Nort Jersey, Seal Team Six, and Fat Loss Pills

I have this buddy; he is a school teacher up in Nort Jersey. Yes, Nort Jersey. Right now spell check is getting pretty confused as I am sure you are too so let me explain.

North Jersey comprises of the North Central and North Western Portion of the state of New Jersey. It is known for is scenic views, happy little country like hamlets, and it’s fine cuisine of homemade cheeses and good squirrel cookin.

Nort Jersey comprises of the North Eastern Part of the State. It comprises less of towns and more like “Places”. When I say places I mean like Newark, Teaneck, Hackensack, Union City, Bayonne and the always sunny North Bergen. Nort Jersey is really more an attitude and a state of mind than it is a real geographic entity. If you are still confused just watch the opening scene of the Sopranos…that is Nort Jersey.

(Welcome to Nort Jersey. Now go home you Fonzanoon.)

So anyway, my buddy has been teachin (they don’t teach up in Nort Jersey, they teachin) there for a couple of years when he gets this great offer by the school district to attend the Worlds Teacher Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was a reward for being one of the area’s most outstanding young educators.

Pretty big honor you could say.

Now the day before my buddy, let’s call him Mikey the Fish, is about to ship off one of his fellow teachers approaches him. No big deal you might say but in the three years Mikey had been there this guy never even muttered a word to him. Not even once despite the fact that their classrooms were right next to each another.

All Mikey knew was this guy had a reputation for being strange. So strange that nobody even understood what he taught. Some people thought he taught art. Some people thought he taught music. Some people thought he taught a combination of both. Bottom line is nobody really wanted to ask.

So this guy comes up to Mikey the Fish and doesn’t say hello, how are you, or even introduce himself. All he says is, and this is seriously true:

“Don’t ever have sex with one of those Prostitutes. You will never want to have sex with a normal woman ever again”.

And with that this Art/Music teachin dude turns around, walks into his classroom and never talks to Mikey ever again.

Now anybody who knows Mikey the Fish knows he is a really good guy. A real professional. But Mikey is also very conservative, in a real way. Not Conservative like in he passes legislation to ban Gay Marriage or lower taxes only to be found hooking up with dudes in airport bathrooms and defrauding the IRS of millions. I mean conservative like he would be the last person you would ever think would be on the prowl for some “professional” help of that kind.

Still, the wacky Art/Music teachin dude had a good point. As a society and culture we expect more from our Professionals whether they are of the Athletic Arena, the Business World or the even the skin trade. We expect a high level of performance and a higher level of execution.

No better example of this can be found with the heroic actions of U.S. Navy’s Seal Team Six and their recent dispatching of Dirt bag Numero Uno, Osama Bin Laden.

(Move over G.I. Joe, here are the REAL American Heroes)

Any combat solider will tell you there is nothing really heroic about taking another human beings life. To them that is their job. They swore to protect the United States of America so that is what they do.

The true heroism in these men does not lie in the killing, that is something made up by the movie industry. The true heroism is in the teamwork, the skill level, and the relying on the man next to you to cover your back even as you walk straight through the fiery gates of hell into your next mission, operation or global hot spot de jour.

And yet despite all those incredible odds and challenging situations I must ask “Are we really surprised by any of this?” These are the Navy Seals for crying out loud. Translated from Latin Navy Seal roughly means “One bad mama Jamba”.

The reason I bring all this up is because recently a client of mine had a scare when both he and his wife were given mislabeled prescriptions from a Pharmacist. Lucky enough nobody was seriously hurt but it does bring up a pretty good point.

I know when I go to the Pharmacy I don’t even give a second thought to what it is I am being given. Why? Because Pharmacists, Doctors and other members of the medical field are some of the best trained and highest esteemed professionals in the world. We expect more from them and rightly so since often times they hold the balance of life and death within their hands.

