parenting

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Healthy Parents: 6 Reasons Not to Join a Gym

December 16, 2011 at 7:44 pm , by 

13 months.

Featured pictures are from July 2008.

Back in August, in the midst of a Facebook message conversation, a friend I have known since Kindergarten described her perception of my wife and me:

“I think of you both as health conscious people….but I can’t picture either of you working out in a gym. I picture you as people who hike on the weekends or bike to dinner.”

Little did she know that I was already mapping out this post, explaining why I passionately oppose going to the gym, yet passionately promote daily exercise in other ways. It’s true, the last time I went to a gym, they had just discovered the hatch on Lost.

My friend was right. I am a biker; mountain biker, that is. At all times, my bike is stored in my Honda Element with me. Every day during my lunch break, I bike to Starbucks to read a book, or to the bank to deposit some cash, or to Whole Foods to pick up some Christmas presents for people.

I pretend that I live in a Mediterranean village in the year 1533, where I would literally have to travel miles at a time in order to get everything done that day. If I want to read a chapter in the current book I’m reading, I have to earn it by biking a mile and a half to get to a place to read it.

If it rains or is too cold, I have a heavy raincoat and “outside workout” clothes to change into. Even when it snows, I’ll still at least walk a few miles outside.

The point is to find someway to get daily exercise (at least 25 minutes) without having to depend on paying someone to use their facility. It doesn’t have to include a mountain bike, but it’s a matter of finding a creative way to get out of the office; even it’s just walking with a friend during designated breaks during work.

I say fresh air (even when it’s cold and wet) is still better than stagnant air inside an office. So let me go ahead and get into it, here are 6 reasons I don’t go to the gym:

1. Joining a gym often promotes an “all or nothing” mentality in which one’s diet follows. ”I was just too stressed to go to the gym for the past two days” often means a backslide into fast food lunches and potato chips as snacks.

2. Gyms promote a perfectly sculpted body as the goal, instead of a realistic, healthy one. We’re not movie stars; we don’t need six pack abs. The focus should be on being healthy, not losing weight. Weight loss is a side effect of active habits, not a target itself.

3. Gyms cost money. I’m not going to pay for what I can get for free.

4. There is a pressure to commit to a gym. Remember that episode of Friends where Chandler tries to quit the gym, recruiting Ross to help him, but then Ross gets suckered in to joining the gym too?

5. Working out puts too much focus on calories. For me, it’s about the the right food choices to begin with. I bet my daily calorie intake is slightly high, because I eat plenty of whole fruits (which are already naturally loaded with sugar) as well as avocados, nuts, and whole milk (full of good fats), but I weigh 20-something pounds less now than I did in these featured pictures of me from 2008 on my honeymoon in New England, before I had made my lifestyle changes- like biking and cutting out processed foods.

6. People size you up at a gym. Plus, it’s easier to do the same to other people; focusing too much on bodybuilders who basically live there.

So I say, liberate yourself from the gym.

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You May Have Just Won a Zazzle Christmas Ornament!

December 14, 2011 at 9:49 pm , by 

One year.

A few weeks ago I invited all my readers to send me their family’s holiday cards, so I can display them on my refrigerator. I explained that the cards would not only serve as a cool decoration and a way for me to meetDadabase fans, but also as entries for upcoming giveaways.

So now it’s time to check it out in action.

Today, Zazzle is giving one lucky Dadabase reader a free personalized ornament through their website. It’s really cool because you can put a picture of your kid on the ornament. We got one for Jack and it should be arriving in a few days.

Now, as for the winner, we’re letting Jack decide. I’ve put all the holiday cards in a hat and now Jack will draw a winner…

 

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Paying 5 Bucks for Kids’ Mac-and-Cheese at Restaurants

December 12, 2011 at 6:22 pm , by 

One year.

Though I’m still pretty new to this parenting thing, I have been noticing for the past several years the hilariousness of kids’ menus in non-fast-food restaurants.

Evidently, the food pyramid for children consists of peanut butter of jelly sandwiches, chicken fingers, pizza, and of course, macaroni and cheese.

