Category Archives: Social Issues

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.

Is Cursive Writing Obsolete?

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During elementary school, I remember thinking that learning to write in cursive was a big deal, a sign of maturity and progress. I liked the weirdness of the cursive Z and getting a new way to write my name. I practiced and practiced in school to get all the letters right. Unfortunately, handwriting of either form has never been my strength. My mother and her parents have beautiful handwriting, but I guess I missed that gene. The first time I ever got less than an A on a report card was an A- in handwriting, which was probably generous on the part of Miss George. I wrote in cursive for a while, certainly in elementary school and junior high. Then, at some point in high school or college, I switched back to printing.

I can’t remember why I switched. Perhaps my printing was a bit easier to read. Perhaps I could write faster that way. For some time I think I did both, switching arbitrarily based on my mood. Then I simply quit writing in cursive altogether except for my signature, which is a crude and ugly hybrid of printing and cursive, much different from my handwriting textbooks. Miss George would give me a solid F, or maybe a D since she liked me.

These days, I write very little by hand. When I must, I print. At work I fill out my time sheet. Sometimes I add a few things to the grocery list. When forced to snail-mail something that doesn’t have a pre-printed address, I begrudgingly write the address on the envelope. Perhaps once a month, I write a check for some weird expense. That’s pretty much it. I hate to write by hand. I can type much faster, and the result is much easier for everyone to read.

A question simmers in my head: is cursive writing even necessary anymore?

It seems odd that we teach two different forms of writing, especially when the cursive form is so bizarre in some cases (upper-case Q, anyone?) and so seldom used today except in signatures. Wouldn’t a typing class be more useful, even in elementary school? Perhaps things have changed since I was in grade school, but I didn’t take a typing class until eighth grade. By then, I had already taught myself to type using about five fingers (left index and thumb plus right index, middle, and thumb), and using all ten just felt weird to me. I’m pretty fast with five fingers and can mostly type without looking, although I’m sure I could be better using proper technique.

As our society becomes increasingly dependent on technology, it seems that we type more and write by hand less. When is the last time you hand-wrote an actual letter to someone – not a thank-you note or brief message on a birthday card, but an actual letter? I can’t remember for certain, but it was probably in college under compulsion, a long thank-you letter to the donor of one of my scholarships. I probably printed it.

What do you think? Do you still write in cursive? Is it still worth teaching to our children? If so, how long should we keep teaching it?

I’m leaning toward giving up on it in our schools within the next 5-10 years. My main concern is that future generations won’t be able to read some documents from previous generations that were written in cursive. Some are also concerned about signatures on legal documents, but there’s no requirement for signatures to be in cursive. In truth, many signatures would be much more legible if they were NOT written in cursive.

Here are a few articles about the debate:

Gay Marriage

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“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm

In November 2008, after a hugely expensive and divisive campaign, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 8, which legally defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. A gay couple challenged this law in court as an unconstitutional limit on their civil rights to marry and receive equal treatment under the law per the 14th Amendment.

On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of the couple, saying Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Prop-8 supporters plan to appeal. Many observers believe the case will reach the Supreme Court within a year or two, which could finally produce a nationwide standard on the legality of gay marriage.

Around the time of the November 2008 elections, I was more interested in the presidential race than an issue in California that didn’t affect me. The issue itself produced mixed emotions in me, so I didn’t have a strong opinion either way. But after thinking about it recently, I have reached a conclusion that surprises me but also gives me peace: I now agree with yesterday’s court decision.

I am a happily married, straight male who loves Jesus, reads the Bible, and supports the rights of gay couples to marry.

How can this be?, you might ask. To me, gay marriage is a separate issue from the morality of homosexuality.

The latter generates more disagreement within Christendom than many Christians realize, especially in the Bible Belt. Although I must admit that I want to, so far I’m not willing to do the textual gymnastics necessary to say the Bible approves of homosexual relationships.

However, gay marriage is a legal issue, rather than a moral one, and America is a democracy, not a theocracy. We don’t create our laws to enforce any particular interpretation of the Bible. The President is not the head of the Church of America, and I am thankful for the separation of church and state, for the right to live for my God in the way I think best rather than having a government official interpret the Bible for me. If you want a theocracy, you can get close if you’re willing to move. Check out Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan.

