Shovelglove

I discovered shovelgloving a few weeks ago, but only glanced at the site; it seemed rather weird, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Yesterday, however, I rediscovered it via my daily consumption of feeds, and decided to read the whole page (something I don’t do much these days on the internet, I admit). If you’d rather not do that, in a nutshell: shovelgloving is wrapping an old sweater around the head of a sledgehammer, and then doing basic movements with your new “shovelglove” – shoveling, chopping wood, churning butter, smiting the orc (I’m serious). See, I said it was weird, and I meant it. But its weirdness gives it an awful lot of charm. How could anyone not pay some attention to an exercise program that has an exercise called “smiting the orc”?

Despite its weirdness, Reinhard, the quirky librarian in charge of the site, convinced me to give it a go. I like that shovelgloving makes exercise such a simple thing, rather than charting it all out – this exercise for that muscle, that exercise for this muscle. Sure, there’s a table of movements, but they’re all pretty logical, with the names (mostly) describing the action very well. I understand “tuck bales” and “drive fence posts” far better than I understand “lat extension to the rear” and “triceps kickback”… what do those things mean?

In regards to how often and how much you’re supposed to shovelglove, it’s dead simple: Monday through Friday, 14 minutes a day – no more, no less. You rest on the weekend. Reinhard has an interesting psychological explanation as to why he chose 14 minutes – it’s not a typical time block, so it doesn’t really register with a lot of people. 14 minutes? Sure, I can spare that, that’s nothing. But half an hour? That’s half an hour. I could watch a TV show during that!

I put in my first 14 minutes of shovelgloving yesterday evening, and it was a surprisingly hard workout. But it was also a hell of a lot of fun – in a quite weird way. I just hope the neighbors didn’t see me.

No S Diet

The No S diet is perhaps even simpler than shovelgloving. Here’s the diet:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No calorie counting, no “you can’t eat that!”; just 3 meals a day, without constantly visiting the kitchen for snacks all day. And while I suppose things could change in the future, I’d say that at least during my lifetime, there will always be 2 days in the week which begin with “S”, so when I want some cookies or cake or whatever, I’ll know right when I can have them.

When I read about this diet, which I discovered via the shovelglove.com site, I thought: this is it. This is the best diet idea I’ve ever seen (and I’ve looked at my fair share of them, lemme’ tell ya’.) Why? Because it’s doable. I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s simple, and it’s not going to feel like I’m trying to become an ascetic. I’ve tried counting calories before, and I discovered that it – ahem, sucks. Sure, I did it for a few weeks. And then I started to hate that little red book. Hate it. It made every meal a math assignment, and I think I’ve mentioned it in the past: I hate math! I’ve also tried diets that simply cut off certain foods, and that sucks even more than calorie counting. I like cookies, thank you very much.

I also think it’s going to be a great fit for me, because I know I’m awful about snacking; it’s probably the #1 reason why I’m fat (with a close #2 being that during most of my life, when it comes to physical exercise, I’ve been a lazy bastard – hey, I’m going for honesty here). Bored? Hit the kitchen. In the kitchen for a glass of water? Hey, grab a snack – it’s just one or two bites of food, right? Right, but those bites add up, chum. Read the nosdiet.com page for more about this, because Reinhard’s got some really good info about snacking and why we all should probably quit doing it so damn much. And for the record, no, I’m not being paid to write this. I’ve not even spoken to the guy.

I realize I’ve only done shovelgloving and No S dieting one day, but I must say – that one day felt fine. It didn’t feel like a chore that I had to make myself do, even the exercise – which I can’t say about many other exercises I’ve done. (I still love punching bag workouts, though!) I’m going to continue to give both a go, and if in a few weeks I’m still feeling fine with both, they may just become life habits.

(Sidenote: I read that apparently, many people respond to the No S diet and shovelgloving as I have – very enthusiastically. And then they discover that it’s not ultra easy all of the time, and they start to despair a bit. So I’m keeping that in mind – the diet in particular is a big change for me, and I’m going to have to be diligent. Here’s my daily calendar for shovegloving and nosdiet; if you see a red square, feel free to say “get back on track!” via the comments here.)

Let’s make a comparison between religions and say, language. Let’s start that comparison out with a quote from Goethe:

“Wer keine fremde Sprache spricht, kennt seine Muttersprache nicht.”

My approximate translation of this would be: “He who does not speak a foreign language, does not know his native language.” I think the same could be said of religion. If you’re not familiar with other belief systems, are you sure you really understand yours?

As a further example, I suppose one could compare religions (crudely, I know) with that favorite standby of many: food. Suppose you get someone who has never had steak, spaghetti and meatballs, or pizza. You set a plate down in front of him with a steak; he eats it, and proclaims that it’s the right food for him, his favorite out of the three. But obviously, that can’t be right. How can he possibly say that if he hasn’t even tried the other two foods?

Certainly, I’m not saying that everyone who is religious to any degree should be a scholar on all religions (or even one). But I do think that to really understand one’s own path, one needs to at least have a vague idea about the road map that others are using. It’s hard to say that you’re sure your map has the right directions if you’ve never looked at any others.

Perhaps I’m being naive, though. The real truth as to why people don’t investigate other religions, unless they’re experiencing doubt about their current one, is probably that they think that all other religions are wrong. Their religion is the One True Religion, the only one that holds the (right) answers to all of the mysteries of the world. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out:

“If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely,’ it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.”

I believe I’ve fully recovered from the annual tryptophan stupor so this should make some sense.

How very true, I thought: the annual tryptophan stupor. It needs to be edited a bit though to take into account that the stupor is also brought on by having far too much to do. Cooking, calling, socializing with family, and of course, eating. Last week, particularly Saturday, which was when our family get-together was, was a blur of family members, old stories, turkey, and assorted sides. It was fun, I’ll give it that; but I’m glad it’s only once a year.

Speaking of assorted sides, my sister-in-law Michelle made something that honestly scared me a bit when I first heard about it. My mom told me about the dish: basically, green beans, potatoes, and cut up smoked sausage, all together. When I first heard the description, I thought: yeck! Then the dish actually arrived on Saturday, and I again thought: yeck! Upon looking at it, the first thing that came to mind was.. well, suffice to say, it was not pretty. The green beans were all squished, and everything, smoked sausage included, was covered in this thin layer of green goop. It looked quite terrible.

And then, I had a bowl of it. Damn. How deceiving looks can be! It tasted wonderful. That just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a book its cover, or, to be a bit more specific to this instance, a food by its looks. Did anyone else try a new food that, at first glance looked terrible, but turned out to be quite good in the end?

Anyway – Happy Thanksgiving all, or Happy Turkey Day; whatever you like to call it. It’s over now. We can all take a rest, at least for about a month – then we get to do all of it again for Christmas!

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