bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • A membership that works for the community.

    A fascinating model for independent, Catholic nonprofit health care, described in detail at DarwinCatholic.   It works by offering two levels of care, in a structure which reminds me of the way our local YMCA works for gym membership.

    1. "Concierge" style primary care, at a fixed yearly price, for a limited number of paying members.   This provides the clinic with a steady revenue and eliminates overhead costs from dealing with government agencies and insurance providers.  Members get highly personalized access to primary care doctors.  (Specialist care is not included.)
    2.  Primary care, walk-in, first-come-first-serve, 3,000 appointments per year, completely free of charge, to the uninsured.

    Isn't that a great idea?  

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  • An enterprising salesman.

    Jimmy Akin thinks that context of Sunday's reading fron John 6 (NAB here) suggests that the boy who supplied the five loaves and two fish sold them to Jesus and the disciples.  

    I'm not sure it matters too much in the long run, but I note it only because it's a possibility that never occurred to me.  Bible stories are weird, you turn them over and over and there's always something new to think about, sometimes very deep, sometimes "just" novel (to me) and interesting.

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  • “Strategies for time management and staying on track.”

    A few months ago I got an e-mail from a reader which I meant to turn into a blog post:

    Right now I am having a *really* hard time getting anything done in terms of housework, cooking, and homeschooling because my youngest  is so demanding. We're managing, and my kids are still ahead of their peers, but I'm just seeking some reassurance that I'll be able to focus a little better as the baby gets older, and/or some tips on making the most of my time. The youngest will soon be transitioning to one nap, and I guess I will have to really plan ahead well so that I can use that time both for "schoolwork" and dinner preparation.


     But since you seem to have a few more things figured out than I do, I'd love to hear about some of your strategies for time management and staying on track!


    Here's some of what I wrote back:

    The first thing you need to know is that I love to make lists and have good ideas more than I love to clean and pick up. So if you imagine that because I wrote a cool list or two, I must have a really neat and tidy house and must be really organized, well, that's just not so. I think I am tidier than average, and I think part of this is because clutter bothers me, so I am pretty well in the habit of doing a quick tidy-up of all the parts of the house I can SEE before I attack anything that requires my brain, such as schooling.

    Here are a few thoughts that come to mind…

    — Thought one. Don't count on the naps. It is a trap. Never plan your day so that anything essential has to get done "during nap time."  The exception, I guess, is if you have successfully trained your baby to go down for naps at set times (e.g., you plunk them in a crib and walk away for 90 minutes).  Eventually, naps change, and some days they don't happen, and some days they happen earlier or later than you want. 

    — Thought two. Streamline, streamline, streamline. The easiest place to streamline is dinner preparation. I love to cook. I used to make elaborate meals several days a week, and revel in discovering new techniques, tools, and exotic new ingredients. I still cook that way on weekends sometimes, but now I revel in discovering ways to make dinner simple while still enjoying the variety that keeps it interesting for me. I have a dinner planning algorithm on my blog that you can check out if you want — the key is, when planning ahead, to match the type of cooking (cold sandwiches? quick pasta? slow cooker?) with the kind of day you are expecting. A lot of people think of ingredients first, but for efficiency, it's best to think first of the kind of cooking you have time and opportunity for.   (Another excellent series on menu planning is hosted by Leila at Like Mother, Like Daughter — check out the right sidebar for the complete list of posts and worksheets.)

    A bonus you get from dinner streamlining is that with a little advance planning you can give yourself a whole week or two of extremely simple and quick meals — very nice for the first two weeks of school, or for spring cleaning, or just to help you feel like you've got a handle on things. Think of all the things you
    can make: What recipes do you know that are the least work for a day when you're home all day and busy — maybe a pot of soup that just needs stirring every once in a while? How about recipes that require NO work
    during the hour right before dinner (casseroles baking in the oven?)  What if you're gone all day running errands? What if you've got time to make dinner in the morning but not in the late afternoon? See what I
    mean? Tailor the dinner to the rest of your life, don't match your life to suit your dinner.

    — Thought three. You can also streamline housekeeping. I love Flylady from the bottom of my heart, but honey, I'm NEVER going to clean out the light diffusing globes on my ceiling. Develop (over time) a BARE MINIMUM LIST. What is the bare minimum to keep visitors from passing out and CPS from taking your children? What is the bare minimum that preserves your marriage and keeps you from going crazy? Know what it is. And when life gets hectic, cut back to that minimum. 