Yes, I know the stress of eating out at restaurants with a kid. I’ve written about it before. Still though, it’s almost insulting that the popular food staples found on kids’ menus do not contain any unprocessed vegetables or fruit.

They are not nutritious meals; they are simply better than fast food snacks to keep a kid from whining that they’re hungry.

Even though we avoid eating out as much possible, there are times when we have no other option; like being on vacation.

Last week while we were test driving a Chevy Volt across southern Florida, our dinners mainly took place at the fancy restaurants in the glorious hotels we stayed at. Though we had brought our own fruits and veggies for our son Jack to eat throughout the three day trip, we still wanted to incorporate “big boy food” into his meals as well.

Right now Jack is in his “mac-and-cheese” phase. He’s obsessed, man. So naturally, that’s what I ordered each night for him at dinner. The first night in particular was my favorite.

After waiting a good 12 minutes or so for the cooks to prepare his mac-and-cheese, the waiter brought out a regular sized glass bowl as if it were the most premium version of the meal a person could find. It looked just like normal mac-and-cheese to me.

Jack ended up eating it in our hotel room. It tasted just like the normal stuff. Nothing over-the-top about it. Just plain ole mac-and-cheese.

But it cost 7 bucks! (Thankfully, we weren’t the ones paying for dinner.)

I mean, it’s already a joke when you have to pay 5 bucks for kids’ mac-and-cheese at most places… but 7 dollars?

For that much, the cheese needs to be made from magical goats in Switzerland that spit gold. The noodles should have been freshly hand-crafted by the grandson of Chef Boyardee himself. For seven dollars, when I changed Jack’s dirty after that meal, it should have smelled like Play-Doh.

 

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7 Steps to This Dad Becoming a Vegetarian

December 11, 2011 at 7:28 pm , by 

One year.

I guess, honestly, I’ve known this about myself for nearly three years now. But it took this long to work up the courage to come out of the closet. Plus, I didn’t want to deal with the label of it and the usual assumptions based on stereotypes.

However, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to deny who I am as a person based on my own preconceived ideas of people who are just like me.

So here at the very end of 2011, I am ready to show the world my true colors. For the most part, they’re green:

I am a practicing vegetarian.

This is 7 Steps to This Dad Becoming a Vegetarian, not 7 Reasons Why You Should Become a Vegetarian. This is simply the story of my journey to “meatlessness.” By all means, this has been a slippery slope of a process. Perhaps an alternative title to this should be 7 Things Not to Do If You Want to Continue Eating Meat for the Rest of Your Life.

Here’s how it happened:

1. I watched the documentary Super Size Me. It didn’t make me immediately stop eating fast food, but it did cause me to question the quality of food I was putting in my body and realize the connection of America’s obesity and our Western eating habits.

2. I married a health nut. My wife, who is from northern California, hadn’t eaten fast food since 1999 when she got an ice cream cone from the drive-thru at McDonald’s. Call it love or call it intimidation, but I stopped regularly eating fast food. It helped that she was making us healthy meals which I could have the next day for lunch instead of going to Subway or Wendy’s like I had been.

3. I stopped eating processed foods. The reason for this is that I developed eczema on my hands. My skin disease got to the point where I could barely type, which is unthinkable for a blogger! I learned that whenever there is “no medical cure” for something, it means to change your diet. So I stopped eating processed foods; anything in which sugar is added. I even stopped drinking fruit juice; and for the first time in my life, actually started eating real fruit instead on a daily basis.

4. I watched the documentary Food Inc. Though I knew that meat came from living animals, I never considered the actual process of slaughter or even worse, factory farming.

5. I went kosher. Many people thought I converted to Judaism when I cut out pork and shellfish from my diet; but a kosher diet, along with cutting out processed foods with added sugar, caused my my eczema to finally disappear!

6. I stopped buying meat to cook with. By the time my wife and I had gotten used to the no pork and shellfish thing, not to mention only eating whole grain pasta and bread (no more “white”), our bodies didn’t crave meat as much. So we only ate meat when we went out to eat over the weekend. In essence, we were “weekday vegetarians” by this point. After about a month of this routine, the only meat I even wanted anymore was fish.