Granted this is just one isolated incident out of the millions and millions of interactions that take place in the medical community each day but could you imagine if this was the norm. Could you imagine an industry where the very essence of Professionalism is thrown out the window only to go splat on the sidewalk like a hefty bag filled with Lipton Onion soup dropped off the top of the Empire State Building?

Well let me introduce you ladies and gentlemen to the Supplement Industry. They bring a new meaning to the word professionalism and it isn’t a good one.

(To be continued)

Whole Grains, Weight Loss, and Health

Hey Shank,

I understand your anti Lucky Charms position but isn't it true that whole grains are superior for weight loss and health?

Signed,
Mr. Slimbody

Hi Mr. Slimbody,

Given your colorful name I might assume that you "get it" when it comes to knowing how to live a lifetime of leanness. Either that or somebody is playing a cruel joke on you like when they call stupid people genius. Or like my shop teacher in school whose nickname was lefty even though he had lost 3 fingers on his left hand in a tragic belt sander incident.

But so I digress.

When it comes to whole grains I don't really give them much thought, especially when it comes to weight loss and health. In fact, when it comes to weight loss and health I don’t give them much thought either. Both are outcomes where as I tend to focus more on behaviors.

I find focusing on behaviors versus outcomes works much better. I do this given my experience that the biggest fallacy in this life is the idea that we are in control. I know some people believe we should be able to direct the people, places and events surrounding our lives but we don't. To add insult to the control freaks injury my experience is that we never can. When it comes to weight loss and especially health you will find there is no greater area where we lack control more.

Now understand I didn't mean to get all Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on you. I am just trying to drive home the point that buzz concepts like eating whole grains to spark fat loss make about as much sense as pre moistened diapers.

(He is supposedly a heck of nice guy but not exactly a Gillette man I would say)

My approach to whole grains is such. When I am out on the streets getting my business done I sometimes find myself without a cooler stocked with low calorie, nutrient dense foods. Now instead of freaking out like the Cookie Monster on a date with Mrs. Fields I simply go to my default meal, turkey with lettuce and tomato with lots of spicy mustard on whole wheat. I tend to like the ones from Panera Bread the best but you can pretty much pick one of these up anywhere. I do this not because I believe the bread I put on my sandwich is going to make me live longer or develop six pack abs. Both of those processes revolving around weight loss and health are dependent upon so many other bigger and more important variables. The reality is I eat my sandwich this way because that is how I like it. If I am worried about fiber I tend to default to the three or more cups of vegetables and three servings of fruit that I eat each day.

When it comes to things like whole wheat pasta and brown rice I have already gone on the record how much I hate the taste of those things. I just don't see the point in eating foods you don't like because of some long term payoff that could easily be accomplished some other way.

I have been eating white rice and white pasta for years and you could iron a shirt on my stomach (gratuitous Water Boy reference). So when it comes to how "fattening" those foods are you have me at a loss. Portion size seems to be more important than anything, especially when concerning weight loss. Maybe that is why if you know someone who switched to whole wheat pasta they lost weight initially because it tastes so bad they can't really eat much of it.

If you want to really focus on weightloss and health than my advice would be to get more consistent with the behaviors that have a proven track record of working. First is to pray to God, Darwin or whomever else it is your worship that you were dealt the right cards at birth. Then focus on behaviors like consistently eating less than you burn off through portion control and a lifetime of consistent and challenging exercise. If there is one chink in the armor of the no control mentality it would be the ability to exert behavioral change in ourselves (albeit as challenging as that might be). For me whole grains just don’t seem to make a very loud blip on the Mr. Radar of life.

(Now that I have my coffee I am ready to watch Radar.)

But then again what the hell do I know.

Yours in chocolate chip cookies,

Mike Cruickshank

Lucky Charms are now a health food?

Hey Shank,

Yesterday I was looking at my kid’s box of Lucky Charms and noticed it said made with Whole Grains. What gives? Are Lucky Charms now a health food?

