by Jacob Clark
And I needed to lose a few pounds myself.
Part three of our plan was to go through the cupboards and refrigerator.
And we threw away all the things we knew weren’t good for us.
This one, if you try it, might be a bit tricky for you.
Jacob and I were both raised in households where there wasn’t a lot of money. We always had plenty to eat, but our folks certainly weren’t rich. And both of us wore hand-me-downs from our older siblings.
Our parents weren’t the type who would throw away perfectly good food which they’d spent their hard-won salary to purchase.
We inherited those traits. It was very hard to resist the urge to toss the food in the garbage.
We wanted to say, “Let’s just push that box of macaroni and cheese to the back of the cupboard and we’ll feed it to our guests.”
But we knew batter. Even if it was hidden behind healthy stuff, we’d know it was back there. And in a moment of weakness, we knew we’d dig it out and eat it.
Our solution… instead of throwing it all away, we put it into three cardboard boxes and took it down to the local food bank. And that made us feel good about helping others, while at the same time helping ourselves. Lose weight, that it.
Giving away food that we loved to eat went against our grain. But we’re glad we did it. And we found, amazingly enough, that giving that crap away actually saves money in the long run.
Here’s why. After we got rid of the junk food, we simply stopped buying it. Jacob knew that if he picked up a four-pack of pudding cups at the supermarket I’d take them to the food bank when he wasn’t looking.
I knew that if I picked up a box of cake mix, he’d do the same.
Both of us are in the mindset now that any junk we buy is like throwing away our money.
So we no longer buy junk food.
And junk food, as you know, is very expensive.
Oh, we don’t go totally without.
But now in order to have a candy bar, or a couple of cookies, we have to earn them. More on that coming…
Thing three: We exercise more.
I know what you’re saying. First, you’re saying I’m a flaming bitch from the fiery pits of hell for even mentioning exercise. Then you’re making excuses. The gym’s too far away and they look at you funny, etc.
But that’s not what I’m saying.
Our version of “more exercise” is more walks, which we’ve always loved to do anyway.
Since our early days, Jacob and I loved to walk. We’d stroll hand in hand in the park, talking about anything and everything. How we viewed the world. Our hopes and dreams. How many children we’d have, and how those children would become presidents, ambassadors and movie stars.
Later on, after our children had grown up to be con artists, criminals and mass murderers (just kidding… maybe) we still walked. We talked about where we’d gone wrong.
Now, even though the grandkids consider us “old” we still walk, and still hold hands while we do so. And still talk about anything and everything.
That’s when we decided to do this book, while on one of our walks.
Anyway, our version of more exercise was more walking.
Walking, as you probably know, is one of the safest forms of exercise for people over fifty. It’s heart-friendly, meaning it exercises the heart without stressing it. It’s much easier on the joints than running. It doesn’t require a bicycle and therefore won’t get flat tires. And it doesn’t require a swimming pool, which many of us either can’t afford or don’t want to maintain.
All it takes is a pair of good shoes and a safe place to walk.
Also, since ED is most prevalent in men over fifty, it stands to reason that many of you reading these words are indeed over fifty.
I’d suggest that if you’re not already walking every day, you start. It’ll not only help you shed those few extra pounds you’ve been desperate to lose. It’ll make you healthier at the same time.
And will probably help you live longer too.
Jacob and I walked half a mile a day even before he developed ED. So we were already in the habit.
We decided to double our walk to a mile a day (1.2 kilometers for you friends who live across the pond from us) once he seriously decided to lose those extra pounds.
We laid out two courses. One of them took us through a neighborhood park a few blocks from our home.
The other took us through our neighborhood.
Why two courses? Thanks for asking.
One reason was so that we didn’t get bored walking the same route night after night. On the days when the wind isn’t blowing we typically walk through the park.
Sometimes it’s a bit cool at night, and if it’s breezy the wind can have a bitter bite to it. On those nights we walk through the neighborhood streets.
We’ve been doing this for several months now, long enough to get acquainted with several neighbors we hadn’t known before. We’ll wave at them when we see them out and sometimes stop to talk with them. Walking is a great way to meet the neighbors and make new friends.
We often walk in the mornings too, now. One of the most enjoyable parts of our walking in the evenings was watching the sun set. It’s really beautiful where we live.. And it occurred to us that on many days, we could watch it come up instead.
I love it when we’re both free to walk in the mornings. The air is crisper and cleaner and it’s just more… joyous, for lack of a better term.
Last winter we were walking through our neighborhood and smelled smoke. It was coming from a house where the residents were still sleeping. We pounded on their doors and windows and woke them up, where they just made it out before their home burned to the ground.
We also called the fire department, who later said a spark from the fireplace they’d left burning through the night caught a rug on fire.
The family has since become good friends. They go on and on about how Jacob and I saved their lives. I don’t know about that. I think in all likelihood they would have awakened on their own once the smoke smell was strong enough.
