Category Archives: Running

Five simple dietary rules (and park rules too)

Posted on August 2, 2010 by | 4 Comments

…the truly important aspects of food intake can be summarized on a page or two in our notebooks. Our dietary rules are simple: to maintain optimum weight, to provide energy, and to avoid deficiencies. The rules, too, should be equally simple. Godfrey Fowlere, an Oxford University physician, has summarized them well:

  1. The main task is to avoid obesity. This is more the province of exercise. We are not overweight, we are overfat. Only exercise will give us muscle to replace that fat. When you exercise consistently your preoccupation with diet will disappear.
  2. Average sugar intake should be halved. Cut down on candy, soft drinks, sugar in tea or coffee.
  3. Fat should be reduced to about 30 percent of the diet. Cut down on butter, margarine, cream, fat on meats and fried foods.
  4. Increase intake of fiber. Use whole-grain cereals, or, in a pinch, Metamucil.
  5. Alcohol intake should be kept to two “units” a day (two pints of beer or glasses of wine).

As you can see, dieting need not be complicated. An obsession with calories is not necessary. These basic rules come down to what is now called “the  prudent diet.” It has a reduced sugar and fat content with some increase in fiber. Salts and alcohol are also reduced but not to limits that would interfere with normal bodily appetites.

– Dr. George Sheehan

Each Monday (or at least this was the plan back at the beginning of 2010) I write a post for a theme I call Motivation Monday, based off a quote from Dr. George Sheehan, especially from the book titled Dr. George Sheehan on Getting Fit & Feeling Great. The book includes three books: How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day, Running and Being and This Running Life. I might also include quotes from other running gurus such as Jeff Galloway and John “The Penguin” Bingham, from time to time. I hope this will help motivate not only myself, but also you as we both start anew each week. This week’s quote comes from a chapter titled “On Sleeping” in How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day.

Sadly, this is only my 18th Motivation Monday post with me writing my last such post back at the end of March. However, I’m going to start where I left off, in terms of where I was in the book anyway. As such, I’m on Chapter 5 of How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day. I’m not going to leave off, though, where I was in terms of exercise and where I have been for the past almost six months: nowhere. To that end, this afternoon before writing this post, I took myself out for a walk around our neighborhood. I wasn’t concerned with distance or time today, but just getting out the door and doing it.

As for today’s quote, my wife and I both have been thinking about diet a lot recently. We both have tried different diets several times, only to rebound to our “original” weights. My wife writes about her struggles in this review of the book Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby on my wife’s blog Your Basic ‘Dare To Be Great’ Situation. I will continue to write about struggles here. I think we both have realized that the latest diet fad is not the answer. What is? For myself, I think Sheehan and Fowlere’s advice is a good place to start, or rather continue.

My lack of exercise and proper diet has been exacerbated by several factors in recent months, but primarily these few which roughly correspond to the five rules from Fowlere:

  1. Not walking to work at the library or to volunteer at the senior center.
  2. Drinking too much soda.
  3. Eating too many fried foods, especially eating out at restaurants.
  4. Not eating breakfast.
  5. Too much alcohol, mostly on weekends, but still too much alcohol — and combined with the other factors, definitely not helping me.

I’m not making any grand pronouncements here or resolutions. I just will say that I’m going to work on each of these slowly but surely over the next few months.

The only part of a rule of Fowlere’s with which I have a problem is the recommendation of Metamucil. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want this happening:

Wife also noticed the fine print which said something to the effect “Obey park rules” as if someone really was going to pour Metamucil into Old Faithful. Too funny, on many levels.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Body, Motivation Monday, Running

Tagged , , , ,

Pausing before I reverse direction again

Posted on March 30, 2010 by | 7 Comments

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us…

Hebrews 12:1

When runners reach the turning point on a racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives there must be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another.

From the book On The Holy Spirit by Saint Basil, bishop

In today’s Scripture and reading in The Office of the Readings in The Liturgy of the Hours, these two sections spoke to me once again on the subject of running and life as it did when I wrote on these two sections last year.

In fact, what I said in that post then:

As a runner, I have not been persevering in running the race that lies before me. In fact, I haven’t been even running and barely walking. I’ve been ignoring that first part: “let us rid ourselves of every burden…” My burden: being a night owl and not getting up early in the morning to run. I get addicted to Facebook and Twitter, which I gave up for Lent, but then substitute them with another application called blip.fm (I will not provide the link lest you get trapped too, I say half-jokingly) and am up until all hours of the night…

still applies now, to some degree. Even though I didn’t give up Facebook and Twitter for Lent this year, I still am burdened by my proclivity toward being a night owl and letting myself get distracted by games on Facebook. I’ve just traded Mafia Wars for Bejeweled Blitz and still surf on blip, to no end.

So two seconds ago, I just deleted my blip account, and as of this moment, I also have removed the Bejeweled Blitz application and another game, which I just have started to play. Last week, I wrote about Increasing The Time I Am Living My Own Life and mentioned a couple of quotes from the late George Sheehan in that regards, including this:

“We cannot add a new activity to our life without taking something else out.”

He also went on to explain that it isn’t easy to decide what is to be thrown out, because often we have to decide between good things, not good and bad. Such is the case here. It’s not as I’ve mentioned in the past that I think Facebook games (or applications like blip for that matter) are intrinsically evil. It’s that I need to make room for running, for writing (both for myself personally and also for my job as a freelance writer) and for reading.

I will end this post as I ended last year’s post:

At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.

Hebrews 12:11-13

It’s time to pause, then keep on moving and keep the faith.

