Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Kids and Calories

Would it be wrong to teach a child throughout their childhood and adolescence how to count calories?

There is a bit of a social stigma about counting calories. It's associated with obsessive behavior and eating disorders. People who aren't overweight are told that they "don't need" to count calories. Because of this, the act of counting calories is associated with being overweight.

I am twenty-something years old, and at any given time, I weigh between 118-122 pounds. According to calculations on several websites (which all vary a little, but not too much), the healthy weight range for my height, age, and gender is between 107-141 pounds.  I guess my point is that I am well within the healthy weight range for these factors. I regularly log my meals and calorie intake, not for weight loss, but for monitoring and maintenance. I eat a lot of good tasting, low calorie foods; mostly because I like to eat a lot, and if what I'm eating is low-calorie, I can eat it in higher quantities. I weigh myself regularly, and if I'm getting a little too heavy, I cut back on my calories and in a day or two I'm back in my happy weight range. I eat plenty of junk food, and give myself permission to eat crazy sometimes. Overall, I stay within a weight range which allows me to be as physically active as I like, and to maintain a good self-image. All of this is possible because I count calories.

So my question is, why can't we trash this notion that counting calories is only for the obese, and make counting calories a form of disease prevention? Disease prevention is an accurate label for counting calories. After all, being overweight leads to premature death, and almost every form of debilitating disease which can be found in our country today can be linked to unhealthy eating habits. These habits can lead to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and lung problems, joint pain and erosion, and this list goes on and on.


How is it logical that we should teach our children to be cautious around strangers, but we aren't teaching them to monitor what they eat? After all, aren't we teaching our kids about "stranger danger" in order to keep them safe? Don't we tell them to look both ways before crossing the road so that they don't get hurt? So why shouldn't we teach children how to monitor their own eating and body weight at an early age so that they will avoid things which will hurt them in the future?

I'm not saying that we should make them paranoid or terrified of food. I'm also not saying that we should strip them of their childhood, take away the joy from their lives by pumping them full of military-like discipline.

If done correctly, I believe that educating kids about healthy calorie intake levels for their height, age, and gender as they grow would arm them with an invaluable tool which so many kids in our population today are lacking. Childhood obesity is a serious problem! If children damage their body at a very young age, how can they expect their body to function for them when they are adults or even worse, once they are elderly. Children who are overweight are developing problems which used to be limited to the elderly.

The values and habits that adults have are often the ones which they have been given or taught as children. This is why it is so important for children to be taught that food must have limits. Eating constantly and without considering how much is too much is a terrible habit, but many children are never taught otherwise. If counting calories can be consistently presented in a positive and beneficial way to children as they grow, this habit will be a lifelong trend. This sort of upbringing would not only lead to a healthy body weight, but a higher self-esteem, and it would lower the risk for depression and anxiety disorders.

In conclusion, counting calories is not obsessive or unhealthy. Instead, it is an essential facet of maintaining a healthy body weight and a positive self-image.


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Frames

People don't come and go, they step down and are replaced.
I was thinking about this concept the other day, and I couldn't help but realize how consistently it happens.
I see it like this:

There is a long hallway, and on either side of this hallway, there are framed pictures. The floor is worn, and well traveled. The pictures are neat and not dusty. As I walk down this hallway, men in blue suits are walking around with clipboards. Occasionally they gather at one photo, and a heated debate begins. They wave papers and quote statistics, and every once in a while, this debate ends with someone fetching the ladder.
Teddy carries the ladder all the time. He is the official ladder boy. He can't be much older than eleven, but he's been doing this job since he was born. Child labor violation or not, teddy is the only person small enough to climb the precarious ladder without toppling it.
When they fetch Teddy, the ladder goes up with Teddy, and momentarily he comes back down with a photo. The frame remains, sitting empty like so many of the frames in this hallway do. These frames represent the roles in my life.
Although I do not direct the people in this room, they have been busily managing these frames for as long as I can remember. I have visited them only three times in my lifetime, and these visits happened in dreams. However, this hallway is as real to me as the room where I sit right now.

I remember the first time I realized that only people leave, not their frames. Each frame in that hallway has housed several people at one time or another. I suppose psychologists would hypothesize that I have invented this hallway to distance myself from loss, and perhaps they're right. But loss is a reality which every person has to face, and my method of dealing with loss was, and continues to be my hallway of frames.


Sometimes I pass a frame which has held some of the most precious people in my life, but even these frames were eventually emptied. It is the way of life. The person comes, I tend their photo with care, smile fondly at the sight of it, but eventually Teddy comes along and takes them away. It's not Teddy's fault. I don't blame him. In a way, he and I have become good friends, he is the only person who will never leave me. He is trapped in my hallway to execute my most painful and necessary tasks. He is consistent. He never grows, he never changes, he simply exists.

Some of the frames have never been filled. Some frames will probably never hold a picture. But each frame exists and is tended with the same care as the frames which hold pictures all the time. Some frames change their faces very often, some frames switch faces daily. But these frames are not the ones which mean the most to me. The frames which matter the most to me are often the ones which hang empty for months or years. It's easier to fill the frames which don't hold so much value in my eyes. The valuable ones hurt more when Teddy fetches his ladder.

Either way, important or unimportant, the frames never change. The role exists in my life, the only thing which is not certain is whether someone will fill that role or not.

