The Doug Diet: Part 2

All my adult life I refused to diet. Hated everything about it. I never wanted to think of food, our life-giving sustenance, as something I had to battle. I loathed the idea of treating Nature’s bounty as a mathematical problem. I got tired of hearing that suddenly X was going to kill you, only to find out a few years later that it was Y that was bad and X was actually good. I remained loyal to the carbohydrates who had served me faithfully for so many years and stubbornly refused to learn about trans-fats and anti-oxidants and the other nutritional mumbo-jumbo. I disdained our cultural obsession with weight and my anti-Puritan streak resisted the idea of denying myself culinary pleasure.

And so I went merrily on my way accepting whatever food appeared (except red meat and most fish, including tuna, that would have me selling my mother’s name to terrorists if they threatened to make me eat a mouthful). I happily shopped the ice cream aisle of Trader Joes (Coffee Blast!), saw no reason to resist the chocolate bar at the check-out counter, had granola (still home-made) and milk and banana for breakfast, grabbed crackers or treats at the school’s kitchen counter to fortify myself for my next class and decided not to join the Pastry Resistance League at our snack-provided staff meetings.

And while I was thumbing my nose at the notion of diet and culinary discipline, the numbers on the scale kept creeping up. As a public figure, I tried to hide it by never tucking in my shirt and privately tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid mirrors. But in my heart of hearts, I secretly envied members of my peer group who never had gained or suddenly lost weight, starting looking at men’s bellies as much as women’s bottoms (for a different reason.) Buying new pants was a torture and finally had to admit that the clothing companies had not inflated pants waist sizes. So every once in a while, I made some half-hearted attempts to do something.

“Exercise, that’s the key!” some people told me. But after two weeks of biking, swimming and hiking every day in Michigan and nary a pound dropped, I concluded, as any reasonable person would, “Science works for other people, but not for me.” So I gleefully ate as I always had and tried to justify it all philosophically, as we humans tend to do. “I’ll show them!” I thought as I enjoyed every bite of dubious (but delicious) foods. “Life’s too short not to treat yourself to chocolate.” Etc. Meanwhile, the numbers kept creeping up. Hiding the scale helped, but looking at photos did not.

So finally this Fall, the scale hit a number that alarmed me, a photo depressed me and I heard a program on the radio about eating well. So I had a long hard talk with myself and suggested to said self to try something different. And so I embarked on the Doug diet.

In my stubbornly independent way, I was determined to make it all up myself without a single calorie counted. First step was eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast with a few raisins (no milk, butter or brown sugar) and a half glass of orange juice. Second was to eat smaller portions and not have seconds. Third was to snack on apples and carrots instead of chocolate or chips. And finally, to eat more vegetables and whole grains. I never vowed to stop eating sugar, white bread, white rice, lots of cheese, etc., but found myself naturally eating much less of all of that. Though I had some hungry moments, mostly I found that my appetite changed and instead of the battle with craving, I simply lost the burning desire for these richer foods. It felt good not to be driven by appetite and still enjoy—indeed, savor more—everything I was eating.

But then came the crowning moment. Three weeks later, I ventured on to the scale and lo and behold! I had lost a few pounds. Science works! Encouragement from the numbers! Motivation to keep going—which I didn’t wholly need (see above), but it helped! And they dropped and dropped until, some 15 pounds lighter, I arrived at the weight on my driver’s license. Eating better, eating less, enjoying more and finally able to tuck in my shirt without shame. Sweet!

One thing that helped was having time off from school and yes, biking a lot didn’t hurt either. But the real test was how would this hold up traveling? Many fewer choices—kale is hardly the snack of choice at the airport! And how would it hold up at school, back in the workplace with the intensity of schedule I have? Not to mention the holidays, with treat after treat thrust at you from all sides. I know no one is sitting at the edge of their chair for the answer, but just to complete the thought— it has held up. So far.

