self-discipline

Some Modern-Day Versions of Ma

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Martha A. Goertzen
Martha Goertzen, my dad’s sister, who lived from 1924-2019. Image retrieved from the website of LaCanne Family Funeral Services, Windom, MN.

Later today or tomorrow I’m planning to put up a brief exercise video, something you can put to use on your living-room floor, and then I’ll be posting much less frequently on this blog as I concentrate on my other site, Behind the Music. That material is much more heavily trafficked, and I have quite a bit of material on sale there, with more being added periodically. If you’re a subscriber to this blog but not to that one, please take a moment to sign up if you have any interest at all in choral music. I write posts about the music we sing in my lovely, lovely choir, The Cherry Creek Chorale, and I also have several books on major choral works. So take a look! All materials except for the books are free, just to be clear.

I did want to finish up a few ideas about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her estimable mother Caroline. As I mentioned in the last post, Laura and her daughter Rose shaped the narrative as they wrote the Little House books. They re-arranged and sometimes left out events, also giving the impression

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Once Again, with Feeling: The Small Things You Do Every Day Matter More than the Big Things You Do Once In Awhile

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Image by Emilian Robert Vicol from Pixabay

The above is from Gretchen Rubin and tweaked by me. I’ve made this point many times, most recently in the area of healthy eating: What counts are the consistent, day-to-day choices that we make, not the big, dramatic flourishes that we perform periodically. Remember my theory of inverse drama:

There’s an inverse relationship between the drama of a process and the magnitude of its results. (from the post “Lessons from the Dentist’s Chair”)

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The Falsity of “Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Hungry”

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Just back on Monday from a lightning-like trip to North Carolina to celebrate the 80th birthday of a family member. Such a nice time! Once again, as I mentioned back in May, much of that time was spent eating in restaurants—or at the party itself, of course. I tried to be very conscious of the time between meals, as no sooner had we finished one session than we started talking about the next: “Where are we going for dinner?” “What are we doing for lunch?” Also, the inevitable “Are we going to Goodberry’s?”

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Would Daniel Recognize the “21-Day Challenge” Named for Him? No.

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Image by braetschit from Pixabay

Yesterday I looked at the actual story in the Old Testament book of Daniel chapter one, in which the Israelite Daniel and his three friends refused to eat the food offered to them at the Babylonian court, not for health reasons but because of their determination to adhere to Jewish ceremonial law even in a pagan culture. But there’s a further passage in this book that’s being used as the basis for several diet plans, and it comes in chapter ten, verses two and three:

At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks.  I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over. (NIV)

Other translations say that Daniel neither bathed nor shaved during the 21 days; it’s fair to say that none of the modern versions of this short-term diet plan includes that idea!

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What’s the Difference between a Habit and a Streak–and Which One Is Better?

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

We just got into the month of June, and I was thinking about ideas I could implement to get some results I’d like to see over the summer. Laura Vanderkam, one of only a couple of lifestyle bloggers I follow (the other one’s being Gretchen Rubin—of course) has been on a running streak for well over a year now (800+ days). She committed to running at least a mile every single day, and she has done so even if she’s been on a trip and had to run around the

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My Personal New Year’s Resolutions

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Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

I have a dear friend who said that she always looked at her birthday as the start of her own personal New Year. I feel the same way. Sunday was my 67th, and I had promised myself that I’d take an A1C test then, which I did yesterday. After a glitch with the first test, I got a result with the second. (Don’t worry—I’m going to get my money back.) It was (ta-da-da-da-a-a-a-h!) 5.3. If the test is correct, then I’ve managed to get down to well below the new, lowered threshold for pre-diabetes of 5.7. (There’s some controversy over whether or not this stricter definition is warranted, as people are being put on

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A Lesson Learned from Lessened Activity Levels

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Image by Mabel Amber, still incognito… from Pixabay

I mentioned in a previous post that I was facing foot surgery, which took place on March 11. So it’s been about 2 ½ weeks since then, and I didn’t feel that I could stand on the scale without my surgical boot or shoe until the 2-week mark. Guess what? I was four pounds up. FOUR POUNDS.

Why did this happen? Well, my activity levels had gone way, way down. I went nowhere at all for about the first week except for my doctor’s appointment, and I spent a lot of time lying on the couch with my foot up on pillows. I

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Is It Better to Know the Truth–About Diets or Anything Else?

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Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro, available in multiple formats.

This is a pretty interesting book, and I enjoyed reading it. Dani Shapiro is an accomplished and best-selling author of several previous memoirs and novels. If you like real-life mysteries, especially ones that involve delving into the past, you’ll probably get seriously drawn into the story. I read it in big chunks over the course of a couple of days.

The plotline of the book centers around Shapiro’s discovery, by way of an impulsive DNA test, that the man she considered to be her father, whom she loved and revered, was not. She had been conceived with the help of a sperm donor. I won’t give away more of the story as I don’t think that’s fair, so you’ll have to read the book to find out if she finds her biological father and how she handles all the fallout. But here’s the central question for the purpose of my post today: Would she have been better off not to have known? Or, to put it the other way: Is it always better to know the truth?

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All Calories Count, But Not All Calories Count the Same

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Nothing stays in Vegas. That’s our starting point here: that every calorie you consume has to get used or disposed of by your body in some way. No calories simply disappear into thin air (although they may disappear somewhere else, as noted below). No calories are “free.” Every single molecule you eat must be dealt with. Your body doesn’t function like a car’s gas tank, when there’s an absolute limit of capacity that results in gasoline on the ground (and the gas station owner yelling at you) if you keep trying to outwit the automatic shutoff by “topping off” the tank and manually restarting the pump. Your esophagus doesn’t have an automatic shutoff valve. I’m not even sure where that organ would be best situated: above the larynx? Halfway between the mouth and the stomach? There’d be a food backup, I guess. Kind of gross, and maybe dangerous. You certainly can get into the “I can’t eat another bite” mode, but in reality the stomach’s capacity is very flexible and expandable. (Just ask the people who’ve had stomach-reduction surgery that leaves them with a greatly diminished stomach pouch. If they’re determined enough, they can outwit the surgery, either by eating constant small meals that don’t overstrain the new little pouch or by going ahead and eating too much. The pouch can stretch, eventually. Read about this and other dangers of the surgery at “Long-Term Complications after Gastric-Sleeve Surgery.”)

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What’s Up with So-Called “Natural Sweeteners”?

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Ah, the wonderful world of so-called “healthy” or “alternative” sweeteners! A food blog that I follow faithfully, Pinch of Yum, has just finished up its “sugar-free January” stretch for at least the second year, with the idea that for one month you’ll stay off “refined” sugar. So what does that term mean for this website? Anything that can be called a “natural” sugar, as opposed to a refined one, including maple syrup and honey, is allowed in small amounts.

Folks, I hate to break it to you, but:

Maple syrup and honey are just sugar.

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