Category — Living Counterclockwise

How is it that the Austrians consume more calories a day on average than we do (a whopping 3,784 calories – the world’s leader, according to the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics), eat a meat-heavy, bread-heavy, vegetable-light diet, smoke at almost two-and-and-half times the rate as we do … and are healthier – with less than half the obesity rate, half the heart disease deaths and half the rate of diabetes.

It’s not a “mystery.” It’s not even a “paradox” — although that was the title of my post on this subject last week. It’s just complicated. It is, as I suggested in the previous post, that Austrians (and French and Italians and others in countries we might compare ourselves to) live very different lives than we do.

One big difference I noted was our deeply embedded and pervasive car culture, which means we drive everywhere (instead of walk or bike). We drive through drive-throughs. We eat in the car. I asked readers, especially my Austrian friends, to weigh in (pun intended) with other ideas about differences. Then I investigated these, focusing on proven connections to health issues. Here’s one (courtesy of my friend Stefan Binder, an Austrian journalist) that really struck me:

Vacation – or lack thereof.

American workers get the least mandated, paid vacation time in the world. Zero, in fact. (Employers in the US don’t have to give their staff any paid leave – although many are paid for the 10 national holidays.) Workers in other countries enjoy as many as 40 days off a year. Austrians get 38 paid leave and national holiday days. And, get this, full-time employees in America, when given vacation time, take only half of their eligible days, and more than 60 percent report working while on vacation. (I cannot remember a vacation during which I did not work.)

The health effects of such behavior can be considerable.

The landmark Framingham Heart Study – the largest and longest-running study of cardiovascular disease – revealed that men who didn’t take a vacation for several years were 30 percent more likely to have heart attacks compared to men who did take time off. And women who took a vacation only once every six years or less were almost 8 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack compared to women who vacationed at least twice a year.

Lack of vacation has also been linked to higher blood pressure, bigger waistlines and increased incidence of depression.

It is also worth noting that Austrians put in shorter work weeks (from 3-8 hours shorter) than we do. So do workers in the U.K, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovenia…I could go on.

It’s easy to see how more work can translate into other unhealthy behaviors: more stress, more stress (or on the run, or take-out because I’m too tired to cook) eating, more time sitting in a chair, less sleep, less family time.

On your next vacation day, think about this. I will. When I’m not working.

You’ve heard of the French paradox, of course: All those annoyingly svelte citoyens de France who breakfast on croissants and pain au chocolat, slather their baguettes with runny Camembert while slicing off slabs of fois gras, partake of profiteroles and tarte tatin – and stay (annoyingly) svelte. Not to mention more-than-annoyingly smug.

The “paradox,” first noted in the late 1980s (60 Minutes placed it on our radar in 1991), was based on the epidemiological observation that French people eat diets rich in saturated fats but have a relatively low incidence of heart disease (an apparent contradiction to the widely accepted belief that high fat diets are a significant risk factor for heart disease). How do they do it, we fat-loving, decidedly un-svelte, walking-heart-attack Americans wanted to know.

The much-ballyhooed French “secret” was thought to be red wine. Drink enough of it, and it doesn’t matter how many goose livers and éclairs you consume. Just so you know, Americans’ consumption of red wine skyrocketed since the “paradox” was revealed. (We drink more wine than anyone else on the planet and more than twice the amount we did pre-paradox.) While we were drinking all this wine, our obesity rate jumped from 15 percent (1990) to close to 40 percent (2015). While we were drinking this wine, we held onto (and increased) our lead as #1 in heart disease among the “high-income countries” (western Europe and North America). So maybe it’s not the wine?

Which brings me to…the Austrian Paradox. I am writing this from Vienna, city of the Sacher Torte, of the everything mit schlag (that’s cream), of beer, of breakfasts of bread, cheese and meat, of meat, meat and more meat. Here’s the menu from the restaurant I went to a few nights ago. This is where I mention that Austria’s rate of obesity is less than half that of the U.S., as is its rate of diabetes. Austrians are half as likely to die of heart disease as we are. Yet they are bread, cheese and sausage eaters (and then there’s that strudel) who mostly seem to shun vegetables. And they drink a lot of beer. And they smoke at more than twice the rate we do.

Vas ist los?

We want the secret.

Okay, here’s the secret: The Austrians, the French… they live very different lives than we do. It is not one thing; it is everything. It’s lifestyle. They walk or bike to work, to shop, to do errands, to visit friends, to go to the museum. Kids walk or bike to school. Old people, really old people, walk everywhere. You see old people making their way up impossibly steep flights of stone steps, riding bikes, arguing politics in cafes.