My point, though, is that you meet the most wonderful people when you walk through your neighborhood. And you help them too. There are at least two other couples I know of who’ve started walking themselves because they saw us stroll by every evening.
Another benefit of walking in the morning is a habit we’ve developed of stopping in at a local coffee shop. We’ve gotten to know the owner very well, as well as some of our local police officers.
It turns out that the early morning right around sunrise is a relatively peaceful time on the streets in our town. That’s when the police officers near the end of their shifts and have a few minutes of free time to start to unwind.
The first time we stopped by the coffee shop there were four officers there talking shop about a disturbance they’d quelled that night. It was a fascinating conversation.
Although hesitant at first to share the conversation with us “civilians,” they warmed up a bit when we bought them each a second cup of coffee.
Since then, whenever we see police cars in the coffee shop parking lot, we make a point to stop in for a cup. They have donuts there as well, but we never partake in them. Neither do the officers. Not because they don’t like donuts, but because they don’t want to be stereotyped or made fun of.
Anyway, my point is that our morning walks have also enabled us to make friends with several of our local policemen. If you don’t know any, get to know them. They have our backs, protect us from bad guys, and are genuinely nice people. They deserve a pat on the back and a friendly word occasionally.
Oh, and they have the most fascinating stories to tell.
We’ve been told more than once by our neighbors that they love to see us stroll around the neighborhood and across the park.
For one thing, we hold hands every step of the way. We’ve always been hand-holders, so we never really noticed. But apparently, from what we’ve been told by
others, a hand-holding couple is exceedingly rare these days.
We’ve also been known to stop walking occasionally and to dance on the sidewalk, hearing music only we can hear. Some of the neighbors have come to know us as the “dancing couple,” we’ve heard. Of course, I assume an equal number probably refer to us as “those crazy people who dance down the street.”
As I said, we always walked for half a mile per day even before the ED monster barged into our bedroom and tried to take over. We increased it to a mile to help us lose a little weight, and recently stretched that to a mile and a half. It takes us the better part of an hour now, but it’s worth it. We feel better and it really does help with weight loss. And I get my husband all to myself for that time every day. We take along a cell phone for emergencies (like the house fire) and so our families can get hold of us if they need to. But typically we ignore most of the calls and just focus on each other.
Jacob jokes that walking helps with his diet mainly because he can’t eat while he’s so far away from the refrigerator. And while that may have (just a smidgen) of merit, the exercise we’re getting, combined with other things we’re doing, is working wonders.
If you’re unable to have another exercise program, please consider walking. It’s ideal for most people because you can walk at your own pace, and you can choose how far you want to walk. I have a friend with bad knees (like Jacob and his right knee) who started out walking to the end of her block and back, about a hundred yards or so total. She gradually increased it, and now walks a mile a day.
A couple of tips if you start a walking regimen:
- Take a bottle of water so you don’t dehydrate
- Always have a cell phone
- Ease into it. If you get too ambitious and walk until you’re exhausted the first time, you’ll get disheartened and quit. Start out with a distance and pace you can handle day after day and then gradually increase one or both.
- Don’t look upon your daily walk as time wasted that you could be doing housework or other stuff. Instead look upon it as your “me” time… a time set aside each day to unstress, unwind, relax and be at one with nature.
-Take a can of mace with you if you have a problem with stray dogs in your neighborhood
- If that seems like a lot to carry, consider a “fanny” pack. We have one, and it carries everything quite nicely.
Okay, I know I’m starting to ramble on, so let’s get to those other things we’re doing quickly and then we’ll move on.
Remember I told you that one of your best resources regarding the ED was the experiences of your friends? Men won’t talk about ED among themselves, so that leaves us wives to do it: to commiserate, to share ideas, and to basically be an informal support group.
The same holds true of diet ideas. Your friends are your best resource. Even better than diet pills or the internet.
Don’t believe me? Just ask them. I don’t know of many women my age who haven’t dieted at some point in their lives. Tell all your friends you want to lose a few pounds, and ask what worked for them.
And perhaps even more important, ask what didn’t work.
All the things we’re doing came from our friends.
- We took all the fattening snacks out of our house. Completely. We just threw them in the garbage and vowed to buy no more.
- Instead of fattening snacks we now have healthy snacks, pre-cut and ready to eat. Each morning I’ll cut up some broccoli or mushrooms or berries or melon and place them into a bowl in the refrigerator. These are things we both love, and they’re there all day long so whenever we need a snack it’s just a matter of opening the fridge and grabbing some. Boiled eggs are also good.
- On the counter we have a second bowl of snacks which don’t have to be refrigerated. Grapes, cherries, plums or other fruits. Also pickles, cherry peppers and sugar-free chewing gum.
