Thank You in Advance Blue Jays...from a Fan

Just before the Blue Jays' 2013 season begins, I would like to say a few words:

No matter what happens in the coming months, I have not been this excited about the start of a season - any professional sports season - in about 20 years. I have the ownership / leadership of the Toronto Blue Jays to thank for that.

They did some amazing things earlier in this off-season. They took their chances. They put their money where their mouth(s) is/are. They went for it. They stepped up to the plate. They threw down the gauntlet. No matter what happens, I must remember the electricity they brought to this city for the last 3 or 4 months.

If all goes well, they may reap the benefit. The Blue Jays could make the playoffs. They could win a championship. They could win several. This city could bask in their reflected glow.

If things that are beyond anyone's control go badly, they may win nothing. That's what happens when you go for it. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

In any case, this team has done a nice thing for us fans in Toronto and the GTA. For me personally, they have renewed my very childish love of sport. They have given me months of excitement - and I hope they'll give me months more.

I believe they will win a lot more than they lose this year. I believe they will compete game in and game out. I believe they will hit for average and for power. I believe they will steal lots of bases and score lots of runs. I believe they will be solid defensively. I believe their starters will go deep into their starts, their relievers will relieve, and their stoppers will stop. I hope that will be enough.

If / when they lose games, it won't be because they want to. Umpires won't conspire against us. Players won't throw in the towel. They hate losing more than I do. They want to meet the expectations they've set. But losses will happen and we will move on to the next game.

If / when they lose games, the media may do what the media does and bash them, assign blame, call for heads, and take no prisoners. That's how the media sells what they sell. Sometimes, a solid playoff-bound team is too dull for the media, and the better stories come when things go sour. That's the media. I won't play that game with this team.

I pledge to savour this upcoming season. The ups and the downs. The wins and the losses. The glorious home runs that steal victory from the jaws of defeat, and the near misses that inevitably will come.

This season I will rediscover the innocent, child-like love of sports and a sports team that used to come naturally. This team has earned that from me.

Thank you in advance Blue Jays...from a fan

Author's note: This post was inspired by my Mother who has already been heard to mutter "Here we go again" during a meaningless pre-season loss. 

What Makes Canadians Different from Americans?

I recently facilitated a session in the States and within a few minutes I heard someone's muttered question: "Is this guy from Canada?" When I asked what gave it away (not that I was trying to hide our country of origin), people answered that it was how I say words like "process" and "organization". Fair enough.

But, aside from the proper way in which we speak, what are the less obvious give-aways about where we're from? I can think of a few:

• For us, "March Madness" refers to the late March snow fall that inevitably hits after we're sure we're done with the stuff. It most certainly does not refer to a tournament that highlights our top collegiate basketball talent. We'd have a tournament like that but all of our top talent is busy in March playing in another country's tournament (besides, we don't have enough for two teams).
• For us, the "right to bear arms" refers to July and August when we're able to wear short sleeves. (The American spelling of "bare" is different from ours).
• Speaking of spelling, we learn to spell in school. We don't just take the hard words and create easier ways to spell them. We also don't create new names for letters of the alphabet so that they rhyme better.
• In Canada, we use the Metric system. This puts us miles ahead of Americans.
• In Canada, we don't (yet) have metal detectors in all of our schools. We don't do that because all of the academic medals that our students wear would set off the detectors willy-nilly. 
• You see, in this country we value education and invest our hard-earned tax dollars ensuring that everyone has access to it (if you're having trouble with that last sentence, education = "edu-m'cation" in American). We could also have ensured that everyone has access to guns, but then we'd need metal detectors in our schools.
• Before we start being accused of Communism or Socialism, please understand that we do favour the rich when it comes to just about everything (including education). But they can't have guns. And (please sit down everyone) they pay higher taxes than other people.
• Speaking of taxes, we pay lots of them: Income Tax; Sales Tax; Goods and Services Tax. "Sin" taxes. Etc. Being a Canadian comes with a price which we obediently pay. That's because we have lots of Government. It generally keeps our cities clean, our streets moving, our people educated, and our health good. And what's best, we don't often have to bear arms to ensure that our Government behaves (our last rebellion was in 1837 and most of the rebels were drunk).
• In Canada we don't turn celebrities into Mayors. We turn Mayors into celebrities (at least in Toronto, and not the good kind of celebrities). 
• While we're on the celebrity front, Canadians are surprisingly prominent. Canadians are funny. They sing well. They are really good at hockey and a few are good at other sports. They are great at anchoring American news. Canadian actors are like comfort food - they bring calm and class to American tv and movies. We've actually started making (and watching?!?) some of our own tv and movies, and some of them look like modern film production equipment was used.
• We have health care.

I could go on and on blowing our horn, but that's very un-Canadian. In fact, we're more likely to be heard complaining about our lot in life up here in this cold and mostly empty country. There's a reason for that too, but I am sworn not to reveal it (by our Ministry of Minimal American Immigration).

David's Guide to Healthy Living

Since some of you seem to think that I'm a healthy guy, in today's post I plan to exploit that misbegotten belief and dole out advice on healthy living. There is no rhyme or reason to the topics I've chosen to cover here, so don't expect any.

Salt / sodium

The salt in your diet is slowly and silently taking its toll on you. Even though it hasn't (so far) received the attention of other "killers" like cigarettes and drinking-and-driving, this doesn't mean you should ignore it much longer.

Since facilitating a session with Cardiologists and Nephrologists on the subject of hypertension (aka high blood pressure) about ten years ago, I have tried to minimize my daily salt/sodium intake. If you eat the way I do, you know that's like trying to minimize the amount of air you breathe (which I don't advise).

