Best Life Tuesday and Wednesday

Get ready for the Ultimate Health Checklist, because we're putting ourselves back on our to-do list Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, with Dr. Oz, rocking those oddly sensual blue scrubs of his. The show begins with Obama-era hope for 2009 in the form of Laura, a formerly frowsy blonde who was told last year by Dr. Roison, the less kinetic medical partner of Dr. Oz, that she may have had only 44 birthdays, but her real age is about 60. The two docs cooked up a to-do list for Laura, at the top of which was quitting smoking (duh), making better food choices and exercising. Throughout this show, Oprah wanted us all to take notes, and it was a good idea because this show was information overload. I wrote down exactly what Laura says she's doing differently. The specifics? "Breakfast: Coffee. Steel-cut oatmeal...." (anyone know why it makes a difference what kind of metal is used to cut the oats? I don't get it) ... "Yogurt. Fresh fruit. Blueberries. Sprinkle with flaxseeds. Lunch: Salad with spinach, other vegetables. Dinner: Always chicken. Plus more vegetables. Cook everything in olive oil. Walk 10,000 steps a day. Manages stress with meditation." ... Already I'm feeling constricted. Chicken every day? All of a sudden I'm fiending for the See's candy my father-in-law gave me for Christmas. Oprah posed a question to ponder during the commercials, which was: Why are you worthy of getting healthy this year? I decided I was worthy because everyone's got the right to be healthy. I don't know if this is going to help much when, like Laura, I'm facing chicken for the billionth time and I want to hurl it through the window and run in the opposite direction. After the commercial Oprah shared her own response, which was something about how health is the foundation for all other good things in life. Very nice answer. But how helpful will it be when facing a life sentence of chicken?
The next thing we had to write down was "Ingredients to Avoid," which is probably all stuff we know already: high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, the term "enriched," trans fat (hydrogenated fats), and saturated fat. The pens in the audience were back in action for "the Ultimate Health Checklist," which begins with scheduling a checkup with a doctor who probably doesn't look as good as Dr. Oz in scrubs. Then you start eating healthy foods. The easiest way to achieve this, Dr. Oz says, is to eat foods that don't have labels. You need 5 to 7 "fistfuls" of antioxident-rich foods a day: Tomatoes, broccoli, beans, blueberries, artichokes, and dry prunes... I stop writing long enough to look at my hand. My fist isn't that big, so already I'm worried about being cheated. And how do you grab fistful of artichokes, anyway? Aren't they kind of pointy? No time to think about it. Dr. Oz is rattling off more numbers: You need 3 grams of Omega 3 daily, because 80 percent of the brain is made of fat, so we need to nourish our fat heads appropriately, which means flaxseeds, walnuts, salmon, scallops, soybeans, and squash. On top of that you need 25 grams of fiber a day, coming from lentils, black beans, peas, raspberries and pine nuts, plus whole grains and oatmeal. No mention of steel blades. Beyond that you need 1 tablespoon of olive oil. No. 4 on the list is a multivitamin every day, though I swear I just read taking vitamins won't make you any healthier. The next assignment for the commercial break: Write down 3 foods you're going to stop buying and 3 you're going to start buying to improve your health. This was followed by a commercial for Blue Diamond Almonds, so I put "nuts" on the list. I wasn't sure if I should stop or start buying them, so I put it on both lists. One thing I know I shouldn't buy is cookies, but on this very day my 10-year-old daughter made me sign an agreement allowing Girl Scout cookies to enter our home, so I'm screwed there. I'm not buying other cookies, then. No other cookies. No soda. No candy. But more beans. More tomatoes. And flaxseed.
The list-o-mania continued with a Know Your Numbers segment, starting with Know Your Waist Size. A woman's should be less than half her height. How much less, they didn't say. Then... Know your blood pressure. 115 over 75 is ideal.... And Know Your Cholesterol. The LDL should be less than 100, because that's the bad one, and the HDL should be greater than 40, because that's the good one. (I never knew that before). You need to know your resting heart rate number, which I'm sure I'll never be able to figure out because I can't seem to find my own pulse. Resting heart rate is determined by putting a finger to the adam's apple area before you get out of bed in the morning. You hold your finger on the spot and count how many pulses you get a minute, and if it's more than 83 your heart's working too hard and you should probably spend the rest of the day in bed. Top athletes have heart rates in the 40s and 50s, Dr. Oz says. You want to shoot for something in the 60s. Lot of information I'll have a hell of a time using. You also need to know your Blood Sugar numbers, the amount of Vitamin D you're getting, and your C-Reactive Protein, which is important but I zoned out during the explanation. I'll be honest. Dr. Oz is a bundle of energy and he sort of wears me out. I think he even wears Oprah out occasionally. The last number he says you need to know is your TSH -- thyroid stimulating hormone -- which is the biggest hormonal deficiency in the country. Wait a minute. How come Oprah went through four doctors before she got a diagnosis of thyroid trouble? How come Dr. Oz didn't catch it? Or the other guy? Hmm.... Which leads to the next thing on your must-have-for-health list: a health advocate. This means you should bring somebody with you to the doctor who's willing to take notes and ask hard-as-nails questions, including, "Where are my medical records? I want a copy of medical records!" Oprah has Dr. Roisin serve as her advocate when she goes to the doctor, even though I'd assume he could serve as her doctor. I'm surprised she didn't pick Steadman or Gail. Interesting. She then assigned us to write down who would be our health advocate. Maybe I should pick Steadman or Gail. They're obviously available.
Dr. Oz kept the lists coming. Here's a list of Health Tests Everyone Should Have: 1. Annual Physical. 2. Every 6 Months See a Dentist. 3. Eye Exam Every 2 Years. Then for women, an annual Pap and Pelvic starting no later than age 21. Men in the same age bracket need a yearly testicular exam. Women between 35-40 need to do monthly breast self-exams plus annual mammogram. At age 50, you need to get an echocardiogram, a stress test, and a colonoscopy. People of all ages need a skin test once a year. At age 65 you need an annual hearing exam. Whew. But we're not done yet: Women need a bone density test by the time they hit 60. Middle-aged men need digital rectal exams. Everyone needs to walk 10,000 steps a day, which is equal to 30 minutes on the hoof. You want to get your heart rate up to the point that you're sweating 60 mins. a week. You need to stretch 5 minutes a day and you need to do strength training 30 minutes a week. Oprah's assignment was to write down a commitment to exercise for the week. Mine is to count my steps and no matter where I happen to be, I'm going to stop at 10,000. I'll have to bring a cell phone so I can call someone to pick me up. Maybe Gail or Steadman. The last item the doctor dealt with was sleep, a sore subject for a lifelong insomniac like me. First let's get the numbers out of the way: You need 7 to 8 hours a night. If you don't get sleep, you'll crave other things, like carbohydrates. Really? Is that why I want potatoes? Because I'm tired? I thought I just liked potatoes On the subject of sleep, Ozzy has yet another list: Keep a routine. Keep your bedroom dark and cool. Reserve the bedroom for sleep and sex only.

