CT Fletcher is popular on YouTube among people who lift weights, but his motivational videos are sage advice outside the realm of power lifting. He’s amazing, and if I lived in his neck of the woods I’d buy a membership to his gym immediately.

His video ‘Advice for Powerlifters and Heavy Weightlifting’ is an instant classic.

Now, when I would step into the auditorium or venue or wherever the contest would be held, this is what I would be thinking to myself: The bad man is here. The motherfuckin show-stopper is here. All you motherf***ers look like sheep to me and I’m the motherf***ing butcher. And I’m here to chop your motherf***ing ass up. I’m the man! Bow down motherf***er because the king is f***ing here. Only one can stand on the top pedestal and that’s my motherf***ing ass. The other two are available for you because this top motherf***er is mine. I own this s**t. CT is in the building! …

“I’m trying to get you guys to realize that I’m not just this guy who gets on YouTube and rants and cusses all the time (although I do a lot of cussing). I’m trying to get a point across to you. I’ve been doing this shit a long time. The last power lifting contest I went to, I noticed one thing. Guys were power lifters … in my day, the psyche up was such an integral part of the lift, but these days guys are in a power lifting contest but I didn’t know if I was at choir practice or in line at the DMV or what!  Nobody knew how to use the psyche-up. They just strolled up to the bar like they were f***ing in line Denny’s. … Your body can never be stronger — your body can never be stronger than the mind. I want you to learn how to get your mind involved in your lift.

When you saw my bicep video and you saw me telling my bicep ‘I command you to grow’ that’s what I was thinking in my mind. I just said it out loud so you could hear it. That’s my mind telling me ‘I command my biceps to do what I want them to do.’

Now, for you power lifters, every attempt is a one shot deal. There’s no tomorrow. You have to give that motherf***ker everything you got right then and there. You can not count on what’s going to happen tomorrow. The only thing you could actually know and depend on is that you can give it everything you have every time you step to the bar. 100 percent effort. I’m not going to say it’s going to work for you, motherf***ker. It’s what I did. You’re going to have to adapt it to you. So don’t say “he said do this.” I’m telling you what I did. You do you motherf***** and I’ll be me,” (CT Fletcher).

Years ago I had a friend who wanted to break 200 lbs. on his bench press. He could rep 190 lbs. at least five times. Whenever I would put 200 lbs. on the bar, he would fail. Over and over and over again he failed despite all the evidence in the world — on paper — that he should be able to break that barrier.

One day I did an experiment. I told him that I would put 195 lbs. on the bar, but I secretly put on 200 lbs. He lifted it without any problem because the real weakness was in his head.

Just as many weightlifters shackle themselves with mind-forged manacles, so does the average citizen in his everyday life.

We are more often than not the architects of the biggest obstacles in our lives. We are the engineers of our own overall success or failure. While there will always be events that are beyond our control (e.g., sudden sickness, a loss of a job) those things pale in comparison to the poison pills that we elect to take or discard on a daily basis.

When CT Fletcher talks about the psyche-up, he’s right. When there is zero — zero — expectation of failure on a lift, more often than not you will surprise yourself with just how strong your body can be. And, while I would hope most people don’t turn into a young Hulk Hogan in their workplace cubicle, ripping their shirts off with a lion-like roar, there is something to be said about getting psyched up for work, for relationships and for life in general.

Every day you have a choice whether to be pumped for what’s to come or not. Every day you have a choice to say “I’m going to give it everything I have” or not. When CT Fletcher talks about “stepping up to the bar” he is also talking about your day-to-day existence. You do not know what tomorrow will bring. You do not know what will happen on your way home from work. Life is a precious thing and every second of every day counts, so there is no excuse why you shouldn’t live accordingly.

CT Fletcher’s philosophy worked for him. A similar philosophy has worked for me. And if you give it a shot, I believe it will work for you, too. There’s a first place pedestal with your name on. Now go grab it.

Today I ran across an old picture of me ascending a rock climbing wall while at the Cumberland County fair in Maine. For some odd reason it dawned on me that rock climbing is a great metaphor for life. Before this picture was taken I had been working a booth for The Heritage Foundation, talking to the good people of Maine about the organization and its principles. A National Guardsman dared me to take the climb and, not one to back down from a challenge, I accepted.