    For me, I do almost nothing that doesn't fit into these categories:

    1. it removes filth (i.e., anything germy, rotting, or that attracts insects); 
    2. it keeps things in *necessary order* (i.e., if I need to find it, it needs to be in place; if I need to work there, I need a clear space –hey that rhymes!); 
    3. if I don't do it it drives me or my husband crazy; 
    4. I need to teach the children to do it, by example or by direct instruction.

    My daily goals are something like, do one load of laundry; everybody makes their beds; stay on top of the kitchen; wipe down each bathroom. And my husband and I clean the kitchen and tidy the first floor each
    night when the boys are in bed, sometimes over a glass of wine, as we catch up with each other about our day. 

    One thing that makes life a lot easier for me now, and that will probably happen for you in time, is that my 8yo is capable of doing much of his schoolwork independently. I have it arranged so that 3 days a week I give him a to-do list (in fact, my school record book is just a bunch of bound to-do lists!) and he is supposed to do almost all of his work by himself, coming to me with questions or to have the work
    checked.  When he comes to me, I do my level best to put down what I'm doing and attend to him immediately. (The other two days a week I work with him more directly on subjects that require more interaction.) My 5yo needs short bursts (20 min) of my full attention several times a day, and I fit those in when I can, usually one of them in the early morning because he and I are the early birds of the family. 

    And I haven't yet mentioned that my big vice is relying on videos for the others when I absolutely need to grab one on one time with one of the children. I try to have videos around that don't make me feel too
    guilty — nature movies, Signing Time, etc. 

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  • Craving sweets. Complicated sweets.

    I have a hankering for this.

    This looks a lot easier.  Maybe I should make some.

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  • (not-a-medical) Doctor Bearing is in…

    Got an email from a reader asking my advice.   OK, I'll throw it out there, because I think it's a great question.  And it's not too far off from where I was a couple of years ago — I wasn't as fit, but my other health markers were always good.

    Here is my problem and I hope you have some encouraging words:

    Everyone says, "Don't focus on losing weight, just get healthy." My problem is that I feel healthy! My blood pressure is good (120/60 or lower), I have a naturally muscular build (strong legs, strong arms), my cholesterol is fine. I actually enjoy exercise although I admit that I have struggled with making it a regular part of my routine. I go on and off the wagon, usually off during stressful periods but I have even started to change that since I know that exercise helps considerably to keep anxiety and stress levels down. So, really… I just need to lose weight! Realistically based on body frame size, height, BMI, and recommendations from my doctor…about 40 pounds. But I FEEL healthy and don't have any physical indications that I'm not. We have been using a Wii Fit since June and even though it tells me I'm OBESE, I also have the top scores in everything from step aerobics to sit-ups to ski jump.

    I know I need to change my eating habits and deal with my emotional eating tendencies and I am taking steps to do that but I get so frustrated when people say "You should focus on getting healthy and not the weight," because right now, my weight is the only thing unhealthy! 

    Sometimes I get discouraged because I think I'll never be able to do it. I look at how many overweight people there are in the world and I think I'm doomed. My husband is great about not letting me sink into that pit of despair. Do you have any advice you could offer?


    The first thing you might do, if it interests you, is read a little bit about the benefits of exercise and of being physically fit even if you're overweight.  There's a lot out there and much of the information is conflicting, but it might help you be at peace with the blessings of being fit and healthy in and of themselves.  Here are a few articles:

    "Is it okay to be fat if you're fit?" (Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide 2005)

    "Fit and fat?" (Forbes.com 2005)

    "Fit and fat: US Study shows it's possible" (Reuters 2008)

    "Health at Every Size: New Hope for Obese Americans" (USDA Agricultural Research Service 2006)

    A few books have been written on this too.  I mentioned The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos.  I have also heard good things about Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin (still waiting for it to come from the library).  Both are capable science journalists.  

    Next.  What to do?

    I think you've already got the answer:

    I actually enjoy exercise although I admit that I have struggled with making it a regular part of my routine. I go on and off the wagon, usually off during stressful periods but I have even started to change that since I know that exercise helps considerably to keep anxiety and stress levels down. 

    It strikes me that the obvious next step for you is to make exercise a regular part of your routine.

    Does it seem like you should tackle the eating habits first, or at the same time?  It depends on your personality, but I am biased towards building one habit at a time.  I, too, struggled with unhealthy eating patterns for years and years.  It was not until after I had been swimming twice a week for six months, not until that habit was really good and strong, that I finally could take the steps to get control of my disordered eating.