No caffeine 4 hours before retiring. No TV in the bedroom. Take calcium and magnesium.... Whoa, rewind that just a bit. No TV? No other activities than sex and sleep? I happen to be writing this in my bedroom and I'm neither asleep nor having sex while I'm doing it. Plus, I love having TV in the bedroom. I'm willing to go along with a lot of things, but no TV? How am I going to watch my Oprah Tivo's? Oprah's writing assignment was put down one sleep habit you'll be changing this week. And I'm working on it, I'm working on it.
"The truth is," Oprah said in conclusion, "You can have all the square footage in your house, all the knickknack paddywhacks... and it means nothing without your health." I believe her. I really do. But keep your paws of my TV.

Spirituality 101...
Wednesday was the spiritual Best Life show. To Oprah, spirituality is being "connected, present and alive." Today my 10-year-old and I had a little cup of fro-yo topped with tiny cubes of cheesecake. It was the highlight of my day, making me feel connected, present and alive, even though not a molecule of what we ate was on any of the lists from the Tuesday show. For me this was a spiritual interlude, a shared pleasure with no other motive than the shared pleasure itself. I liked what guest Elizabeth Lesser had to say, which was that we have an instinct saying there's more to life than meets the eye and we can look at that something with no fear (but I think that also requires faith). I wasn't acquainted with Elizabeth Lesser or Oprah's other guest, Rev. Ed Bacon, though I think I have neighbors who are part of his Pasadena congregation. But I was familar with Rev. Michael Beckwith, whose Agape services are held in Culver City. I'm feeling very smug now, knowing all this spiritual enlightenment radiates from my part of the country. Truth is, I only know Rev. Beckwith from another daytime television show, "Starting Over," a sort of a "Real World" for middle-aged ladies. One of the ladies got to go to anxiety counseling with Rev. Beckwith and I really liked what he had to say, which was something like, "Fear is misdirected attention." Very succinct and very potent -- now the only problem is how are you gonna pull that attention off the thing that's scaring you and focus it where you can be effective? There's a spiritual challenge.

