school also wear normal cross trainers and skater shoes. Almost no one wears "martial arts" shoes.

I think the best thing about the Ligas is the sole. I wore cross trainers for a long time in kung fu and particularly when I started getting in to spinning/flying kicks, I noticed the really textured soles made it harder to turn. And when I did turn, I could feel it put more lateral pressure on my knees, which is not a thing I like. Additionally, it started ripping pieces off the soles of my shoes, which made them a lot less comfortable. These have enough texture that they're not dangerous to walk in, but they feel really nice for martial arts.

Actually, I like Ligas so much at this point that they're the shoe I wear for my every day life. The only bad thing about them is that the sole is thin and doesn't have much padding. So when you step on a rock, boy do you feel it. And cold goes through them in nothing flat, so they're not great for winter wear.

These are the new running shoes I just picked up. I had a pair of New Balance before, and these are the closest equivalent to them. I'm not going to shill for NB as a brand, because everything fits pretty differently. Mostly, you'll just notice these have some pretty heavy duty support in the forefoot, which is what I needed. This one also has less rigid support on the arch - just a little less - because the wear patterns on my old shoes showed I was getting pushed to the outside a little by that.

My insoles. I use blue-flavored superfeet because that's what my physical therapist told me to do, and I would walk over hot coals for that woman. Are they better than any other insoles? No idea. I would say they're definitely more supportive than the ones that come with shoes. I'd never go back. Do you need them? It depends on you and your feet.

This pair is pretty old - you can tell from the nasty sweat-stained footprint that I've driven into the foam. However, they're still okay to use since the plastic isn't cracked and I haven't actually worn through anything yet. Which means they've outlasted the pair of shoes they were once in. So even if they are relatively expensive, you don't have to replace them too often.

Hi, I'm Rachael. I'm a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I'm not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I'm writing this because I've got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I'm hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I'm also writing this because it's a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

Earthquakes in Ohio

I love you, Rachel Maddow. But I need to take exception to a thing you said, as much as it pains me.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's a long clip, and the point in question is sort of interspersed through it. Basically Rachel says that the earthquakes in Ohio were caused by fracking. And that this is somehow a surprise.

Now, this may be a nitpicky complaint, but I'm a nerd and it's my purview to get nitpicky about things.

The earthquakes in Ohio were not directly caused by fracking. they were caused by waste water injection. While Rachel does say this at one point in the clip, for the most part this gets shortened down to the earthquakes being caused by fracking.

In this case, the best you could come up with is an indirect cause, since without the hydraulic fracturing, there wouldn't be a lot of fluid that needed to be put down the disposal well. But frankly, if you want to be accurate, you have to say that the earthquakes were caused by improper waste water disposal.

And you know what? This is not a new thing. Deep waste water disposal wells in Colorado in the late 60s and early 70s caused earthquakes as well. If there are faults in the area, waste water can get in to them and lubricate them. Or if the well is over pressured, that can change the local stress field and get things to shift around.

As I said, I know that this may seem like hair splitting, but it bugs me to no end to hear the waste water disposal issue being conflated with the actual process of hydraulic fracturing. It's sloppy. If nothing else, waste water disposal wells are not a new concept, and even without hydraulic fracturing they still get drilled and used because normal oil production often entails a large water cut (ancient salt water coming out with the oil) and that water gets re-injected in disposal wells.

It's another question to ask if hydraulic fracturing itself causes earthquakes. Likely yes in summary, and here's a nice recent example from Oklahoma. Though the point in both of these places is really that any induced seismicity is less than a magnitude of 3.0, too small for us to actually feel.

Whether or not this is cause for worry is a whole issue on itself. We can also cause seismic activity by pulling a lot of water out of aquifers and thus cause compaction issues. (Or pulling a lot of oil out of reservoirs and causing compaction there.) While the effect is the same (man-made earthquakes), the causes deserve to be addressed with accuracy.

A month without meat

I read Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse: an interview with Timothy Pachirat at BoingBoing today. Right before I went for my morning run, actually.

