How to lose weight in three easy steps

A co-worker I know asked me a month or so ago how much weight I'd lost.

She was suitably impressed by the amount and then asked me about my exercise regimen. She knew I was climbing the stairs at work, but was I doing anything else? I told her that I walked and was trying to get back into running.

That, fortunately, derailed the conversation. She knows my knees are bad, so she went off about how strange it seemed that I would want to return to running. I was glad, though, because it meant I wouldn't have to tell her stuff I knew she didn't want to hear.

I've been asked the question a lot, and I usually just say I'm doing Weight Watchers with my wife. The questioners know just enough about the program to tell me they don't want to put that much effort into counting points and wander off, thinking there has to be a simpler way.

Actually, Weight Watchers and most of the other successful programs work off three simple concepts.

First, you must become aware of how much you are actually stuffing in your mouth. Make no mistake, our capacity for self deception is enormous. My co-worker, eats enough for breakfast and lunch to take care of my caloric needs for the day. I've no idea what she does for supper, but given that she's a foot shorter than me and female, she's already eating too much. But she tells people she really doesn't eat that much.

Ah, self deception.

Second, you have to become aware of what you're eating. I could down a large cheeseburger with bacon and a pile of French fries with ease, then polish my evening off with a couple of Pop Tarts. During the day, my intake wasn't much healthier. That's changed, and I don't feel all that deprived. I'm not even going to discuss what my co-worker eats beyond saying that she regularly patronizes the grill in our building, and they don't carry much in the way of health food -- though you can make healthy enough choices if -- and this is a big if -- you pay attention to what and how much you are eating.

The third step is exercise. Lots of exercise. Intensity seems less important than duration. Start small and work your way up, but you have to work your way up and up and up. None of this stroll around a block after dinner and, whew, I think that'll do. The only activity other than cleaning house I've heard my co-worker talk about is yard work, and she gave most of that to a lawn-care service this year.

Now, I'm not trying to pound my co-worker. She's not really any different from anyone else who asks what I'm doing and then blows the whole idea off because they don't want to put out the effort.

Yes, in the beginning, you have to keep track of what you eat, how much you eat, and how much you exercise. Yes, you have to form new habits. Yes, it takes some efforts and will require permanent changes. But hey, do you want to lose weight or not? And the answer to that determines whether your attempt will be as simple as one, two, three.

Out, damn'd fat

A funny thing happened on my to losing weight. I began to understand something I'd failed to understand before.

Facebook friends, fellow church members and family know that I've lost a significant amount of weight recently. My wife decided to start Weight Watchers, and because I needed to lose some weight to be able to fit into my clothes, as well as try to have an effect on my blood pressure, I decided I would follow the program as well.

I've gone well beyond my original goal, having lost about 20 percent of my starting weight. New clothes have been purchased, which was not part of the original plan, and blood pressure medication has been cut drastically, even more than I'd hoped.

You would think that nothing remains but to celebrate. But I've noticed that while I'm dressing, I cannot fail to see it. The fat.

Oh, sure, I can see how skinny I am -- I've not weighed this little since the '80s. But when I see myself in the mirror my eyes are not drawn to the now prominent clavicles in my shoulders but to those resistent little pockets of underlying fat somewhat lower down on the anatomy.

Now, I'm not obsessing about the remaining fat. I have no desire to try to eradicate it from my body. In fact, I'm trying to adjust my intake to maintain my weight or even to put on a couple of pounds so my newly purchased pants will fit better.

But I better understand why some folks become obsessive about those remaining pounds.

During my time as a pastor, I was privileged to minister to college students for a time, and I encountered a couple of young women who believed they were "fat" and unable to attract boys because they were "fat."

Later, while attending a country church located not too far from an eating disorders clinic, I had the joy of knowing a couple of young women who found our church and attended while being treated at the clinic.

None of these women were by any sane measure obese or even what I would consider overweight. All were attractive and drew stares from young men as they passed by. The two women from the clinic were as thin as models, most probably, from what I knew about the clients of that facility, because when they looked at themselves in a mirror, they saw the fat, not the beauty the rest of the world saw.