Oprah elaborated on her personal conception of spirituality, saying it allows you to endure anything and know you're going to be okay, because you're more than your house or your job or your marriage or any other attachment, including your very identity. One of my favorite quotes about Oprah is that "she didn't let trauma traumatize her..." as if she choose not be traumatized. Like, it could've happened, but she didn't allow it to. And all this time I didn't think you had any choice. I'd like to know how she did that.
One clue might be in the way she counseled Tanya on Skype whose bakery business is getting beaten up in the recession. Oprah asked Tanya to direct her mind to what she's still got -- she can still breathe, for example. She's still "clothed in her own mind," which is an expression I hadn't heard before. Tanya on Skype didn't seem terribly relieved, but Oprah persisted. You have to accept what is, she said. You create more stress when you resist something because it wasn't what you expected. All this hardship helps you learn about yourself, Oprah was saying, but I'm afraid most of what I've learned isn't very pretty. I'm not very good at forgiving and forgetting, I suck at letting go of the past, I've got resentments and grudges and obsessions up to wazoo.... You know, I don't really like learning such things, so I'd probably vote for no further hardship. Nonetheless, Rev. Beckwith says spirituality is never about gaining anything, it's about letting go, as in letting go of false concepts about yourself and your role in life, false identities, false habits, misconstrued ideas. So if I'm ever going to shed all my undesirable traits, I guess I need more adversity. Especially if I want to leave my "body temple" with a nice bright aura. Our intentions become the clothes we wear when we leave the physical, says Rev. Beckwith. And God knows I want the right clothes.
I felt like a glib jerk, though, when Jackie was on. I seriously cannot imagine how she copes and perseveres. She's truly a transcedent being, and I really am in awe.
Gotta love both ministers for putting out the word that being gay is a gift from God. The guy on Skype was made in the image of God, therefore he is exactly what he's supposed to be. What a concept! Now that's an attitude that doesn't grow on trees.
If you take one thought into the new year, Oprah said at the end of the show, remember you have everything you need right now, and everything that's happening is going to bring you what you need to learn. I also want to take into the new year what Mattie Stepanek's mom had to say, which was, "What you choose to think, speak and do is your life's spiritual message." I'm thinking my spiritual message so far has left a bit to be desired, so I've got my work cut out for me. Here's to changes for the better!

Best Life!

The first new Best Life show was on yesterday, and it was fabulous Oprah-info-tainment. The first segment was pure confessonal, with Oprah laying bare the shame and self-loathing she felt on stage standing next to Cher and Tina Turner, both her elders and her slimmers, in a dress she hadn't planned on wearing because the one she wanted had gotten too tight. Oh, I hate that feeling, when the damn zipper won't go up, or it does go up, but everything else pulls and shifts in a sad effort to accomodate the extra hippage. I'm not sure when the Cher and Tina show aired, but I do remember watching it and never once thinking that Oprah seemed particularly heavy or at all miserable. But evidentally she was in hell. What I do remember is Tina Turner saying she liked being her age, while Cher's blunt rebuttal was someething like, "being old sucks." Truth is, Cher and Tina both have a point, as Oprah's current show seemed to be saying.

From her earliest years Oprah was an overachiever, maybe even workaholic, as the segment with her assistant Novana, pointed out. Novona showed a typical page from last year's calendar, which began at 6 a.m. and included three tapings, preproduction meetings, and a whole bunch of other stuff adding up to a 14-hour day with no breaks. "I wasn't on my own to-do list," is how Oprah puts it. But we all worked that way when we were young and ambitious. We were all out of balance. And like myself, when Oprah was young and famished, she'd grab the potato chips. Another thing we have in common. I could kill a bag in one sitting, easy, and I bet she could, too. Buit we can't get away with that now. Well, maybe if we split a bag...?

The point is, Oprah's not young anymore, and neither am I. I'm guessing she's done a little Botox here, a little wrinkle filler there, and I'd be stunned if Andre the hairdresser isn't regularly touching up the gray... But despite how great she always looks, Oprah says she felt much of 2008 feeling exhausted and defeated. I'm pretty sure that when Oprah's thyroid misfired earlier this year -- which she says is when the fat started to win -- it was because of age-related hormone changes. So like I said, Cher got it right. Age does suck.