So I feel a little pride that it all happened without joining a club or buying a book or following someone else’s diet regime— just good common sense. If I had to summarize the “Doug diet,” I’d have to credit Michael Pollan’s brilliant summary—“Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” (“Food” meaning things with less than five ingredients that you can pronounce.)

Meanwhile, all these years that I imagined “if only I weighed ten pounds less.” What was I hoping for? That people would love me more? Respect me more? Admire me more? I can report with conviction that none of the above has happened. Indeed, most people didn’t notice and fewer cared to comment. I’m just happy to be eating better, feeling a bit lighter in my body, consuming less, tasting more and all of that is its own reward. No need to expect anything else, trumpet it out (beyond this posting), try to capture it and package it and sell it (though I admit that “the Doug diet” is kind of catchy).

After all the calories consumed sitting and writing this, it’s time to crunch a carrot.

Bon apetit!

The Doug Diet: Part 1

When it came to health food, my Mom was ahead of her time. While my friends were merrily drinking soda with every meal, eating baloney sandwiches on Wonder Bread, happily slurping the colored milk from Fruit Loops and topping it off with Oreos and Snickerdoodles, my sister and I drank milk and fruit juice, had Quaker oats or Shredded Wheat for breakfast, ate turkey on whole wheatish bread for lunch and dessert was whole wheat cookies with little ladders around the edges (don’t bother to look—this from a local bakery named Dugans). Every meal, I lined up an arsenal of vitamins, cultivating my visual spatial skills by arranging them in different patterns around the plate before the unpleasant task of swallowing these life-saving supplements.

My Mom was a devotee of Carlton Fredericks, a self-proclaimed expert on nutrition who had a radio show and wrote several books. He advocated for vitamins as necessary to offset the lost nutrients of over-processed foods, despised white bread and alerted the public to the dangers of hypoglycemia, a kind of reverse diabetes that my Mom either actually had or was led to believe she had. I hadn’t thought about Mr. Fredericks until this Blog’s theme popped up and so I dutifully clicked on the Google search. First entry was from a site called Quackwatch which was far from impressed with Carlton’s credentials. By the end, “nutritional charlatan” was pretty much the conclusion. Sorry, Mom!

Now don’t get me wrong. We were hardly eating tofu and stir-fried vegetables in 1950’s New Jersey. It was strictly meat, potatoes and over-cooked boiled vegetables. And when I was old enough to “cook” for myself and indeed, had to when my parents left me alone for two weeks in my junior year of high school, it was the glorified White-Castle’ish hamburger for breakfast known as Minute Steaks and a whole freezer of Swanson’s TV Dinners—fried chicken with potatoes, peas and carrots and a little apple turnover my all-time favorite, Salisbury steak second on my preferred list.

By college, I had moved from TV dinners to a loosely macrobiotic diet of brown rice, miso soup and such. Quite a switch! Now I had to cook in earnest and The Tassajara Bread Book was my steady companion—Tibetan barley bread, buckwheat rounds, whole wheat pancakes. From there, it was the vegetarian years, baking my own bread, sprouting Alfafa sprouts, culturing yogurt in the bathtub, making homemade granola and such. Diet for a Small Planet lay open on many of my kitchen counters and I still remember fondly Easy and Elegant Cheese Souffle and some soy bean casserole whose name escapes me.

The Community Food Stores (of which only Rainbow and Other Avenues remain in San Francisco) were my shopping digs, scooping out from big bins and sweeping the store before leaving. And then came the Moosewood years, which pretty much raised my children. They seemed perfectly content with their mostly vegetarian diet, but now, for reasons of marriage and location and perhaps repressed longings, they both are avid meat-eaters. Oh well.