Given that, I will now explain rock climbing as a metaphor for life, as well as how one’s worldview changes how they approach the wall.

In life, we all have an end point we’re shooting for. We all want to get to the top of some mountain. Some people want to prosper monetarily; others seek spiritual wealth. Some people seek knowledge; others wish to experience their fill of earthly pleasures. We all value different things, and as such our lives will all take vastly different twists and turns before we call it a day.

In between our starting point and the final destination there is an infinite number of paths laid out before us. We have a general idea of how we want to go about attacking the mountain, but there’s a big difference between gauging obstacles from afar and then experiencing them up close and personal.

Just like with rock climbing, sometimes the path that you thought would get you to the top in theory doesn’t work out in practice. You have to recalibrate your route. You might have to backtrack or go far out of your way to traverse a difficult section. In a worst-case scenario you might even fall off the wall, but thanks to a harness you don’t kill yourself and, if you so choose, you can start all over again — armed with the knowledge only failure can teach.

The conservative knows that every person who attempts the rock-climbing wall of life will have different strengths and weaknesses. Some people want to shoot for the top, and some don’t. Some people have amazing upper body strength, and others have an iron grip. Some people are light and some people are heavy. Some people are tall and some people are short. Given all these variables, the conservative generally doesn’t worry too much about what the guy next to him is doing and begins climbing away. He focuses on his technique. He monitors his strength. He takes time to stop and pause and re-evaluate his strategy when necessary. He isn’t afraid of falling. The conservative does all this, and in the long run he is generally rewarded for it.

The liberal, by contrast, does not fare too well. He complains about the size of the footholds. He looks at their placement on the wall and wonders who put them there and if there was some sort of nefarious plot connected to the decision process. He complains that he doesn’t have chalk, but the guy next to him does. He wants better shoes. It’s unfair that he has to climb in rainy weather, when the guy before him had nice weather. The winds are shifting one way or the other. He wants a different belay man. The list is endless. And at the end of the day the liberal sits at the bottom of wall, having wasted valuable time that would have been better spent just climbing the damn wall.

Sometimes, the liberal will look up and see his conservative counterpart smiling at the top of the mountain and will yell nasty things in his direction. The conservative will be accused of being a heartless bastard for basking in the sun’s rays and enjoying the view while the liberal down below must sit in the shadows — again, even if it was the liberal who chose to spend the limited time and resources afforded to him unwisely.

If you have a rock climbing wall around your neck of the woods, I suggest giving it a try. You’ll learn a lot about yourself, both mentally and physically.

See you at the top,

Doug

Joe Weider passed away on Saturday, March 23 at 93. For those who don’t know him, The New York Times provided a good write up:

Joe Weider, a scrawny youngster who sculptured himself with bodybuilding during the Great Depression and created an empire of muscle magazines, fitness equipment, dietary supplements and Olympic-style contests featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. …

Mr. Weider may not have been the 97-pound weakling of the comic books who got tired of having sand kicked in his face. But as a teenager in Montreal, he hated being roughed up by neighborhood hooligans, discovered bodybuilding in a magazine and bought into it for life. He developed a V-shaped torso with bulging biceps and abs like Michelangelo’s David, and he was still muscular and jut-jawed in his 70s and 80s.

In the intervening decades, Mr. Weider, [...] who moved to the United States as a young man, founded many of the world’s most popular bodybuilding magazines, including Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Men’s Fitness and, for women, Shape. They had 25 million readers and were crammed with photos of greased bodybuilders and Hollywood stars like Sylvester Stallone [...] and Mr. Schwarzenegger.

The first weights I ever used were made by Weider, on a bench with his name printed on it. The set included a booklet of exercises, each explained in great detail. My father explained to me who, exactly, Mr. Weider was and what he meant to the fitness world. And if his knowledge on physical fitness was good enough for my father (a former Army Ranger) it was good enough for me.

I first started lifting weights as a skinny high school kid in the early 90′s. I was 5’8, 110 pounds soaking wet. Regardless, looking at the pictures provided by Mr. Weider, I went downstairs into my family’s basement on a regular basis. It was cluttered with junk, and dark and damp with cobwebs in strange places like a lot of basements, but I loved it.