The automobile is not a way of life. I’ve yet to see a drive-through. The idea of zipping through a kiosk to get a greasy bag of food to eat in the car is as bizarre to them as not owning a car is to us. (Yes, they do have McDonalds.) They don’t snack on garbage food from machines all day. Although I would not make the case that either the French or the Austrians have a full-blown “dolce vita” or “pura vida” attitude toward life, they sure seem to enjoy their lives, inhabit them, live them fully in a way we don’t. (As an aside, I’m currently on a Westbahn train full of commuters – and I am the only one on a laptop working.)

So if we are going to learn any lessons from the Old World, let’s look beyond red wine or good fat v bad fat. Let’s look at life.

Okay, bliss is a big word, with synonyms like jubilation, ecstasy, rapture. So maybe I don’t mean “bliss” exactly but rather some unbidden moment of joy that transcends everyday experience. Hmm. Perhaps I do mean bliss. I have written about this before, and I am delighted to be able to write about it again.

I am running up a slow, steady incline through the red rock country of southern Utah. It’s early morning, cool and crisp, a blindingly blue sky. There’s a point in a long-ish run where the ease takes over the effort. Maybe at mile 3 or so, I stop thinking about the heaviness in my legs and how the dry air is chapping my lips and how in the shade, where there is a bit of it, it is downright cold. I’m just running. For perhaps 10 seconds, my mind is actually scoured of thought, which I think is the place mediation is supposed to take you. When I start thinking again, it is with new (and surprising) clarity about a book project I’ve been puzzling over for months. It is a true ah-ha moment. I almost stumble over my own not-so-fleet feet.

My run takes me up to a charming little artists’ “village” with a lovely café where I order the first coffee I have had in four days, an Americano served in a heavy, hand-thrown ceramic mug. I take my coffee outside to sit at one of the tables on the brick patio. I am alone. None of the shops and galleries are open yet. The barista turns on the outdoor sound system. It’s Van Morrison. If I had to listen to one and only one performer for the rest of my life it would be Van Morrison.

The sun warms the top of my head. I smell the coffee. I listen to Van. And not to be too woo-woo about this – but it is pretty damn woo-woo – I feel a whoosh of energy rush through my body, head to toe, crown to root. (Yes, I’m talkin’ chakras here. I warned you about the woo-woo.) My head feels weightless, my chest opens, my feet, which have endured five miles of asphalt pounding, tingle with electricity and warmth. In the space of a breath,  I   feel   it   all.

And then it’s gone. Unbidden bliss.

I write this as I sit in my cramped regional jet airline seat on my way back to my life. I am wedged between the window and an excessively wide-shouldered, loudly snoring man. I write about this to preserve the memory, a memory to be ignited during moments that are decidedly unblissful.

What I see when I look around is old people living solitary, silent lives; old people sequestered in old people communities – “active” for the healthy, “assisted” for the not; old people made to feel as if they need to apologize for being old, for clogging up the works, for showing us the future we don’t want to see.

Presumably we all have a soft spot in our hearts for our old people – grandpa, great aunt Tillie, old cousin Bill – but we lose patience with everyone else’s. The grandma at the grocery store. She’s looking through her cavernous handbag for coupons. She’s taking forever to count out the change from her purse. She’s holding up the line. Come on. The geezer in the car, the one whose gray head you can barely see above the top of the driver’s seat. He’s driving 22 in a 35 mph zone. He’s actually making a full stop at the stop sign and looking both ways before proceeding. Get off the road.

And maybe even, sometimes, we lose it with our own kin. Grandpa (Dad) pulls out the old photo album. Again. He launches into the story about…fill in the blank. Again. We roll our eyes and find the first excuse to leave the room.

Old and in the way.

“Old and in the way” was a music group Jerry Garcia formed in the mid-1970s (with David Grisman and the amazing Vassar Clemens.) I know this not from reading the Wikipedia entry but because I heard the group in Berkeley. I got there early and was hanging out in the alley behind the club when Garcia arrived. I held open the back door for him.

Just as my young self from those days – car-less, kid-less, 401K-less, a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker — could not imagine my mid-life self today, so too can I not imagine my elderly self in decades to come. Or maybe I should say, the (stereotyped) elderly self that comes to mind is not one I care to imagine: the little old lady in a mint green polyester pants suit gripping the steering wheel of a big Buick. The little old lady sitting on a vinyl couch in the TV room of an assisted living facility talking to other little old ladies about blood pressure medicine. Or about how she once held open the door for Jerry Garcia. No thanks.