My strict vegetarian years ended on a school camping trip with 60 kids. It was a cold and drizzly night and chicken was grilling while I sat huddled eating a cold potato salad with the smells of barbecue wafting to my nostrils. My ancient hunter and childhood meat genes kicked in— goodbye, vegetarianism, hello chickenatarianism. Just in time for my increased travel giving workshops. As a novice vegetarian in the 70’s, I traveled in an unfriendly Europe and kept my protein afloat with some disgusting yeast (not the later flake kind), whatever peanut butter I could find (not much) and more sensibly, French cheese. Later travels in India were a vegetarian Mecca—and passing the meat stalls with hanging carcasses, flies and no refrigeration made me grateful. Now adding chicken and turkey and shrimp and made traveling on planes and teaching in Europe in the 80’s and 90’s much easier. When turkey bacon and chicken sausages started appearing, my last regrets about a red-meatless diet disappeared and that’s how it has been ever since.

This is a glorious time to be a vegetarian— or close to it. Quinoa, risotto, cous-cous and more have joined brown rice, farmer’s markets are displaying a renaissance of vegetables—kale, poblano peppers, portabella mushrooms, Japanese eggplant, arrugula, words that I’m sure no one in New Jersey ever hear of 50 years ago—and the once exotic world cuisines (only Chinese restaurants in my childhood) are now commonplace—sushi, pad Thai, green tea salad, pupusas, paella, chile rellenos, etc. etc. —as American as apple pie. Backyard and community gardens are thriving and meat-eaters are killing their own turkeys and slaughtering hogs in neighborhood gatherings to be more honest and get closer to nature. Michael Pollan is the new Carlton Fredericks, only this time with real credentials.

And so it was in the midst of all this variety and plenty that in my 60^th year, I decided to go on my first diet. Tune in tomorrow.

The Facial Hair Intelligence

There are only three kinds of people in this world—those who are good at math and those who aren’t. (Always warm-up the audience with a joke! Ha ha!)

Amidst all the ways we classify people, I offer a new one here—those who recognize facial hair and those who don’t. Since I shaved my moustache, it has been fascinating to see the reaction—or lack of it.

I was a late shaver and once that facial hair starting appearing in college, I just let it freely express itself. It was, after all, the 60’s. (Well, actually, the early 70’s, but everyone knows that the 60’s were really from 1965-1975). Eventually, a fully formed beard emerged and kept me company until I turned 30. And then in a memorable event in northern Michigan, the only time my parents stayed at my in-laws cottage on the lake, I awoke early on the morning of my 30^th birthday and had my father shave my beard. We decided to keep my mustache. I then crawled back into bed and waited for my wife to wake up so I could surprise her. Two hours later, I grew restless and started clearing my throat. She finally awoke, looked over at me and shrieked, “Ay! It’s Donald Sutherland!!”

I kept my moustache for the next 30 years—except for one short month back in 1985 when I shaved it to fool the kids as the Mystery Runner in our school Walkathon. No one was fooled and I decided to immediately grow it back. So in my first day back at school this week, I said hello to the Lower School Head. She has a habit of always being the first to notice when I get a haircut, so imagine my surprise as I stood face to face and chatted with her for five minutes before I finally had to blurt out, “Notice anything different?” Even with the prompt, she still didn’t. Now we have been colleagues for some 25 years, passing each other in the hall, sitting at meetings together, eating lunch down in the kitchen across for each other. Meanwhile, a five-year old boy who hadn't seen me in seven months waved to me from down the hall and after seeing me from far away for exactly 2 seconds, shouted, “Hey! Where’s your mustache?”

And so it went. Either people noticed immediately or not at all. It didn’t divide down any gender/age/ familiarity line. As mentioned above, some people who have known me forever didn't notice and others who knew me more casually did. Which in my thoroughly scientific research style, led me to these earthshaking conclusions which may stun the neuroscientists and change the way we think about each other. Ready? Here they are.

1. Some people notice facial hair. 
2. Some people don’t. 

And then there might be a third category of people. “Yeah, I see it, but do I care? You think I don’t have anything more important on my mind that commenting on your stupid mustache?”

At any rate, I’ve written to Howard Gardner and suggested this be included in his growing list of Multiple Intelligences. Before long, school curriculums will be built around developing this all important intelligence, showing photos of two people with similar values, but noticing their distinct facial hair differences (here I'm thinking of George Bush and Bin Laden). 

