#I stopped to get a diet coke and the drive thru line was too long so I went inside

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

Today is not off to a great start.

[darkarfs]

I went on a 10-mile urban hike today. Literally walked from my home, past all the grocery stores, past the Wal-Mart, past my therapist's office, past every business, everything that was or was not open, walked until there was no sidewalk left in any direction, nothing but highway and untraversable terrain. Then I walked all the way back home.

I stopped into the Wal-Mart, the Shop N'Save and the GIant Eagle (I wanted Apple Jacks, I miss them) and ALL of them were fucking overrun, just way too full of people. I was one of maybe 12 people I saw, overall, without a mask, so I felt like a right prick (still not my fault; fucking Wal-Mart was even out of BANDANAS; some lady with a mask had goddamn 12 of them in her cart; you best be issuing those to people who need them, goddammit) when I was in any of the stores. Also, when in the stores, there was no sense of any kind of being able to *stop moving.* Didn't matter which direction you were going in, there was at least one senior citizen absolutely *bearing* down on you, in either a motorized wheelchair or whatever. Like, if I stopped, ever, you saw them scoff, roll their eyes, darting around you, and then getting another kind of upset when you tried to get out of the way. Giant Eagle was so bad I finally just bought some salt and vinegar kettle chips and a diet Coke just to get out of everyone's way. Wal-Mart's self-checkout lines were so crowded and so long I just left the store without getting what I went in there for initially (lens wipes.)

Places doing takeout weren't doing BIG business, but there was still a long line of nothing but pickup trucks at the Texas Roadhouse. Three places I was really surprised to see still open, considering how Pennsylvania are still on state-wide lockdown regarding anything but "essential businesses:" the vape shop (it has exactly one employee, so I guess that's well enough), the pet cremation offices, and the by-appointment-only gun shop. One place I was shocked to see had around-the-block cars both on the way (around 1:30), and on the way home (around 4:00) was the drive-thru Starbucks line. Each time I saw anything that was either overrun or doing twice or three times the business they did before of any of this, I teared up a little. It's really not fair. These people aren't "heroes," they aren't "on the front lines." Playing into America's fucking fetishizing of the language of war, which is tied directly into the fetishization of capitalism, and then into the misnomer of "bootstraps" and "earning your living." They deserve more than they're getting. Instead, they're seen as both "essential" when what we're saying is "disposable."

It shouldn't have been the way it was up to now, and it shouldn't be how it is now, either.

I wasn't all that sad to see the businesses closed. Sad to think some of them didn't have work anymore, but...we didn't need some of these businesses, did we?

I don't know if I had a point. I got my Apple Jacks, anyway.

[stevemoffett]

Cheat nights

They say the best diet is the healthiest one you can stick to long-term. In 2015, after an end-of-relationship, stress-induced, 15-pound weight loss, I decided to stay at that weight after the first wave of relationship-ending feelings let up. (There are multiple waves).

What ended up being the right diet for me, which has allowed me to keep my weight precisely where I wanted it since then, is the following: 2200 calories a day, emphasizing proteins and fats over carbs (nowhere near a “low-carb diet,” though). 

A little over two thousand calories a day, you will find, is not a very large amount of food when you look at every nutrition panel and add things up. For instance: a bowl of cereal, in general, is around 200 calories. Not much, right? 

That’s what the cereal box says, anyway. But, consider it more carefully: are you really only having one serving size, according to their definition? One serving size is 1 cup of cereal. Try measuring out 1 cup exactly, and pour it into your cereal bowl. Does that look like how much you normally pour?

Now, the milk. Cereal companies assume everyone uses a half-cup of skim milk. 

Do you use skim milk? Do you pour a half-cup in exactly? Again, measure a half cup of milk if you’re curious and pour it into your 1-cup cereal bowl. 

Does that look familiar? Do you measure it every time? If you do, are you a maniac?

Or, do you eyeball both the amount of cereal and the amount of milk you pour in like a normal person?