It was on a set of Weider weights that I began to put on muscle. I found out that strength was addictive. It changed the way I thought about myself. With strength comes confidence. Confident young men carry themselves differently, and when you walk and talk tall, those around you in turn treat you differently. There’s a domino effect that happens to the mind, body and spirit when an individual flips physical fitness routines from being a necessary arduous task into being part of who he is.

Last week I was talking with a good friend of mine after a workout, and he promised to give me one in the near future that would make me “see Jesus.” The point is, an individual who knows that hidden reserves of strength are always there, if he is willing to dig deep into the fiber of his being, behaves a lot differently than the average Joe. Such individuals apply lessons taught by the weights to other aspects of their life — and more often than not the results are positive.

My path to a thousand life lessons began with Joe Weider. For that I am forever grateful.

Today is definitely a day to mourn for anyone who loves to hit the weights.

Here an excerpt from Arnold’s Schwarzenegger’s statement on the loss of Joe Weider:

Today, I lost a dear friend and mentor, and the world lost one its strongest advocates of living a healthy lifestyle. Joe Weider was a titan in the fitness industry and one of the kindest men I have ever met.

I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him — he was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to “Be Somebody with a Body.” He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions. When I was a young boy in Austria, his muscle magazines provided me with the inspiration and the blueprint to push myself beyond my limits and imagine a much bigger future. I know that countless others around the world found motivation in the pages of his publications just as I did, but as I read his articles in Austria, I felt that he was speaking directly to me and I committed to move to America to make my vision of becoming the best bodybuilder, to live the American dream, and to become an actor a reality. …

Well said, Arnold.

I’ve always found it fascinating how men and women we’ve never met and may never have a chance to say “thank you” to can positively shape our lives or completely change its trajectory. I never properly showed my appreciation for how Joe Weider influenced my life (How hard would it have been to write a simple letter?), but I guess it’s never too late. Wherever you are Joe, thank you and may you rest in peace.

Related: ‘Pumping Iron’ inspires, decades after its release

Related: Schwarzenegger’s ‘Six Rules for Success’: Sage advice for all Americans

Related: Lifting Weights: The Making of a Conservative

‘Pumping Iron’ came out in 1977, at a time when body building was still genuinely considered freakish. The world had not yet been sufficiently introduced to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and by extension the kind of action star that he would help popularize during the 80′s and 90′s.

But perhaps more importantly, ‘Pumping Iron’ continues to inspire countless Americans to head out to the gym or to start an exercise routine, no matter what their goals are. Not everyone can be (or wants to be) Mr. Olympia or Mr. Universe, but everyone can take steps to improve their health and wellness. If you’re looking for a movie with “good” guys and “bad” guys, a family man (Mike Katz) and a lovable underdog (Lou Ferrigno), give it a watch when you get a chance. You won’t be disappointed.

Want humor? It has that, too. When a cocky young man asked Arnold for advice, he had this response:

Eight years ago when some fellow came to me in the gym and said, “I want to win Mr. Munich, you know. And I am a perfect poser and I have a fantastic body and I just want to learn and new posing routine, a new style. Something way out, which nobody expects.”

So I said, “Well, let me see the posing routine you have right now.” Well when the guy took his clothes off and posed for me he looked like nothing, number one. And his posing was bad. So I mean, I think he was just crazy, you know? So I thought, well okay, if he thinks he’s the best poser I’m going to pull a little trick on him. And so that’s what I did.

I told him, I said I have a new posing routine from America. I’m in correspondence with all the best athletes in America, and so on. And I told him that the new thing is he has to scream while he is posing. And he looked at me and said, “Wow, that’s a new idea.” I said, “That will really come off impressive when you go out on stage and scream. People can’t miss you! They will look at you!” …

So I taught him how to scream, you know? [...] I taught him how to do it. The higher your arms go up, the higher you make a screaming noise. And the lower your arms come down while you are posing, you know the lower the noise. You know, like, “Aaaaah! Oooooh!” This kind of a thing. Well, I practiced with him for about two hours. I spent a lot of time mastering his new posing routine, and he mastered it very well. He was screaming really loud in the end. The high and low. And he went to the Mr. Munich contest. I told him when he walks out he has to scream loud, too. “Aarrrg!” And so he did, and obviously people were not ready for that at all. So he went out there and screamed loud and went through three or four poses with the loud screaming and they carried him off the stage and then they threw him off the stage. And then threw him out. The guy is totally nuts.