    You could look at it this way.  Forty extra pounds, in and of themselves, might be bad for you, and losing some of them might be good for you.  (It's not as certain as you might think.)  But the habit of regular exercise, which you CAN start now and continue for the rest of your life, is practically certain to improve your health. 

    Why not make that change first?  

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  • Change is worth it for its own sake. Can you believe that? Can you want it?

    Interesting discussion on weight and diet over at Megan McArdle's.  I participated as "bearing." 

    I chose to press a different point, but I really do agree with many of the principles of the HAES (Health at Every Size) movement mentioned by commenter "silentbeep."  Health is more important than weight and appearance, and focusing too much on weight instead of healthful behaviors (particularly exercise for its own sake) can discourage people from making changes that really matter.   Weight is an imprecise and maybe even harmfully misleading proxy for overall health and especially cardiovascular health.  Permanent, significant weight loss is difficult, is shown to be achieved in only a tiny minority of attempts, and is maybe not as important for health as people think it is.  Overweight people are treated poorly, and lots of folks think they deserve it, and that's wrong and unhelpful.

    Where I part company is this idea that (a) people shouldn't want to lose any weight, nor try to; and (b) if they do try to, "science has proven" that they will likely gain it back anyway.  So you should definitely tell everyone who's lost a lot of weight that they will just gain it back.

    (I tell you, chronic dieters just can't win.  Thinness moralists assume they don't have the moral character to stick to their plans, and HAES moralists assume they don't have the moral character or intelligence to break the cycle of self-hatred and accept themselves as they are.)

    There is one persistent fact that flies in the face of the "you can't lose weight and keep it off" crowd:  Some attempts succeed.  There are real people walking around who really lost a lot of weight and really kept it off for years.  I have a long way to go before I can count myself among them, but they exist.  The National Weight Control Registry is trying to keep track of them and learn what makes their experiences different from so many others. 

    (I often think of my uncle, a retired pipefitter and plumber who was diagnosed with Type II diabetes at least ten or twelve years ago.  He quit smoking, gave up sugar, took up gardening and canning his own vegetables, lost an enormous amount of weight… and today at 65 he looks great.  I haven't written about him here before, and hadn't even thought much about it, but the truth is that his achievement has been a quiet inspiration to me.  I'll have to tell him that the next time I see him!)

    One thing I notice in these discussions is a failure to discriminate among several distinct issues.  These four questions, for example, are very, very different:

    1. "How can we make the population less overweight?"
    2. "How can we make the population eat more healthfully and get more exercise?"
    3. "How can a person who wants to lose weight permanently be helped to succeed?"
    4. "How can a person who wants to make a permanent change for healthier eating and more exercise be helped to succeed?"

    I have little patience for making people, or populations, do anything.  Especially since, as has been convincingly argued, few people in long-term studies achieve permanent change; public policies designed to put the population on a diet are probably hugely wasted effort (there is still room to experiment with nudging the external incentives around — I'd like to see a change in the structure of agricultural subsidies, for one thing).  So much for #1 and #2.

    As for the difference between #3 and #4…

    But having been through it myself over the past year, I can attest to the power of desiring to change behavior for its own sake.

    Imagine the difference between someone who "wants to lose weight" and someone who…

    • finds himself staring at the grocery cart, thinking "I'm sick of eating all this processed stuff…  I want to learn how to eat, prepare, and enjoy real food for a change."

    • decides "I spend too much time staring at a screen… I need to get outside more."

    • wants to set a good example of healthful living for her children, sharing fun physical activity and learning to cook good food together.

    • realizes she wants to become an athlete, and can if she is willing to try.

    • realizes that she eats far more food than she needs, and that she feels out of control of her food, and that she's tired of it and wants to stop.

    I think people with these real desires have a real chance of permanent change, and so support for those who fall into category #4 is probably worth a great deal of effort.   I can't prove it, but it's my suspicion that the desire to change behavior from within, for its own sake, is the key to success; and that the desire to change appearance and "to do what's necessary to achieve that" (that is, wanting to change the behavior only because it might help change one's appearance) is a marker for likely failure. 

    I think few people can keep doing what they don't want to do in the absence of immediate and ongoing reward; and that numbers going down on the scale might be enough reward, but that numbers staying the same on the scale probably aren't, at least not for long.  But lots of people can do what they really want to do, even if it's hard.

    So maybe people should stop looking for inspiration that tells them "You can do it!  You can stick to a diet and exercise plan to lose weight and keep it off!"  And they should start looking for inspiration that will convince them "You want to do it!  You want to permanently change your eating and activity to something that's heathier…  whether you lose weight and keep it off, or not."