Normally when I run, I think about what I want to work on, writing-wise. Or if I really get in the zone, I just sort of let the music wash around between my ears and don't think about much of anything. But today, I couldn't get that interview out of my head.

Not because there's anything particularly shocking about it. Really, it's less graphic than excerpts from Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma that talk about slaughtering chickens, or portions of Temple Grandin's books. There's nothing overtly disgusting, and it's not a brutal expose of industrial filth or unusual animal suffering.

But I guess that's the thing that really stuck in my head about it. That it was all very routine and business as usual. The interview is very much about the industrialization of violence, in this case violence against animals. And the way the many workers dissociate themselves from that violence by laying it all at the feet of the few that actually deal with the animals in the last moments of their lives. And as consumers, we're even more in that dissociative boat.

It bothers me, and I need more time to think about why. This could really develop into a complex ethics monologue of the sort that I generally despise reading, so I'm not going to do that to myself or to you. But if it bothers me so much that twelve hours later I am still thinking about this, that tells me I have some mental dissonance that I need to resolve.

I like hamburgers, and I like steaks. However, I don't know if I like them that much.

So I've decided for the next month, I'm going to go without meat and see how I feel. My plan is to go for the wussiest variety of vegetarianism out there, which is to say I'm keeping eggs and dairy, and I've already admitted to myself that I love sushi too much to even consider giving up fish. But at the very least, I'm done eating anything warm blooded for the next thirty days.

We'll see if I'm dying for a hamburger on April 8. Right now, I can't really tell.

Fitness for Fat Nerds: Doctor, Doctor Give Me the News

There are several things you need to do before you get started on the whole exercise thing, my fellow fat nerds. Make sure you have good shoes (more on this later). If you're of the female fat nerd persuasion, get some good sports bras. Invest in a tiny mp3 player if you like music. Things like that. But here's one you probably haven't thought about:

Get a new doctor.

Well, let me back off that blanket statement a little. Your doctor might be perfectly fine. Your doctor might be wonderful, one you've had for years and years, one that listens to you and works with you. If you're lucky that way, good for you. Don't just keep that doctor, declare it Awesome Doctor Appreciation Day and make him or her a pie.

But most of us? Need a new doctor. It's a giant pain in the ass, depending upon your insurance company. Your options might be severely limited. But it's worth it to explore those options.

Let me tell you a story.

Back in 2005, I was unemployed. My job hunt was becoming so desperate that I seriously considered joining the Army as a viable career path. That didn't end up panning out, but one thing the Army recruiters did that I will owe them on for the rest of my life is they taught me how to run. So even when I gave up on the Army thing, I kept running.

Somewhere in there, I started developing these awful, sharp, shooting pains in my knees when I ran.

Now, I hate going to the doctor. I hate the feeling that I'm being a whiner, if nothing else. I'm much more of the suck it up, Cupcake school of pain management. So if I'm willing to actually make an appointment and go, that should tell you just how much pain I have to be in. Enough pain that mainlining Advil doesn't cut it. Enough pain that I'm actually starting to worry about my bodily integrity.

So after months of increasing knee pain, I finally went to the doctor.

You know what the doctor told me? Your knees hurt because you're fat. Lose 15 pounds and they won't hurt so much.

Never mind that my knees hurt because I was exercising, and at that point I had already dropped 20 pounds. Never mind that the pain was so severe on some days that it was interfering with my ability to exercise and thus continue to lose weight. I just needed to lose more weight, and things would magically become better.

I kept going with running and kung fu and did my best to just ignore the increasing amounts of pain, because I told myself it was all a weight issue. The pain in my knees got bad enough that I started having problems with stairs. At that point, I considered going to the doctor again, but I knew that she'd just tell me I was still too fat. I didn't see a point in coughing up a copay so my doctor could make me feel like shit about myself.

A few years after the original diagnosis of being too fat, my right knee locked up and I fell down the stairs. My significant other convinced me to try going to the doctor again.

Due to the strange vagaries of being in an HMO, I ended up seeing a different doctor.