‘Pumping Iron’ even has a few lines that will make you ask yourself, “Did Arnold really say that? Was he lying? Was he telling the truth?” I know the answers to many of those questions … but I won’t ruin it for you. You’ll have to do your homework for scenes like “the pump.”

The greatest feeling you can get in a gym, or the most satisfying feeling you can get in a gym is “the pump.” Let’s say you train your biceps. Blood is rushing into your muscles. And that’s what we call the pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling like your skin is going to explode any minute. It’s really tight. It just blows up and and it feels different. It feels fantastic.

It’s as satisfying to me as cumming is, you know? As having sex with a woman and cumming. So can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like getting the feeling of cumming in the gym, I’m getting the feeling of cumming at home, I’m getting the feeling of cumming back stage when I pump up, when I pose out in front of 5,000 people. I get the same feeling. So I am cumming day and night! I mean, it’s terrific, right? So I am in heaven.

God only knows what sort of crazy stories Arnold has that will never see the light of day.

With that said, the best parts of the film are the scenes where the athletes talk about training, because their advice is applicable to many disciplines:

The body is not used to maybe the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th rep with a certain weight so that makes the body grow then. Going through this pain barrier. Experiencing pain in your muscles, and aching — and go on and go on and go on — and these last two or three or four repetitions, that’s what actually makes the muscle then grow. And that divides one from a champion from one not being a champion. If you can go through [pain], then you may go on to be a champion. If you can’t go through [pain], then forget it. And that’s what most people lack — is having the guts to go in and says, “I go through, and I don’t care what happens.” It aches, and if I fall down I have no fear of fainting in a gym. Because I know it could happen. I threw up many times while I was working out, but it doesn’t matter because it’s all worth it.”

Boom. That’s life summed up right there, and oddly enough it’s spoken by the guy who said “I am cumming day and night!”

Today we live in a society that avoids pain at all costs. We live in a society that fears pain. It fears a whole lot of things … but it really fears pain. Emotional pain. Physical pain. Economic pain.

The truth is, often times the most spiritual, emotional and physical growth we attain comes from enduring hardship. You make muscle by destroying muscle. You improve your endurance by pushing your limits. The mind almost always gives in before the body. Success often comes from the knowledge we gain through failure. If you aren’t pushing yourself to failure, you aren’t pushing yourself. If you show me a successful person, I will show you a person who has failed many, many times.

I firmly believe the U.S. obesity rate is an outward manifestation of the cultural rot going on inside the minds of millions of Americans. When self-esteem reigns supreme and everyone is afraid of offending the guy next to them, you wind up with a “comfort zone culture.” And when you stay in your comfort zone, you get fat and lazy. Insulated from insults or criticism, always seeking to feel good instead of possibly experiencing pain, the mind and the body and the soul atrophy. What’s left is a life wasted. And it’s sad, because it never has to be that way.

I respect anyone who takes a leap of faith on a new career or a new job, because they’re jumping into the super unknown. There might be a pile of pillows at the bottom, or their might be a load of bricks. I respect anyone who writes, because they offer themselves up to the slings and arrows of complete strangers. Those intellectual battle scars bring with them experience that will serve the writer well in the broader war.

Likewise, I respect anyone who finds an exercise routine that works for them and then sticks to it. The body really is a like a piece of clay. The “you” that you want to see in the mirror is there right now. He stares you in the eye every day. He just responds to hard work. When you put in the time you’ll coax him out. And when you do, you’ll think differently and you’ll act differently and those around you will respond in kind. And you will never again want to go back to your comfort zone.

Don’t trust me? Watch ‘Pumping Iron,’ and hopefully some of the all-time greats of body building will change your mind.

Related: Schwarzenegger’s ‘Six Rules for Success’ are sage advice for all Americans

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie goes on Dave Letterman and eats doughnuts, but then has the nerve to tell accomplished doctors to “shut up” when they discuss his weight. Way to close the gender gap there, winner.

Dr. Connie Mariano was the doctor to President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. She’s an accomplished woman. She recently expressed concerned about N.J. Gov. Chris Christie’s weight, particularly if he were to one day become the president of the United States.