Meanwhile, you can test yourself. Look at the two photos below. Do you see anything different besides the Christmas tree, head angle, light and upper body clothing? If so, give yourself an A. If not, you may be one of the unfortunate types doomed to only succeeding in linguistic and mathematical intelligences.
Sorry.

Grateful Hearts

“Give us grateful hearts, O Father, and make us ever mindful of the needs of others.”

So goes the grace at meals when I visit my in-laws and though “O Father” may be controversial, the overall sentiment is certainly worthy. The subject of gratitude came up recently in a recent group gathering and it’s a good one to consider.

Seems to me that gratitude operates at many levels. It begins as a social convention designed to make relations courteous, harmonious and pleasant. Children need to be trained—“What do you say?”— and if the training goes well, “thank you” peppers our conversations, thank you cards are tucked away in the desk drawers and we reserve space in the forewords to our books or introductions in the public performances to acknowledge and thank all those who helped. Gracias, Merci, Danke, Takk, Spacibo, Domo Arigato, Kamsahamnida, Obrigado, Xie Xie, Terima Kasi— thank you is one of the first things we learn and remember in a foreign language.

The fact that there is a word for thank you in every language speaks of some universal human need. In one of the most bizarre Utopian fantasies I’ve encountered—Walden Two, by B.F. Skinner— it was prohibited to say thank you on the grounds that we should just be nice to each other and there’s no need to add an extra thanks. An intriguing thought for about two seconds, but any utopia that ignores the actual nature of our species is doomed to failure. The fact that most people probably never even heard of Walden Two is proof enough. Gratitude needs to be spoken aloud for both the giver and the receiver.

A second level of gratitude is a selective variety. “I’m so grateful my children were born before computers and video games took off big time” is an example from my own life.

Other personal examples include:

• “I’m thankful I got to travel around the world before McDonald’s did.”

• “I’m glad that I got to hitchhike around the country before it got too dangerous.”

• “I’m grateful I didn’t die or get permanently injured when I crashed my bicycle into the car and smashed the windshield with my face.”

You get the idea.

Sometimes selective gratitude can carry a seed of smugness. “Glad I was born into the privilege of being a middle class white male in New Jersey” for example. Well, maybe not the New Jersey part. But in my book, this kind of gratitude falls short of the larger definition.

The third level is the profound understanding that we are here by the grace and mercy of others. The first sacrament is our food—we live by other’s death, be it plant or animal. The ancient traditions are filled with examples of how to respectfully take life and thank your meal appropriately. With the advent of slaughterhouses and supermarkets filled with pre-packaged food, we are far from grace as the essential fact of our very existence. But where people still pause at the dinner table and fold their hands or bow their heads, such existential gratitude lives on.

From there, it’s the countless seen and unseen helpers who guide us through this life, starting with our parents. Gratitude to parents? There’s a novel concept in contemporary American culture, but one at least as old as The Ten Commandments. Then there are the countless teachers charged with the mission of nurturing our tender souls, or at least teaching us how to dot i’s, cross t’s or curve our fingers at the piano. But truly, if we stopped to think about all the people who have shaped us and guided us and helped us—including the writers, musicians and artists who inspire us, the factory workers, farmers, truck drivers who bring us our needed goods, there really is no end to gratitude. Maybe that’s why B.F. Skinner decided not to bother thanking any one?

Gratitude, like its cousins of compassion and empathy, is a developmental process, taught by rote to children, who indeed need to develop the habit of saying thank you and meaning it occasionally. But deep gratitude is probably not possible until the frontal lobes are developed in early adulthood. And even then, it needs to be encouraged and nurtured to grow. It’s a quality of attention that needs time to pause and reflect, something difficult to do caught in the pulling and hauling of the daily round. It is a daily practice that requires intention and the largeness of heart to go beyond one’s little worries.

