Resolutions Made... and Broken?

[By Crabby]

So let's see, we're getting toward the end of January. And many people made New Years Resolutions a few weeks ago, right?

Remember? You were going to eat healthier or get more exercise or stop charging up your charge cards or clean the house more or remember to floss or whatever.

So... how y'all doing so far?

Should we have an annoying little pep talk?

Because it seems like we're about at the point where the novelty of whatever Great New Initiative you embarked upon will have just about worn off. It's either getting a little easier, because the changes are becoming a habit... or you've come to discover that whatever the hell you promised yourself is WAY harder that you thought. You're about ready to bail or you already have.

If it was a totally ludicrous overambitious plan anyway, bail away! Good riddance to bad resolutions.

But... what if it was a good idea but you just can't seem to live up to it?

Here's where I think it's important to fight the natural tendency towards black/white all-or-nothing thinking. A "broken" resolution doesn't mean you should just walk away and feel like crap about it. "Oh look at my poor broken resolution, it's all smashed to pieces. God I suck. I'll just have to sweep it up and throw it away; maybe I can start over with a shiny new one... next year!"

Nah. Don't be like that.

Instead, try picking up one little shattered piece and don't worry about the rest of the mess. So what if you said you were going to go to the gym 5 times a week and do 25 miles on the treadmill and a bunch of weights and yoga and stuff? Screw that. Go walk a mile during lunch tomorrow and build on that. Were you going to quit smoking forever and made it just a few days? Well, try it again. Every day not smoking counts for a lot, and eventually all the false starts will add up to success.

Just don't beat yourself up for your failure and use self-flagellation as a substitute for action. Honor the progress you were making by taking another tiny baby step. Forget about how far you said you'd go, and concentrate instead on just heading in the right direction. It's that old tortoise and hare thing--small slow steps will win in the end, even if it's not as exciting as charging out the gates and beating the pants off some turtle.

And for those of you who are still at least somewhat on track, hooray for you! Give yourself a lot of acknowledgment and don't just take your awesomeness for granted. Change is hard! Giving up candy bars and eating more broccoli and lifting weights instead of watching Law and Order reruns--that sort of behavior doesn't come naturally for most people. If you're doing stuff like that--well, you rock!

So what about those of us who didn't make New Year's resolutions? Well, we still have goals, which we are either accomplishing... or not.

For example, while my basic "ten commandments" are pretty much still in place, I previously announced on the blog a couple of intentions:

• I was going to get more serious and structured about interval training; and
• I was going to stop trashing my knees by running. This meant: (a) I'd go to a doctor again to get them checked out or (b) I'd return grudgingly to race-walking, despite it being the dorkiest form of exercise on the planet.

So, how have I been doing with those two items?

Stay tuned, that's tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, I'd love to know how everyone is doing on their health, fitness, weight loss, or other life goals. Is it harder than you thought, or easier? What's working or not working? Confess your sins or trumpet your accomplishments, it's all good--and very helpful for others who are starting to struggle right now and may need some encouragement or commiseration!

Embitterment Disorder: Cool, A Brand New Disease!

[By Crabby]

(OK, So It's Not In a Text Book Yet, But Let's Pretend.)

I don't know why, but I'm always amused whenever the psychological researchers try to introduce a potential new mental disorders (like, say, cyberchondria or blogitis). Perhaps it's that process of taking behavior that seems "part of regular life," (however f*cked up regular life may be), and medicalizing it. Does this mean there will be a pill for it soon? (And will it be a bitter pill to swallow?)

Which is not to say these phenomena aren't real and painful--but pretty soon we're all just going to have to declare ourselves psychological basket cases of one sort or another. None of us will have personalities anymore, just clinical diagnoses.

So this latest study talks about a new potential diagnosis: post-traumatic embitterment disorder. (Quick translation: being all bitter because something bad happened to you.) Being too cheap to subscribe to actual scholarly journals, I can only work off the embitterment abstract, but to me the whole study seemed, well, kind of dumb.

(A brief digression: I love the idea of psychological research, because, well, people are bizarre and fascinating and I want to know why, don't you? But the actual studies themselves--I've read a ton of them and they're pretty much all lame. They're always proposing some obscure model or explaining something obvious in confusing made-up language. I studied psychology for many years--but I can't say I learned much of anything useful, in terms of helping or understanding people, from any of these studies. Microbiology? That's a science. Psychology? I'm not sure it is, yet.)

Anyway, back to Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder. It's defined as "prolonged embitterment, severe additional psychopathological symptoms and great impairment in most areas of life in reaction to a severe negative but not life threatening life event."

Did the abstract include the interesting part, that is, how do you define "embittermnent?" Nope. Are you clinically bitter? No way to know from this. There's apparently a scale, the Bern Embitterment Scale, which sounds very useful to administer to potential spouses, co-workers, friends, or whatever, but I couldn't find any info on it. What do you ask to get people to admit it? "Hell yeah, I'm a bitter pain-in-the-ass to be around, thanks for asking."

So basically what they did for this "study" was they gathered up a bunch of people they already decided fit this description, and compared them to 50 other mentally ill people who didn't. The bitter people were more depressed, suffered more adjustment problems, but were less anxious than the others. Okay, whatever.