Christie’s response? He created the first “war one women” ad, should he decide to run in 2016:

“If she wants to get on a plane and come here to New Jersey and ask me if she wants to examine me and review my medical history, I’ll have a conversation with her about that. Until that time she should shut up.” Christie also added that the she’s “just another hack who wants to be on TV.”

Wrong, Gov. Christie. You’re a hack. A fat hack. You’re a bully whose shtick will never play outside New Jersey. And I say that as a guy whose mom is a Jersey girl, and I say that as someone who spent summer vacations as a kid playing arcade games along the boardwalk in Ocean City. I have the Italian Ice and mini-golf stories to prove it.

What kind of idiot watches Mitt Romney get pummeled by the false “war on women” narrative, and then decides the first thing he’s going to do to start the new year is to tell a highly intelligent, accomplished woman that she’s a “hack” and needs to “shut up”? The list of video and audio clips of him telling off women is already extensive, but he doesn’t need to add to it. Even worse, Dr. Mariano detailed a phone conversation she had with him shortly afterward, in which Gov. Christie essentially yelled at her until he was out of breath before hanging up. Smart move, genius.

Dr. Connie Mariano looked after the health and wellness of three presidents, but N.J. Gov. Chris Christie calls her a “hack.” Let me ask my Magic 8 Ball if Mr. Christie is an idiot. Answer: “Without a doubt.”

Just as Gov. Christie has a problem with food, he also has a problem with the adulation that has come his way from liberal media outlets for lighting into the Republican Party. But just how Sen. McCain found out that it was all a ruse in 2008, Mr. Christie will be destroyed overnight by the same late-night comedians he’s yukking it up with now.

Gov. Christie has no self-control when it comes to calories. He has shown no self-discipline when it comes to exercise. Those faults also rear their ugly head every time he channels MSNBC’s resident blowhard Chris Matthews during a testy press conference or town hall meeting. He is not presidential material, he cannot at the present moment inspire the nation, and he would be crushed by Hillary Clinton in a landslide if the stars ever aligned in such a way as to pit the two of them against each other for the highest office in the land. Conservatives need to start working now to take him out of the running. A good start would be to come out in droves for the 2014 midterm elections.

Part II:

With that said, I thought I would split this post into two parts. After I got home from work tonight I was thinking about Gov. Christie’s regular refrain that he’s doing his best to lose weight. Unless he has a medical issue we don’t know about, that’s bull.

Below is a video of me hoping on my rowing machine for an impromptu 1,000 meters. At almost 34 years old and with no stretching or warmup (my wife will give me a hard time about that) I knocked it out in under 4 minutes. My heart rate reached 174 beats per minute at completion. If Chris Christie only rowed 3,000 meters per week and was able to get his heart rate to a comparable training range I guarantee he would lose weight. Given where he is currently at, he could row for 4 minutes at a similar intensity and lose weight. Maybe he’d only cover 400 meters at his current level of health. So what. The point is — he isn’t doing s**t at the moment. He’s cracking jokes on David Letterman.  He’s lying to himself, and people with a habit of lying to themselves will lie to you.

Note: At 5:30 minutes you will realize that I have an interesting little dwelling, which includes a Gen. Patton poster and a little pink ceiling fan at the same time. As part of the deal when I moved in to my cardboard box, I was asked not to alter what once belonged to a six-years-old little girl. I have honored that pledge. Next time someone insinuates in the comments section that I have a lot of money, remember this video.

From time to time this blog veers a bit off course from its normal politics and pop culture fare to cover health and fitness. I wrote on Schwarzenegger’s “Six Rules for Success. I discussed running and the importance of being humbled. And now, I get to bring to you a short video on CT Fletcher, who in a sane universe would be approached by Marvel to play an older version of Luke Cage; the guy looks like he could walk through a brick wall. CT’s story provides a humbling tale and a message of hard work that I love. To top it off, he’s over 50 years old — and regular readers know I like writing about older guys who continue to sling the weights around despite all of society’s sick incentives to become soft and weak.

Don’t look for an easy way out. Nobody wants to work hard these days. Everybody wants the easy way — the 20 minute abs, the 10 minute this, the 10 minute that. … F**k that! Come to the gym. Work your ass off. Earn it. …

They said: “You can’t do it. You’re going to die.” I said: “Well, I’d rather die doing what I love to do than sitting at home looking at TV.”