Signed,
Mr. Confusion


Hi Mr. Confusion,

Love the notes you leave in my fortune cookies. Hope all is well with you.

Yes, Lucky Freaking Charms are now a health food! Think about how awesome that is! It would be like if somebody was able to come up with a high fiber cigarette.

Mistakenly, I was always under the impression that people ate things like Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, and Coco Puffs because they were quick, convenient and tasted awesome. Turns out I was wrong. I guess you cannot underestimate the heart protective benefits of all that marshmallow and sugary goodness.

Unfortunately when reality sets in you begin to realize that the only active ingredient that makes those cereals health foods isn’t Whole Grains, it’s called Marketing.

(Magically delicious for sure. But as a health food? More like magically full of hype)


I actually know some really ripped bodybuilders who eat that stuff. The only difference is it usually occurs after they have been out drinking all night or during the off season when they are competing with other bodybuilders to see who can get the biggest and the fattest possible.

Personally, if I wasn’t being thrown by an overwhelming need to recapture my youth (which has been known to happen from time to time) I would kick that stuff to the curb. But then again I don’t have kids so what the hell do I know.

Yours in chocolate chip cookies,

Shank

Chocolate Cake, Mr. Snagglepuss and Adolf Hitler (Continued)

Mr. Snagglepuss

Who is Mr. Snagglepuss you might ask. He is only the swingingest cat in a three piece suit this side of the Equator. He was also my Psychology Teacher, senior year of high school (Please note that the man’s name really wasn’t Mr. Snagglepuss. As usual names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Now I want to go on the record here and say that Mr. Snagglepuss was one of the best, if not the best, teachers I ever had.

How can I say that…well let’s just say that Mr. S taught me things in that class that even 18 years later I still find incredibly helpful and applicable to my life. To me that is the sign of a good teacher. That and he never forced me to learn that an Isosceles Triangle is a Triangle with two of its sides equal in length (This is actually a nice Segway into my next blog titled “Everything I needed to know about Geometry I learned from Fisher Price).

Anyway, one day we come into class and there is an assignment on the board. This was not the usual M.O. for the Puss so it definitely caught our attention.

The assignment was to pick from three candidates listed, the ideal leader for our country. Here are their qualifications:

Candidate A associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. Had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B was kicked out of office twice, rises from bed at 11am, used opium in college and drinks champagne, brandy, whiskey and smokes cigars to excess every day.

Candidate C was a decorated war hero, vegetarian, doesn't smoke or drink (was actually a vehement anti smoker), kept a strict schedule, never showed up late to meetings and hasn't had any extramarital affairs.

Out of the 20 people in the class, 19 picked Candidate C. The only person who didn’t pick candidate C was this guy named “Stewie”. Stewie (which ironically enough comes out as “stewed” in spell check) was always a rebel plus he had a bit of an edge to him. And just like most people from Woodbridge, N.J. he wore that edge proudly on his sleeve. He smoked Marlboro Reds since the age of 14 and regardless of the ambient temperature outside he always wore this denim jacket with a big Metallica Patch sewn on the back. Ride the lightening it said, I think.

When Stewie was asked why he didn’t go with C he said it was because the guy sounded like a control freak that always had to have it his way. Stewie liked both A and B better because he thought they sounded like real people who could more easily relate to others. He actually went with candidate B because he smoked cigars and slept in everyday, two things to which Stewie always aspired to do when he grew up.

Now you might ask what the heck does this story have to do with diet and nutrition? Candidate A, the guy who smoke and drank a lot, that was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Candidate B, the guy who also smoked and drank a lot and also slept in everyday that was Winston Churchill. Candidate C, the future PETA and Pritikin diet man of the year…that was freaking Adolf Hitler.

(Good choice picking C. Look at what you just won. The worlds biggest psychopath. I'll take the British Party animal anyday)


So congratulations! You just picked the biggest murdering coward of the last thousand years to be your leader because underneath those snazzy well pressed suits he wouldn’t have required a script for Lipitor.

