Take a Walk and Simplify Your Life

Photo by Travelzine












Feature Entry: Take a Walk and Simplify Your Life

The first week of August is “Simplify Your Life Week.” Sometimes we aggravate our stress level by making things too complicated. The MoneyWalker is feeling too much stress because of all the junk in his basement. It is time for his semi-annual Friendship House Charity Garage Sale. Simplify, get rid of that junk.

When I’m overstressed, my coping behavior is weak. Stress causes me to as Anita Brookner says, “waste my emotional energy.” It seems that we humans are always trying to shape our emotional energy with money and the things it buys. I have a closet full of clothes but now I want a new sport jacket.

There can be negative consequences when we attempt to manage our emotional energy with money. Moreover, with the current national debt crises, making needless purchases can greatly add to our stress rather than reduce it.

What can we do to simplify a strategy to better manage our emotional energy? Eat rich foods? Take expensive vacations? Self medicate with pills and alcohol? Not if we want to simplify our life. The correct answer in a word—walk! Simplify--who needs those expensive fitness club fees and the over-hyped pageantry and pretense of the gym.

Journal Entry:

Today’s weight = 174.8

Money finds since last entry = $13.60, $2.27 average per walk.

MoneyWalker

Recidivism, Diet, and Exercise

Negative thinking or just contemplative?

Journal Entries, Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2010

October 27: Weight = 172.4 lbs.; Coinage = $.96, 11 pennies, 1 dime, 3 quarters; Glass bottles = 3; Ground Scores = 3.
October 28: Weight 173.2 lbs.; Coinage = $2.29, 94 pennies, 1 nickel, 13 dimes; GB = 6.

October 30: Weight = 175.2 lbs.; Coinage = $.48, 18 pennies, 1 nickel, 1 quarter; GS = 6; GB = 5. One interesting event was a movie set in Mid City NO. More than 50 trucks, technicians everywhere, busy action, and giant lighting equipment. I wonder which of the people where the stars and which movie was being shot. We have so many movies and television series shot in our fair city it is becoming known as Hollywood South.

October 31: Weight = 176.2; Coinage = $3.91 including one int. coin (100 Chile pesos), 81 pennies, 10 nickels, 11 dimes, 6 quarters; GB =10.

November 1: Weight = 176.0; Coinage = $1.89, 69 pennies, 2 dimes, 4 quarters; GB = 9; GS = 6.

November 2: Weight = 175.4 lbs.; Coinage = $1.39, 39 pennies, 4 nickels, 2 dimes, 2 quarters; GB = 6; GS =5. Today was a nice walk in the rain.

Feature Entry: Recidivism, Diet, and Exercise
There is no question; October was a disaster for the MoneyWalker in terms of exercise and diet adherence. The month contained three separate trips to see friends and relatives. Weighing ever day—forget about it. Healthy breakfasts, no way. Ninety minute zoom walks—are you kidding me. Portion control, how about raw gluttony. All my old bad habits bunched together in one wonderful guilt-free month of unrestrained eating and hardly any boring exercise. Now my waist line shows the result. Guilt and shame have returned with a vengeance.

My October was a working definition of recidivism. Here is how recidivism works. First, you develop a bad habit. We will call it overeating sweets and starchy carbohydrates. The result is weight gain and being overweight. Second, is a resolution to follow a diet and lose weight. The resolution works and a healthy BMI (body mass index) is obtained. Third, a long vacation is experienced followed by a calorie filled holiday, Halloween for instance. The good eating habits are broken and the lost pounds race back. That is how recidivism works.

Unfortunately for people like the MoneyWalker, losing weight is not just a matter of diet and portion control. It also involves a chain of behaviors including exercise, journaling portions, and daily weighing. With recidivism, all the positive behaviors are victims. Collectively the loss of adherence to healthy behaviors results in a vortex of shame and guilt that leads to more binge eating and denying.

Besides weigh gain, a dangerous side effect of diet/exercise recidivism is loss of self-esteem. Lowered self-esteem can then lead to anxiety which if not checked and if other stressors are also present can lead to depression. Stressors such as abuse, personal conflicts, illness, personal issues such as weight gain, death, and substance abuse can all pile up and lead to clinical depression. Clinical depression is serious and should be treated by professionals, but there are behaviors and techniques that can be used to combat regular depression and similar feelings including episodes of stress, unhappiness, sadness, or grief.

Clinical psychologists often use Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help their clients understand how to change negative thinking into more healthy feelings. All situations have positive as well as negative aspects. CBT utilizes a series of exercises that help the individual to identify the positive and eliminate the negative. CBT is not recommended for do-it-yourselfers, but a related skill, positive self-talk, is a doable. Positive self-talk is what the MoneyWalker calls “cognitive over ride,” a replacement of positive thoughts with negative thoughts." Elizabeth Scott, MS has provided several ways to practice positive self-talk.

Because self-talk can be both negative and positive, and because people with common depression focus on negative self talk, she recommends that we notice our patterns of negative thinking. She recommends that we keep a journal to jot down negative comments in order to summarize our feelings. Knowing our patterns can help us to practice thought-stopping. When the negative thoughts begin, we just say STOP!, and then replace the thoughts with positive thinking. Some use a rubber-band around their waist and pop it when the negative thinking begins.

It is not always possible to totally replace negative thoughts, but the self-talk can use milder wording. For example, we can substitute “pain” for “discomfort.” When walking and dealing with rude and dangerous drivers, instead of saying “I hate drivers that never yield to pedestrians, they make me so angry!!!” Instead we can say “ I don’t like rude drivers, they annoy me.”
Concerning healthy food choices, we can use positive self-talk to change negative selections to neutral or positive selections. At a party, we can use self-talk to select non-fattening foods and beverages. We can say, “This chocolate brownie will only give me a minute or two of pleasure, but I will feel depressed for hours; I will munch on these veggies instead.” And we can change self-limiting statements to questions. Instead of saying, “I can’t handle this temptation,” we can turn the episode into a question, “How can I handle this sugary food temptation?”

The MoneyWalker is giving positive self-talk a chance. I’m just going to over ride my desire for fattening foods and tell myself to eat healthy. Just follow my journal entry and watch those pounds fall away.
MoneyWalker

Hey Neuroscience, Can You Help Me With My Depression?

Journal Entry: 6/16/10: Weight = 173.8 lbs; Coinage = $.26.

Feature Entry: Hey Neuroscience, Can You Help Me With My Depression?

With continuing nightmares of Katrina, now the oil blow-out in the gulf, the bad economy, a seemingly irresolvable Arizona border, and a sinking 401, is it any wonder that the MoneyWalker is in the ravages of depression.

But the cause is not any of those things. This morning, inexplicably the scales indicated a gain of 2 lbs and the walk coinage was an 18 month low—26 cents. Now those are causes for depression!

San Francisco neuroscientist Puterman, Lin, Blackburn, O’Donovan, Adler, and Epe have completed a study that suggest that vigorous physical exercise helps reduce the health related negative effects of chronic stress. They found that sedentary women between the age of 54 and 82 considered to be chronically psychologically stressed and that failed to exercise regularly developed DNA degeneration that is thought to lead to cardiovascular disease. In contrast, a matched group of chronically stressed women that exercised according to the CDC guidelines (75 minutes of exercise per week) did not experience DNA degeneration.

The authors concluded that, “Vigorous physical activity appears to protect those experiencing high stress by buffering its relationship with TL.” (TL is the abbreviation for telomere length. Telomeres are sections of DNA at the end of chromosomes. Without exercise the TLs were shorter and deformed in comparison with the exercise group.)

Whew, just knowing all that walking is providing a healthy buffer for my chronic stress so as to prevent cardiovascular disease and other life-style diseases helps the MoneyWalker to feel a whole lot better.

The MoneyWalker

Journal Entry: 6-15-10: Weight = 171.6 lbs; Coinage = $1.27
Journal Entry: 6-14-10: Weight = 171.2 lbs; Coinage = $1.97

Walking as a prevention of cancer?

Journal Entry: Average weight over last seven days = 177.0 (yikes!); Coinage 12/11 = $1.88, Coinage 12/13 = $2.04, Coinage 12/14 = $3.59, Coinage 12/15 $2.81, Coinage 12/16 = $.66. Note the $1.88 and $.66 totals were vacuum container free. The MoneyWalker will not turn his back on the generous agreement with the Mid-City Car Wash’s generous policy of leaving their vacuum bays unlocked and their non-harassment management policy, he continues to find more enjoyment in finding curb coins.

Feature Entry: Walking as a prevention of cancer?

Medical research continually indicates that chronic tension and anxiety attacks the immune system. Many medical researchers have found that cancer cells openly reside in our body but are arrested or held harmless by a healthy immune system. We also know that individual decisions such as a good night’s sleep, stress management, eating healthy, and exercise lead contribute to the body’s immune functioning.

Thus walking appears to be an important weapon in the war against cancer. Not only does walking assist in weight control and keeping the body physically fit, it provides an excellent way to shape emotional energy thus reducing the effects of chronic tension. While there is no scientific evidence that links the habit of walking with cancer prevention, it is logical to assume that the practice of systematically walking as a life style habit helps the body’s immune system in keeping dangerous cancer cells at bay.

MoneyWalker

Interaction Statistics and Weight Loss

Journal Entry: 10/26/09: Coinage = $1.26, 96 pennies (one wheat), 4 nickels, 3 dimes; Glass bottles = 8; Ground scores = 3; Best coinage = 3 asphalt coins (coins hammered away from New Orleans’ asphalt streets). It has turned chilly in New Orleans, a perfect time for a light jacket. The MoneyWalker placed a washed light jacket on a special hook on a street pole with this sign attached, “Washed, please take!” The jacket, a ground score from an earlier walk, had been retrieved from a curb site. It lasted on the pole less than 30 minutes. Someone is walking warming today. Giving back is a good feeling.

Journal Entry: 10/27/09: Weight = 175.2; Coinage = $1.26, 41 pennies, 1 nickel, 3 dimes, 2 quarters; Glass bottles retrieved = 2; Ground Scores = 2; Best coinage find = a fence find consisting of one quarter and two pennies. Tip: I have found that people throw coins away, usually pennies, especially along the fences that separate the drive throughs of fast food franchises from establishments next door. So, when I check drive throughs, I look especially closely next to the fences as well as the areas near the pay windows. This morning the MoneyWalker found a quarter and two pennies along the fence of a Burger King drive through.

Feature Entry: Interactive statistics and weight loss

The MoneyWalkers just returned from a five-day mini vacation to the beaches of Destin, FL with three other couples—great friends. We have been taking this twice yearly trip for several years. We all met years ago at the University of New Orleans’ Faculty Women’s Club. Five of us are professors and all are teachers, three from public schools. Although representing different disciplines, our long friendship is due in part to a respective appreciation of statistics.

At Destin, the women enjoy shopping and the men hang out, take walks, philosophy, and read. Two of us enjoy checking out the thrift stores for used books and brick-a-brac treasures (the MoneyWalker collects small ducks, small boats, and cassette tape recordings). One book from an earlier post was _Perfect Weight_ by Rubin Jordan, 2008 (Siloam Publishing). Chapter 11, “Think for Your Perfect Weight” reminded me of interactive statistics and weight loss.

The chapter featured a testimonial by Carol Green, and executive chef from South Africa. Carol, after years of dieting and sporadic exercise still found herself to be consistently 20 lbs overweigh. She finally found a third step that has brought her back to her perfect weight—to eat while relaxed: “How you receive your food is important. Make every meal an occasion. Pray over your food. Eat calmly. Eat with joy every bite.” It was the interaction of diet, exercise, and stress management that produced the desired result.

She noted while studying to be a chef in Lyon, France that most French citizens eat hearty amounts of eggs, butter, and cream, but weren’t overweight. She noted that “French people ate their meals sitting down. They weren’t in a hurry to eat, preferring stimulating discussion and a leisurely pace with their knife and fork along with a glass of Bordeaux, even in the middle of the afternoon. No matter what they had pressing on their schedules, the French took their time whenever a meal was served.” We Americans can learn from the French. Too often, we eat on the run, wolf down our meals, and fail to appreciate the food or the time to prepare it.

In summary, it is the statistical interaction effect that might be missing from our attempt to lose weight. It is not just exercise and diet that needs our attention, but also stress free eating. Why not eat better food, sitting down, while enjoying stress-free and stimulating conversation.

MoneyWalker

Anorexia and the Walking Culture

Journal Entry: Weight = 174.4 Coinage = $1.17, 37 pennies, 1 nickel, 5 dimes, 1 quarter; Glass Bottles = 2; Ground Scores = 2; Best coinage find = .46 at the Mikimota restaurant and Sushi bar drive up. I regular check this money spot but rarely score. This morning’s 1 quarter, two dimes, and one penny made me forget how much I dislike sushi.

Feature Entry: Anorexia and the Walking Culture

Yesterday, the MoneyWalker stated that Barbie, now 50, was a role model for us all. In the nicest of way, The Numismatist, and Ms. MoneyWalker agrees, suggested that yours truly was misinformed and provided misleading if not dangerous advise; that Barbie was anorexic for crying out loud.

For most, turning 50 is a milestone. Looks improve for some; others keep their girlish figures or rippling abs. Still others pull together a wardrobe that expresses their personality. But it's rare to have all three - unless you're made of plastic and your name is Barbie (NYT partial quote). Born Barbara Millicent Roberts on March 9, 1959, in Willows, Wisconsin, Barbie, the 12 inch doll is the top-selling toy in the world. What say you readers? Is Barbie a worthy role model? Is she anorexic?

As for the MoneyWalker, he must recant on this issue. If Barbie influences some members of the walking culture to pursue walking in order to obtain unhealthy thinness (anorexia), then Barbie cannot be held as a role model.

According to the American Psychological Association

“The cardinal feature of anorexia is refusal to maintain body weight over a minimal normal weight for age and height. (APA, 1987, p. 65)

In their chapter of Louis Diamant’s edited book, Psychology of Sport, Exercise, and Fitness: Social and Personal Issues, 1991, J. A. Prout, R. V. Kappius, and P. S. Imm indicated that 14% of anorexic patients over-exercise and are characterized by an obsessive impersonal ego-dystonic urge to move (ego-dystonic, a person's behavior, thoughts, impulses, drives, and attitudes that are unacceptable to him or her and cause anxiety). Prout et. al. indicated that anorexic individuals that are exercise compulsive walk great distances, rarely settle, have a sense of inner restlessness, and spend their time doing vigorous physical exercises. Such exercise finally leads to exhaustion and then depression.

Our protagonist Lewis Percy often fell into this walking trap:

“As he walked along the Fulham Road his pace slackened and his euphoria…gradually ebbed away, leaving sadness and confusion in its wake.”

He also had an eating disorder.

Anorexic? Be careful out there.

MoneyWalker

Walking Culture, a time for rumination and nobility of thought

Journal Entry: Weight = 173.2; Coinage = $.69, 9 pennies, 1 dime, 2 quarters; Glass bottles = 5; Best Coinage find = 64 cents in curb finds, two quarters, a dime, and four pennies. The MoneyWalker’s ventral striatum, the brain's reward region, is joy filled with all monetary finds, but finding coins along the curbs provides the most satisfaction. Two coins were especially nice, an old quarter and later an old dime; old in the sense that they had been ‘walked over’ many times and were laden with street corrosion.

Feature Entry: Anita Brookner, the winner of the prestigious UK Booker Award, has written more than twenty literary novels, all featuring lead characters that are dedicated walkers. The MoneyWalker is a big fan. The current read is Lewis Percy. Lewis, like all of her characters, battles with a hostel vortex of depression. Each chapter chronicles his “will to meaning” as a defense against being dragged under to a life of misery.

One of Lewis’s most successful strategies is his constitutional habit of taking long walks:

“Whatever the reason, he was not anxious to get home without some kind of interval rumination, some time to call his own. The idea of covering a long distance appealed to him. Gentlemen in Trollope, to whom he was devoted, even more than to his early heroes, covered vast distances and were thus able to sustain their noble thoughts. He resolved to walk home regularly, and to tell Tissy to expect him an hour later than his usual time.”

Thus, two of the benefits of those that subscribe to the culture of walking is the opportunity gained for rumination—time to reflect on serious matters of the mind; and second, to find time for noble thoughts.

MoneyWalker

Stress Management Solutions

Journal Entry: Weight = 173.0; Coinage = $1.54 ($1.40 from morning walk) 29 pennies, 4 nickels, 4 dimes, 3 quarters; Glass bottles retrieved = 11, Ground Scores = 4 including a perfect designer golf shirt; Best coinage find = a curb quarter from an area that offered a high level of visual distraction, a miracle find.

Feature Entry: The MoneyWalker just returned from his annual pilgrimage visit to Houston, TX to watch the Houston Astros with his long time friend and exercise physiologist Mark Loftin. We will feature him in an interview later. These trips allow Mark and I to totally enjoy 48 hours of stress-free living. The three B’s--baseball, brisket, and a little booze--can do wonders. We also enjoyed Tex-Mex, long walks in Memorial park, and the Houston Museum of Fine Art. What a week-end. Astros won two out of three from the Brewers. Two pennies were the total find, but who cared, we were stress free.

About stress, Elizabeth Scott, M.S. writes for About.com, a New York Times professional blog. About.com has hundreds of topics including Scott’s blog on stress relief. One of her recent blogs was “Stress Relief in 5 Minutes or Less.” She listed several examples, two included “quick burst of exercise,” and “have a good laugh.” Loftin and I had tons of laughs and since he is a master with corny jokes, I will feature one that he might tell, a politically safe bar joke.

A three legged dog walked into a crowded bar in one of our Western states.
Bartender, “What can I do for you?”
Three legged dog, “I’m looking for the man that shot my Paw!”