I had profiled that clinic in a story I wrote while doing my journalism studies, along with some other eating disorder clinics, in an effort to understand the "why" behind the problem and as a way of doing something useful with journalism. The story would be published in a college newspaper and would have the chance to reach young women just like those I'd dealt with as a pastor.

The clinic director was blunt and attacked me almost as much as she helped me during my interview with her. She pointed out that I was a male, which meant I didn't suffer the societal stigma of having to be thin. She pointed out that I was thin and had probably never had a weight problem in my life.

I had slipped in to my 40s and was, in fact, actually beginning to have to struggle with my weight, though I exercised enough for it to not be a huge problem, and when I told her that, she scoffed at me. I didn't and couldn't understand, she declared, and I was just another do-gooder journalist without a clue.

I did have the opportunity to interview one of her clients, who did try to help me understand. Again, this was an attractive young woman who simply did not see what I saw. And so I really didn't get it.

Now, a couple of decades later, I have an inkling of what they were trying to tell me. And I can see how easy it would be to slip over that line. The pressures on men have increased, though not to the level they are on women. Six-pack abs are all the rage. Dweebs were featured in a reality show, but that only lasted a short while, and the hunks continue to dominate the bachelor shows, one of which has been on way longer than I ever thought it would be.

Weight carries seriously medical consequences, and those need to be dealt with. But we need to grow beyond the concept that only the slender are worthy or "hot." That beauty has more to do with the number of pounds we carry than the people we are.

I appreciate it when people tell me how good I'm looking, but really I'm growing a bit weary with the comments. Did I look that bad before?

And a part of my mind thinks, "Yeah, but if you saw me without a shirt, you'd see the fat, too. And then you wouldn't think I looked so good." And that's a place I don't want to go.

I constantly remind myself that I lost weight to feel better, and I do. My blood pressure's down; my back doesn't hurt as much. I'm able to go for a jog without feeling beaten at the end of the route. And if I gain a few pounds and notice they've decided to take up residence on my waist, I'll learn to live with them.

On Fox and patriotism

Vote now! Don't let the American flag be banned in America!

That was the tenor, though not the exact wording of an e-mail I received from a friend last week. (I don't have the e-mail anymore to refer to it.)

I was directed to a Fox News website with a simple poll that asked whether the American flag should be banned. Yes, no.

The e-mail warned me that an untoward number of people had voted "yes," and encouraged me to vote, apparently so we could shoot down the unpatriotic twerps who had the audacity to want to ban the American flag.

Usually, when a news site runs a poll like this, they give some explanation or a link to the story that prompted the question. No such luck here, though I did notice the poll was about a year old. Ah, the Internet. Nothing ever dies on the Internet.

Use the keywords "banned" and "flag" on the site, and the only page you'll get is for the poll because the story that lies behind it has nothing to do with banning the flag.

Seems that last year a small group of high school students turned up at a school whose name I've forgotten and don't care to look up again wearing flag bandanas and shirts emblazoned with the flag. On Cinco de Mayo.

The school determined that the boys intended to tick off Hispanic students and made them remove the bandannas and turn the shirts inside out. The student opted to leave for the day.

Reminds me of the time a small group of students at my high school wearing Confederate uniforms. You might not think too much of that because I attended Robert E. Lee High School, but they did this early in the first six weeks of the year we integrated.

Both groups of boys were hoping a commotion. And although you might want to argue their free speech rights, schools are really not obliged to encourage students to pick fights with other students.

Regardless, my first thought was, "So much for Fox News being an unbiased source of information." Honestly, if anyone believes that Fox doesn't have an agenda, it's solely because they have the same agenda. Someone sharing your bias doesn't mean it's not a bias.

More troubling to me is the continual fuss on the part of people who worry that we're not being patriotic enough. These are the folks who react angrily to the flag being "banned," when no plot to ban the flag exists, and who believe we should have an amendment making it a criminal offense to desecrate the flag, specifically to burn a flag as a political protest.

