The Perfect Prescription

July 14, 2021 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

I don’t like going to the doctor.

It’s not that I don’t like my doctor; he’s great. It’s that it puts my impermanence on full display, stripping away the denial of immortality; even when it’s simply a routine checkup. Something about being in a medical office raises my blood pressure as well as fear level.

“How are you feeling?”
“You’re the doctor; wouldn’t it be up to you to tell me?”

He chuckled an inner warmth that blended well with his extensive knowledge. As I said, I like my doctor. In a time where the medical providers are overworked and under-appreciated, rushing here to there to accomplish everything required of them, he always appeared totally attentive during the short time we spent together once a year.

“Are you exercising?”
“Yes, I walk about 30 minutes at least five times a week – plus I take my dog out each day. That’s not really exercise because we have to stop and pee at every bush we pass.” I paused, then corrected, “Well, it’s not WE to have to stop and pee; it’s him. Just clarifying…”

He smiled again.

“Your blood tests all show that everything is as it’s supposed to be. You’re a healthy man.” He paused. “So, how’s your life?”

The question knocked me on my heels for a brief flash; not a query I expected from an MD, but, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. One cannot heal the body while ignoring the mind and spirit. As I took a mental inventory of “how is my life,” I opened up about the waning days of my career, my aspiring spirituality, family drama, life goals, and the passing of years in general.

Says singer/songwriter John Mellencamp in The Real Life: [Read more…]

Time to Take a Stand for Good Health

October 9, 2013 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

I hope you’re sitting down when you read this; it’s quite alarming.

Hmmm, actually, I hope you’re not.

Most of us have sedentary lifestyles.

In many cases, rocks move more than us. I say this neither to induce shame nor guilt, but because – well, that’s just the way it is. Unless you’re an athlete or you have a job that’s got you on your feet all day long, a 2008 report showed that the average American spends about 7.7 hours per day plopped on an ever-expanding tushie. An Australian study says, “The average adult spends 50 to 70 percent of their time sitting;” a majority of his or her life.

It’s not difficult to get there. Consider an office job, relaxing in front of the TV, sitting at the dinner table, reading a book, driving to work, watching DVDs, going to the movies, playing video games; the list goes on. I mean, if we used our feet half as much as we used our behinds, we’d have shapely legs and firm butts; which sure as heck wouldn’t be a bad thing.

With the exception of walking my dog, conducting meetings, or going to Zumba, I spend most of my day in front of a computer screen. For goodness sakes, I’m doing it right now writing this piece. You might not be a computer jockey like me but I bet your life is similar.

What’s alarming is that recent research is showing that type of lifestyle can be as unhealthy as smoking.

Want to know the details? (Actually, you don’t; but I’m going to tell you anyway.) [Read more…]

Growing Up in an Overweight Family

January 24, 2013 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

by Tara Spener

My parents have always been overweight.

When I was very young, it wasn’t something that I really noticed. They were just my parents. I didn’t notice or didn’t understand that they were heavier than they should be.

However, as I got older, that changed. Over time, my parents’ weight was about much more than their health.

When I was a young child, my parents being overweight meant that they couldn’t play with me the way some of my friends’ parents could play with them. There were no games of chase, no family bouts of tug of war, no family football matches in the backyard. It also meant that they didn’t have the energy for me. They were often too tired from their day to do more than sit down on the couch at the end of the day.

In the beginning, I just thought that’s the way things were, but as time went on, it started to weigh on me that my parents couldn’t (or didn’t want to) do the things that other parents did. I felt like I was missing out in some small way.

Meal times were not the most healthy.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started to think of dinner as something that didn’t come from a box. Once I started to become more interested in eating healthy foods, my parents couldn’t provide me the guidance I needed. They weren’t able to teach me how to make nutritious meals. It wasn’t until I was married that I knew how to make a roast chicken. It wasn’t until college that I knew how to do more than boil some spaghetti noodles.

The unhealthy foods and the unhealthy role models made it hard for me to know how to live a healthy lifestyle.

Once I got to high school, I became interested in track, and I started to lead a more active lifestyle myself. I struggled for many more years trying to learn how to eat a healthy and balanced diet, and I continue to struggle with body issues.

Because my parents didn’t teach me healthy habits, I never learned how to listen to my body and give it the healthy foods it needed. I didn’t learn to exercise because of what it could do for my body and how it could make it feel. As a result, I struggled for a long time with learning how to say no to foods and with learning to strike the right balance with exercise. I either worked out too much or not at all. I either ate too much or too little.

Continuing to run track in college helped me to find that balance.

I learned how to train to push my body to its highest performance. I learned how to eat a healthy diet that gave me energy and made me feel great. Most of all, I learned how to love my body and to treat it with the respect it deserved.

