Do these guys look like they need a gym or tofu to you?
My cowboy is 53 years old, and he eats like a teenager — which is to say he eats a lot, and much of it is red meat, full-fat cheese, eggs, butter and bread. He should be fat and sickly, if you believe common nutritional wisdom in the nation right now. But he’s not.
In fact, the cowboy is in phenomenally good shape. His only obvious health problems stem from “wearing out” his joints from doing stuff like roping calves and playing football. Like most ranching folks I know, the cowboy is strong, fit and has the stamina of a much younger man — all while never turning down ice cream.
What’s going on? Well, it might be counterintuitive to see the cowboy’s lifestyle as healthy, but it is in fact scientifically sound to make such a statement. It turns out that people who eat high-fat, high-calorie diets are not adversely impacted by this diet, if they are also intensely physically active.
According to research out of Indiana University, a person’s level of physical activity is much more important than what they eat. Researches divided 14 subjects into two groups. Both groups ate an “unhealthy” high-fat breakfast of 960 calories. One group exercised at high intensity for at least 30 minutes, the other was sedentary. Researches then measured stuff like the diameter of the brachial artery. After the fatty meal, the sedentary group had the greatest obstruction of blood flow while the active group had…no change at all. That’s right. None. Also, the sedentary folks saw their triglycerides increase 184 percent, whereas the active people had an increase of only 47 percent.
Betcha none of them boys is on Weight Watchers.
This, my friends, is why cowboys and cowgirls don’t get fat, in spite of their awesomely yummy, meaty, fatty diets. They do physically demanding work, all day long, like people evolved to do. They don’t sit behind a desk like I do, reading super scary articles on the New York Times website about how bad meat is for you. Don’t expect this information to be widely available to the general public, though — not with all the money there is to be made off of dieting. (The weight-loss industry generates about $68 billion in the US each year.)
Which leads me to why I hate the newest trendy fitness club chain, Monkey Bar Gym.Boo, hiss.
Not content to merely offer fitness equipment and classes like normal gyms, this new chain has decided to indoctrinate its members in the “dangers” of eating meat, saying it’s bad for people and the planet. If that were the case, the aforementioned study would not be true, and we would not have eyes in the fronts of our heads like all the other predators. We’d have eyes on the sides of our heads, like all the other herbivorous prey animals. We also wouldn’t have canines. Science aside, Monkey Bar Gym wants us all eating seeds and nuts before driving to their gym to do things called “hanging leg raises”.
Think I’d rather stick to steak and horseback riding.
Pass the butter.
Memorial Day Musings
Fallen soldier, today I think of you, who gave your life for me, for us.
You are young, and old, tall and short, male, female, human and animal. The one thing you all have in common is that your spirit rose up and up, and you went away, so that this morning I could do something so mundane and trivial as drive without worry to a Starbucks for an iced coffee, sit outside in the sun and read the morning paper. Your sacrifice made room for me to have just another typical day.
Thank you for that.
Sometimes, you knew what you were getting into and you did it anyway. Often, you thought you understood but being young and feeling invincible, I worry that you truly you did not know, that death caught you by surprise, jolted you from this world too soon. You leave behind so many holes that will never be filled, places you should have been, hands you should have held. Sometimes, you did not think there was a choice even though there was, and this hurts me, too. Sometimes you selflessly did the right thing even though the people who sent you to your death had selfishly done the wrong thing. This does not diminish your sacrifice; it only augments the punishment the selfish ones will have to face someday. You were good, too good for them. Sometimes you were heroic. Always you were hurt. Gravely hurt. Killed. Always we benefited in some way from this, and so I thank you, deeply, sincerely, and with a bittersweet sorrow that threatens, if I think too hard about it, to suffocate me.
There are things worth dying for. But how many of us would die for them? You were not afraid of commitment. You committed everything you had. You thought of your husband as you lay dying, your wife, your child, your best friend, your dog back home. You looked at the sky and you realized in that last shocking moment just how beautiful a blue it truly was. They say that beauty comes to us with the passage, that the pain stops, that new colors come to us, new sounds, music so marvelous we cannot even imagine it in this earthly form. You rose from your body, up into the blue, and looked back down, at what was left of who you had been, and then God took you home.
I thank you.
Today, I do laundry. It seems such a simple thing. The whir of the machine, the drone of the home and garden network as I fold the sheets and towels on the bed in the morning sunshine. Outside, the sprinklers make a hopeful hiss upon the grass. I have this peace, this day free of drama, these simple things, because you do not.
I know this.
We miss you. And more than that, we are grateful to you. We love you, and today, we remember you.