The Weekly Platter

So, it's Friday, May 18. I haven't posted in a while, so I'm serving you my buffet of blog posts here. The Weekly Platter, if you will.

Personal

The Assault is continuing on after a small break due to a lingering back issue. I think I may have slipped a disc in my back when sleeping awkwardly on Ro's couch about a month ago. But a couple of weeks of sleeping on the floor and taking a break from the gym have me feeling about 95% now. Got in three Crossfit sessions this past week and am looking forward to continuing with the strength and conditioning regimen there. Every day, it's something different. And every day, I wake up sore all over. I look forward to each workout and am truly exhausted when each workout is done. It's a win-win, folks! Yesterday's workout: 21-15-9 of box jumps and burpees (that means 21 box jumps, 21 burpees, 15 box jumps, 15 burpees, 9 box jumps, 9 burpees). Took me 7:30 with sporadic 5-10 second rests between sets. Not thrilled with my time, but my lungs still hurt this morning, so I'm pushing myself.

Weight is still right around 181. I'll admit, I haven't really been making an effort to get down to the 175 target I laid out some months back. I've been content to sit right around here, and this week, MotherOfTheWife is in town and making all sorts of Indian foods that I can't possibly say no to, so who knows how much I've been eating. But no more! The honeymoon with 180 is over. Time to bust through the plateau and reach 175. I got weddings to go to this summer, dammit!

Travel

Just got done with a stint in Florida, Atlanta, Nashville, New York and Chicago. A couple of weeks here on the homefront in CT, and then it's out to India for a week. I'll return to CT for one night to attend TheWife's residency program graduation dinner (she's not graduating, she's got another year), and then it's off to Georgia for a week. One June wedding in L.A., one July wedding in Seattle, an August wedding in Asheville, NC, and a September wedding in Long Island will cap off the personal summer travel. As for work, who knows.

TheWife


Many of you who know me know that my month-long trip all around the US and to the Caribbean, followed by the two-week work trip mentioned above, left TheWife feeling abandoned. It didn't help that Anant decided to peace out for most of that time, too, so TheWife was in effect at home by herself for the majority of the time. And yes, she blamed me for this. In fact, she so hated me that she wouldn't even speak to me or let me finish a sentence on the few days I was at home. I told her it felt like we had broken up, but we were still living together. It was super odd. Anyway, she had no idea I was going to Chicago because when I tried apprising her of my travel plans, she cut me off with a curt "I don't care" or simply didn't listen when I did tell her my plans. So imagine her rage when she called me on her way home from work one day, just to hear me tell her I'm on the way to Chicago. Hell has no wrath like TheWife scorned.

Well, I'm glad to say TheRanga, not unlike ThePhoenix, has risen from the flames a stronger and more powerful being. And how did I do it? I'm actually not sure. I think it's some combination of actually being at home for an extended period of time and delivering her a great birthday gift along with a reservation at a nifty little restaurant, capped off by an extravaganza of cupcakes from the best bakery in Hartford. Apparently, the best way to TheWife's heart is through her sweet tooth. Boom, baby!

(TheWife, if you are reading this, I love you very much)

Sports


I won't go too much into detail here, but the Saints bounty-gate scandal keeps getting more and more complicated. Anthony Hargrove's recent admission that Joe Vitt and Gregg Williams told him to lie is a HUGE stain on the franchise that has been denying any wrongdoing so far. Somehow, this seems to have passed without much more scrutiny. The suspensions, while severe, were in this Saints fan's opinion, warranted. Otherwise, how the hell is the NFL going to put a stop to this kind of behavior?

But NOW, things have taken an even more interesting turn, with Jonathan Vilma deciding to sue Roger Goodell for defamation of character. Vilma must be completely resolute in his protests that he never paid, nor intended to pay, any player for intentionally inflicting injury upon another player. I just don't even know  what to think at this point. As a lifelong Saints fan, when we won SB XLIV, it felt too good to be true. It now seems that maybe it was too good, even if only a little bit.

As for Duke basketball, an offseason that was only slightly better than the Saints' took a turn for the better this week, when the Blue Devils landed a top 25 recruit, power forward Amile Jefferson. Finally, Duke gets the long, versatile, mismatch guy that we have sorely missed since the likes of Shane Battier and Mike Dunleavy. At 6'7", 190, Jefferson has a bit of filling out to do, but I have faith in the Duke staff to use him in a way that makes the team a bit less one-dimensional than last year's squad. So we'll return Seth Curry, Andre Dawkins (maybe), Tyler Thornton and Quin Cook in the backcourt; Mason Plumlee, Ryan Kelly, Josh Hairston, Alex Murphy and Marshall Plumlee (God, please let this one be better than the last two) down low; and we'll be adding sharpshooter Rasheed Sulaimon and the aforementioned Amile Jefferson to the squad. If Murphy and the younger Plumlee can come in without missing a beat (remember, they red-shirted last year, so they should be familiar with all the sets) and if Sulaimon and Jefferson can adapt quickly this summer, we might actually field a decent team! Honestly, as long as we don't lose to another 15-seed in the first round, I'll be happy.