→ 7 Comments

Posted in Body, Mind, Running, Soul

Tagged , , , ,

Increasing the time I am living my own life

Posted on March 22, 2010 by | 8 Comments

My rules for budgeting my 24 hours are simple. No lunch, no novels, little TV, a rare movie, few magazines, a quick pass through the newspaper. Thus I reduce those hours in which I am a consumer and a spectator and increase the time when I am living my own life.

– Dr. George Sheehan

Each Monday I write a post for a theme I call Motivation Monday, based off a quote from Dr. George Sheehan, especially from the book titled Dr. George Sheehan on Getting Fit & Feeling Great. The book includes three books: How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day, Running and Being and This Running Life. I might also include quotes from other running gurus such as Jeff Galloway and John “The Penguin” Bingham, from time to time. I hope this will help motivate not only myself, but also you as we both start anew each week.

Today’s quote comes from the book How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day, and a chapter titled “On Changing.” In  a section right before this quote, Sheehan explains how he eliminated a number of activities from his usual day in order to make room for running and writing, including lunch, movies and television. He also includes reading novels, but does say that he prefers classics, especially books by “great thinkers.”

In a section right after this quote, he says “we cannot add a new activity to our life without taking something else out,” adding that it isn’t easy to decide what is to be thrown out, because often we have to decide between good things, not good and bad.

So what do I need to eliminate to make room for my running and writing?

Lunch? Until I learn to cook myself a big breakfast every morning, this isn’t going to happen. Also when working at the library one Saturday a month, I need lunch to help me get through the rest of the day. Other times, I need it too to get through the rest of the day, because I usually don’t have the big breakfasts to which Sheehan subscribed. So no, I’m not eliminating lunch.

Movies and TV? My wife and I already have “given up” television and we don’t watch movies every night  (maybe once or twice a week, we have something from Netflix to watch). So no, I’m neither eliminating TV (since it’s already been eliminated) nor eliminating movies (since I don’t watch that many anyway and also because we have a movie night with a couple of neighbors that we’ve been enjoying the time to get together).

Reading novels? I must admit that I don’t have the attention span for reading that I once did. I only can read in small doses, which is why lately I’ve continued reading the stories of Sherlock Holmes. I also started out the year by reading graphic novels, which can be digested easily in small doses. That said, I just ordered a novel, Cutting Stone by Abraham Verghese, on the recommendations of a couple of “real life” friends and a few book bloggers with whom I’m acquainted. However, I don’t plan on gulping it down in one sitting, especially considering that it’s over 600 pages. So no, I’m not eliminating reading novels, although I’m not going to read them in large doses, because I’ve learned I can’t do that anymore.

So if not these places, then where?

I guess if I can think of one place that I could eliminate to make room for my running and my writing, and also my goal of getting up earlier each morning, would be to stop playing games on Facebook late into the night. It’s not that the games are intrinsically evil or that I’m saying I’ll give up playing them completely, but just that I need to stop playing after 11 p.m.

Well, as it’s almost 10:50 now as I write this, I think I need to go…so I can get my last 10 minutes of games in.

Later, y’all.

→ 8 Comments

Posted in Body, Motivation Monday, Running

Tagged , , , ,

Hanging up the phone and starting over again (cue the music)

Posted on March 15, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Amiel, the Swiss philosopher, wrote in his journal that “the morning air breathes a new and laughing energy into the veins and marrow. Every dawn is a new contract with existence.” The dawn, Amiel said, is a time for projects, for resolution, for the birth of action.

Early to bed, early to rise is good advice whether you arrive home tired out or not. It is, for one thing, the classic physiology. Were we to follow our body rhythms, those circadian cycles, it would be the normal way to spend our alloted, unchanging 24 hours. The gradual buildup in our physiological function and then the gradual decline, the flooding and ebbing of the tides in our body, are matched by our physical and mental activity. The closer we get to following the rhythm of the earth, the closer we get to our own internal rhythms.

Early rising puts us in harmony with those rhythms. It is truly a great beginning. Early rising followed by an early morning workout is an even better one.

– Dr. George Sheehan

Last week I restarted a theme here on an unfinished person called Motivation Monday, where each Monday I write a post based off  a quote from Dr. George Sheehan, especially from the book titled Dr. George Sheehan on Getting Fit & Feeling Great. The book includes three books: How To Feel Great 24 Hours A Day, Running and Being and This Running Life. I might also include quotes from other running gurus such as Jeff Galloway and John “The Penguin” Bingham, from time to time. I hope this will help motivate not only myself, but also you as we both start anew each week.

So my first thought on today’s quote from Chapter 2 of the first book, “On Planning,” is that ironically I read this at about 8 a.m., at least an hour after I should have been up and running, literally, at least every other day. I also know that I committed to this previously: in 2007, in 2008, in 2009, and have failed for a lack of follow-through. So what is different this time? Nothing. However, unlike what I’ve tried in the past, I am not committing to a specific schedule of x, y and z to follow after I awaken. That I have learned just doesn’t work. All to which I’m committing is to work toward getting up an hour earlier each day than that to which I have become accustomed. For me, that means 7 a.m. and then doing some kind of exercise, walking/running every other day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and stretches/other exercises on other days. So yes, it does mean x, but the y and z just will naturally follow and spring (an appropriate word at this time of year) forth from there, whatever those y‘s and z‘s might be

This also means that it might not happen overnight and might have to be done incrementally. In fact, on this first day of my new plan, I already have failed by awaking at 8 a.m. and not exercising yet. That said, I will continue on and do better tomorrow, because I am a work in progress, because as Sheehan once wrote, “Each one of us is an unfinished person in an unfinished universe.”

For further reading on getting up early, here are a few sites I have had bookmarked for years and plan to use to help motivate me:

Maybe they also will help motivate you.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Body, Motivation Monday, Running

Tagged , , , ,