I do not ask these questions to shame you. If anything, I believe that nutrition facts are unrealistically-portioned. Consider the commercial for Oreo O’s, one of the most popular cereals in America. At the end of the 15-second clip, does that look to you like one cup of cereal and one half cup of milk? I mean--maybe it is, but the bowl is cupcake-sized, the spoon is for infants, and the camera lens is some kind of wide-angle deal, but...does that look like one cup? Do you suppose the Cream Team might have deliberately made it look bigger, so when you pour yourself a bowl where the Oreo O’s levitate all the way to the rim when you put in the milk, you sort of just assume that’s around 200 calories?

Now consider Oreo cookies themselves. One serving is 3 cookies (160 calories, no milk). When you buy one of those sleeves of 6 do you eat three, then...I don’t know...tear off half of that paper tray thing and then twist the plastic wrapper closed so you can eat the rest later? Or do you eat all 6 of them, eating the cream-less sides first, then eating the other sides with the cream puck facing your tongue? Because that’s what I do. 

Small digression: the other part of this equation is the sugar. In one serving of Oreo cereal or cookies, there are 14 grams of sugar. I would invite you to find a sensitive enough scale, and pour out 14 grams of sugar. It looks like a lot. Would you consider eating that much sugar straight? Would you consider pouring it into a glass of water and drinking it? Incidentally, one can of Coca Cola has 39 grams of sugar. In that case, you are drinking that amount of sugar dissolved in carbonated water.

Reader, I love cereal. My favorite brand is Frosted Mini-Wheats. Until I stopped eating them (to cut down on sugar), I scrupulously counted one serving size’s worth (21 biscuits) whenever I ate a bowl. I eyeballed the amount of milk, but only after measuring it the first time to see how it appeared. 

My favorite way to have it was with whole milk and a big scoop (2 tablespoons) of peanut butter. One serving size of the Mini-Wheats with skim milk is 230 calories. Using whole milk puts it up to 270. Two tablespoons of peanut butter is 200 calories, so that’s 470 calories total. Again--I invite you to measure those amounts out and see what it looks like.

It will look paltry, I assure you. It looked paltry all 1000 evenings I ate it, too, but it tasted great. And, afterward, if I waited about 20 minutes, I could resist pouring myself another bowl, because at the end of the day, I was never full--I was only just full enough not to feel hunger pangs.

For me, this was unsustainable. And what I will tell you next, to some, would border on describing an eating disorder, so if you don’t want to expose yourself to that kind of thing, consider stopping reading here.

The key to happiness, I have come to find, relies in big part on having something to look forward to--assuming the lack of another source of regret or guilt or fear or sadness or dread. So two times a week, I would be able to look forward to a cheat night during which, starting at dinner time, I could eat whatever I wanted, bar nothing.

One of my absolute favorite things to eat is Vito’s Pizza near where I used to live. They make a pizza with perfect crust, and if you ask for it “light done,” you can get it so that the dough is soft with a paper-thin crisp layer. Additionally, the sauce and cheeses are unmatched.

I’d share this with my brother and sister-in-law (my sister-in-law is generous and would eat fewer slices than my brother and I). My sister-in-law would also make brownies for us with peanut butter chips mixed in, perfectly baked so the middle was still slightly goopy. Arguably, in my opinion, it is one of the most delicious dinner/dessert combos you could eat.

And yet, my gluttony would bide its time since the previous cheat night, growing more perverted in the meantime. In addition to my idiosyncratic way of eating pizza (tear off the crust and eat it first, then dip each bite of pizza into a bowl of vinegar), I would blur the line between dinner and dessert. It quickly got to the point where I would take a bite of vinegar-y pizza, and then immediately take a bite of the brownie.

I estimate that given each of the pizza slices being around 600 calories, and the amount of brownies I’d have, the cheat night would be at least 3100 or so calories in that meal alone. And then, frequently, I would eat more afterward. A few times, I drove from their house at 10 PM and got McDonald’s drive-thru on the way back to my apartment.