My hallway of frames is growing as I grow. There are covered pictures gathering dust in the corner. Sometimes I go over and look at them, but not very often. They no longer exist in my life, so why should I waste time with them? Occasionally, when I look at an old photo, I find that I no longer care about it at all. These are the photos which I throw away, and they never return.

Overall, my hallway of frames makes sense in context with my personality. I strive for order, thrive in compartments and boxes. Every part of my life must be analyzed and labeled. The parts which are the hardest to categorize are often the parts which I avoid.

I tread through my hallway of frames with reverent steps. I smile at new additions, and mourn over recent losses. This is my reality, and within my reality I create imaginary havens like my hallway of frames. They are the unspoken places which provide me with delegation. No, I did not erase you from my life, Teddy did.


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Driven...

Someday I'm going to die.....
There will be a moment, when the neurons in my head will pulse for the last time. The muscles in my heart will pound one last time, and the blood in my veins will carry their last load of life to my cells. The mitochondria in my cells will zip through their very last citric acid cycle. The cycle will arrive back at its origin, only to find no more nutrients waiting for it. No more water arriving, no more oxygen....no more life. The mitochondria will use up the ATP in about 10 seconds, and production will grind to a halt. My body of old, tired organs will kneel to the earth. My eyes, although rapidly drying, will no longer blink. It will be as if some cruel wizard has turned me into wax. Strangely still, my body, once humming with life will live no more.


Dying is such a strange though to me. It's so simple...yet so strangely complex at the same time.
We all have this tiny little battery, this life-spark which fights entropy every day. Naturally, the universal laws of life are constantly trying to tear us apart. Life in itself is an opposition of science. It really is a miraculous existence that we have been presented with. Every organ simultaneously keeps its neighbors alive and functioning. Sensing even the smallest molecular change, our bodies adapt every second, providing us with an equilibrium that we rarely even think about.
Anyone who has studied science and felt its addictive fingers grasp the thriving mind of the scholar can attest to the sense of awe which surrounds the whole field. Unlike most things in our world, life goes on effortlessly. Our bodies and the whole world around us forms a thriving engine, the complexity of which we could never even pretend to duplicate.


Even so, life is fragile. The entropy of the universe expands like a tsunami, and by all logic, life should not be able to withstand it. Every day we fight for our lives, endlessly feeding our unquenchable needs. We battle the pieces of us which constantly slow, needing fuel. We nourish our cells with water, and recharge our souls with sleep.
Every day we defy entropy, and every day entropy hisses
"Just wait, child, just wait. I always win in the end."

Science is beautiful and heartless at the same time. But why should we be surprised? Science has no heart. That's why it's so comforting to people who have been heartbroken, beaten, and abused by the hearts of this world.
The compulsive need for order which haunts my soul thrives in the comforting arms of science. There is mystery in science, but there is also consistency and order. Everything exists for a purpose, we exist only as spectators.

When we die, we do not disappear, atoms are not wasted in nature. We feed prokaryotes and are decomposed by beetles. We become part of the earth. In a way, everything we see is composed of our ancestors. The trees harbor their spark, the soil crawls with their remnants, the earth is one gigantic memorial for the people who lived before us.

It's almost as if the knowledge of the universe already exists, we only exist as its fingers, it's instruments.

Whatever the purpose of the universe really is, I am in it, and I do not intend to waste the opportunity to shake the world and seal it with my fingerprint. Whether divinely created, or naturally molded, the earth is chugging along like a well-oiled machine.

Science is the passion which pushes me towards my dreams. It fuels me like an atomic bomb, and lights the corners of my future like a laser. I am driven, I am determined, and I am in love.







Saturday, February 9, 2013

JohnTV

Well this is a little strange for me to blog about, but in reality I'm just writing about things that I find interesting, so I guess this applies.
I found this channel on youtube today called JohnTV. They have a website as well, named JohnTV.com for obvious reasons. Anyway, the entire channel is devoted to chasing prostitutes out of Oklahoma City. This guy follows prostitutes that are picked up by "customers", waits until they are in a very compromising situation, then rushes up and videos them getting busted. He gets license plate numbers, video evidence, sends his tapes to the police, and posts them on youtube.



The whole point is to kill the myth that prostitution happens discretely. Instead, he presents evidence showing that streetside prostitution is a big problem, and not just in sketchy areas. Instead, he films prostitutes hanging around on corners where kids are playing, he watches them as they are taken to public parks and stores, he sees them dishing out services in cars in public places.

All of these things he sends, not only to law enforcement, but he posts online for the world to see. Often, when he scares the heebie-jeebies out of some prostitutes and her customer, he tells them they're going to jail, that they're going to be on the internet for people to see, that license plates have been recorded, and faces captured for eternity. He interviews prostitutes that he catches, customers who he can corner, and shames them to no end.

In some ways, his freestyle vigilante videos could be seen as harassment, but after watching just a video or two (which have all indecencies blurred out, by the way) one immediately begins to see the shameless way this public prostitution has sullied this otherwise pleasant city.
I have become a fan of this guy who shames these lewd horndogs, and I'm clearly not the only person who has taken a liking to his humorous and shocking version of justice. The videos on his site have acquired millions of views, and thousands of subscribers.

If you ever want a little humorous, yet eye-opening videos to watch, look up JohnTV on Youtube, you will not be disappointed.