Listen, I am not using this as an example to promote poor health habits along with excessive alcohol and cigarette consumption (although after the holidays I can certainly understand where people who do that are coming from). The point is this. Diet and morality do not mix, not for one second.

Next time you feel guilty about eating some cake I want you to smack yourself in the face and ask yourself this. When was the last time you gave your time or donated money to an animal shelter, a soup kitchen, or a home for seniors? There are thousands of places that need your help and resources more than Body by Jake and his newest piece of crap exercise machine that you won’t wind up using anyway. If you can’t feature that, then you have something to really feel guilty about.

Then again, what the hell to I know.

Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Mike Cruickshank

Chocolate Cake, Mr. Snagglepuss and Adolf Hitler

“Welcome to the abandoned land.
Come on child take my hand.
Here there’s no work or play. Only one bill to pay.
There’s just five words to say as you go down, down, down.
You’re gonna burn in hell!”
(Twisted Sister)

I work in Princeton, New Jersey. Now before you draw any conclusions I want to qualify what I do for a living. I do not work in one of the “sexier” professions like a Rocket Scientist, Investment banker, or Plasma Physicist(Please note that in Princeton these professions are considered sexy like actors and models are in the rest of the world).

I wear shorts for a living. I am a personal trainer.

So the other day I had a lady come in the gym. From the second she hit my peripherals I could tell she was really neurotic. I mean a real hot mess.
With no prompting on my part she came over and let me know she felt the need to “confess”.

She told me she had been bad.

Now at the risk of making this sound like a bad late night cable movie I went ahead and asked “What did you do that was so naughty”.
Maybe not the right choice of words but to my amazement she told me to “Guess”.

I asked her if she robbed a bank.

“No” she said. “Worse”.

I thought to myself what could be worse than robbing a bank? According to the FBI, not much. Maybe Domestic Terrorism?
I quickly disqualified that given the fact that a wealthy white woman hasn’t blown something up in political anger since Patti Hearst.

“Did you kill somebody?”

“No” she said, “It wasn’t that bad”.

At this point I had given up so I said to her “I give up. What is worse than robbing a bank but not as bad as murder?”

“I had a piece of chocolate cake”.
If this wasn’t the early spring and my gym wasn’t in a basement I could have sworn you would have heard Crickets chirping at that point.
People, let’s get one thing straight.

FOOD IS NOT A MORAL DECISION.

Now before all you militant vegans, conspiracy theorists and health nuts start ranting on about conditions in slaughterhouses, the evils of big agriculture and fat parents raising fat kids I want you to note for the record I am not talking about any of that stuff.

The idea that somebody should feel “bad” or even worse that stupid fitness world buzzword “guilty” about any food is insane. So the next time you hear Jaime Lee Curtis tell you that her yogurt makes her poop and lets her do so “guilt free” let me tell you straight up that she has absolutely no idea what the heck she is talking about.

There is no such thing as a “bad” food. There is only the wrong food being eaten by the wrong person at the wrong time.

For example, enjoying a cookie that you just made with your child or having a piece of cake at a celebration with family and friends is a heck of lot different than sitting alone in your apartment crying tears into a pint of Haagen Dazs contemplating how much you hate your life. One example is about using food to enhance the experience of life. The other example is using food as a drug to numb you to reality.

The point is that there is an entire industry that profits off this idea of “Guilt Free” foods and it is just plain wrong. Now if you don’t want to take my word for it then take the word of Mr. Snagglepuss.
(To be continued)….

Charlie Sheen, Street People and You

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (French Proverb)

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah I get it. You don't speak French. Well neither do I. Nor do I condone the speaking of French by some of my fellow countrymen. Please don’t get me wrong, if you want to speak French in deference to the great nation then be my guest.

