Healthy Tips from Aristotle

Over half of the adult population in the United States makes the decision to start each day with a vitamin supplement, and the numbers are growing. Sounds like a step in the right direction, wouldn’t you say? At the very least, the adults in our nation seem to be taking a genuine interest in leading a healthy life.

While I am not here to change your mind about those supplements (I am certainly not a doctor! Though most adults are taking supplements by personal choice rather than from doctor recommendation), I would like to encourage you to think about your vitamin intake from a new point of view.

 Rather going into great detail about the number of toxins available to American consumers through their vitamin supplements – nearly ALL of the Vitamin C supplements sold today are made with genetically modified corn products – I will instead share with you the wisdom of Aristotle.

The same philosopher from the 4th Century B.C. who taught us “Good habits formed at youth make all the difference” (one of the wisest sentences ever uttered, in my opinion) also planted a garden and wrote about it, sharing his knowledge of cruciferous vegetables and their health benefits.

Ban the Trail Tweets

You may understand a few things about my personality at this point; particularly the idea that I have my own personal set of rules and I expect no one else in the world to even understand them, let alone follow suit. My rules are elementary (to me), yet to others they seem full of antitheses. If you take the time to scrutinize more closely, you'll find my general rule of life be quite simplistic: Savor every moment.

That's why I'm a trail runner. 

And yes, savoring life can have different pictures within the same frame: I love the fitness involved within the art of running, but I'd like my aide stations to be filled with M&M's and my finish line to feature pulled pork sandwiches. I love morning runs, but I'd prefer them to start MID-morning. I love to start off a race with a group of new-found friends and my all-time very favorite runner in the world, then end up on my own in the middle of the wilderness. I use the road for running when I need to think something through completely...the trail is for thinking about nothing but the intensity of the moment. And I love to blog, but I have little use for social media.

Trail running invites you to become a minimalist, to focus, to test your personal limits in ways you never dreamed of before, and to truly, deeply understand that there is no room on the trail for worrying that you may lose both your dignity and your pride, especially if you showed up at the start line with too much to begin with. 

And that kind of place, compadres, has no room for Tweets or Instagrams. 

Boston IS America

It has taken me over a week to have the heart to write about the tragedy in Boston on Patriot's Day. Many of those days were spent getting over the shock. Then there was the time spent watching to see if they'd nab Suspect #2. Throughout all of that I dug through story after story, watching, reading, and listening for a common theme.

I sorted out my own story, my love for the city of Boston, for not only the Boston Marathon, but the entire running community, and my love for this beautiful nation. I started to write a few times, but didn't want to bore you with my own memories of waiting on Boylston Street, dashing across the Charles River in the rain or eating clam chowder on a cushy bar stool at what used to be called the Bull and Finch Pub.

I also didn't want to potentially bore you with non-fiction commentary that I personally find fascinating...the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed's Hill nearby; it took 86 years for the Red Sox to win the World Series after trading Babe Ruth to New York; or that the streets of Beantown were once flooded with 2.3 million gallons of molasses moving at 35 mph.

My son found the common theme in this nightmare before I did, and pointed it out without realizing how deeply his words struck me.

Ditch Your Control Issues

Simplicity, as a way of being, goes way beyond making dinner in six ingredients or less. It is more than consolidating errands or cutting back on spending.  And it is deeper than limiting the number of invitations given to a birthday party or reducing the size of the front yard flower bed. While these ideas are helpful in the short term, they do little to reduce the stress levels of an overly complicated way of living in the bigger picture of life.

Certainly do make those changes as you journey toward a more simplified lifestyle. However, as you embark upon the adventure of disentangling the complex minutes, hours, and days that make up your life, remember that the keys to achieving personal goals can only be found deep within yourself.

A common characteristic of people (no one group in particular, just a basic human trait) is the interminable need to control. We have an insatiable desire to exert our own control over others, over the community, over nature…everything. The best thing we can do with that need?

Let it go.

The Shamrock Shake-Worthy

While I most certainly will never proclaim to be the most healthy eater you've ever met, there actually are some standards I do like to maintain. I love to eat whole foods and I love to cook from scratch. While I have been known to eat chocolate chip cookies and leftover pizza for breakfast (on more occasion than one), I have also countered that with broccoli quiche and oatmeal with blueberries and cream. Two superfoods in one meal, I'd like to point out (broccoli and blueberries).

I also like to think of myself as a person who "gets along with others," in most cases, although on occasion, I have admittedly crossed paths with a certain number of (up to this point) folks who had yet to be assigned a category in my mind. Irritating, perhaps. Obnoxious. Self-absorbed. Certainly those could be category titles, but until now, there has never been an all-encompassing adjective that was quite fitting enough.

And so I'll take a brief moment to thank McDonald's for providing me with a list of 54 ingredients (complete with nitrous oxide and other additives that the World Health Organization has warned to be carcinogenic) that provides not only a standard that I hold for my personal well being, but also a new title to the select few people I hope to never run across again in my life. The Shamrock Shake-Worthy. Who else but your arch-enemies would you actually feed this to?

Capitol Hill Bake Sale

I am trying to determine if the US government has finally come up with a viable plan to raise funds in a way that does NOT involve raising taxes (or that silly notion of actually paying attention to where all of the billions of dollars are being spent).

I think they are gearing up for the mother of all bake sales. I mean, really...there must be a good idea SOMEWHERE within all this madness. 

You see, the USDA is debating whether or not to purchase 400,000 tons of sugar in order to limit the available supply, in turn, boosting the dollar amount made by sugar producers. 

I'll give you three guesses as to why the government is actually involved in this sweet deal. It's really not the bake sale idea (brilliant as it may be), nor does it have anything to do with our nation's dramatic increase in waistline measurements (though a sugar tax has been proposed in order to combat our nation's obesity problem, but the idea was fairly short-lived. What would we eat, for crying out loud??) And if your third guess is anything beyond self-serving, well, think again. We're talking about politicians, after all. It's the government.