Our laws generally aim to prevent people and groups from hurting each other or society as a whole. They still give us plenty of leeway on many issues and allow us to do many things that the Bible forbids. There is no law against adultery, for example. Or smoking. Or lying to your boss. Or being a greedy, materialistic jerk. The law considers these moral issues rather than legal issues and doesn’t significantly interfere with our freedom to hurt ourselves in these ways.

But in the law’s eyes, gay marriage is different.

The vast majority of Americans are straight. I would guess that the majority are at best uncomfortable with the idea of the gay lifestyle. Despite all our talk about America’s being the land of the free, where all men are equal under the law, in many circles it’s still acceptable to treat men and women as inferior if they happen to be gay. With apologies to Orwell, we act as if:

All men are equal, but heterosexuals are more equal.

We used to treat women as second-class citizens. Then the laws changed, and over time we have righted that wrong to a large degree. We used to allow whites to own blacks as slaves. Then the laws changed, and over time we have righted that wrong to a large degree, even to the point that a black man is now our President. Yet most states continue to deny gays the right to marry simply because many people disagree with certain aspects of their lifestyle.

I cannot in good conscience support such a position.

Does God intend marriage to mean one man and one woman? I think so. But I don’t think the American government should get to make that call for us, and within another year or two, I predict that it won’t be able to.

Hug Etiquette

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Hugs are good. Hugs are important and can boost your emotional and physical health. However, there’s an etiquette to hugging that varies by country, region, religion, gender, family, and any number of other issues. If you break that etiquette, people get creeped out. Sometimes they file reports.

In many European countries, both men and women greet each other with a hug and/or kiss, sometimes multiple kisses on each cheek. In Brazil, people are very affectionate and often hug people upon meeting them for the first time. On the other hand, in Islam, physical contact between members of the opposite sex in public, even just a handshake, is generally frowned upon, particularly in more traditional sects. Even married couples aren’t supposed to show physical affection in public.

In America, I think we’re somewhere in the middle. Men tend to shake hands with other men, but some male friends or family members do hug briefly IF they make it more manly with a few solid pounds on the back. However, athletes in uniform follow a completely different set of rules that allows butt-slapping at any time and long, full-body, jumping-up-and-down hugs in the event of a big win. Female friends are more likely to hug than shake hands, although new acquaintances follow the male protocol of handshaking.

Thanks to the sexual harassment videos we have to watch at work, male-female interactions in America are trickier, which has produced odd hug derivations such as the side hug (one arm around the other person, only sides touch) and the A-frame (start facing each other but standing apart, then lean toward each other to touch only at the shoulders).

Individual preference also plays a large role in mixed-gender greetings. Some people of each gender are huggers by nature and likely to initiate a hug. Others are anti-huggers and only begrudgingly hug when the other person initiates it. In a greeting involving mixed-gender friends, many men let the woman take the lead to avoid an awkward faux-pas. Finally, mixed-gender work situations are more handshake-oriented in most organizations. Southwest, with its family-oriented culture, is a possible exception. My department isn’t very huggy, but the People department is very huggy. I even hugged Jenny’s coworkers, including her boss.

Are you a hugger or an anti-hugger? Vote in the new poll on the right. There are plenty of both around. My cousin Brad is a big-time hugger with guys and girls. Girls get a normal, full-body hug, while guys get the handshake that pulls you into a single-arm hug with a pat on the back. My friend Mad Bomber, on the other hand, is an anti-hugger. If I tried to hug him, he’d probably shoot me. Either approach is fine, just a personal preference.

I think I’m a closet hugger. I enjoy hugging people, guys and girls, and think everyone could use more hugs. However, I try to be sensitive to other people’s personal space issues and the other weirdness that can surround hugging, so I follow the other person’s lead. Bottom line: if you need a hug, come find me.

Here are a few other helpful articles on the subject:

A Guide to Hugging

Hug Etiquette Basics