Lately, I’m feeling like the final level of gratitude is far beyond mere social convention, thanks for the good things that come our way or pausing to admire a sunset. It is a hard-won grace to be thankful for ALL of it— the support and the betrayals, the friends and enemies, the good fortune and the disappointments, without distinction. Not a faked “Gratitude Café” appreciation, but a deep meditation on the maddening fact that the bad luck and hard knocks of this life are as much (and sometimes more) grist for the mill as the pats on the back and hugs. Yeats had a moment like this when his body blazed with that feeling of blessing for 20 minutes and wrote about it again in his dialogue between Self and Soul. And being the frail and undependable creatures we are, we may feel that same kind of blessing one day and the next day (minute?), be cursing the person who simply will not move far enough forward to turn left so that we can make the light.

Thank you for reading this.

But Enough About Me

“How was your day, dear?” I imagine my unseen readers wondering. Really? Before I answer that, let’s just say that there’s a fine line between being the hero of your own story (see Dream On blog) and thinking that anyone else is all that interested in your story. I often think about this reading some family Christmas letters. And I can’t throw too many stones here, because we do one each year also. Perhaps we get one point in our favor by doing it in rhymed verse or multiple choice with funny wrong answers— some kind of creative endeavor that some appear to have enjoyed.

But still at the heart of the matter is the idea that others are interested. And if they’re friends, family or acquaintances, one hopes they might be—up to a point. So and so got married or divorced or quit their job to swim with the dolphins in support of peace in the Middle East is newsworthy. Little Johnny scored two goals in the third soccer game of the season and had perfect attendance at church and loves to play video games is getting close to TMI. As one person confessed, “ I read so and so’s three-page letter and had to lie down and take an aspirin. Merry Christmas!”

What with Websites and Blogs and especially Facebook, the world has become an extended groaner Christmas letter. It’s bad enough we have to read once a year about things we were just fine not knowing, but now everyday is a chance to find out about the great salmon dinner someone just had or how little Charlie peed in the toilet two days in a row. The world is one big Reality TV show, with everyone feigning interest—“I’ll watch yours if you watch mine.”

How is this different from someone writing an autobiography or a novel or telling stories about her day at the dinner table? One distinction is the level of experience. An autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi or Ella Fitzgerald is probably more interesting than the story of someone who watched Reality TV Shows all day. And then went out to get more beer. 

Another is the level of craft. Is there poetry or humor or a storyteller’s zest in the telling? David Sedaris’s experiences might not be more interesting than yours or mine, but oh, how cleverly he tells them.

And finally, there is the hope that the story might hit some universal vein that others can relate to and feel that part of their story has been told. Dickens starts his autobiographical novel David Copperfield wondering if “he will turn out to be the hero of his own story,” but along the way encounters all the kinds of trials and tribulations that most of us can recognize and relate to— loss, joy, betrayal, loyalty, pride, foolish choices, love, redemption and more.

So back to my first day at school. I don’t really think that many people are sitting on the edge of their chairs wondering how it went. Nor should they be. Unless it involved a Martian abduction or kids tying up a substitute teacher or a heartwarming tale of how Lucy gave up her whole recess to sit next to and comfort Lily who had been hit with the ball. But perhaps a few might be interested to know that despite the pleasure of a more leisurely, independent and autonomous schedule that I enjoyed in my time off, the school routine is deeply embedded in my muscle memory, etched by my 36 years plus of living it day after day. And so all the metaphors held—slipping on an old pair of pants, riding a bike after a long time away, feeling like 7 minutes instead of 7 months had passed since my last class—in short, it was just fine and even more than fine. 

I’m quite happy in my own company, but truth be told, the three-year-olds I taught are much more interesting than I am in even my more inspired moments. And the 8^th graders are pretty great too. I loved singing with the 100 elementary kids and telling them the story about me really being Doug’s twin brother taking over his teaching, using my new mustache-less face as proof. I even loved the staff meeting that began with laughter and ended with tears as people spoke from the heart— real stuff. That was my day.

But enough about me. At least, until my next Blog.

Is It Summer Yet?