- This one is important… we do all our grocery shopping together now. That way if one of us is tempted to buy a box of Twinkies, the other is there to nix the idea. And since we almost never have cravings at the same time, this one works very well.
- Jacob has a sweet tooth, although he denies it. I freely admit that I have one. But here’s the funny thing about having a sweet tooth: It really doesn’t take a whole bowl of ice cream or a whole bag of candy to satisfy it. We’ve taken a daily dose of honey for years, ever since we found out that a teaspoon of locally produced honey can help with our allergies. The reasoning is that local bees eat the same pollens which cause your particular allergies. The pollens get into the honey they produce, and then into our bodies. The pollens’ presence in our bodies help us build up a natural immunity to them. Then in allergy season, when the same pollens are in the air, they don’t bother us as much. It seems to work, at least for us.
Anyway, back to the sweet tooth thing: we used to take our teaspoon of honey each morning with our vitamins. Now, we just leave it on the counter. At some point during the day, whenever we crave something sweet, we take our honey. Believe it or not, just that simple teaspoon of honey is enough to satisfy our sweet tooth for awhile.
- We haven’t nixed unhealthy snacks completely. But we limit them as much as we can, and we have to earn them. For example, if one of us has an overpowering need for chocolate, we’ll go to the 7-Eleven to get a candy bar. But… we have to earn it by walking to the 7-Eleven, we always buy the smallest bar they have, and we split it between the two of us.
- We tend to eat out a lot. Three times a week on average. It’s not that we’re not capable in the kitchen. We’re both good cooks. It’s just that we’re at the stage in our lives when we want somebody else to do the cooking sometimes. When we eat out, we’ll agree on an entrée and then we’ll split it. The waitress will bring you an empty plate if you just ask. That way we get to splurge by eating what we want. We just get less of it.
- And we never, ever, take home leftovers. If we can’t finish it all at the restaurant, we leave it there.
- We switched to light or low calorie foods whenever we could. Most of them taste just as good as the fattening version.
- Jacob likes a beer or two most nights of the week. He’d had light beers before at social gatherings and such when it was the only thing available. He made a comment that they tasted more or less the same as his brand of choice. So I said, “why not switch then?” He did and was satisfied. That led us to switch from Coke to Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper to Diet Dr. Pepper, sweetener in our coffee and iced tea instead of sugar. The days of that yucky aftertaste in diet drinks is pretty much gone. These days most diet drinks taste just as good as their sugary counterparts.
- We each drink a full bottle of water between dinnertime and bedtime. It helps chase away those late-night cravings which are the enemy to every diet. It also helps us stay hydrated, which is important to help our digestive systems properly process our food and get the waste quickly out of our bodies.
- We drink a full glass of liquid (sometimes water, sometimes iced tea, occasionally a diet soda) before each meal. We sit at the table and socialize and talk of our day, and share idle gossip, and drink a full glass of liquid before we take the first bite. That not only gives us a chance to catch up one on one, it means our stomach is already half full even before we start to eat. And it’s nice, being able to just take a few minutes from our busy days and give each other our full and undivided attention.
- We do the same thing at restaurants, by the way, which is actually easier to do because we never ever get appetizers. By the time our entrée is cooked and served, we’re typically on our second glass of drink anyway.
I should note that these diet suggestions are much like our other suggestions to combat your erectile dysfunction. I realize that our bodies are all different, and things that worked to help Jacob and I lose a few pounds may or may not work for you. Please, consider these, and any others I haven’t mentioned. Try a lot of different things, and discard those which won’t work for you.
If you take away anything from
this section, take these two things:
Getting and staying at or near your optimal weight will usually help with the ED problem.
Getting and staying at or near your optimal weight has benefits far beyond helping with your ED. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy, and you just might live longer.
Good luck.
Chapter 15: If you smoke, stop
It’s a nasty and costly habit anyway.
Smoking is like overeating in some regards.
Don’t interrupt. Yes it is.
We know that one requires a fork and the other a lighter.
We know that you can smoke a steak but you can’t eat a cigarette.
Well, you could, but we doubt you’d like it much.
The two are totally different things, yet have some very important things in common.
Did you know that moderate smokers (defined as ten to nineteen cigarettes a day) are four times more likely to experience serious erection problems (defined as never or seldom obtaining an erection) than men who never smoked?
And it gets even scarier.
Heavy smokers (a pack a day or higher) are nine times more likely to develop the same issues.
This study came from the Chinese, who know a thing or two about having babies. And, presumably, about having erections.
You can insert your own joke here if you want, but we did indeed mean erections, not elections.
The Chinese are famous for their efforts to limit their population growth, after crunching the numbers a generation ago. They decided that if they didn’t get a handle on their growth rate, within two generations they’d have way more people than they could feed.
And since they were an extremely isolated society, they didn’t like the thought of depending on other countries to feed their people.