Author Archives: Andy

Beardtober

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My office is sponsoring a contest this month called Beardtober. The premise is simple: the participating guys let their beards grow throughout October, and the best and worst beards at the end win prizes. The entry fees, and the opt-out donation for those who don’t want to grow, go to Vogel Alcove, a great organization in Dallas that provides day care to homeless children while their parents work or look for work.

Although I’m a better candidate for Worst Beard than Best, I signed up and haven’t shaved since Thursday. I might post pics here, but we have an official Beardtober website where you can follow everyone’s progress. Most of the “before” pictures are our company ID pics, some of which are really old. Mine is from 2001, when I still had hair. They gave me 15:1 odds.

Super Size Me

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The other night I watched one of those movies that I felt I should watch but kept putting off – Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock. The premise is simple: against the advice of every doctor and loved one he has, a guy goes on a McDonald’s-only diet for 30 days to see what happens. He must eat three McDonald’s meals a day, try each item on the menu at least once, “super size” the meal if the cashier suggests it, and not eat anything that doesn’t come from there. He also reduces his activity level to the “average” level for an American.

Spurlock is monitored by three doctors, a dietitian, and a trainer throughout. At the beginning of the experiment, he weighs about 185 and is in excellent health by all measures. After 30 days of eating nothing but McDonald’s, Spurlock’s body goes significantly downhill:

  • He gains 25 pounds, almost a pound per day (his average daily consumption is 5000 calories when he only needed 2500)
  • His liver function drops significantly due to damage and fatty deposits, similar to the liver of a binge drinker.
  • His cholesterol jumps 50-60 points.
  • His sexual function decreases.
  • He suffers from depression, headaches, chest pains, fatigue, and a general lousy feeling.

Obviously, few people except documentary filmmakers would ever go on such a diet, but many people eat out several times a week or even every day. Many of them experience some of the same symptoms that Spurlock did.

National Health Crisis

In between the updates on Spurlock’s 30-day journey, he shares a variety of information related to the obesity problem in America. You’ve probably heard some of the facts before, but they are worth repeating. America is now the fattest nation on earth. Texas is one of the fattest states in America. About two-thirds of all adults are overweight, according to the CDC. Childhood obesity is skyrocketing, as are many related diseases such as diabetes. Obesity is now the second-leading cause of preventable death behind smoking, and I suspect the two will trade places within a decade.

Obesity is a national health crisis that costs us billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and it’s time to start treating it that way.

What kills me is that so many overweight people don’t seem to care.

Sure, if you ask overweight people if they want to be fat, most will say no. They might tell you that they try to eat right or exercise sometimes, but it’s hard and doesn’t work. They might spend billions on pills, workout videos, gym memberships, surgery, and more but don’t see the results they want.

To be more precise, it’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they don’t seem to care enough to make the changes they need to make. And quite frankly, that apathy irritates and saddens me. I hope it does the same for you.

Most of us don’t start off as Ferraris genetically, but the vast majority of us get a fairly healthy, functional body that should last us many years with proper care. As a Christian, I view my body as the temple of the Holy Spirit and believe that I am created by God in his image. When I don’t take care of the body he gave me, it’s like being given a brand-new car and trashing it – leaving it out in hailstorms with the windows open, never changing the fluids, driving it through a patch of thorny bushes, and finally volunteering it for the local high school’s car bash fundraiser after 60,000 miles. What a waste of a beautiful gift!

Yes, I understand that there are medical conditions that contribute to the difficulty. Yes, I agree that it’s frustrating to be disciplined enough to eat well and exercise regularly. The Sourdough Jack at Jack-in-the-Box is one of my personal faves, and my family life and weird work schedule make it hard to work out consistently. Yes, the deck is stacked against us by a variety of external factors such as the companies who sell unhealthy food, the power of their lobbyists, and educational policy that favors standardized test scores over physical activity in schools. But I maintain that in most cases, the primary responsibility lies with the individual. We choose what to eat. We choose how active to be.

Stuff It, Skinny Boy

Some of you might be thinking, “Sure, Box, easy for you to say. You stay skinny without even trying!” Yes, it’s true that I’m fairly thin. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I try to run at least 10 miles a week and take walks during my break at work. I also eat a pretty healthy diet. My breakfast is almost always a bowl of high-fiber cereal, OJ, and coffee. My meal at work is usually a bagel, a banana, some yogurt, and maybe a cereal bar or low-fat popcorn. Dinner varies in healthiness. I rarely drink soda and try to avoid sweets except on special occasions, as dessert is my Kryptonite. I have to work to keep my body healthy just like anyone else.