My parents still struggle with their weight.

However, now I am able to offer them the role model that I had hoped they would be for me. With time, I hope that they are able to learn how to adopt a healthier lifestyle so that they can live long and fulfilling lives. And maybe one day we’ll be able to enjoy that game of tag … with their grandchildren.

About the Author: Tara Spenser is currently the resident writer for workingcapital.org, where she researches the most affordable business capital available. In her spare time, she enjoys blogging, swimming and being a mom.

Want to Really Change? Keep Track of the Numbers

February 8, 2012 by Scott "Q" Marcus

When my children were young, I registered their growth on the hallway doorjamb with pencil marks and knife notches.

Next to each was inscribed a date and name. Since those statistics are most likely meaningless to the latter owners, I assume sandpaper and lacquer have removed that chronicle; yet I wonder if they left those markings intact, pondering periodically where went “Daniel, January 28, 1988” or “Brandon, April 7, 1989.”

Numbers are the language by which lives are recorded; history is kept; and even how the universe communicates. This does not denigrate the clout of intuition, emotion, nor hunches; yet, the bottom line — quite literally — is what the numbers say. Whether checking the weight of a newborn; success of a business; leadership of a country; or the future of our planet; it’s “in the numbers.”

Our language is strewn with numeric references. We hope no one “does a number on us,” or that our “number is up.” We “dress to the nines” for elegant receptions, but refrain from becoming “three sheets to the wind.” There are “no two ways about it;” numbers count (um, pardon the pun).

It therefore stands to reason that that which we monitor expands our awareness, affording concern or confidence. So logically, if we want to change something about us, we must establish a baseline and “keep score.”

This process starts before we can count, as illustrated by how the amount of gold stars on a refrigerator can be extremely effective in fine-tuning a child’s behavior. As adults, step one in altering our lifestyles might involve tracking our accumulation of wealth (or lack thereof), or when we anticipate joyful occasions, “counting the days.”

Of course, that means should better health be the objective, we must track the behaviors associated with those goals. A smoker can become an ex-smoker by paying attention to how often he lights up and setting targets to lower that count over time. If physical fitness is the desired outcome, we can write down how often — or how far — we walk or run. We record our blood pressure. We check our weight. We can even monitor our attitude.

All this has been a preamble to one question: “If we agree that keeping track can make our lives better, why don’t we do it more often?” What’s the resistance? [Read more…]

Giving Thanks for Wherever You Are On the Journey

March 31, 2011 by Featured Author

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow. ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

Give thanks for what you are now. That’s not easy when you’re not happy with what you are now. But, you’ve got to start somewhere, so why not start with exactly who you are today? That was the first step on my journey towards better health and happiness in my life – getting honest about who I really was, and accepting that as my starting place. That’s something you can do right now

Here’s how I got honest. I was 287 pounds, in physical and emotional pain and I knew I needed to change things. I didn’t know where to begin, so I asked my doctor. My doctor had been telling me for years that I needed to drop some weight, and I got angry and resentful every, single time. It took a lot of nerve for me to walk into his office and say, “Okay, let’s say you’re right, I do need to lose some weight. Where do I start?”

He referred me to a nutritionist. After my first meeting with her, she asked me to start a ‘Food Journal.’ In it, I was to write down everything I ate for a week. She asked me not to edit my food choices yet. “Just eat what you’d normally eat, and write it down after you’re finished,” she said. I bought myself a new notebook on the way home from the appointment, and I was very excited about starting the next day. Then came the morning, and suddenly I was angry. I don’t know where it came from – this defiance, this rebellion. Suddenly I was thinking, “I’ll show her what I eat everyday!” And I went off to the doughnut shop and bought six of my favorites and ate them all, with a quart of milk, for breakfast. And I wrote it all down. Then for lunch, I was feeling guilty, so I made myself a salad. It was a large salad, loaded with cheese, beans, and plenty of dressing, but I felt less guilty about that than I did about the doughnuts. Again, I recorded it all in my journal – this time with measurements. I had two snacks that afternoon – 18 vanilla wafers and two pudding cups, and “a bag of trail mix.” I’m quoting from the journal here. For dinner, I fixed spaghetti. I wrote that I ate a “full plate of spaghetti,” which was a lot.

The week continued on like this. Looking back now, even though I seemed to be eating with a vengeance, I don’t recall feeling as though I ate more in this particular week than I did most of the time. Eating a half-dozen doughnuts was nearly a weekly ritual. I’d just never made note of it before. Two snacks in the afternoon – pretty common for me. I didn’t feel fuller than usual, and I didn’t get a stomach ache from eating like this, so the guilt and shame I felt when showing my journal to the nutritionist at our next appointment wasn’t as much about what I was eating, as how I was living.
[Read more…]