Olympic Fever

Much of the world is currently in the throes of Olympic fever. The pageantry, the athletics, and of course, watching your country in the medal race.

But, you know what? I'm just not that interested.

I'm sure part of this is my anti-China bias. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I've lost interest in the Olympics more generally. The jingoism gets to me for one. And then there's the fact that my youthful dream of being an Olympic swimmer will never come to pass (although the 41-year old athlete with two kids is making me reconsider this).

But I've been far more interested and concerned with the war between Georgia and Russia than I am with Team America, Team China, or Team Korea (which is surprisingly high in the early medal count right now - good for them).

Anyway, I want to call your attention to this article. Tim Wu discusses the non-Chinese media (I refuse to call it Western because, let's be frank, this kind of coverage isn't limited to just the "West") and whether it's being too harsh on China.

Now, I agree with much, if not all, of what he's saying. Just because the Chinese have put in a lot of hard work to prepare for the Olympics doesn't mean it should be immune from criticism, particularly if all that hard work was geared towards cleaning up their treatment of laborers, minorities, or the environment. And as a good friend of mine said, if China wants to be a leader on the world stage, it's got to be able to accept the criticism. Just because you're great doesn't mean you're faultless, and it's perfectly legitimate for people to point out your faults (they do it all the time to the U.S., EU, and Russia. Indians do it to themselves.)

However, I think there's also something to the Chinese complaint. It's difficult to separate legitimate criticism from a wider cultural disdain, but I think some of the reporting falls into that. Of course, there is the gap between Chinese expectations and everyone else's reporting, driven in many ways by the high expectations that the CCP set for both itself and the rest of the world. But, while I may dislike China, I think our criticisms must be tempered with this recognition of all its people have accomplished in the past 30 years (as well as being mindful of all its people destroyed in the 30 years before that).

The criticism is getting tied up with the jingoism, and I draw a line there. It's fine to point out (massive) faults in the system and history, but the arguments are stronger (and sometimes more chilling) if they're grounded in a more rational assessment of the country.

New Routine

If you really want to lose weight, cut fat, slim down, and enhance your cardiovascular fitness, there is really nothing better and nothing easier than running. Better than swimming, better than stair climber, and better than those radial things the housewives always use that the gym. I say this out of experience, not because I read it in the literature.

That's why its such a shame to live in this paved city. Not even the parks have unpaved running paths, and the longterm impact that all that pounding has on your knees, hips, and lower back probably more than makes up for the shortterm cardiovascular benefit you'll get by running here.

At the end of last year, with my sedentary job and somewhat careless eating habits, my waistline was getting out of control. In high school I stayed steady with a 30 inch waist. It moved up to 31 inches in college, and after several years of computer terminal jobs, I'm now at 32 inches. My pants have been steadily "shrinking" this year, bringing me close to 33 inches in November, so I had no choice but to put my foot down.

I had been maintaining a solid strength-weight routine for over a half year as of January and registered modest, incrimental strength gains becuase of it, but it did nothing to improve my heart health or slim me down. A super cardio/diet routine was in order, and running was out of the question because of the hard pavement, crowded sidewalks, and start-stop traffic lights around my house. I also counted out the treadmill becuase it's so horribly boring, and it is also bad for your hips. Swimming would have been a good backup option if there was a pool nearby--and there is not.

My only remaining recourse was/is the torturous stair climber. No doubt, it is an effective contraption and it can deliver a solid concentration of exercise. But in my opinion, you spend more energy wearing out your legs on the stair climber than you do increasing your heart rate, which makes it feel more like a strength routine than a cardiovascular one. Also, it hurts a lot, and it feels like you suffer twice as much to burn the same number of calories as you would running.

Mentally, any kind of machine is punishing. Unlike running outside or swimming laps, you cannot tailor your pace to your mood. You lock yourself in for a certain time and a certain difficulty, and you can't deviate from it. It is boring too, and there is little to distract your from your work other than the crap news or thinking about how much your legs hurt, yikes.