It’s just that there tends to be this nasty habit common to some people from the Metropolitan Northeast. I am sure you know at least one of them. They speak French because they think it makes them better than everybody else in this fine land of milk, honey and cut off jean shorts (please note that these are the same people who learn Spanish so they can “speak the language of the people” and insist that they will send back a plate of pasta unless it is al dente). In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I do know some French but it is limited to Croissant, French Toast, French Fries, Baguette and a Doctor of Chemistry named Nico who is
Marrying my buddy Gina.

Now before you go and run and grab your copy of the French to English Dictionary I will save you the trouble and play the role of interpreter. What the proverb says is “The More Things Change, the More they Stay the same”.

In an effort to keep what is left of my sanity I have to remind myself of this saying on almost a daily basis. I do this primarily because of my dealings in the fitness world. But it also seems to consistently apply to my experiences in life.

Charlie Sheen

So other day I was sitting around watching this train wreck that is the tragedy of life called Charlie Sheen. In between “Winning”, “Tigers Blood” and whatever the next piece of drivel that was to spew out of this guy’s mouth I couldn’t help but feel bad about my enjoyment of the whole experience. Here is a guy who is obviously about three or four fries short of happy meal, having a breakdown on national television in front of millions of people and the only thing I seem to be able to do is watch and laugh.

Odds are Charlie Sheen will wind up dead soon, much earlier than nature intended. This is sad not only because when he is straight he is an amazing talent (go stick your thumb up your butt Ferris Bueller) but more so because the reality is this issue goes much deeper than his skills as an actor.

For a long time now we as human beings have had a fascination with the “crazy”, “abnormal” and “mentally insane”. A recent New York Times article told about the Bedlam Hospital in London where during the 1800’s people would pay a penny to walk the halls and peek in on the residents, all of whom were suffering from some type of mental infirmity. Apparently this was some sad form of entertainment as well as a way for the hospital to make money. After watching the public’s reaction to old Chuck I can safely say that neither I nor the rest of you out there have come very far from that point.

Not to be a total buzz kill but the fact is that Charlie Sheen is somebodies son, somebodies father, and I am sure that somewhere out there are other people who genuinely care for him but can do nothing to help other than sit back and watch him slowly disintegrate. It has to kill them and there is nothing they can do about it. Addiction really is a waste of life.

STREET PEOPLE

If there ever were guardians of the proof that addiction is indeed a waste of life you don’t have to look much further than some of the street people who reside in the alleys, missions and shelters of biggest city near to you.

I just got done reading a great book called Beggars and Thieves, written by Mark S. Fleisher. It is a non-fictional story about a scientist who spends time amongst the street people of Seattle in order to get a better understanding of the world they live in.

One part that really got my attention is when Fleisher writes about street people constantly talking about going clean (i.e. giving up drugs and moving to full time employment, paying taxes, obeying laws etc.). He relates this specifically to the millions of dollars that governments spend on programs in a wasted effort to help these people turn their lives around:

“Going straight talk is folklore…Hustlers talk about personal change is analogous to children’s talk about what they want to be when they grow up. Young children aspire to become doctors, lawyers, firemen and policemen and these aspirations are expressed without a clue about the reality of achievement in modern American society, grade point averages, the writing of research papers, the reading of thousands of pages in hushed libraries, college and graduate school entrance exams, tuition payments and college debts….(the drug users) don’t care about the realities; the pleasure comes in saying the words; the verbal ritual itself brings pleasure”.

It might seem terrible to you, as it did to me, that these people spend most of their lives in a world of fantasy, denying the reality of their situation. But here’s a newsflash for all of us, we do the same thing too. Maybe we don’t sleep out on the streets or drink alcohol to excess or do massive amounts of drugs but in some ways we are just as bad as they are. This holds especially true when it comes to dieting and weight loss.

YOU

I know a couple of people who actually don’t find the Charlie Sheen situation very funny and are quite sick of the whole thing already. You might wonder if these enlightened souls are simply better than the rest of us, existing on a higher plane of being than we simple fools could ever hope to attain.

Nope.

If there is such thing as a simple truth, the one thing I have found that all these people have in common, these Charlie Sheen outliers, is that they are recovering addicts, family members of recovering addicts, or people who work in the mental health care/addiction therapy area.

When I started this blog entry off with the proverb I was referring to the fact that no matter how much we chose to believe we have changed (i.e. we no longer believe that all of life’s illnesses can be cured with a good bleeding) there are certain aspects that are part of being human that we will never be able to outrun. Like the historian Will Durant said, history is not so much about learning not to repeat our mistakes as it is a study of the human condition. Being human is something that doesn’t change.

One of the aspects that I find is most human is our incredible inability to really understand a situation unless we are knee deep in it. Hence why most people who are some way related to addiction don’t find Charlie Sheen very funny while at the same time some of us can’t stop laughing about it. I would imagine that I too would have a hard time laughing at somebody else’s drug problem if say one day during my adolescence I came home to find my mother hanging off a rope by her neck with a puddle of pee beneath her because she didn’t balance her uppers and downers correctly. Or if my face became the deceleration point for a nasty drunk of a father’s right fist.

While not so vivid or extreme I find the same issues with my life in the fitness industry. I have been in gyms since I was fourteen years old. You will have to forgive me if twenty one years later I still cannot figure out how somebody thinks they can take a pill, or rub on a cream, or “carb block” their way to fat loss. It actually blows my mind, probably because I have been knee deep in fitness for more of my life that I have not. I mean really people; do you really believe that a pill is going to make you thin? Seriously? I just cannot feature that. Another thing I cannot feature is the body of your dreams in three times a week for twenty minutes. Hell I got abs but I spend more time than that marinating my steak and chicken for the week. I spend one hundred minutes a week just stretching. Five to six hours just lifting weights. What’s up with the sixty minutes a week thing! God, sometimes this stuff really pisses me off.

But then I need to calm down, think a little French, and remind myself that people are just that, simply people. Maybe the reason they don’t understand is because they haven’t spent a better part of their life as knee deep in fat loss as I have. They might be just like that little kid who wants to be an astronaut who doesn’t realize that you pretty much have to be both fearless and a freakin genius in order to be one. That being an astronaut is more than just having the desire to wear a helmet.

At this point I have no idea any more where this blog post is going. Maybe all I want you to do is take a hard look at yourself and an even harder look at your goals when it comes to weight loss and really ask yourself some hard questions. Am I being that little kid who wants to be the astronaut? Am I being that homeless addict who really believes he is just one big drug deal away from hitting the big time? Am I being realistic about exactly what it takes to look like that fitness model on television? Are the abs I want not only worth it but are they actually possible to obtain given all the other things I choose to have going on in my life? Or am I just drunk with the idea of it all and the feelings of fantasy that make the stark, painful realities seem much smaller than really are.

One thing is for sure. There will always be somebody in the fitness industry willing to make a buck by selling you the belief that you can do it. Whether you can is something that is up to you to decide. I got a feeling that for most of you the only real truth about six pack abs is you aren’t getting them anytime soon. And there is nothing wrong with that because there is more to life and being a good person than having a great ass.

But then again what the hell do I know.

Yours in chocolate chip cookies.

Mike Cruickshank

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

I wanted to start this newest blog entry with a little ditty from my childhood. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what the heck a ditty actually is. All I know is before he dropped the Cougar, John Mellencamp sang a song about one. Due to the obscurity of the phrase I thought it perfect given the nature of this blog so I just ran with it.

When you're climbing up a ladder,
and you feel something splatter...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you’re chilling' with your daughter,
and you feel the poopoo water...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you're miles from anywhere,
and your bowels just don't care...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you're riding in a Chevy
and you feel something heavy.