I want my head full of other images, images of vibrant, engaged older people, funny, feisty, perceptive, talented, passionate, compassionate older people. Older people who not only have experience but still seek it. I want to be that kind of older person. Why is that so hard to imagine? Why do we have to think of aging as a long list of things we can’t do rather than a long list of things we can?

The photo is of my maternal grandparents who traveled every summer throughout the western U.S. landing in various college towns and talking their way (well, Nanny did the talking) into summer school classes. He was an engineering teacher with the soul of a poet. She was a pistol.

It’s early morning — steel gray skies, steady light rain (yes, western Oregon in January. Also February, March and probably April) – and I’m in the car on my way to the 7:30 Barre3 class. I am worrying about the presidential election and what if Donald Trump gets elected and I have to move to Canada. I am worrying about whether my daughter is going to be offered this baking job she wants and does the cat have worms and what’s that strange clicking I hear coming from the engine and wasn’t I supposed to get my yearly cholesterol check like two months ago. I am worrying that I worry too much.

I find a parking space on Broadway and I walk across the street, worrying that I forgot to put shampoo in my bag. I open the door and stuff my coat (it’s getting ratty…should I invest in a new one?) and purse (uh oh, did I remember my cellphone from the car?) in a cubby, ditch my boots (I should really get them re-heeled), and walk barefoot into the studio. I find my place at the barre.

We start with deep breaths, then neck stretches, then cat-cows. We are eight beats into step-tapping to Edge of Glory when I suddenly realize that I am not worrying any more. I realize that I am not in my head any more. The realization zips by in an instant, evaporates, disappears because, well, I am not in my head any more. I am in horse pose doing plié-relevées. I am in chair doing tricept kickbacks.  I am planking. I am my body.

This, really, is the glory of physical exertion. For years – decades – I exercised with my focus on the long game: bone strength, cardiovascular health, weight control. All important, oh yes, but it was all about the future, about the distant rewards, about body parts and mechanics. My deep investment in long-term goals all but blinded me – or at least caused me to take for granted — the immediate gratification one gets from movement and exertion: the infusion of energy, the sense of well-being, the elevated mood. And the insistent, chattering internal do-it-it’s-good-for-you monolog robbed me of the real-time experience of moving in my body. Of being in my body. Of scouring my mind of worry and thought.

And, like this morning, of moving, just moving.

You could make any number of health and wellness/ counterclockwise-y New Years resolutions. You know what they are, and you know from past experience which ones will stay with you past, say, January 7. So you could resolve to:

Get to the gym three times a week or
Eat six servings of vegetables
Or you could vow to:
Get another hour of sleep or
Give up _______ (fill in with favorite bad-for-you indulgence)

Some people disdain the whole resolutions thing. I personally think January 1st lists are phony and set us up for failure or guilt (probably both). But I do love the idea of intention that powers action and expectation that leads to outcome. And I love the idea of self-direction. So I am, in fact, thinking of starting the new year with a plan.

The plan involves a physical challenge – actually back-to-back related physical challenges (the January Barre3 official Challenge and my personal February get-back-to-the-ballet-studio challenge). But more an more I am convinced that living a vibrant and engaged life is more about attitude and intention than it is about kale and kettlebells. I don’t mean that good health isn’t important. Certainly it is. And I don’t mean that we should shirk our personal responsibility to promote, enhance and maintain good health. Of course not. So yay for those six servings of vegetables or that pledge to work out more.

But that’s not all there is to vitality, and resolutions (if you are the resolution-making type) that focus only on the physical are often not as life-enhancing as maybe we think (or hope ) they are.

So what is? Waking with energy and purpose, eagerness and curiosity each morning. That is my “resolution,” and, yes, I know there’s a disturbing whiff of bumpersticker-ese about this. Allow me to replace that unpleasant scent with this quote from John Updike:

 Each day we wake slightly altered and the person we were yesterday is dead.

Which means we are reborn. New to the experience of that day. And that, my friends, is counterclockwise living.

(Photo by me, 30,000 feet flying east into the dawn.)

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking successive autumns.

George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) wrote that, and I could not agree more. And, as if fall were not awesome enough by its own self, it is also an excellent season for those of us committed to living counterclockwise. Here are the top 5 reason (well, my top 5 reasons) fall is the best season for engaged, vibrant, youthful living:

1. Soup. Yes, let’s begin with soup. Lentil soup. Black bean soup. Potato leek soup. Butternut squash and apple (see #2) soup. Soupsoupsoup. A quiet and contemplative pleasure to make. A deeply satisfying (body and soul) meal to consume. Soup forces you to slow down, breath, savor, enjoy.