Jenny

Years of desk jobs, hormonal birth control, poor diet, stress, and having two children eighteen months apart had left my wife unhappy with her weight. A few months ago, she decided to make some changes. She joined a gym and started working out four to five days a week. She ditched her frequent soda habit and eliminated most sweets. She started limiting her portion sizes and improving the quality of her food. She isn’t doing anything magical, just making smart choices consistently. As a result, she’s already lost 20 pounds and counting. Her energy level is higher, she feels better overall, and she feels better about herself as well. I am very proud of her.

Peer Pressure

A man in Super Size Me made a really interesting point that stuck with me. As the anti-smoking movement grows in scope and power, it’s becoming more socially acceptable to encourage smokers to quit by harassing them, excluding them, taxing them, and making their lives difficult. We’re also passing new laws every year that restrict where people can smoke. Especially with friends who smoke, we can sometimes confront them directly through humor, facts, or other means to express your concern for their health and your own personal discomfort from their habit.

Imagine if we used the same approach to obesity. Imagine if we confronted each other about how fat we are, how poorly we eat, and how little we exercise. Imagine if we could demean a Double Big Gulp or a Big Mac as easily as we deride cigarettes as “cancer sticks”. Imagine if we could tell an overweight friend, “I’m tired of watching you slowly kill yourself” as easily as we could say it to a chain smoker. Imagine if we charged airline passengers by the pound or charged overweight people a higher copay or deductible for health care.

Would these interactions be awkward? Rude? Difficult? Painful? Absolutely. But our current approach doesn’t seem to be working, and the stakes are too high to maintain the present course.

So let me take this opportunity to start the conversation. If you are overweight, I am worried about your health. So are your doctor and (I hope) your family and friends. Even though it will be difficult, I want you to do what it takes to reach a healthy weight. Eat better. Be more active. You don’t have to become a marathon runner or competitive cyclist, but you do need to get off your butt and do something. Often.

If you’re currently overweight but trying to lose weight, as I know many of you are, I salute you. You are attempting a difficult task, one that many lack the will to pursue. You rock!

It’s not about having a good-looking body. Believe me, I’ve seen enough naked people to know that most of us don’t and can’t have a perfect body. I certainly don’t and never will. Besides, most of the “perfect” bodies you see in magazines are made perfect with PhotoShop.

It’s about having a healthy body, and an overweight body isn’t healthy. Do you want to be healthy? Are you willing to do what it takes to get there?

Real

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As some of you already know, my son Brenden spent last night at Cook Children’s in Fort Worth. Yesterday afternoon he started having trouble breathing, as has happened a few times before. When the albuterol breathing treatments didn’t work, Jenny took him to Cook’s urgent care center in Hurst that evening. Numerous treatments there didn’t solve the problem, so they sent him to the main hospital via ambulance so they could monitor his oxygen levels enroute.

I had to work at 11pm in Dallas. Picture me there, getting occasional phone calls and texts from Jenny telling me that the treatments aren’t working, my son still can’t breathe, and my two-year-old and Jenny are taking an ambulance to the children’s ER. I couldn’t do a thing to help.

While sitting at work, awash in tension, a friend walks by and asks how my kids are. It’s kinda like the standard “how are you?” question that Americans use as a greeting, except “how are the kids?” is more personal and a better conversation starter. But I didn’t want to tell him that my son was struggling for air and on his way to the hospital, and my poor wife was already up later than normal with no prospect of sleep in sight. I assumed that my buddy was just being friendly and didn’t want to hear the unpleasant truth. So I lied and said they were doing fine. We ended up talking about Brenden’s pottytraining instead, with me putting a positive spin on the fact that we hadn’t quite succeeded yet.

It’s so much easier not to be real.

Different people approach “real” in different ways. For many, as mentioned in the article I mentioned, our lack of perfection (as determined by the media, our friends, our families, or other sources) is so discouraging that we can’t help but feign happiness as a defense mechanism. Being real, admitting our failure to measure up to an impossible standard, is far too scary. We fear that people will turn from us, kick us out, or gossip about us.

I’ve struggled with that problem a bit, especially as a teenager. I’ve always considered myself a shy person. Through various and dubious sources, I came to view my shyness as a liability. Being outgoing and friendly was the ideal, so I didn’t measure up. I was deeply and irreversibly flawed. At times I was miserable with who I was, especially since I felt unable to change it. But I couldn’t tell anyone, either. No one, I thought, wanted to hear me whine that I was sad because no one liked me. So I put on a happy face and saved the sadness for the times when I got to be alone.

I know people personally who have struggled with other issues – body image and eating disorders, troubled relationships with parents, low self-esteem, spiritual doubt, and more – that they don’t like to talk about. They pretend to be happy, to have it all together, to be on top of everything, to be perfectly well-adjusted. But it’s a lie, a lie told not in malice but in fear.

Although I have learned to embrace my shyness (mostly, at least) as an essential part of who I am, I still fight the tendency to wear a mask sometimes. At work, where I’m a trainer, I don’t want to admit when I don’t know the answer. As a parent, I don’t want to admit when I don’t know what to do with my sons or when I make a mistake. As a husband, I don’t want to admit when I’m wrong or being selfish or rude. As a friend, sometimes I don’t want to give you a real answer when you ask how my kids are doing.