Back then, I implemented some changes in how I eat - and they were good changes. I'm not nearly as good today, but some things have stuck:

• No extra salt-shaker salt on anything I eat. Ever. I get more than enough in the restaurant or fast-food or grocery-store prepared foods I consume. My body was used to tasting salt, instead of food. Now I taste food. Give it a week or two and you won't miss it (okay, maybe a month).
• I choose from amongst the many equivalent grocery store items I buy based on which has the lowest sodium content (and fat, calories, carbs, etc. of course). If I buy a can of tuna, for example, I check the labels for the various brands and variations - and am always amazed at the range of sodium content. None are good, but some are much better than others. This is a dead easy no-brainer way to immediately cut down on sodium. But pay attention to serving-size because sometimes the manufacturers accidentally mislead you.
• In general, I am aware of the amount of sodium in everything I eat (again, by reading labels). Soup is a killer. Even the soup that I think of as bland is full of it. Bread is a shocker. Anything canned, processed, or preserved always comes with big sodium numbers. And so on.
• I have adopted the belief that if I eat out even once in a given day, I'm already over the daily limit I should have in my diet. A plain 12-grain bagel at Tim Horton's, for example, consumes about 30% of my daily limit all by itself. It doesn't mean I don't eat out; it just means that the rest of the day is about cutting my losses. (To see Tim Horton's Nutrition guide - again only for example - click here: http://www.timhortons.com/ca/pdf/nutrition-guide-can.pdf).
• Really the only chance I ever have of staying within my daily limit is when I/we cook at home. If I use an ingredient from a can, I rinse and strain it before adding it to whatever I'm making. When I cook vegetables, I steam them and add nothing (you'll be amazed at how good they taste once you've weaned yourself off of the extra salt). When making a sauce or a stew or a chili - by the time I've added all the herbs, there's little or no need for salt. It's not hard, but it does require discipline and enough time to cook instead of always eating out or buying fast grocery store meals.

The Globe and Mail had an article last week with a sodium calculator. It will give you an idea of just how much you're consuming currently: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-navigator/how-much-salt-do-you-consume-in-a-day-you-may-be-surprised/article9477552/. Or go straight to Project Big Life here: http://www.projectbiglife.ca/sodium/#.UToi_Rw4v94.

Exercise

I run, and when I can't run, I treadmill or I ride a stationary bike. I don't do it as often as I like, and sometimes I can't do it because I'm busy or injured or sick. But the important thing for me was that I just started doing it one day instead of waiting any longer (about 12 years ago).

If you're not already doing something, find time in your weekly calendar that you can commit to something modest and just get started. If it isn't fun in some way, find something else because you won't stick with it. I joined Canada Get Fit to start my running career and just stayed with it until my body accepted that this was happening. Today, I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but not going for a run always makes me feel guilty and sad.

If you want, you can proactively find out how to prevent injury and how to optimize the impact of whatever exercise you choose. Or you can do what I did, start running, and learn about the injuries as you encounter them. That makes it more of an adventure.

Snacking and Treats

Here's the only really hard part (I think). It's one thing to start running, or feed yourself a healthy meal. It's a very different matter to constantly ignore the little boy (or girl) who was programmed by your parents to reward yourself for good behaviour with a treat or to nibble on a great big bag of greasy chips while watching TV.

Does this sound familiar?

• "I've been good this week...I can afford to get some pad thai at lunch".
• "Salad at dinner was great. Boy, am I a good person. I think I'll have a nice bowl of ice cream to celebrate my righteousness."
• "I think I'll have 2 or 3 of those big old greasy chips in the cupboard. No harm, I only ate half my french fries at lunch. Hmm...according to the nutrition label, a single serving is actually 10 chips. I'll have 10. Some of these are broken - I can probably have 20."

I'll give you two tricks that have helped me with snacks/treats:

1. Things that are deliciously sweet or salty should be enjoyed in the mouth. That's where your taste buds are. Eat slowly, savour the taste in your mouth, then grudgingly swallow it down when you have fully enjoyed the sensation on your tongue. If something is less tasty because it's - God forbid - nutritious, eat fast and get it all down before the taste kicks in. Don't forget to chew.
2. To avoid in-front-of-the-television snacking, I eat an orange. But I eat the orange very, very slowly. I spend about an hour or longer meticulously cleaning the remnants of the peel from the rest of the orange before I start eating it section by section. By the time I'm done, the snacking window has closed.
3. I close off the food portion of my day by flossing. Again, in front of the television, I do the flossing ritual slowly and meticulously. After all that work, I don't even think about eating anything else before bed.

Warning: While these tricks may extend your life, your spouse may seek to shorten your life so he or she doesn't have to spend another day with his or her nut-bar, orange-peeling, flossing, slow-eating spouse.

Poutine and Energy Drinks

Some people I know swear by poutine and energy drinks as key components of healthy living. To them I say, pish posh.

Poutine is why we haven't heard any threatening noises from French Canada about Separation lately. They have implemented a brilliant strategy of infiltrating the rest of Canada with poutine. When we're all fat and lethargic, they will invade. Much faster than the machinations of separation.

Energy drinks are obviously evil and they don't try hard to hide it. We can wait until several more years of research to find out just how evil, or just cut to the chase and stop drinking them now. Either way, aren't the energy drinks pointless if you're eating yourself into a state of torpor with poutine?

Disclaimer

The advice offered here is for entertainment purposes only and does not represent the beliefs or practices of its Author. The Author does stand by his feelings about poutine, but does not actually believe French Canada is planning to invade. Furthermore, the Author does not actually spend hours on the couch at night meticulously cleaning oranges and his teeth. That would just be weird.