My guess is that most of these so-called patriots have no idea that Congress adopted the Uniform Flag Code back in the '40s, which makes it part of federal law.

Too many people believe that the Uniform Flag Code is like the pirate code in "Pirates of the Caribbean," more sorta guidelines than actual rules. In practicality that's true because the law contains no enforcement measures and Supreme Court rulings based on the First Amendment would nullify some of its provisions.

But the law was developed to explain how to show proper reverence for the national ensign, surely the concern of every patriot.

Only patriots may be the worst violators of the law.

For instance, the code says the flag "should never be used for advertising purpose in any manner whatsoever." Hmm.

It states, "the flag should never be used as wearing apparel ..." which depending on how you interpret that, means that wearing bandannas that look like flags or T shirts with flags on them may well violate the code, be a sign of disrespect. Hmm and hmm.

That reminds me of the man I knew in Lockney, Texas, who was livid after seeing a teen with long hair wearing jeans with a flag on them. He didn't think the boy was patriotic; he thought the boy needed a thrashing for disrespecting the flag.

And my favorite part of the code says that the flag should never be printed or impressed on anything designed for temporary use and discard. You know, like napkins, paper plates, packaging. Hmm, hmm and hmm.

Could it be that the patriot who serves barbecue and sides during a patriotic holiday on a paper plate festooned with a flag and then wipes her mouth with a napkin that looks like a flag before tossing the whole kit and kaboodle in the trash is as disrespectful at the flag burner she despises?

Hmm.

Along the Texas Independence Trail -- Last Part

Planning is key to success. A failure to plan is a plan to fail.

We know the aphorisms by now, and they do embody truth, though not all the truth that might apply to a particular situation.

Take vacations, for example.

On a previous weekend jaunt we serendipitously discovered that Texas parks were celebrating the 175th anniversary of the war for independence and that they had a commemorative "passport" you could collect stamps in by visiting certain historical sites.

We decided that the Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to collect some more stamps.

Accordingly, I hopped online and looked up Goliad and Gonzales. I discovered, as I thought at the time, that candlelight tours of Presidio La Bahia would be held on Saturday, and a re-enactment of the Goliad massacre would take place on Sunday and then figured out a route that would take us to Gonzales on the way home, where we could see the cannon that sparked the "Come and Take It" flag.

All well and good, except that the date for the re-enactment was in March, not May, and the Memorial Day weekend stretches from Saturday to Monday, not Friday to Sunday, as I thought at the time. So much for plans.

Missing the re-enactment and tour wasn't such a bad thing. We spent plenty of time at Goliad and gathered the appropriate stamp.

But when we arose Sunday morning, we had hopes of seeing the cannon and receiving another stamp.

At breakfast, we had the dining area to ourselves, with plenty of freshly prepared food. One of the women working the area began a conversation with Sharon, whom she recognized from the day before. I didn't recognize the woman as one of the ladies working Saturday because she was so relaxed and happy and smiling. She called the kids from the day before "those children from hell."

We set out for Gonzales, just a short hop away, and arrived at the memorial museum where the cannon is. Only problem: This was Monday, and the museum is closed on Monday. And being Memorial Day weekend, the chamber of commerce was closed, so we couldn't have our passport stamped.

The city is also home to the Pioneer Living History Museum, which is also closed on Mondays, but as we drove by, Sharon saw that the gate was open, and a sign seemed to indicate the place was open.

We turned around, parked and walked down a winding pathway, across a couple of wooden bridges and into the main area. No one was there, so we spent time wandering about, taking photos and poking our noses inside when doors were unlocked.

A sundial inspired me to see if the time would be correct, and if I could take a picture when the clouds parted. Turns out, the dial's time was correct if you account for daylight saving time, and I snapped a shot.

We may have missed the cannon, but in Luling we are treated to the sight of a water tower painted like a watermelon. I'm sad to report we did not take a picture of it, but if you want to see it you can go here: www.agilitynut.com/food/fruit.html. Scroll down to the watermelon section. The annual festival in Luling is called the "Watermelon Thump."