So, I Actually Read an Article

I read this article last week in the WSJ. For those of you who can't access it because WSJ requires a subscription, I'll give you the skinny: basically, a body of scientists who carry out studies and influence national health policy have come out and said that obesity is at an all-time high and it's high time we do something about it. That's all fine and good--I agree wholeheartedly. The article then goes on to elaborate on what the scientists say we should do in order to fight obesity: place an emphasis on daily exercise and also implement systems for counseling, preventing, and treating obesity. Again, this is all fine and good. Overall, however, the article has a tone of "Why do we have so much trouble legislating obesity out of our society?" In fact, a telling excerpt from the article states the following:

"While several cities and states have considered excise taxes on sugared drinks in recent years, for example, the beverage industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying and advertising against them. All have eventually been defeated thus far."

And this is where my problem lies. I don't know that we should rely on laws to fight obesity. There is a camp that will argue that food, like alcohol or tobacco, is an addictive substance and that an addiction to food can lead to self-destructive behavior: eating disorders, depression, isolation, deeper psychological problems, suicide; you name it, you could probably find a way to link food to it. These people will argue that if alcohol and tobacco are so heavily regulated at the federal and state levels, then why not food? And this is a sound logical argument.

Except for one crucial fact--food is a necessity for life; alcohol and tobacco are not. I think it's pretty universally accepted that being a drinker of alcohol or a user of tobacco shortens your life; it cannot be argued that being an eater of food shortens your life. Yes, being an eater of certain foods will clearly shorten your life, but being an employee of certain companies will shorten your life too--any job involving exposure to the elements, manual labor, inhalation of pollution or an undue amount of stress will take some days, if not years, off your life.

In the work world, we call this "occupational hazard" and go about our merry way, saying "well, that guy CHOSE to be a coal miner/painter/construction worker/investment banker/biohazard cleanup guy, so it's his fault." But when someone eats fried chicken, pizza and wings to his death, now we're getting up in arms about the government's responsibility to tell that guy not to eat so much pizza? Or, alternatively, we look to the government to make pizza so expensive that he no longer finds utility in eating it. In my opinion, this guy made the choice to overeat pizza and is paying the price.

Now, lest I sound insensitive, a disclaimer: those of you who know me know that I am a passionate eater. If I could, I would eat pizza, fried chicken, and tacos every day for the rest of my life. Many of you have seen me take down an entire pizza or 10+ tacos at a time, in fact. Hell, I really like the way beer tastes and I wouldn't mind having a bunch of beer every day for the rest of my life. But this is 2012--I have the internet and a wealth of other resources at my disposal. I know that eating a ton of pizza and drinking a ton of beer on a daily basis will dig me an early grave. Thus, I don't do it. I don't need a law to make pizza more expensive to keep me from eating it. I just need the information that pizza, while delicious, is not good for me and should not be eaten on a daily basis. And this is where this article fails, because it doesn't mention the most potent weapon we have in the fight against obesity: early childhood parenting.

It is no secret that childhood obesity has reached alarming levels these days, and the nation is wondering what the hell we are to do about it. But the funny thing is this: obesity is at such a high level in 2012, when we arguably have MUCH more information on healthy foods/lifestyles, much more access to healthy foods, and a wealth of options for children in terms of exercise. For instance, when I grew up in Louisiana in the '80s, I guarantee there was little information on trans fats, optimal grain/meat/dairy intake per day; there sure as hell were no healthy options at McDonald's; and finding a tennis partner in north Louisiana, well, I may as well have been looking for a cricket partner.

The key that kept me from being a gigantic fatass as a kid was simply that Mom would yell at us for watching too much TV and playing too much Nintendo or generally just sitting around too much. We had to do chores around the house--one of us loaded the dishwasher after dinner, one of us cleared the dining table, the other cleaned the countertops and stovetops. On the weekends, we were forced to help Mom and Dad in the garden planting pansies, dethatching the grass, turning over the flowerbeds--whatever needed to be done that day, basically. Each evening, we had to pick up our mess in our bedrooms and go to bed in a clean room. Even when there weren't chores to be done, Mom would give us an allotted time for TV (usually 1-2 episodes of Saved By the Bell and California Dreamin'), and then would literally turn the TV off and say "go run around outside."

Now, we weren't eating the healthiest foods on earth--after all, most of our meals were Indian food, which is really not that great for you; and the "eat out" nights were always pizza, Taco Bell, or Chinese food--but what we were doing was moving around. A lot. Was I as good at Tecmo Bowl as some of my friends? Well, no. Was I skinnier than they were? No question. And there is no doubt in my mind that those habits cultivated in me by my parents have always laid the foundation for me to live an active lifestyle. As you can tell from reading the Assault posts, I'm not eating raw veggies all day long every day. I enjoy my trips to the pizzeria, Popeye's, and my boy Chili's, but there is always an emphasis on activity. Even if it's not intense exercise at the Crossfit gym, it's cleaning out the garage, picking up in the bedroom, decluttering the kitchen and breakfast area, trying to walk a lot during the day by parking farther away from the office, grocery store, etc. These little habits, when repeated every day, make a world of difference. And in my opinion, these habits start at an early age. Sadly, not enough parents are instilling these habits in their children.

So while the WSJ can point to the lack of codified nutrition legislation and Coca-Cola's lobbying budget as prime culprits in the fattening of America, I'm looking at the irresponsible parents who, when faced with the decision of what to feed their kids for dinner, stuff them with Coke and pizza and then let them sit and watch TV and play Xbox all night. Write an article on what we're going to do about that, WSJ, and I'll pay more attention. Hopefully then, we can start pushing these bars lower: