Thoughts from the ammo line (Post Thanksgving editon)

[Valin]

Power Line

Scott Johnson

Nov. 29 2024

As she says, Ammo Grrrll’s topic today is ROOKIE MISTAKES. She writes:

So enough already with post-election analysis. I want to turn utterly from politics, to a brief restoring respite from them. So our topic today is: Rookie Mistakes. It’s a fun topic that I hope to use as a recurring theme, so I will just cover a couple of categories today. A quip I saw decades ago in Reader’s Digest said, “Architects cover their mistakes with ivy; brides with ketchup and doctors with sod.”

(Snip)

Since we are discussing food, it must follow that we should address Rookie Mistakes about Exercising and Fitness. Fitness, particularly if it involves weight loss, is an endless and incremental process. The original Never Ending Story.

Let’s say, hypothetically, Freshman year of college you had not read ANY of the assigned readings in Sociology (some 4,000 pages!) until the last week of the Quarter and were now obliged to “cram.” Since you still had a memory then and your teenage body could live quite nicely on coffee and candy bars for 96 straight sleepless hours, you were still capable of getting an A or for sure a B-plus. This turned out to be a mixed blessing at best. For it made you believe that there was nothing that could not be done at the last minute. And that is untrue. As President Trump would say: Sad!

Unlike cramming for those Liberal Arts exams, you cannot “cram” for a foreign language, Physics, or a 25-lb weight loss into the five days before your 50th High School reunion. I know; I’ve seen me try.

In fact, the most enduring sustained weight loss program I hit upon after decades of failure was to lose just five pounds a year. For five years. AND KEEP IT OFF each year.

It had been time. I had in my late 40s and early 50s, accidentally slipped the surly bonds of the “normal” sizes – 10, 12, 14 – and INTO the dreaded “Plus” sizes found only in specialty Fat Lady Stores. Of course, the first thing the depressed official fat lady finds is that she is now at the BOTTOM of the sizes in those stores! A veritable Rock Star in size 18s which hang on her in a most comfortable non-binding way. But the humiliation of having to go there outweighs the perks of now being considered “tiny” and as quickly as I could, I hustled back to the regular clothing store.

If Amazon had been around then I might still be Size 18.

The Rookie Exerciser, filled with Irrational Exuberance, can make up a most unrealistic exercise chart which we shall call the All Or Nothing Approach. EVERY day I shall walk 3 miles around a small local lake! If I miss one day, I will add those miles to the next day and walk around it twice! Eventually, of course, you end up “owing” yourself a walk around Lake Superior.

And so you give up and just have another doughnut. My new mantra for several years now instead of beating up on myself until I cry and have another doughnut is: “Progress, not perfection.” Besides, you will hear many a person say, “I just love Barb – she’s so funny. I really admire Ernest, he’s so smart.” But, “I adore being around Patricia! She’s just so darn thin,” has been said by nobody ever. Tell me I’m wrong!