In many of these cases, my own pride is the culprit.

In others, it’s either our perfection-oriented culture or my flawed perception of that culture. I assume, unless you really dig or choose to read my blog, that you aren’t really interested in my problems, at least not enough to actually sit and listen to them. There are people, such as my awesome family and close friends, that are interested, but I assume the rest are not. Is that wrong? I’m not sure.

What I do know is this: when I do choose to let myself be real, it’s both scary and liberating. By letting myself be honest with others, I’m also being honest with myself. In doing so, I’m honoring the God who both made me the way I am and trusted me enough to let me bear whatever burden I’m carrying.

I’m probably more real on here than in any other place. As I’ve mentioned here before, I greatly prefer writing over talking. Talking makes me the center of attention, which makes me want to clam up and run away. Writing also makes me the center of attention, I suppose, but at least I don’t feel your eyes on me. I post some really honest, vulnerable stuff on here – my spiritual journey including struggles with depression and doubt, my list of some of the most shocking things I’ve ever done, potentially controversial views on religion and politics that I generally wouldn’t share in person, and many of the spots and warts that I normally hide.

That openness is one of the things I love most about blogging. I love being honest with you here in ways I cannot be through any other medium. You help keep me honest by following my blog. Thank you for helping me be real. I hope that by admitting my own imperfections, I can help you to be real as well.

Gap Year After High School?

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I found an interesting article in Time that resonated with some of my friends, so I thought I would post it here. It’s about a new trend among young adults that some call a “gap year,” a transition period between high school and college when they work, volunteer, travel, intern in their field of interest, or try other activities that might be impossible later on. One girl set up solar power in India. Another immersed herself in Spanish by spending months in Guatemala. The point is to take a break from school to try some other things, mature a bit, recharge, and become better prepared for college.

Plan the Work, Work the Plan

My path through my bachelor’s degree was pretty traditional – 12 years of public school followed immediately by four years of college, exactly like my parents and I had planned. I never even considered not going straight to college. I worked every summer after starting college, but I never took off a year or even a semester from school. After graduating, I had a few weeks off and then went to work at Southwest. My sister’s path was very similar.

I committed to Baylor as an education major, planning to be an English teacher like my beloved high school English teacher, Mrs. Picquet. However, while sitting in my first education class, something just felt wrong, as if I wasn’t supposed to be there. So I switched majors to English. The next year I switched again to professional writing, thinking I might become a technical writer. Junior year I added a computer science minor, thinking it would help me get a job as a tech writer, which it probably did. Finally, after two changes of major and one addition of minor, I graduated and went to work.

Soon I discovered that I didn’t like tech writing.

The company was great. My coworkers were great. The pay and benefits were great. But I just didn’t like the work. Fortunately, through that job I discovered what I really wanted to do, which is dispatch flights. So it all worked out, but…

Change the Plan?

What would have happened if I hadn’t gone straight from high school to college? What if I could have deferred my enrollment and scholarships and done something else like the young people in the Time article did? I actually thought about taking off the spring semester of my freshman year and interning with a Christian drama ministry in California, the one with whom I’d toured the previous summer. Unfortunately, it probably would have cost me my scholarships, so I didn’t do it. But given the option, I might have joined them during my gap year.

Or I might have written another novel or other works and tried to get them published. Or volunteered in Africa as a missionary. Or traveled extensively. Or tried for a writing internship somewhere or simply worked in a normal job, maybe even throwing bags for Southwest. Or been a ski bum at Copper Mountain. Or immersed myself in my chosen foreign language of Latin in, um, I guess the Vatican (oops). Obviously, it would have been much easier to have some income, especially if my parents weren’t supportive of my weird plan, so some of these ideas are more practical than others.

As a result of whatever I chose, I might have ended up in the same place or a much different place.

Others’ Experiences

One of my friends at Baylor spent four years in the military between high school and college. I was impressed by his maturity, focus, and work ethic, and I’m sure his military experience played a big role in developing those qualities. Now I also hear from others who went straight to college after high school but don’t feel they were ready. Taking some time off to work, volunteer, or travel would have helped them get focused and mentally prepare for college, they say.

Society expected them, at 18 years old, to know what they wanted to study and “become” AND to be willing and ready to do whatever it took to get there. However, not everyone works that way. Perhaps most people don’t work that way. How many 18-year-olds really know for sure who they are and what they want to do for the rest of their lives? Many of my friends didn’t. My wife didn’t, either. It actually took Jenny until her thirties, after she had our first child, to figure out what she really wanted to do as a career.

What do you think? Is a “gap year” a good idea or a waste of time? Do you have any experiences that shape your thinking?