Then we're off to Lockhart, famous for its courthouse and its barbecue. I vaguely remember that one Lockhart barbecue place was in Texas Monthly, and when we hit town, I pull over, fire up the iPod and discover that, indeed, Black's Barbecue is one of the mag's top 50 barbecue joints.

It being noonish, we park on the courthouse square, where the citizenry seems to have just finished a Memorial Day event, and walk the three blocks to Black's.

Its reputation is deserved. We think the food is wonderful -- though I'd quibble a bit about the potato salad. Everything is individually priced, but when we check out, the total is less than what we'd pay for the equivalent at one of the restaurants at home.

While we're waiting in line, one woman tells an employee that her friend is from England, and they've brought her to the restaurant to experience Texas barbecue. He introduces himself and chats with the pair for awhile, making sure they know how welcome they are and giving them instructions.

Having satisfied our barbecue RDA -- it's on the food pyramid, right? -- we return to downtown to take pics of the courthouse, which is supposed to be Empire II style, whatever that means. We also hike down to the town's library, the original building for which is built in Greek cross and Classical Revival style, according to the library website, although the sign in front of the building described it as French Revival. I don't know the difference in architectural styles, so it matters not. It's a cool-looking building, though.

Another of my plans goes awry when I wind up on I-35 sooner than I planned. I expect it to be a zoo because of holiday traffic, and I'm right. Still, like other plans gone wrong, the traffic only means we'll arrive home a bit later than expected.

Browning wrote that our best-laid plans often go awry, leaving grief and pain for the promised joy, but we found the joy of the unexpected discovery instead.

Along the Texas Independence Trail, Part Deux

Sunday morning, and we've slept late again. Yep, 7:30.

We clean up and head to the lobby for the hot breakfast that's supposed to await us. Only problem is that a bunch of adults and children apparently associated with a softball team (pre-middle-school aged girls) dominate the area, and the children have scarfed up most of the food.

While waiting for more eats to arrive, one of the moms notices us standing and decides we have to take her group's table. We protest, mostly because another seating area is available upstairs, but she insists. So we take our seats and the real horror begins -- we have to listen to the adults natter on about the tournament and how bad the umps are.

They tell the girls how they should be playing while also urging them to listen to what their coach says. And the woman who yielded her table is a parrot, repeating almost everything another adult says. Going deaf looks pretty good.

But we reap the benefit of freshly prepared food and prepared for the day's adventures.

While driving to Goliad, we encounter our first GPS anomaly of the trip. The road's been widened and moved a bit from whatever map that formed the basis for my unit. We are treated to the screen showing us driving through a river. Who knew a cube was an amphibian?

The first stop is the Fannin Battleground Historic Site. An obelisk dominates the center of the circular site and marks the spot where Fannin and his men surrendered and received a promise they would only be imprisoned. They were transported to the nearby Presidio La Bahia, and the cur Santa Anna would ignore the promise and order their deaths.

The rest of the site is basically a giant picnic ground, with lots of tables, a couple of large charcoal grills and a playground. Seems like an odd way to honor the valiant fallen, but this is Texas, and we'll celebrate anything with a barbecue.

Next on the list is Goliad and the Presidio, which is the dominant part of an area that include the Fannin Memorial, which marks the burial site for Fannin and his men; a monument to the Angel of Goliad, Francisca Alvarez, who helped some of the wounded and escapees at the time of the massacre and other Texians during the war; and a monument to Ignacio Zaragoza, the general who commanded the forces that defeated the French and whose victory is marked by Cinco de Mayo. Along with a statue, they've a replica of the house he was born in, but it's locked, so I've no idea what the interior looks like.

Zaragoza's statue is about life-sized, and Sharon comments, "He's shorter than Sam Houston." It takes me a minute to realize the reference to the 60 foot statue of Houston on I-45. I groan but really wish I'd made the comment.

The fort is impressive, but the walls aren't as tall as I thought they'd be. They stand taller than I do, but if the average height was significantly shorter then, the walls would have been plenty tall enough. The corners have watchtowers, with long, narrow entrances. Even after turning my newly skinny self sideways, the entrance is a close fit.