But bitterness is an interesting psychological concept. I'm going to ditch the scientists for a moment and struggle with my own conception of what it is and why it's so hard to be around.

Because to me, it's more than mere crankiness (thank goodness). You can bitch and complain about all kinds of things and still be a basically happy well-adjusted person. To me it feels like there's not just depression and negativity about bitterness--it also seems tinged with hostility and entitlement too. Not just "why did this bad thing happen," but "why did this bad thing happen to ME and not YOU? Bad things always happening to ME and they shouldn't. And I'm not going to do anything different to avoid bad things, either, because none of them are MY fault."

But maybe that's just my idea of what bitterness sounds like. You all may have better suggestions as to what we're actually talking about when we say someone is bitter.

Another question: why are the researchers focusing on post-traumatic bitterness, the kind you would get as a result of having an Awful Thing happen? In my experience, bitterness is more interesting (and I think more prevalent) as a personality issue, not as a response to stress.

We all know people suffering from Bitter Personality Disorder, whether they call it that yet or not. They're bitter when something bad happens and bitter when something good happens. It's a world view that often seems independent of actual life events. We've all know people who've been through horrendous trauma and aren't bitter--but other people who stay bitter for weeks over a parking ticket that they totally deserved.

Anyway, I think a better question about those suffering from Embitterment Disorder: how do we get them de-bitterized? That would be useful information.

Random Friday

[Posted by Crabby]

Image courtesy of nataliedee.com

So remember we were recently complaining about how conflicting health research was messing with our heads and making us confused about what the heck we were supposed to do? Well, here are some more studies to make you nuts.

Calcium and Older Women:
So yep, you guessed it, after years of research urging women, including older women, to take calcium supplements, guess what they're now discovering? That calcium supplements might increase heart attack and stroke risk in postmenopausal women. The researchers warned that the findings weren't conclusive and needed to be confirmed by other studies. But if true, they wrote, "this effect could outweigh any beneficial effects of calcium on bone."

Revenge of the Acrylamides:
It's as though the scientists have a dark sense of humor, because I had barely finished posting "whatever happened to acrylamide?" when I saw this news: "Acrylamide in Food May Increase Breast Cancer Risk."

(However, true to form, right next to that study was one from a few months ago saying "Acrylamide Not Linked to Breast Cancer." I like that one better.)

So what is acrylamide and how do you avoid it, if we're supposed to be avoiding it again? It sounds nasty, doesn't it, with that icky synthetic "acrylic" prefix?

Well, it's a carcinogenic chemical formed when carb-heavy food is cooked at high temperatures, and you find acrylamides in a lot of processed foods you should be going easy on anyway. French fries and potato chips are the usual example. However, they can also be found in innocent foods too, like toast (even healthy whole wheat toast), and (gulp)in coffee. (Here's a Big List of acrylamide-containing foods if you want to get really depressed.) Smoking will increase your levels a lot too.

Too Depressing to Publish?
Turns out there may be some selective publication of drug studies going on: according to the article, "nearly a third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature, and nearly all happen to show that the drug being tested did not work." The result: the drugs look more effective than they actually are.

Now, On the Brighter Side...
If you're female and over 40, a recent Swedish study seemed to suggest that, oddly enough, daily consumption of high-fat dairy products might help with weight control. But don't break out the Ben & Jerry's just yet. Despite a more optimistic report about this in Health, looking at the actual study made the conclusion seem a bit tentative. This study also contradicts another recent study that looked at high fat diary consumption in American men. (And researchers noted that the effect observed in these women differed according to the type of dairy product and the subject's body weight--cheese was good. Ben & Jerry's, alas, was not specifically mentioned).

Confused About All This?
Here's one theory that may explain the conflicting data.

Can you tell we're getting to the silly stuff now?

The Perfect Social Networking Site for a Crab:
Cheerful folks, however, may not appreciate bugroff. (And I believe "bugroff" is properly pronounced with three syllables, not two.)

Advances in Feminine Protection!
Okay, so it may not be an actual product you can buy at Walgreens, but check out the tampon stun gun. I love the concept. Wielding the tampon alone will mostly likely scare off the attacker, and if not: ZZZZZap!

When You Can't Understand The Lyrics:
So do you ever download songs in a foreign language for your workouts, then find yourself hearing English lyrics in them that aren't really there? A mostly hilarious example of this phenomenon can be found here. (Sometimes they stretch a bit too hard looking for dirty interpretations, but often they're spot on. Made me giggle most of the way through).

Health and fitness? Oh well, um... there's dancing in the video too!

Have a great Friday everyone.

Parkour and FreeRunning: Yikes!

[Written by Crabby]

Photo by: Sergio Silva

So I followed an innocent link from the mild-mannered Washington Post "Lean Plate Club," (not sure how to link; it's a newsletter you have to sign up for). It just said "Using the outdoors is a great way to keep your workout fresh!"

Well, sure, I can go along with that. So I clicked a few links, and... holy crap! There was a whole weird wild-assed new form of exercise that was lying hidden there behind the understated prose that I'd never heard about.