Safe behind the tomato-proof glass of the computer screen, I dare to complain a little bit— tomorrow I have to go back to work. After six months off. (Put those tomatoes down— you can’t reach me!).

Some twelve years ago, I initiated a job share at my school with my two colleagues. Two jobs, three people, each of us gets one trimester off to write books, to play music, to travel and teach (see this Blog’s title). Counting summer vacation, that’s six months working at school and six months free— not a bad deal and one that’s allowed me to keep on at school for 37 years without feeling burnt out.

But now I have to go back to work for six months straight. Not that I haven’t been working. For most of the Fall, I was strapped to my chair for four or five hours every morning writing my next book on jazz blues. That was hard work and the hardest part is the feeling like you could always be doing more. But the difference between that and teaching at school is that I got to set my own schedule. As I mentioned a few postings back in Skateboard U., autonomy rocks! I got to march to my own drummer and find the beat that fits. I can be a harsh and demanding boss to myself, but mostly, my boss and worker selves got along well and knew how to talk to each other. When the need of the moment was to play the piano or get out on my bike or lunch with a friend, negotiations were simple and I didn’t have to check with anyone else.

When I wasn’t working on my book, I was off teaching workshops or rehearsing with the volunteer group of kids from school performing at the World Music and Body Music Festival. Those were scheduled activities, but had a different tone working with people who chose to come and thus, were motivated, eager, and appreciative. Sheer pleasure!

And as any Blog follower might remember, I did work for two weeks at school in October and then another week at a school in London. That was back to a rigorous schedule of 6 or 7 classes daily, but with a big difference. I was in the Lone Ranger mode— a short term ride in on my horse and speed away again with a Hi Ho Silver! No time for tangled relationships with students or teachers, no accountability beyond the class, no report cards, no staff meetings, no politics. Heaven!

But it’s all over now. Tomorrow I’m back to the relentless beat of someone else’s drum, kids in my class because they have to be there, report cards down the line, re-arranging the schedule with five different teachers when there’s a field trip, endless e-mails about who has seen the lost bass bar mallet or who moved the cheese and all the twists and turns and tangles of politics and relationships as a few hundred people daily negotiate their separate agendas to reach some form of workable community. Now it’s pleasure and pain, heaven and hell. In short, the “real world.”

Goethe said “Talent develops in solitude and quiet places, character in the stormy billows and full current of human life.” It has been a blessed six months floating on the tranquil lake of my own private paradise and now it’s time to re-enter the stormy seas of shared community. Time to give my character its Crossfit work-out. I’m sure it will be a pleasure teaching the kids again, enjoying my colleagues, finding the rhythm of the new beat with each day a different movement in the Suite of the week’s schedule, appreciating the contrast between Thursday and Saturday and working for the next inch of progress in my development as a music teacher. But still, part of me will be wondering:

How long until summer vacation? 

Recipe for an Auspicious Year

On the first day of the year, try these recommended activities:

• Chant through the entire Buddhist Sutra book, even if it wakes your wife up too early.

• Have oatmeal for breakfast, with orange juice and Roiboos tea. With a dash of honey.

• Play three games of Solitaire and win two. Cheat on the third.

• Play through Bach’s French Suites on the piano. Memorize the Allemande of No. 4 and be astounded yet again by the complexity of Bach. And moved by the beauty.

• Learn the lyrics to All of Me, All of You, All the Things You Are, Always and Autumn in New York. Note how it changes your playing. Wonder if by the end of the year, you could learn the words to 295 more jazz tunes.

• Shave your mustache that you’ve had for 30 years.

• Start cooking 17-bean soup. Count the beans.

• Look in the mirror and remember why you grew the mustache.

• Go for a walk in Golden Gate Park past the drummers on Hippy Hill. Think about going to get your bagpipe. Decide not to.

• Eat the soup with salad. Wonder why your upper lip is so thin.

• Watch Miracle on 34^th Street and feel uplifted even if you’ve seen it 34 times before.

• Brush your teeth and decide you’ll definitely grow that mustache back.

Happy New Year!