THEY ARE NOT HEROES
I am of the opinion that the word “hero” is so overused that it has lost its original meaning of a super act of courage and extraordinary bravery that qualified the doer of those deeds to sit with the gods. These days, it seems that just the fact that someone died doing his or her job qualifies him/her for the label of hero. In my mind, heroes are people who go way beyond their job descriptions. Dying is not a prerequisite for the title, although dying would reinforce the notion of the danger that was involved in the deed.
I started thinking about these distinctions after the 911 tragedy and, again now, as the soldiers in Iraq are being labeled heroes. The firemen and cops in 911 and the soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere all volunteered for hazardous duty. As an ex-GI Viet Nam Vet and as a current social worker that works out on the streets with kids, I have and am now in the position of being killed in the line of duty. I can tell you that I am real dedicated to what I do and I thrive on this type of high danger stuff. I probably could qualify for a “brave” title, but just because I happen to walk into some crazy kids bullet and die, does not qualify me for hero status. I would have had to do something far beyond my normal, abet quite hazardous, job description.
The GI’s who are catching bullets in Iraq after doing their jobs with the utmost bravery are still not heroes. The firemen in the 911 tragedy who died as a result of doing their jobs are not heroes. The GI’s who were captured in Iraq after they made a wrong turn and then rescued by the Marines are not heroes. The cop who gets killed responding to a domestic violence call, as way too many of them do, are not heroes. The heroes are those who would qualify for the Congressional Medal of Honor, who go way beyond what duty requires, such as the person who flings him/herself on a grenade to protect the others and faces sure death or the guy who Joe civilian who, while out for a walk, sees a child straying into traffic and runs in front of cars to grab the kid out of the jaws of death. Those are the true heroes!
This Wonderful Way Of Eating Called Atkins
I just bought a pair of pants, size 32. This might not seem like a very important statement on its own until you know that a little over two months ago I wore 34” waist pants and was about to look for 35” ones because I was having trouble buttoning and unbuttoning the 34” ones. Three inches and 20 pounds in 2 ½ months, incredible!
I used to go through the abs exercise part of the health club, saying to myself, “poor unfortunates!” Then in the last four years, I started to put in weight and girth. At first it was amusing. I have always been the one who showed ribs instead of six pack. All of a sudden, I had a stomach. More recently, it became painful bending over. That and turning 61, got me to decide that if I was going to make it for the next 40 years, I was going to have to get rid of that gut.
I have spent the greater part of the last 40 years on a very low fat diet and have always been thin. To me, having ended up with that extra weight and girth was baffling. It wasn’t until I read Dr. Atkins New Diet Book that I began to understand just what was happening in my body and how to fix it.
As the good doctor explained it, our bodies have a built-in protection system to get us through periods of famine. Normally, the body looks to carbohydrates to convert into energy. If we eat more carbs than the body needs to consume to meet our current energy requirements, it stores the excess carbs as fat. It doesn’t convert the fat we eat into body fat, it converts the excess carbs. During normal times when there are plenty of carbs going into the body, that body has no ability to digest the accumulated body fat. Only when the body thinks that it is in famine times because it can’t find any carbs to gobble, does it produce the enzymes, called keytones, which are able to convert the fat into energy!
So what the Atkins way of eating does is to initially fool the body into thinking that it is in famine by restricting the intake of carbohydrates to about 30 grams per day. The body then starts to produce the keytones, which eat the fat and, voolaa! This is not just interesting theory. There are these little sticks, called “K-sticks” that you can get from a pharmacy. They were originally made for diabetics who need to monitor their keytone levels for other reasons. All you do is pee on them and compare the color they turn to know how much keytones your body is producing. The mirror will tell you the same story, actually before scales will, because the girth will decrease before the weight.
Four months ago, I would have thought what I just wrote was heresy, especially after hearing that Atkins actually encourages eating full fat versions of foods while on his program! Now I understand that if you don’t keep the intake of fat up, those keytones will convert protein (muscle) into energy, if they run out of fat. Again, this theory in confirmed by my experience. I damm near gorged myself on chicken and turkey with skin and fat under the skin and on fish.
There were nights when I ate a third of a chicken, skin and all and went to bed AND STILL LOST WEIGHT AND GIRTH!
I actually overshot my goal of 150 pounds by 5 pounds, so I increased my carbs to stop the process. Now is the tricky part, the life maintenance part. I now have to figure out approximately what my carb intake should be so that I am burning all that I eat. If I do that, the body will not have any left over to store as fat. I have actually found that I can live quite well without the muffins and the excess pasta and rice that I gorged on for years.