7. I read the book Eating Animals. During my very first book giveaway here on The Dadabase, one of the winners was a cool guy named Mike Mitchell. I’m not exactly sure why, but he went through the trouble of mailing me a copy of Eating Animals. It is my opinion that reading this entire book is the point of no return. By the time I was halfway through, I had already made up my mind.

Will I ever eat meat again? Sure. If I it were my only source of nutrition and there was no other option in order to survive, yes I would. I would even eat a pig, which isn’t kosher.

If I was stranded from a plane crash in the Andes Mountains and had to eat the corpses of fallen human beings, I would, if it meant I stayed alive to see my family again. (This is a reference to the actual events portrayed in the 1993 movie, Alive.)

I guess the real question is whether, like a lot of vegetarians, I eventually will become vegan.

But an even more important question is how my wife and I will raise our son, concerning the consumption of meat. As for now, he doesn’t like meat anyway. I seriously wonder though, if I will let the pressure of social expectations cause us to allow our son to eat meat when we won’t eat it ourselves.

I’m still sorting that part out right now. I don’t want to be labeled as the wacko guy on Parents.com who deprives his kid of hormone-injected, factory farmed meat from animals who are so physically weak and unnatural that they can’t even reproduce sexually.

Fun Bonus Thought!

If nothing else, becoming a vegetarian this year has answered one of my life-long questions: What are Vienna sausages made out of?

After learning that most pigs are castrated because Americans don’t like the taste of pork with that much testosterone, I know of at least one ingredient not found in Vienna sausages.

2 Comments Posted on Nostalgia, parenting, Storytelling

My Son the Beach Bum… Not Really!

December 11, 2011 at 6:59 am , by 

One year.

Last week our son Jack got to experience the beautiful state of Florida for the first time. Thanks to Chevy inviting us to test drive a Volt from Fort Myers to Key West, we stayed our first night at the Hilton in Naples.

The next morning, Jack decided he wanted us all to go watch the sun rise together, because he woke us up with just enough time to take him out to the beach right behind the hotel.

I’m not sure that I have ever watched the sun rise on the beach, but as the dad and husband, I figured it was my duty to make sure my son and wife saw this legendary event. If nothing else, it was pretty Clark Griswald of me.

We had the whole beach to ourselves. Since Jack always loves his bath time every night, we assumed he would love the beach.

Nope.

He didn’t like the sand between his toes. He didn’t like the ocean waves rushing towards him. He is no beach bum; that’s for sure.

Jack preferred to ride on my shoulders the whole time, admiring the ocean from a distance.

He liked when the three of us started walking along the beach, encountering plenty of mysterious crustaceans. We saved the lives of several shelled creatures that had been washed up on shore during the night. Before tossing each one back into the ocean, I would let Jack visually inspect it for approval.

We even found a live sea crab outside of his shell, looking for a new home. Hopefully, I was doing him a favor when I scooped him up and threw him back in the water. I was attempting to save him from being eating by one of the many birds flying above.

As for the most unique seashells that had already been evacuated, they are now serving as decoration at our house back in Nashville. (Because of our last name, it only makes sense we should incorporate shells into the theme of one of our rooms.)

In the meantime, my wife Jill saw dolphins occasionally popping up in the distance (though it may have been the same one?) and would point them out to me just in time to catch a glimpse.

I especially enjoyed finding a live starfish. It made me think of that classic (if not cliche) story about the boy who walked along the beach throwing all the starfish back into the sea. He is approached and questioned by an old man who warns him he will never be able to save all the stranded starfish in time, wanting to know why he should even bother. Then as the boy throws another starfish into the water, he replies, “It mattered to that one.”

Turning the starfish over, I showed Jack and Jill its thousands of tiny moving feet, proving it was indeed still alive. I then explained to them (as if a one year-old had a clue what I was saying…) that a starfish’s stomach leaves its body to digest its food externally.

We had gone out to the beach to see the sunrise and to let our son fall in love with the ocean. Instead, Jack was terrified of the sand and water. At least he got a free lesson in marine biology, thanks to his old man.

To see more pictures from our trip, and a video clip of Jack’s first time experiencing of sand and ocean waves, indulge yourself in The Dadabase Facebook page.