If you’re curious, no, I have never purged. The idea of that frightens me. I would describe my attitude about the consequences of overeating as decidedly Catholic: you get what you deserve, and that usually means feeling bad.

In my case, that usually meant a night of feeling completely disgusting, occasionally breaking out into sweats as I slept no matter how cool my bedroom was, and still feeling full the following morning, only getting relatively back to normal after an intense exercise bike ride before work, and even then, my stomach still was rumbly until lunch.

Remember, I said I gave myself two cheat nights a week. On the other cheat night, I went to my parents’ house, where my dad usually made one of about 4 or 5 staple meals: turkey meat loaf (my favorite), shish kabob, eggplant parmesan, chicken, or sandwiches.

I’d eat the main course and then plunder whatever snacks and cookies they had in the house, most often cheese curls or Oreos. Again, the calorie count would probably get over 3000, but since unlike the limitations of the amount of pizza on pizza cheat night, there was always a surplus of food at my parents’ house, so I wouldn’t eat any more once I got home.

And that’s how it went for over 3 years. The cheat nights were two days away from each other, so since I’ve moved away, I spaced the nights to split the week more evenly (Saturday and Wednesday). 

But now it’s up to me to feed myself, and things have become weirder.

Where I live now has good food, but good pizza is hard to find. The best place I’ve found is about 20 minutes away, whereas there’s a Domino’s down the street. Do you think I regularly drive 40 minutes after work to get the good pizza, or do you think I now have the Domino’s app on my phone?

And on the other cheat night, I just go to the grocery store and pick up random things. One week I ate an entire box of Cheez-Its, a large package of hummus, a whole DiGiorno’s pizza (WHY???), and an entire container of glazed donut holes. Last night, I still had some celery from Thanksgiving, so I made stuffing from scratch, ate a flatbread from the grocery store with it, a couple of pancakes with eggs, and, again, a whole package of glazed donut holes, this time with peanut butter spread on them. (By the way, the donut holes package has only 60 grams of sugar in it total--about 1.5 cans of Coke’s worth).

I sit here this morning feeling like I always do post-cheat, which is crappy. I always resolve to eat less the following cheat night, and I almost never do. 

Meanwhile, the menu has continued to get less stable. I am convinced that if things continue like this, there will be a night where I just eat a stick of butter like it’s a candy bar. Or I’ll hire someone to throw a fistful of Fruity Pebbles at my open mouth and put a cigarette out on my arm. 

My weight’s still fine. I increased my daily non-cheat day intake to around 2600 calories and increased my time in the gym to try to see what that does to my lifting regimen. I weigh 165 pounds at the moment, which is a 5-pound gain over my 2015-2018 weight (there was always a fluctuation of around +/- 8 pounds, but the average was always 160).

I also feel like I should change because I’m getting older. To document this, there is now a gray stripe in my beard, from the bottom of my chin to my neck on my left side. I’m not sure if I’m paying more attention to feeling crappy after cheats because I’m more paranoid being alone out here, or because it’s actually taking a harsher toll on my aging body. And eventually, eating a ton and then lying down to sleep shortly afterward is going to give me some kind of reflux issue, I am positive.

The real lesson here is probably in the math, and moderation is probably the answer. Let’s say each cheat night is 3600 calories. Each day before the cheat I eat around 1000 calories, making it 4600 calories in that day. That means I could dispense with the cheat nights and just spread the total excess calories (2400+2400=4800) over the other 7 days, which makes an additional 686 calories a day.

Dieting is hard, but the health benefits, hard as they are to get, will turn out to be worth it. 

Eh, maybe not. But if you’re making things difficult for yourself, it’s probably going to end up being good for you. Another decidedly Catholic attitude.

[newstfionline]

How Honesty Could Make You Happier

By Judi Ketteler, NY Times, Sept. 19, 2017

I’ve been keeping an honesty journal for the past several months. With honesty much in the news lately, I wanted to reflect on my own. My 6-year-old daughter once told me that telling the truth made her feel “gold in her brain.” Could upping my personal honesty light up a pleasure center in my own brain?