She listened to me explain my knee pain, about how much exercise I was getting per week. She actually believed that I was that physically active, in spite of my weight. She messed with my knees a bit and then told me that "A lot of female athletes have this type of knee pain..." Yes. She used the word athlete. And then she referred me to a physical therapist.

It took the physical therapist all of five minutes to diagnose my problem (I have an old injury in my right hip that screws up my leg alignment, plus arches that collapse), tell me to get special insoles for all my shoes, and give me a set of exercises to do.

So that was great. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. I had to take two years off of both running and kung fu while I let the physical therapy do its work. My knees are better now, but they will never be good.

And a lot of that is because I had a doctor who didn't want to look further than my weight.

There are a lot of doctors out there like that. And that's a problem. I avoided going to my former doctor a lot of times when I shouldn't have because I didn't want to get a lecture about how I needed to lose weight. I knew that I was overweight, and I was trying to do something about it. When I did have a problem severe enough to make me go, it was blamed on my weight if there was even a tenuous connection that could be made.

If you're serious about physical activity, if you find a way to exercise that you enjoy and do a lot, you are going to end up needing to see a doctor. You'll screw up your ankle, or mess up your knee, or pull a muscle. It's going to happen. Life in general is hard on our bodies, and if we live it large and have fun, injury is almost inevitable. And that should be fine.

You need a doctor that you can trust to actually listen to you when there is a problem, someone who will help you fix the problem instead of just telling you to lose weight and call it a day.

Hell, even if you're not going to turn into a fitness fiend, you deserve a doctor that will listen to you. This is not to say that we are completely divorced from our weight. There are some health problems we fat nerds can end up with that are related to our level of fat. But our health is also so much more than just our weight.

And so are we.

Fracking on the SGU

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe this week (episode #346) has an interview with Gordon Maupin, about fracking. I think Mr. Maupin was very reasonable and it's definitely a good interview to hear for a calm, measured take on the topic.

It would have been nice to hear more discussion of the geological issues, but Mr. Maupin also isn't a geologist so that's likely why he wanted to address it mostly as a policy issue and just stick to move of an overview with where the science is at. (At the moment inconclusive with a large side of surface contamination being the more likely culprit.)

Hopefully once the EPA finishes their study, maybe they'll interview a geologist...

Stories and blog posts, oh my

So, Penumbra is kind of awesome. They bought one of my stories and I wrote two blog posts for them. Not because I needed to write two blog posts. But because I wrote one, thought it was too silly, wrote a second one, and then sent in both. And they decided to use both.

For those interested:

The March issue is on sale - my story, The Jade Tiger is in it. The theme of the issue is Steampunk.

Silly blog post: A Wild Word Doc Appears

Less silly blog post: Because Sherlock

As you see, my talent for choosing titles never ceases to amaze.

Bad Movie Liveblogging: Dante's Peak

It's a cassic, and I haven't seen it yet.

Get ready for bad geology in 3... 2... 1...

Fitness for Fat Nerds: A Run a Day Keeps the Wibbling Away

Ever try to go to bed without brushing your teeth? I just can't do it. Some kind of awful little plaque alarm in the back of my head starts going off and refuses to stop until I've done something, even if it's just smearing some toothpaste around in my mouth with one finger. Part of this could be because I'm absolutely terrified of the dentist and will do anything it takes, up to and including ritual animal sacrifice (no, not really) to guarantee that I will never have a cavity again.

The bigger root of my tooth brushing obsession is probably just the fact that it's been a nightly routine almost as long as I can remember. Routine plus desperate desire to fight tooth decay wins, apparently.

I bring this up because we're animals, and animals like routines. I'd like to think I'm slightly less neurotic than my cats when I miss giving them their morning treat and idiot talk, but I'm still a slave to my daily habits. This is a fact I've tried to turn to my advantage for exercise.

I also admit that I had a lot of help getting it going, in the form of severe jetlag.

I was in Germany for almost three weeks. My first night there I managed (somehow) to stay awake until about 9 PM, at which point I collapsed like a badly made souffle. The next morning, I woke up at 5 AM entirely on my own. I'd already discovered that there was no gym in the hotel I could use, so running was my only option. And I also realized that I probably wasn't going to feel like running after working for ten hours. So I warmed up, put on my running shoes, and went for a 30 minute run along the banks of the Weser in the pre-dawn dark.