You can see the last site of the trip, the Mision Espiritu Santo, from the walls of the Presidio, and we head over to see what's there.

The mission is part of a state park, and one of the rangers tells us they'll give a lecture at 2 p.m., almost two hours away. We'd seen a Whataburger in Goliad, so we buzz the short miles back to town and scarf down a burger. With time to spare, we spend some time taking photos of the DeWitt County Courthouse.

We return to the mission and wander about the grounds reading the signs, which will tell us most of the information we'll receive in the lecture. The lecture does answer one key question we have -- why is a skull and crossbones carved above the door that exits to the plaza. That, the ranger tell us, is the door caskets were brought out of after a funeral.

We're exhausted and ready to return to Victoria, so we drive "over the river" and head for the hotel.

The plan is to find something to do that evening, but our best laid plan is dashed because this is Sunday night on Memorial Day weekend, and there ain't nothin' to do but have supper and watch Kung Fu Panda.

Monday we'll head for Gonzales, the Lexington of the Texas Revolution.

Along the Independence Trail, Part the Oneth

Memorial Day weekend. Three days to try to put some stamps in our Texas Independence 175th anniversary passport.

After a bit of research, I decide we need to visit Goliad and Gonzales. We'll stay in Victoria because they have more choices, and it's close to several stops we'll make on Sunday.

We rise late -- when did I come to believe that 7:30 is late? -- but still manage to hit the road by mid-morning, pretty good for me nowadays. I used to have the traveling thing down. Knew exactly what needed to be packed.

Now, I pack most of the needed items, then remember I forget something, then remember I forgot something else, and finally remember I forgot one last thing. Then, after we leave the house, I'm likely to remember something else and have to go back.

But not this time. We manage to pack everything with limited remembering and don't have to return for anything. Won't have to buy anything on the road, either.

The wind blew strongly from the south, and I fought it the whole way. One of the bad parts of owning a square car, I suppose. After leaving the Interstate behind at Waco, the adventure began.

Sharon's dad and I used to occasionally have a discussion about the best way to travel. I used to favor Interstates and U.S. Highways with bypasses. He like to travel the state highways and farm-to-market roads. The trip was the thing, not the arrival. I've come to appreciate that point of view.

Like traveling through the town of Rosebud, where a painted sign at the city's edge proclaimed, "We call it home."

Now, I'm sure they meant that in a positive way, but as we drove through the town, I was reminded of the phrase, "It's not much, but we call it home." That's usually uttered ironical when referring to spectacular digs, or honestly when the home really isn't much. Rosebud fits the latter category.

On the Interstate we would have missed the road sign in LaGrange that showed a nearly vertical truck on a steep incline on the left and a wavy line on the right -- not the usual "curves ahead" wavy line, with a couple of curves, but multiple curves.

"What does that mean?" I asked Sharon. She didn't know for sure. A short way later, we see an exit for trucks, so we figure this incline is pretty steep, but still aren't sure about the wavy line.

Turns out the steep incline has multiple switch backs to enable vehicles to climb the hill -- as I'm sure you've already figured out. A road that could have been at home in San Francisco.

And of course, we're behind a large truck that's lumbering up the hill, straining to do 20 mph.

In Halletsville, we pass a Cobra attack helicopter near the side of the road raised about 10 feet in the air. We have to turn around and find out what that's about. Can't do that nearly as easily on the Interstate.

Turns out the helicopter is part of a memorial to Vietnam veterans from Lavaca County, with a fairly large number of names listed.

And almost all the towns have cool houses, like the green Victorian we saw in Cameron, or a spectacular structure like the courthouse in Giddings that's being restored.

You just don't see those sights from the Interstate.

The day ends in Victoria. While driving to a restaurant for supper, we pass a large field nearly covered with flags, a relatively recent Memorial Day event apparently created as a fund-raiser/Memorial Day tribute by a local soldier. Residents can purchase a flag in memory or in honor of a soldier, or buy a POW/MIA flag, and the profits are used for Warriors Weekend, which provides wounded veterans from the war on terror with a fishing weekend each year.