My plan was to jot down different instances throughout the day where I had to make a choice about honesty and notice how it felt.

The day I started the journal, the same 6-year-old daughter asked me during her bath if the cat really went to sleep last year, and if that actually meant that I had killed him. I rinsed her hair and sighed, wondering if I should wait to start this honesty project until my children were grown. But I braved it and told her that yes, I had made the choice for him to die, because he was suffering and I wanted him to be at peace. She lost interest about halfway through my explanation, which was O.K. with me.

It struck me that the choice to lie or be honest was often a choice between two equally undesirable things. Telling my daughter the truth did not make me happier, but lying wouldn’t have either.

A bigger opportunity arose with my 8-year-old son. Though he didn’t know anything about the journal, after a few weeks, he seemed to open up in a new way, asking me things he was too embarrassed or scared to ask before, like what the word “pimp” meant and why people kill themselves. In fact, one of my biggest takeaways was that we shouldn’t lie to children when they are asking us about grown-up words or ideas--otherwise, they will just ask Siri. If it’s between YouTube and me to explain prostitution, I pick me.

Still, I wondered about those little lies we tell to avoid hurting people’s feelings. Researchers at the University of California San Diego Emotion Lab are looking at “prosocial” lies--the white lies we tell to benefit others, like telling an aspiring writer their story is great because you want to be nice and encourage them, when in reality you know it needs work and will meet rejection. A recent study at the lab suggests that we are more likely to tell a prosocial lie when we feel compassion toward someone, because if you feel bad for someone, the last thing you want to do is hurt them with the truth. These lies feel better in the short term, but they often do more harm than good in the long. After all, the brutal truth can be painful, but people need to know it if they are to improve their performance, especially in a work or school situation.

But was brutal truth what I really wanted when it came to my marriage?

My focus on honesty at times did lead to better interactions with my husband. When the New York Times Magazine article about open marriage came out, for example, it sparked my curiosity. Since I was keeping an honesty journal, rather than keeping it to myself, as I would have done in the past, my husband and I had an honest discussion about it. Other times, the compulsion to be honest strained things between us. That I disagree with some of his parenting techniques doesn’t necessarily need to be pointed out every single time. I came to realize that, within relationships, there is a third category between dishonesty and telling white lies, called not sharing everything.

Over all, I found that I struggled more with the small instances of honesty, rather than the big. So, when a client accidentally paid me twice for a project--sending a duplicate $1,000 check a week after they’d already paid me--there was no internal debate. It was $1,000, so obviously, I notified the client. But when the McDonald’s drive-thru cashier gave me an extra dollar in change and the line had been SO long and all I wanted was a Diet Coke and my kids were acting crazy in the back seat and why was this stupid McDonald’s always so slow anyway?! . . . it was a different story. Even though I gave the dollar back, I almost didn’t, because an extra dollar was such a small thing and seemed somehow justified. Had I not been focused on honesty, I’m not sure I would have given it back.

My experience was consistent with what behavioral economist Dan Ariely wrote about in his 2012 book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. His research showed that we fudge the truth by about 10 percent or so. We cheat when we are fairly certain we can get away with it, but just by a little, and about things we can justify. We do it more if we see other people doing it. We do it less if we are reminded to be honest. My journal pointed these instances out to me rather starkly.

Even though honesty felt like a struggle, I started to like how it felt. Research from the University of Notre Dame has shown that when people consciously stopped telling lies, including white lies, for 10 weeks, they had fewer physical ailments (like headaches) and fewer mental health complaints (like symptoms of depression) than a control group that did not focus on honesty.

When people were more honest, they also tended to feel better about their relationships and social interactions, the researchers found. This rang true for me, mostly because I felt better about myself. I like the saying, “Everybody wants the truth, but nobody wants to be honest.” I didn’t always want to be honest. But I wanted the truth, and this focus on honesty helped me feel that I was doing my part.

The bottom line is that focusing on honesty is a way to actively engage with the world, versus passively complain about it. It might even make you feel like you have gold in your brain.