I’m CT Fletcher: Six-time world champion, three-time world champion (drug free) bench presser, three-time world strict curl champion. …

What happened (and it took until 2005 for my attitude to change and be humbled) was the fact that I had to have emergency open-heart surgery. I was rushed to the emergency room more times than I care remember. … I was 260 before the operation, so I lost 45-50 pounds just to try and not have the operation, but it didn’t work. I came out of that surgery weighing 190 pounds,  looking like I never lifted weights in my life. I was a human skeleton. … It took me almost 2 years to recover. …

I still want to go back and defend the unbroken 225 strict curl record. I’d like to do it at the age of 54 —be able to do what I did at the age of 30. I think that would be pretty cool to come back 24 years later and do the same thing at a much lighter body weight — and 24 years older. …

20 minute abs, 20 minute calves, 20 minute butt, 20 minute any-f***ing-thing is a pile of bulls**t. If you see somebody with great abs, a great butt, a great whatever, they didn’t do the s**t in 20 minutes, and if they tell you they did, they are a f***ing liar. Trust me on that. No matter what, cause I hate complainers and I hate criers … if I could come in here with a metal valve implanted in my chest, taking 10 different medicines just to stay alive every day and do my workout, you have no excuses. So no matter what — your nose bleeds, it’s that time of the month, the kids are crying, you don’t feel like it, your back hurts, you got aches and pains — it’s still your mother-f****ng set. Let’s get it done.”

Related: CT Fletcher inspires: Your body can never be stronger than your mind

The problem with most plans is that the mind is in the wrong place from the start. The individual says “I’m going to go to the gym more often,” or “I’m going to eat healthier foods.” The heart is in the right place, but the mind is not. There’s a reason why they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

Instead of doing something, you should be something. Instead of saying, “I’m going to do more running this year” you should say, “I am a runner.” In one case you’re asserting the desire to engage in an activity and in the other the activity is integral to who you are. Psychologically, these two positions seem to be only off by degrees, but when you plot out the vectors they produce, on a long enough timeline the differences are profound.

It always puzzles me to see people go on drastic diets or exercise programs. They swing life’s pendulum wildly in one direction and convince themselves that it isn’t going to come barreling back the other way. They enter into an exercise program that leaves them unable to walk for days on end, get discouraged and then give up because they didn’t scale the workouts to their ability level. They go cold-turkey on drinking or smoking or eating — or whatever the vice may be — and then fall right back into bad habits because they never properly committed to the right lifestyle to begin with.

When you take possession of a lifestyle, questions disappear. You don’t have to wonder whether or not you should have that extra piece of cake — you just don’t. You don’t have to wonder whether or not you’ll exercise the next day — you know that you will. It’s what you do because it’s who you are.

Over a year ago I severely injured my shoulder. I couldn’t lift my left arm up to wash my hair and had nights where I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Needless to say, when I finally was able to start exercising again my weakest exercise — the pullup — was even worse. I made a rule: Any time I exited or entered my room I would do a set of pullups. Over time I got stronger … and stronger … and stronger, until one day I realized my pain was gone, my mobility had returned, and what was once a weakness was now one of my strengths. It took almost a year for that reality to unfold, but it all began with a mental directive that while the timeline was negotiable, the end result was not.

Mother Nature uses time and pressure to mold the physical world around us, but I firmly believe we too can use the very same methods to achieve success, wealth, health and happiness in our own lives. Once you honestly determine the person you are, your mind will seek out ways to bend reality to your will and you’ll attract the kind of company into your life needed to assist you in your endeavors. Make that switch from doing to being and check in with me three, four or five years down the road. My bet is that you will have done away with the practice of making big New Year’s resolutions in favor of constantly recalibrating the little things, which reaffirm and enhance the better person you’ve become.

The Washington Post just ran a story on the military’s bulging bellies. I looked through my old Army photos from 1997 and found one of me with my fellow infantrymen after a 10 mile run. Nope. No fat people there. My Magic Eight Ball says the MOS might have had something to do with it.

Over the past few years there has been increasing coverage of the growing waistlines of our nation’s military. It’s generally a dumb story. The people charged with fixing the problem know exactly what’s going on:  Nobody does physical fitness like the infantry. Period. If you want less overweight soldiers, tell the POGS to look at their grunt-buddies for an example of how to stay in shape.

Let’s take a look at who, exactly, can’t seem to get their asses in gear, shall we?