2. Apples. Sure, other fruits hog the anti-aging limelight (pomegranate, mangosteen, acai berries, blah blah blah), but the apple – glory of fall harvests – should be front and center. It’s not just the vitamin C and B6. It’s the particular kind of fiber found in apples (eat the skin or lose out) that interacts with other phytonutrients to significantly bolster the blood fat-lowering effects. The phytonutrients in apples also help regulate blood sugar. And recently scientists have identified a new important health benefit: the beneficial effects apples have on bacteria in the digestive tract. Also they are delicious, crunchy, satisfying and low-cal. And, as a bonus: Apples are grown in all 50 states, meaning you have a better chance of eating local with an apple than with just about any other fruit.

3. Sleep. Sleep is good, and we don’t get enough of it. With the equinox comes shorter days, longer nights, and more lovely darkness to take advantage of. Cooler nights (open those windows!) mean better sleep “hygiene.” Also the beginning of flannel sheet weather. Need I say more? Wait, I will say more. Here in the Pacific Northwest, fall means rain. Which means falling asleep to the soft hiss of rain, the sound people actually download to listen to because it is known to enhance relaxation.

4. Cooler weather. Not just great for improved sleep, cooler weather is perfect for long walks, hikes, bike rides, runs – you know, getting out and (joyfully) moving your body. If you were stuck indoors during summer heat waves and air inversions, now is the time to go back outside. It’s not just physical movement that keeps us healthy and vibrant, it is our connection to the natural world.

5. Glorious colors. Scarlet and magenta, gold and bronze, russet, flame, apricot. Oh I could go on. But you get it. Fall colors are magnificent, a treat for eye and food for the soul. It’s hard not to feel grateful just to be alive in the presence of such beauty.

So happy equinox, everyone. Take a walk while munching an apple. Make soup and savor it. Sleep well.

I just returned, sore lady parts and all, from a 2-day, 136-mile bike trip out and back to the coast. What I love about long-distance bike riding is not what you’d think. I don’t love it because of the physical challenge, the way it works all the big muscles, the great cardio. I don’t love it because it takes me outside, for hours and hours, into the glory that is Oregon. Well, of course I love it for all that. But that’s not the big reason.

The big reason is how obvious and no-nonsense life lessons are when you’re out there on a bike for hours and hours. The lessons are delivered, in your face. No mushy aphorisms-to-live-by, no bumpersticker-like words of inspiration. Just immediate, lived experience.

Here’s what I mean: One minute you’re tooling down this back road and there’s no traffic and the wind is at your back and the air is sweet with new mown hay. On either side of the road, the foxglove and larkspur are in full bloom. And your companion (who happens to be your wonderful, amazing middle son Zane) calls your attention to a red-winged blackbird. And the two of you say, almost in unison, “It doesn’t get better than this.”

Five minutes, maybe more like 3 minutes later, the wind picks up and shifts and is hammering your face and all of a sudden there’s nasty gravel all over the shoulder and you run over the decaying but still redolent carcass of a skunk. And you think: Shit. What just happened? This is how quickly life changes. And you realize: Just because it truly sucks right now doesn’t mean it will suck five minutes from now. And you think: Life turns on a dime. And isn’t that kind of grand.

You can be philosophical – okay, you have to be philosophical – when you are powering up a seemingly interminable 7 percent grade or when the late afternoon sun is scorching your back as you sweat through the final 15 to home. This is when Zane and I curse loudly, pick the bugs from our teeth and yell to each other, remind each other: “It’s all good miles.” The downhill-sweet-hay miles and the uphill-log-trucks-on-your ass miles, the skunk miles, the watching-a-great-blue-heron-dive-for-a-fish miles. It’s all good miles.

Get it?

I’m beginning to.

Pleasure is planned.

Joy happens.

Pleasure is what you feel eating a plate of grilled fresh sardines at a little taverna in Crete with the sun dipping down over the Agean. It took four airplanes to get here, and countless hours poring over airbnb apartments to find a cool and funky place to stay, and concerted exploration of tripadvisor and yelp to find the taverna. And then you had to walk a mile to get here. But now here you are. And it’s lovely. It’s delightful. It’s a pleasure.

Joy is when you are crouched filthy and sweaty in the garden pulling the umpteenth thistle from in between the tomato plants, and you look up to see the cat walking on the edge of the raised-bed box, all slinky and graceful, sinuous and supple, and for no reason he stops and turns his head to look at you, and his eyes are as green as grass, and it takes your breath away. And in the place of that breath joy floods in.

What does this have to do with counterclockwise living?

Everything.