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

Given the title of this blog I am hoping you have guessed that there is something extra special wrong with me today. I have fallen victim to a stomach virus which according to my nurse practitioner has been running rampant throughout all Mercer, Middlesex and Somerset Counties (please note it is the virus and not the nurse that is running rampant).

After all the negativity and anger that came from my last blog I have decided to make this one a little more positive. This is not some Zen mission to balance the universe or to keep my yang up relative to my yin. It’s just that too much bad energy is not good for the stomach and right now, in that area, I am operating at a deficit. I can ill afford to make the situation any worse.

So in an effort to turn lemons into lemonade (according to my friend “The Weezie” you also need to add Vodka) I have decided to do something uplifting with this current bout of not so comfortable down time that nature has chosen to afford me.

If you are having a hard time with this self-help version of Mike Cruickshank just try to think of me like you own personal Tony Robbins, minus the gigantism. Now here are two sickly sweet, life affirming things I have come to realize (despite having spent the better part of the last two days counting the cracks in the bathroom tile).

1. If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything:
In the movie Godfather Part II, Hyman Roth commented that he would give 4 million to be able to take a piss without it hurting. I get that.
There are very few iron clad laws that pertain to this poop sandwich we call existence. One of them is gravity but a close second would be the debilitating nature of disease. When you are sick there is a very strong potential for that sickness to take almost complete control of your life. I would imagine this would be ten times more so if you had a chronic illness like Aids, Cancer or Multiple Sclerosis.

The ultimate problem with any of these words of wisdom is that they are meaningless unless you can connect with them on a personal level. I would never claim to be the person who could teach you how to do that. Likewise I wouldn’t want you to have to wait until something bad happens before you can connect those dots (thanks to Scott Abel for that last line).

My only suggestion is the next time you are frolicking around, admiring the shape of a beautiful person (or a sunrise for you more repressed types), or enjoying the flavor of your favorite wonderful food, try to imagine for one second that you can’t. If you have a hard time conceptualizing that then just think of how many baby back ribs a person could pound down while nauseous with chemo and radiation treatments. Or how many beautiful people at the beach or bird watching a person takes in when they have Macular Degeneration. How much running around do you think you are going to do when Multiple Sclerosis has taken your muscles out from underneath you.

It’s definitely something to think about. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. It’s worth a shot.

2. Gatorade actually serves a purpose:
Granted that purpose is limited to two things with one of them being a bad case of diarrhea. The second is if you are doing heavy physical labor for several hours under hot and humid conditions. When it comes to the later please understand the following. Sitting on the nautilus leg extension machine in a climate controlled gym does not count as heavy physical labor under hot and humid conditions.

I guess what really has always chapped my ass about Gatorade is more how it is marketed and misused but then again the two probably go hand in hand. Just so we can set the record straight, Gatorade does not make Derek Jeter or Michael Jordan great (nor does it make them sweat green, which sounds more like a liver condition). Too much of it would more likely give them some acid reflux than anything else.

Also, there is not a widespread pandemic of electrolyte deficiency in this country. With the way those commercials carry on you would think that electrolytes are scarcer than a seated toilet in Japan (if you don’t know what that reference means please don’t ask).

The bottom line is that Gatorade is really just a tool. Now granted when I was a kid it came in only one flavor, Lemon Lime Green Death, was dispensed in a small glass bottle and tasted awful. But it does serve its purpose when applied to the right person in the right situation. I could actually go for some right now but that has more to do with my potty issues and less to do with any desire to play in the NFL.

Conclusion

If neither of these makes sense or if they come across as silly and trite please note that I am a little new to this whole self-help thing. Granted there could have been more content here but there is only so much that I can do from the semi prone position. Personally I always thought of the average self-help author as a publicly accepted drug pusher. Instead of using coke, crack or heroin they chose to deal in false hope. So in that sense I never had much of a taste for the subject.

But then again what the hell do I know.

Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies (not now but maybe in a couple of days),

Mike Cruickshank