"Age is a bear," Bob Greene said during the show's second segment, adding -- as if he needed to-- that you can't work the same way at 50 that you could at 30 or 40. He noticed Oprah on the wane and wanted to know were the "zest" had gone. "Are you fulfilled?" he wanted to know. "Are you taking care of yourself?" And at least part of his meaning was, "Are you using the gym?" Which leads us to another reason age sucks. While you (and I and Oprah) may've been able to starve ourselves into ass-hugging Calvins, now we gotta move that ass. Every day. Bless her heart, Oprah reiterated her hatred of exercise, but now she's lifting weights and doing the elliptical machine at least 30 minutes daily at a pace that allows a pant-pant level of conversation and occasional burst into "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes." If that was the last song Oprah heard in a gym, then it really has been a long time.

Of course this wouldn't be an Oprah health-and-fitness show without a little work on the soul, and in this case, it comes in the form of a questionnaire, asking among other things: Why are you overweight? (This reminds me of the old Richard Simmons show, in which he drove a Rolls Royce or something with the license plate Y R U FAT, a question that if answered honestly and addressed appropriately, should lead to a different license plate, Y R U THIN. Right?) Bob Greene and Oprah want us to journal on these questions, digging deep to uncover what we're really hungry for. What are you looking for in life that hasn't come your way? Why haven't you been able to maintain your weight in the past? And why do you want to lose the weight?"

I think about how I might've answered these things 20 or 30 years ago: "I'm overweight because all the models in Seventeen weigh less than 120 pounds and I want the number on my scale to match theirs." "I'm hungry for lawn clippings because I haven't eaten for two days and now the smell of the grass is making me salivate." "I want to lose the weight because I read someplace you can't be too thin. Which means if you're not too thin, you're not perfect, which I have to be to make up for everything else that's wrong with me."

And this leads me to the reason I think Tina Turner also had it right: It's good be old. When I was young I may have been skinnier, but I was sure crazier. At least I can see that now. Bob Greene says that if any part of your answers indicates you'll be hapy if you reach a certain size or weight, then he knows right there you're screwed. That didn't come as any shock to me. It would've when I was 21. But not anymore. Age has given me that gift. And believe me, it was the only gift.

So while I may be grateful for the wisdom that comes with age, I'm very eager to see what happens on the next Oprah, when Dr. Oz reveals the single most important thing we can do to hold onto our youth. God, I hope it's not cutting calories!

Jan. 3, 2009
I wonder if Oprah's thinking about reusing the caption she put on the January cover of O -- "How did I let this happen again?" -- for a story about how she let herself be duped once more by a mendacious memoirist. A couple years ago it was James Frey, whose drug-o-logue, "A Million Little Pieces," was made an Oprah Book Club selection before Oprah learned the hard way that drug addicts tell lies. To her credit Oprah made a heartfelt apology for her role in misrepresenting the less-than-truthy tale, and then went on to publicly kick James Frey's ass. Nonetheless Frey somehow swung himself a deal for three more books, including one about a bunch of people in Los Angeles, which was published this past year. I remember the guy who reviewed it for the LA Times calling it one of the worst things he's ever read. I don't know if the other two books'll be any good, but even if they are, I doubt there'll be any reunion show for Frey.
The point, though, is that it happened to her again. This time it was a retired TV repairman living in Miami who fooled Oprah. Some years ago Herman Rosenblat, now in his late 70s, wrote a touching Holocaust memoir that ended up being reprinted in one of the "Chicken Soup" collections. Oprah found it, flipped for it, and termed it "the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air." But the tale of how a teenage Herman, imprisoned in a concentration camp, was kept alive by a nine-year-old "angel" unfortunately turned out to be a hoax. Rosenblat has been quoted as saying he just wanted to bring hope to people with his writing. And on the subject of the Holocaust, there really aren't a lot of feel-good's with happy endings.
I wonder if there isn't a roomful of fact-checkers on the Oprah show, all with smudgy glasses and perfect four-point-o's, going over every word of every book Oprah flips for. You'd think that after the Frey fiasco, she wouldn't dare pop her cork for any book without its veracity being checked, double-checked and triple-checked. But I suspect Oprah is a reader who wants to believe in the goodness of all books, and therefore in the goodness of their authors. I think she loves literature so much she loses her heart first and asks questions later. She may have gotten perfect (or near perfect?) grades and she may have even had glasses, but Oprah wouldn't have liked it in the Facts department. I did some fact-checking in my day, and I'm pretty sure she's not the type. She's more passion than skepticism. Details probably don't jump out at her as bogus, especially after she's become enamoured of everything around them. And that's fine. So what if every few years she makes a Smart Woman/Bad Choice move with a book? I'd like to believe a fling with a dishonest book is a whole lot easier on the emotions than a fling with a dishonest man.