Didn’t work for you, then consider taking a quick burst of exercise. Find a reason to leave your desk (or wherever) and walk five or ten minutes to conduct business in another location. It could be for any reason—deposit letters, see a colleague, pick up office supplies—anything that takes five or ten minutes. You can also walk up several flights of stairs or conduct a few push-ups. Careful with sweat stains, but these quick burst of exercise can be really great stress busters.

Uh Oh, I’ve just received a subtle reminder that we have company coming for an evening dinner and that chores have been promised to Ms. MoneyWalker. Why do I feel a need for a quick walk?

MoneyWalker

Stoop-Sitting

Journal Entry: Weight = 173.8; Coinage = $.65, 25 pennies, 1 nickel, 1 dime, 1 quarter; Bottles =3; Ground Scores =2; Best Coinage Find(s) = 17 total cents on a “occasional” street, 1 dime and 7 pennies over a five block stretch. See stoop-sitting below.

Feature Entry: The New Orleans legacy of “stoop-sitting” is back. A stoop is a front porch with lots of places to sit and “hang out.” After Hurricane Katrina, Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose’s (author of One Dead in the Attic) stoop became an unofficial town hall and community center. In his neighborhood, people gathered to sing songs, talk about “how did you make out?,” have a cola or stronger, vent, solve the cities problems—it was therapy. But then the stoop has always been those things in New Orleans. The stoop is where for generations New Orleanans have clustered as friends, neighbors, and family to talk.

Yesterday, I discovered that the tradition is alive and well while walking and searching on an occasional street (a street that is neighborhood dominant rather than business dominant, and one that I take only occasionally). Rather than an early morning walk, I took an early evening venture.

What a treat! Even in the oppressive heat, it was just like it has always been. Stoop after stoop was filled with friends and families talking and sharing and venting, and eating, and…doing what they have been doing for three hundred years. After Katrina, stoop-sitting slowed for awhile, but its departure was brief. Stoop-sitting and walking, two great stress reducers.

I like walking in New Orleans! Who said that first? Was it Fats Domino?

MoneyWalker

Stress? Walk. Chill!

Journal Entry: Weight =173.8; Coinage = $1.73 (two day total) 68 pennies, 10 nickels, 3 dimes, 1 quarter; Glass bottles retrieved = 15; Ground Scores = 18. Significant coinage finds—all of yesterday’s evening walk. Started walking at 7:10 p.m. after arriving from 2,300 miles Texas Farewell Tour, with last leg covering 375 miles. Despite fatigue it felt good to be mining my own territory after 12 days of being on the road. All the hotspots provided a welcome back—hunches, telephone stands, newspaper vendors, drive-throughs, curbs, and parking lots all contributed. This morning I was confused as an attendant at a drive-through car wash. A man fed the machine a five dollar bill but the machine bilked him. Neither the driver nor I could gain a green light or a refund. Buyer beware!

Feature Entry: the benefits of walking are being written about everywhere including the world’s largest circulated magazine, the AARP. The May/June 2009 edition touted “No-Worry Workouts” and listed brisk walking as one of the best exercises for stress relief.

This blog focuses on weight loss/management but stress management is an important goal of the MoneyWalker. It is an understatement that we are living in stressful times. Don’t even talk to me about my 401-K because that just loops into a hundred other fears--real or imagined.

So if you are worried about what the bad economy is doing to your bank account, consider what it’s doing to your health. When feeling stress, your body releases two significant hormones—cortisol and adrenaline. These confused friends cause our heart to speed up and our brains to become more alert. In pre-historic times these were healthy responses because as likely as not, we were in physical danger and needed a “fight or flight” response.

Those days are gone, but we are left with the hormonal response anyway. If not used, these well meaning friends turn into enemies. If the hormones are left to float around, often enough, they contribute to high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, irritability, depression, and sometimes a heightened susceptibility to heart arrhythmias.

And then the bad habit clustering begins. If we feel chronic stress, we are more likely to over eat and make bad food choices.

So why is walking the answer? At least three positive things occur. One, the walking helps you “use up” the extra hormones, especially when you learn the MoneyWalkers favorite walking technique—to zoom. Second, walking as a repetitive motion has been shown to have a calming effect on the body so that less of the harmful hormones are released. Third, after about four minutes of zooming (8 minutes for slower walking) the body begins releasing endorphins, the so-called feel-good hormones.” These true friends relieve pain and enhance mood.

Oh, there is a forth reason, the focused walker finds a surprising amount of coinage during the walk. Finding a coin stimulates the ventral striatum, the reward center of the brain. So reward yourself, take a walk.

MoneyWalker