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  • So the “cash for clunkers” ran out.

    It's good news, right?  The point was to get people to buy a bunch of cars, no?  The sooner the better?

    I sympathize with car dealers who didn't get a shot at the money, but — If anything, the only obvious bad news here for the country is about what might have been:  It turns out that the government could have offered $2,500 to $3,500 instead of $3,500 to $4,500 per vehicle, and people would probably still have bought a bunch of cars, more of them for the money budgeted, and maybe a little more slowly.

    The success of this voucher program makes me wonder if perhaps voucher-type programs should have been tried sooner.  A lot sooner.   Vouchers in general strike me as a good compromise that combines government funding and assistance with market freedom.

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  • Yokes.

    From Disputations, a bit that I think might help me as I ransack my schedule for a spot to stick some of the Divine Office:

    Jesus' yoke is easy and His burden light because they are the means for us to become what His Father created us to be — viz, His sons and daughters, not His servants or oxen. They lead us to freedom, and with each step we take we become more ourselves. Other yokes, other burdens are unnatural for us, and so weigh us down in ways we weren't created to support.




    The hard part… is not bearing Jesus' burden but picking it up in the first place, since to do that requires setting down the unnatural burdens we've gotten used to.

    This leads to the obvious question:  Which of my "burdens" weigh me down unnaturally, and which are part of His yoke?

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  • On being a supportive husband.

    When people compliment me on the weight I lost last year, I always take care to give credit to Mark for being very, very supportive.

    Mark refuses to take much credit.  He says it's very easy to be supportive of me.  Here is his algorithm, according to him:

    1. Listen to me when I wonder out loud why the scale is not doing what I want it to do 
    2.  Ask, "Have you been sticking to your habits?"
    3. Listen to the answer 
    4. Say, "Well, there's the reason the scale isn't doing what you want it to do.  Go back to your habits." 
    5. Wait for a chance to say "See?  I told you things would improve if you went back to your habits." 
    6. Repeat as necessary  

    Of course, this doesn't include all the cheerful schedule-arranging and child-minding he does for me so I can swim and run every week without fail, but I guess he doesn't mind that.

    Must be time to listen to him some more (image courtesy of babyfit.sparkpeople.com):

    63.84.200.46

    Have I been off my basic background of habits?  Yes.  Namely, I haven't been interested in vegetables and I have mainly been making up the difference with hot buttered toast.  

    The last couple of days I've tried to correct this with lots of green veggies.  I'm having the most success with steamed leafy greens, so maybe as boring as it is I'll just try to eat a bag of collards or spinach every day.     And I can go back to my extra habits too — they're all still really good habits, even for a pregnant person.  

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  • In case you’re interested.

    A few weeks ago I posted a review of Paul Campos's The Obesity Myth.  Megan McArdle interviews Campos here — text transcript, no audio or video.

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  • Linky liturgy list.

    Liturgy of the Hours resources gathered up helpfully by Melanie.  I need to read through a lot of this stuff, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get a chance.  

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  • Conformity.

    Jen's post today is a must-read.  

    The ride home from the airport after we picked up our Kidsave child Rita was a little tense. We quickly found out that when they said in her bio that she speaks some English, by "some" they meant "not a single word." A Colombian social worker named Maria was with us as well, and she didn't speak much English either.

    "Is hot too where you live?" I asked in broken Spanish.

    They barely managed to nod and smile. They had arrived a day late after getting stuck in Atlanta overnight, and were too exhausted to strain for conversation topics. Rita was so tense and stressed by her strange new surroundings that she'd developed a bad headache. In the forty-minute drive back to our house we made some other efforts at chitchat, but it was hard work. Our group consisted of a suburban American family from Texas, a young career woman from the bustling city of Bogota, an orphaned child from rural Colombia, and we were all tired. It was pretty quiet for most of the ride home, the main sound being the air conditioner straining to beat the sweltering heat.

    Then Maria started to say something, hesitating to make sure she chose the right words. "I hate to trouble you," she said apologetically, "but it's very important that Rita and I go to Mass on Sunday."

    When I told her that we are Catholic too, everything changed.

    In one moment we went from having nothing in common to having everything in common. 


    Read the whole thing;  it sums up succinctly one of my favorite things about being Catholic, namely, the blessed conformity of the Mass, and why it's so beautiful to know what to expect, no matter where you are.   I wrote the word "conformity" just now having only skimmed Jen's post, and went back to discover that she, too, used that term with affection.

    You can learn more about Kidsave in Jen's post here.  

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