Surprise, surprise. Look who leads the pack or, more aptly, leads the rear of the formation on Company runs:  women, the Air Force, and fat old men who have their rank and don’t give a rip because they’ve hit twenty years of service and can retire at any time.

When I was part of Charlie Co., 1/18 Infantry in the 90′s we had a guy who treated his body like crap and he couldn’t stay in shape. The solution? They made me get up with him on the weekends and take him on four, five, and six-mile runs. We also ran after work. We did push-ups. We did sit-ups. Our Platoon Sergeant gave me free rein to drag him out of bed and onto the road for long runs until he got it in his thick head to get where he was supposed to be, meaning: in shape. When you make something a priority, things start to fall into place. Shocker. The military should make it a priority to emulate the kind of standards infantrymen hold themselves to.

With that said, the bigger story is the nation’s eating problem:

Obesity is now the leading cause of ineligibility for people who want to join the Army, according to military officials, who see expanding waistlines in the warrior corps as a national security concern. …

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling said he was floored by what he found in 2009 when he was assigned to overhaul the Army’s training system. Seventy-five percent of civilians who wanted to join the force were ineligible, he said. Obesity was the leading cause.

“Of the 25 percent that could join, what we found was 65 percent could not pass the [physical training] test on the first day,” he said in a recent speech. “Young people joining our service could not run, jump, tumble or roll — the kind of things you would expect soldiers to do if you’re in combat.”

I believe that our nation’s outward appearance is a reflection of our own cultural decay.

Sloth. Gluttony. Pride. Envy. A nation of video game obsessed, chip-eating narcissists live vicariously through the heroes in their first person shooter, only taking breaks to go to the bathroom and catch a few minutes of whatever brain dead reality show is popular on MTV. Huge swaths of the population sit around on their butts all day, and when they wake from their Netflix induced stupor long enough to catch a news report of someone who went out there and actually built something they become angry. (See: Occupy Wall Street.)

In the United States, we live in a society where anyone can be fat. Quite unlike any other time in history, the poorer you are in the United States the more likely it is that you will be fat. It’s a testament to our greatness, but one that doesn’t come without its own set of challenges. Where once artists and painters drew naked heavy women because weight was an indicator of wealth, today obesity is an indicator that you might very well be living on a tight budget.

Today, the rich have personal trainers to help hound off the weight, but the poor have internet access. All the nutritional information we could ever want is right there at our fingertips, and yet rich and poor alike don’t utilize it. There are YouTube videos, blogs, government funded websites and enough dietary knowledge to make anyone a subject matter expert in a relatively short amount of time, and yet we still pack on the pounds. Why? It’s because we aren’t serious. About anything. We spend our days working and our nights watching Jersey Shore. Or Buck Wild. Or Honey Boo Boo. Or Dancing with the Stars. Or American Idol.

And so, the nation’s newspapers should not worry about the body fat standards of the military so much as it should worry about the psyche of our civilian population. More nutrition labels aren’t the answer. More bans on sodium and fat are not the answer. Limits on carbohydrates aren’t the answer. Instead, I would argue that finding a way to change the culture in a way that tempers its obsession with instant gratification and celebrity would yield better results.

And if we fail? If there’s a zombie apocalypse we all know who will be the first ones to go — and it won’t be me.

Regular readers can argue over whether or not I’ve been honest with my writing (I would say I’ve always put forth a good faith effort to do so), but Google has made it possible for readers to, on some level, put together a stunningly accurate psychological profile without ever relying on prose.

Conduct a Google image search for ‘douglasernstblog’ and you will see page after page after page of the pictures I’ve used over the years to represent the words I worked so hard on. For me, while I can’t always find the perfect image, it’s always been a priority to find the best picture possible that represents the content. And so, scrolling through Google image results can give you the reader a glimpse into my brain. Likewise, the same holds true for any blogger who churns out content on a regular basis. It’s safe to say that the FBI and the CIA should be taking the engineers at Google out to lunch for the favor; the implications are huge.

Below are a few screenshots I’ve taken from a search of my own blog, although it’s only a portion of what’s there. I think that a good profiler could easy tease out what’s important to me, what drives me — what issues weigh on my my mind daily — and the values I hold dear. If someone wanted to predict my behavior for any given scenario, the images below would be a reliable road map of sorts from which to surmise an answer.