I don't watch much tv or see many music videos, so perhaps you all are years ahead of me on this.

Parkour and FreeRunning are sort of like skateboarding without a skateboard. From what I understand, parkour places more importance on speed; freerunning is more about the acrobatics. But basically, people run around, usually in urban environments, and gratuitously jump over and off of things. They climb up things that don't look climbable and do flips and fly around in ways that defy gravity. A lot of them seem willing to risk life and limb and incarceration and looking like asses (when they fall) and I didn't see a lot in the way of helmets or pads.

As a sidenote: I went to a rollerskating rink last summer (long story; it was the Lobster's fault). I fell once, banged my head, and said: never again. Never ever ever. And sure, I fell all the time as a kid--but it f*cking hurts a lot more to fall when you're over 40! Alas, parkour is not for me.

But there is something appealing about the idea, as nutty as it sounds. It looks, well, fun. (Especially if you were 17 years old and made of rubber). And sorry, dial-up folks, but there's not other way to really to describe it without resorting to video.

For a more sensible, instructional, less psychotic video, try this Washington post introduction to parcour. I don't think registration is required, but I could be wrong about that.

But for a better idea of why this is whole phenomenon is starting to get some press, check out this video. If you are over the age of 25 or watching at your place of employment, you may want to turn down the sound before it gets past the opening credits--as least on my computer, the music was way too loud.



And here's a website with a little more instructional info about parkour if you're feeling inspired to give it a try.

And please, if you do, keep us posted! Any takers?

Gym Class Memories: Happy or Heinous?

[By Crabby]

According to a recent A.P. article, P.E. classes have changed since the old days. That is, in the schools that even have physical education anymore.

Now there's less emphasis on team sports and more on doing exercises and other individual activities.

More attention is being paid to limitations of overweight or obese kids, which is another reason, the article says, why individual activities are preferred. This way the heavier kids can go at their own pace. And "even if the lesson is about a team sport like football, they focus on skills like passing the ball."

You can kind of tell from the tone of the article that we're supposed to think this is all a great thing--and I'm not saying it isn't, exactly. But the lead paragraph starts off like this:

"With music pumping in the background, the kids in Terry Wade's physical education class are in constant motion, going from sit-ups to jumping jacks to curls with light weights"--and the picture is of two wildly happy looking adolescent girls jumping up in the air.

Well, at twelve I would NOT have been wildly happy about that sort of P.E. class.

Back when P.E. was just another word for "recess" to me, occasional drills and calisthenics and walking/jogging around the track seemed like cruel and inexplicable punishments. Why were we stuck doing boring hard icky things when we could be playing something?

I loved playing. Pretty much anything: soccer and basketball and softball and tennis and volleyball and dodgeball and kickball. Even if my lungs were burning and my legs were aching, I'd be having a blast.

But I was lucky. I was a reasonably well-coordinated tomboy. This was back in an era when girls were not allowed to play full-court basketball until high school, and we weren't supposed to know to know how to swing a bat or even which end of a tennis racket to hold. We were all supposed to throw "like girls." In other words, expectations were really freakin' low. So even though I had no special athletic talent, I was considered "good" at sports. Playing them was fun 'cause I was better than a good percentage of the other girls. (I am pretty much incapable of finding things "fun" when I suck at them.)

In fact, once I went off to college, and sports were no longer mandatory so everyone who hated them or was lousy at them didn't play anymore, I found out I wasn't actually all that good at anything. Not coincidentally, sports became a lot less interesting to me and I haven't played any for years.

So for all the people who weren't motivated or coordinated or were self-conscious about their bodies or whatever: I can totally understand why the total elimination of team sports in gym class might seem like a phenomenally awesome idea. (And if you want an off-color but amusing take on why high school gym class sucks, as usual our friends at the Midwest Teen Sex Show are all over it. Warning: NSFW.)

Still, reading the article I had mixed feelings. Sure, P.E. classes should be as inclusive as possible. And there should be a variety of activities so that at any given time, only half of the kids are totally miserable, and not always the same half every day.

But isn't something missing if the kids can't play any team sports during P.E.? Should we not teach algebra because it's going to make some kids feel bad that they're no good at it?

Sure, competition can be ugly sometimes, and I think the whole "character building" aspect of sports is grossly overrated. (A rant for another time). But dang it, I hate to think of a whole generation of kids having to take aerobics classes and do sit-ups everyday and coming to dread them at 13 when they could save that dread for later, when they're 30 or 50 0r whatever. Can't they spend some days at least trying to kick a goal or catch a fly ball or hit a home run? 'Cause that stuff can be, you know, hella fun. Sit ups are never hella fun; I don't care WHAT kind of music is pumping.

So this whole post is really just an excuse to hear about your gym class experiences. Any fond memories or horrible nightmares? It's my impression that the mere word "gym class" can induce in many people the sort of visceral reaction normally associated with "tax audit" or "colonoscopy." Or how do you feel about team sports? Play any voluntarily these days? Feel free to share!

UPDATE:
We're getting some strong feelings and amazing stories in the comments section--honestly, I had no idea gym class was so awful for so many people. If you don't normally pop in to read comments, today is a good day to check it out!