Flash back to six years ago: I was in pretty bad shape. I didn't exercise and was pretty reckless with my diet. On a whim, I decided to start running in the morning on a dirt track near my apartment. Within two months, all of the fat just melted off my body, and the whole process just seemed effortless. Unlike now, there was never a sense of forboding or dread when I started to run. I just did it. When I felt tired, I backed off, and I turned it on when I felt great. It was easy to add variety to the routine by running up stairs and doing sprints. Also, when I ran, I could zone out, look around, plan my day, and otherwise distract myself, and the workouts would always seem shorter than they actually were.

I guess there is nothing really left to say other than I wish there was more dirt in the city, more running surfaces than the concrete sidewalks, and more grass. It would be a lot easier for me to stay healthy if there were.

Food and Sleep

If there was one moment when I could say that I felt like I was finally beginning to settle back into my USA life, it would have to be the day I got my gym membership. That was back in March. At that time I had been working for a month, I was basically finished setting up my apartment, and I really needed to settle into some kind routine that was completely unrelated to work. Exercise was a good bet for me because I have always been interested in physical fitness, and I know how to set up an intro routine having been in and out of shape about a dozen times over the last 15 years.

With my longish commute in mind, there was really no way for me to combine a strength and an endurance program. I only have 45 minutes of time to spend every morning, so it had to be one or the other. The lack of runable parks around here made my decision easy. I joined a gym and began a strength routine.

Now, three months later my results have been frustratingly modest at best. Sure, I went through the initial two-month surge. Most exercisers see significant gains throughout the first few months of exercise because lazy muscles respond to just about any stimulus. But, three months in I have already plateaued and I don’t see myself breaking through it. Why the pessimism? Because I know that my intensity is not the problem. Even though I hate it, I have been able to drag myself out of bed every morning at 6 am to go throw the plates around for an hour. The real culprits in my overmodest gains are my uneven diet and sleep patterns.

Sleep is a panacea for many ills and it can really hurt you when you can’t get enough of it. If you are trying to exercise (or sit through boring lectures), then don’t expect to improve unless you can get enough sleep. This was a serious problem in high school when I suffered from insomnia. I remember then hitting a certain exercise wall that I couldn’t go past. The problem I’m facing now is that I can’t go to bed early enough. 10 pm should be my absolute ceiling for bed time, but I’m lucky if I can be in bed by 11pm. Not only does this make getting up at 6 am bloody murder, but it just sucks the life out of a workout and it kills recovery. While recovering from a strength workout, every hour of sleep is precious. If you can’t get enough sleep, then your body cannot keep up repairing the damage that you are doing to it. This is when you plateau and you notice your strength gains start to dip.

My dietary habits have not been so hot either. I tend to make three good healthy meals for myself every day Monday through Friday. Sound good? It isn’t. There should be at least five meals a day to keep my insulin levels fairly even and my metabolism up. But frankly, I can’t keep up. One solution would be to split my lunch in two, eating part of it around 10 am and the other part around 2 pm, but my work schedule does not really allow for this. What happens is I end up tanking three large meals a day, and this has not been beneficial to my waistline at all. Also, weekends have proven to be killers with frequent trips home and meals out. As tasty as it is, Mexican food is a fat bomb and Chinese restaurants use too much oil (I am not singling out Chinese restaurants. Most restaurants up the oil/fat content of their food to make it taste better. I just happen to eat Chinese a lot.) Even at home, I tend to snack around on sweet things on the weekends. We still have a full cake in the freezer that I haven’t touched. That’ll have to go somewhere soon. We also have honey-covered almonds, candy, chocolate, and other stuff just sitting around. When I go home, my mom unloads this junk on us and temptation is too much to refuse.

So that’s the way it is. Strength gains are hugely reliant on consistent diet and sleep. Does this mean that you need to measure your food out with a measuring cup? It sure does. Otherwise you end up eating too little, not recovering, and wasting an hour in the gym.

Well, what else is there to say other than life improves with better time management. Something I definitely need to learn.