Same thing the next day. And the next. And at that point, I was on a real streak and it seemed a shame to break that, so the next and the next day...

For those three weeks, I was able to break out of my habitual pattern of staying up late, and I got used to getting up every morning and going for a run before breakfast. There were a couple of days when it was too cold to run outside, but I still got up, stretched, and did the few exercises I could do in my hotel room.

By the time I got back home, I couldn't not get up and do something. Despite the fact that the return to high altitude just screwed my lungs for the first week.

Because this is the thing. For all I talked about finding some sport/fitness activity/game/etc to do that you think is fun and awesome, almost nothing is fun and awesome 100% of the time. There are always, always going to be times when you just don't feel like it, and you need to be able to make yourself do it anyway. Making the exercise routine really helps in that fight against your own inertia. If you get up at x time and do y every day, you've got one more weapon to fight your own excuses: "Yeah, I'm tired, but it's 8AM and that's when I run."

Trying to get into a routine sucks, I'm not going to lie. If you're me, about five days in you'll be questioning your own sanity and wondering why you wanted to do this so badly anyway. After the first two weeks, it starts getting easier. But this is your brain trying to lull you into a false sense of security, to convince you that it's okay, just take a day off and sleep late. Don't trust it. Unless you are physically incapable of doing your routine, do it. After three weeks, you've built the foundation for severe psychological discomfort if you stop doing your routine. But don't even give yourself a break then. The whole point is that you keep pushing yourself until every time you think, "Don't wanna," the thought is immediately followed by, "But that's what I do. So... yeah."

How exactly you want to build your routine is really up to you. I used to just do evenings. This getting up in the morning and exercising is a very new thing for me, and I don't think I could have managed it without a healthy helping of jetlag to get me going. But this is what you do:
- Pick your exercise.
- Do it every day at approximately the same time. Even on weekends.
- Don't stop.
- I mean it.
- I don't care if the bed is warm and your cat is purring.

I will add a caution, though, to the every day plan. Particularly when you're starting out, trying to go hell bent for leather every day is honestly not a good idea. It's rough on your body. You will need to take a day off from your activity of choice every few days to let your muscles recover. That's perfectly okay, and there's nothing wrong with it. But taking a day off shouldn't mean sleeping through your exercise time or using it to watch reruns of Castle. It's still your exercise time, so do something with it. Take a walk. Play Dance Central. Or at least stretch while you're watching your Castle reruns.

Because there will be times when you genuinely cannot exercise, for a multitude of reasons, and possibly even for an extended period of time. Etching this routine into your brain so that it can never be removed will help you pick things back up afterward.

I also understand that for a variety of reasons, you may not be able to do an every day at the same time routine. Maybe you have a weird work schedule, or classes screw with you, or whatever. Routine building still works when it's not every day.

I had a routine before Germany as well. I went to kung fu on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday (and I ran on Thursday and Saturday). Even when I didn't feel like it, I made myself go to kung fu because I knew I would broil alive in my own neurotic wibbling if I didn't. Unfortunately, that particular routine got destroyed by a shoulder injury in November. I was struggling to keep going with exercise, and then Germany came along and that put me back on track.

I will say one thing, comparing the two routines. It's easier to stick with one that is every day as opposed to just on set days of the week. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you have to do what you can.

If your schedule is so random and awful that you can't put together any kind of routine at all, you've got it the toughest out of anyone. That means that when you are fighting your own inertia to try to exercise, all you've got is 'do it' without the added push of habit. It can be done, though. I believe in you.

But if you're in the latter situation - and please, don't think I'm judging you because I have no idea what your life is like - before you tell yourself that you just can't have a routine at all, take a good hard look at things. If you want to do this exercise thing, you need to carve the time out of your life to do it, because it's important. You don't exercise when you have time, you have to make time to exercise.

If you think about it that way, maybe you can carve out time to create a routine after all.

Exercise being fun helps you get through that first month of building the routine. After that first month, then it reminds you why that was a good idea.

Hi, I'm Rachael. I'm a fat nerd. I also run 3-4 miles a day and have done kung fu for eight years. I'm not writing this because I want to be some kind of fitness guru. Hell no, that would be ridiculous. I'm writing this because I've got a lot of friends that struggle with the [metaphorical] Fitness Demon and I'm hoping my experience might make things a little easier for them. I'm also writing this because it's a lot of stuff I wish someone had told me, back when I was making attempt after unsuccessful attempt to get into this exercise thing. If it helps you out, great.

Everyone's a Hero

Everyone's a hero in their own way
You and you and mostly me and you.

-- Captain Hammer

Stephen Marche wrote a column about the utter meaninglessness of the word 'hero' as currently used in America: We Are All Heroes. The stinger at the end sums the whole thing up nicely: If people living up to their basic obligations are heroes, then we're all failing disastrously.

Ouch.

As I read the column, though, I found myself thinking "Yes, but..." a lot. I think there's a lot more to the issue. Which is not to say Mr. Marche doesn't, because goodness knows it's hard if not flat impossible to boil down a complex issue into a snappy column that comes in at the appropriate word count.

However, since this is the internet, where oceans of text are spilled daily to expound on matters of no consequence that no one's paying attention to anyway, I might as well say what I'm thinking. So, my buts. Let me show you them.

I've got kind of a knee-jerk defensiveness that kicks in every time mentions the self-esteem generation, participant ribbons, all that. Depending on who you ask, I'm either at the tail-end of Generation X or the very front of Generation Y (or whatever it's fashionable to call them these days), but I always get this paranoid feeling that it's me in the cross hairs. I don't know when the self-esteem raising craze really hit, but I definitely churned through the public education system when it was in full swing. It just seems a little too easy to take a shot at the self-esteem bullshit we got fed in school.

I obviously only speak for myself and my limited group of friends that are close to my age, all of whom are intelligent, snarky nerds. But by about third or fourth grade, I'd copped to the fact that not only were participant ribbons meaningless, they were actually kind of insulting. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when everyone's getting the same award, it's not much of an award. Particularly when you're awarded for participation in something that's mandatory.

Perhaps I was remarkably cynical as a child. I also had amazing parents, who took pains to drive two important facts into my skull:
1) You are smart, and don't ever take shit off of anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.
2) It's pathetically easy for even very smart people to do embarrassingly stupid things.

Hell, it could even be because my parents let me watch things like Life of Brian at an age that would probably cause some severe pearl clutching among the squadron of adults that think children are delicate hot house flowers as opposed to tiny, developing humans. There is a certain impression that gets made on you when you're young and seeing the "Yes, we're all individuals," scene for the first time.

Whatever the reason, I want to give my peers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to participant ribbons and self-esteem raising. There's an awful little part of me that would just like to think I had it all sussed out because I wasn't one of the little sheeple (god I hate that word) but that smells way too much like hubris for my comfort.

At worst, the scourge of participant ribbons are a symptom. We didn't turn into a country of selfish beasts because of the orange ribbon that got pinned to our shirts in sixth grade. The most toxic parts of selfish American culture that encourage an abdication of duty - emphasis on consumerism, lack of empathy for those on a lower social rung, the idea that we shouldn't have to pay for anything - are not sourced from people in my age group. Sure, assholish thirty-somethings are now rallying around the idea that all taxes are too high and screw the safety net anyway, but the self-esteem generation isn't leading the charge.

I'm pretty sure no one ever gave Senator Mitch McConnell a ribbon for just showing up. (Other than the invisible ribbons lovingly bestowed by privilege, but I digress.)

Maybe a message of selfishness is happily accepted by people who have had their egos artificially inflated. But I also think it is just that the lesser nature of the human animal is to be, well, kind of lazy and selfish. So anyone whispering sweet nothings about how we can have everything we ever wanted (Oh boy! A war in the Middle East!) and never have to pay a cent is going to have a lot of receptive ears.

This is a general failure on all our parts to reject the poisonous idea that selfishness is somehow an acceptable ground state, if not a virtue. Because if you've accepted that idea, even the smallest of selfless actions become noteworthy.

We like calling soldiers¹, firefighters, and paramedics heroes - police as well, though that's a bit more fraught. Some of it's because, let's be honest, most ordinary people would not want to run into a burning building or get shot at by hostile men armed with assault rifles, even if they were being paid to do so. People doing those things willingly, whether its their job or no, does seem a little fantastic.

There's something else all of those heroic professions have in common, however: the pay is generally shit.

I volunteered as an EMT for several years. I never seriously considered making it a career because the pay was so ridiculously low, my mortgage would have swallowed up nearly half of my gross salary. (I do not live in a mansion with a pool.)

At a time when we have soldiers on food stamps and public safety workers looking down the barrel of severe budget cuts while simultaneously one party would love to slash social programs like food stamps, maybe calling these people heroes is also hollow compensation and pathetic excuse. You can't feed your kids, but you're a hero. You can barely scrape by, but you are some sort of superhuman paragon of virtue that should be above such mortal concerns anyway. We threw you a fancy party, what more do you want - more funding for suicide prevention? Mama needs a new tax cut.

Of course, it's not just soldiers and public service workers that are struggling financially these days, though their struggle is all the poignant because it comes at such immense personal risk. But I think it's this struggle that's contributed to another change in how we view heroes. Mr. Marche mentions Peter Parker, and he's a perfect example in this case. When you're constantly having to decide if you're going to have electricity or food this week, being a superhero does seem like it should be the easier half of life. Beating the ever-living shit out of a masked bad guy that's threatening a little old lady is an easy, black and white call. When it's a choice between heart medication and new shoes for your kid, it's a hell of a lot harder.

This is not to say I disagree with Mr. Marche's thesis. The utter cynicism which which the term hero is being wielded has everything to do with manipulation and political expediency. If we shy from our obligations as a nation, it's because as a nation we have allowed our expectations to be so pathetically lowered, and without much of a fight.

But does that mean heroes are dead?

No.

Mr. Marche retweeted this (so I have no idea if he agrees with it or just found it an interesting point), and it makes me sad:

@arcadiaego: not sure *anyone* is a hero outside myths. (Which may be your point, Steven.) But interesting article.

Maybe this is me clapping because I believe in fairies. If that's the case, so be it. But no matter how meaningless the word becomes in public discourse, heroes still exist.

The presentation of heroes even in mythology isn't so simple as all that, but for the sake of argument let's grant that they're paragons, that they're presented as what we should aspire to be. There are still people - ordinary, flawed, beautiful, mortal people - that have that same quality. There are people who far exceed expectations, and in so doing encourage others to aspire to do the same. Mr. Marche brings up the example of Sal Giunta, who says he doesn't feel like a hero at all.

But that's kind of the point, I think. People who truly have that quality we should laud as heroic have expectations of themselves that far exceed those of society. When they meet their own expectations, they don't necessarily find it out of the ordinary. But it should encourage the rest of us to examine our own expectations of ourselves, society's expectations, and find them wanting.

When I was in Germany, one of the ladies I worked with told me that she'd recently found out her grandmother sheltered Jewish people from the Nazis during World War II. She said, "I'd like to think that if I were in that situation, I would be that strong. But you never know."

That is what heroes do.

They make you look deep within yourself and say, if I were in that situation, facing that kind of danger, could I be that strong? If that were me, would I have that kind of fortitude? I don't know.

But I will strive to be that person.




Notes:
1 - I think with soldiers there's also a whole other level of American neurosis at play, starting from the beginning of the Afghanistan War. People were reminded, and rightly so, about the abhorrent treatment some Vietnam War veterans received at the hands of civilians. No one wanted to see a repeat of that, particularly when it became clear that anti-war protests would be ongoing. We overcompensated, big and grand and loud, because damnit, that's the American way. That desire to compensate then became a very useful political club to aim at anyone objecting to the wars, particularly in their early days.