A book that lists the placement of each flag along with the donor and the soldier being honored lies on a stand at one end of the field, and each flagstand bears a ribbon with the name of the honoree attached. One lists a soldier from the Revolutionary War.

The road alongside the field is under construction. Had I known that ahead of time, I probably would have given into to the old urge to find the better, faster route.

I'm learning.

Addicted to the History Channel

The famous quote is that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

A brief, say 15 seconds, search of the Internet shows that quoted credited to Winston Churchill, with the original version, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, belonging to George Santayana.

People utter that quote often to support a wide variety of opinions they believe have roots in history.

The problem: We really don't know history and have little desire to learn it, much less take the time after learning it to understand how it really applies to a current situation.

I don't know what it's like in the public schools today, but I know that in the stone ages, most of my history teachers were coaches assigned to teach history, and their credentials for teaching the subject tended to be iffy.

The only teacher I had who had actually been a history major in college taught my 9th grade world history class and managed to make it interesting. We spent less time studying dates and names to be regurgitated on multiple-choice tests and more time studying the flow of events and how they related to each other.

Of course, that history was mostly Euro-centric, as though nothing of consequence happened in Asia, Africa or any of the Americas outside the United States.

In seminary, I had another wonderful history teacher who helped understand the context of religious history in relation to the events happening in the world at the time and who enjoyed taking class time to discuss the similarities of current events to the events we covered in class.

I read much more widely in history these days than I did as a kid, though I'm not sure I could be called a history buff. My wife and I often visit historical sites, where I learn stuff I was never taught in school.

All this has made me impatient with much of the discussion I hear going on these days. Two phrases tend to turn up with regular frequency: "Never in our history ..." and "The [fill in whatever group from history you're trying to use to support your point] never intended ..."

The latter phrase, of course, is usually filled in with "the Founding Fathers."

These phrases, and the arguments that ensue from the premises they introduce, suffer from two problems.

The first is our woeful ignorance of history. Almost every time someone utters the phrase "never in history," I either immediately think of a time in history when virtually the same circumstances occurred, or within a week or so, I will hear a historian discuss virtually the same situation that happened during the period he or she studies.

While watching Ken Burns' epic documentary on the Civil War right after Christmas, for example, I heard echoes of many current debates.

Then I heard and read stories about celebrations connected with the anniversary of the war's onset, which brings me to the second problem. We know or learn just enough history to support our point of view and ignore the rest.

Many of the interviews I heard and read tried to support current political movements based on reasoning that helped trigger the war. Historians asked to comment in response generally framed a "well, yes, but that doesn't take into account these other factors occurring at the time" kind of answer.

We cherry-pick events and quotes from the past to support our positions so often that we end up believing that the version of history we're constructing is the whole story.

The Founding Fathers debate is a great example. The Founding Fathers intended [fill in the blank] when they wrote the Constitution. Or my personal favorite, the Founding Fathers intended America to be a Christian nation.

Quotes are pulled out of context, both the context of the passage being cited and the context of the era in which it was written or uttered, and used to bolster a debater's favorite point.

But the broader scope is ignored. Quoting Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson in support of the Christian nation theory, which I've heard some folks do, is ludicrous. Even broadening the concept to use them to support the 21st century propositions about God's relationship to the nation fails utterly because we fail to take into account what they meant in the context of their 18th century Deist and Enlightenment understandings.

That you can find pastors religious figures among the delegates to the various conventions that eventually produced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution doesn't necessarily prove the point either.

All it really proves, in fact, is that a number of different people with different ideas came together and hammered out a grand compromise that has worked for all these years.

And perhaps it has worked for all these years because it was a compromise between those competing points of view. Maybe that's the real lesson of our history.

Maybe Santayana's quote should be something less poetic, along the lines of: Those who cannot remember their past, or deliberately choose to ignore parts of it, are dumb, so they will repeat it.

Nah. Better stick with the original.