Anyway, to those who have been reading from the beginning, below are just some of the ideas I’ve imprinted in your psyche. It’s been a wild ride, and I hope you stick around until the end.

Best,
Doug

If you ever asked yourself why you’re fat, then you should have also asked yourself if the federal government drones have ever instructed you to make decisions that were bad for your health. Why? Because they have.

It turns out that there are a lot of high school kids who aren’t happy with how the new USDA guidelines are impacting the way they eat at school. Shockingly, when the government got more involved in their school programs the main thing it accomplished was a higher price for everyone involved and a product that no one really liked all that much.

In Wisconsin, high school athletes are complaining about not getting enough to eat each day, due to the skimpy new school lunch menu mandated by the United States Department of Agriculture and First Lady Michelle Obama.

The story … on that subject is unfortunately not unique. Students across the country are complaining about the new school lunch regulations. …

Some are throwing away their vegetables while others are adapting to the rules by becoming industrious. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, students have created a black market — for chocolate syrup. The kiddie capitalists are smuggling in bottles of it and selling it by the squeeze, according to SouthCoastToday.com.

Nancy Carvalho, director of food services for New Bedford Public Schools, was quoted as saying that hummus and black bean salads have been tough sells in elementary cafeterias.

The sad thing is, if these kids are getting a public school education that was anything like mine, they’ve probably already been primed to root for President Obama on election day. Hopefully, this experience will change their, umm, “gut” instinct moving forward.

Take a look at two food charts, the classic “food pyramid” that I grew up with on the right, and the newer version the USDA has put out on the left.

On the left we have an “improved” food pyramid put out by the federal government. On the right we have an older version, which is interesting because there’s a good chance if you tried to follow it over the years you now have some extra weight around your midsection.

For years, the federal government told us that the foundation of our diet should be a carbohydrate-heavy mix of grains. The masterminds in Washington, DC had it ass-backwards! A healthy diet should actually have whole grains and starches at the top of the pyramid, and one good reason for that is because carbohydrates affect your blood sugar. Eat too many of the wrong carbohydrates, and you’re just begging for insulin and weight issues down the line. The modern “food plate” and “food pyramid” still has it somewhat wrong, and yet Michelle Obama and her ideological allies have the nerve to get on television and lecture the rest of us about and obesity epidemic. The federal government has repeatedly instilled perverse incentives in the population under the guise of improving health, and then used the predictable consequences ( ‘predictable’ to free-thinking people) as a pretext to write more regulations.

We don’t have an obesity epidemic — we have a stupidity epidemic. We have individuals who would rather abdicate important decisions about their health to complete strangers in the nation’s capital than to bear down and take control of their own personal wellness.

When I was a kid, the federal government scared people into thinking that eggs were bad because they could increase cholesterol. So eggs were out, but meanwhile citizens weren’t educated about foods with a high-glycemic index. Eggs were “bad,” but no on said a peep about foods that were high in trans-fatty acids until much later down the line. The truth is, eggs aren’t bad for you if — just like anything else — you’re smart about how many you eat. And the truth is, it doesn’t matter how many studies the USDA puts out, it’s ultimately up to the individual to take control over not only what they put in their body, but what they want to put into their body.

Proper nutrition begins at home, and if an increasing number of children aren’t getting healthy meals where they’re need most, then perhaps that’s where public policy makers should look for answers. Mandating that kids who eat school lunch get black beans and hummus (I’d like to see much more chicken, turkey and other proteins provided) does nothing for a kid whose house is stocked with Oreo cookies, potato chips and leftover Pizza Hut from the night before. The current food pyramid actually looks like it’s trying to encourage vegetarianism; when done incorrectly that puts the body into “starvation mode,” making the body store fat! But I digress.

For those who are interested in health and nutrition, I highly suggest the documentary Fat Head. It was made on a low budget in response to Morgan Spurlock’s Super-Size Me, and while it’s obvious that the director will never win an Oscar, the content is pretty sound. It’s an eye opener, not just about how misleading Spurlock is as a filmmaker, but also the role the federal government plays in impacting your dietary health.

Keep protesting the new regulations, kids. Just don’t forget this lesson when you step onto your first college campus. These days, the ones who are supposed to “questions authority” dutifully take orders.