Jan. 2, 2008
I found the People magazine in which Oprah is quoted as saying she "fell off the wagon" this past year, resulting in a 40-pound weight gain and a selflessly awful photo in a lumpy purple track suit. "How did I let this happen?" her self-written caption wailed. Well, Oprah knows how: She gave up making herself a priority, she writes, which so many of us do. She says she stopped exercising and went back to eating poorly, and the next thing you know, the year's kaput and so's her figure. But she's vowing to climb right back on that wagon, and sure enough, the commercial I saw last night for the Oprah show was back on the theme of "Your Best Life."
I wonder if this means Oprah is letting all of us know it's perfectly okay to recycle lost dreams and aspirations, and that even at age 54 a woman can reactivate a goal gone south. Or maybe it means Bob Greene, Oprah's trainer, had a long heart-to-heart with his favorite no-show client and told her, Look, we were all set to do a bunch of shows where you eat right and work out. This was supposed to make you fit and make me look like a good use of ninety bucks an hour. But noooo. You had to fall off the wagon. Haven't personal trainers been hurt enough by the economic downturn? Oprah, if you don't start hitting the gym again, another whole sector of the service economy will collapse!
I have no idea what -- if anything -- Bob Greene said to Oprah. And it doesn't matter, because she's back on the wagon and we're all getting back to business with her. Next Monday Oprah begins a full-week immersion into Best Lifedom, 2009-style, and I don't know about you, but I can't wait. Instead of reading that People magazine laying on the couch the magazine had been living under during the holidays, I read it on the stationery bike, hating every second of my 30-minute uphill peddle. But I did it because I believe somewhere Oprah's on her bike, too, sweating and hating just like me, and our hate is linked in an arc of calorie-burning misery from my stationery bike to hers.
We all need some kind of fantasy to get us on that damn bike, and today this was mine.

A New Year

Jan. 1, 2009
Today I resurrect the Oprah effort. After only a handful of entries, I gave up trying to do whatever Oprah says when I realized nobody can do everything Oprah says. Apparently not even Oprah. I mean, think about it. Oprah began 2008 with a road show down in the South someplace, where obesity runs (or waddles) rampant and lots of Americans have lots of bad habits of both body and mind. So to make these sweeping life changes, Oprah brought in reinforcements. I don't think Dr. Oz was there (though he'd certainly be around a lot in '08), but exercise guru Bob Greene showed up, as I recall, wearing nothing but workout clothes and a can-do smile. This, after all, was the kickoff to Oprah's (and our) "best life" ever. Soon there'd be stuff on Oprah's website and products in our grocery stores to keep us living that elusive "best life, " along with Oprah. Sure it was intimidating, but Oprah was so positive and pumped. In track suit and sunglasses, she didn't allow herself a peep of doubt or self-deprecation. Now me, I'm different. I'm not sure I'm a defeatist, but I'm not really a successist, either. I wouldn't dare say anything I do is the "best," which is weird, because at some point in my life, I must've done something better than at other times, which would make it my "best," right? I mean compared to my usual mediocrity. But I'm not aware of when that happened and I certainly never think about how things are going to be the "best." So I wasn't really expecting to have my best life in '08, but I figured if I'd do everything Oprah said, then maybe things would at least be heading in a more Oprah-like upward direction. But then I got too far behind. It got hard. I got discouraged. I figured I'd blown it. And then I gave up. But here's the thing I wasn't expecting -- Oprah blew it, too. She didn't have her best life, either. At least not in the sense she and Bob Greene were talking about last January. I didn't want to say anything, but I noticed, as the months of '08 started to fly by, Oprah wasn't getting any fitter. Despite those "best life" logos on our frozen vegetables and Lipton tea, there was no discernible improvement in Oprah's physique. For whatever reason or combination of reasons -- from the demands of the Obama campaign to the school in South Africa and who knows what else with dogs and thyroids and Steadman and Gail -- Oprah wasn't at her best. In fact, I was starting to think she was getting heavier. But I (and perhaps she) didn't want to admit it. Then came the confession: Oprah was back up to 200 pounds. That's a horrible thing for any woman to admit. I still don't want to admit that one morning more than 10 years ago I too saw the scale's needle kiss the 200 mark, even though I lost a bunch of it later that same day when I delivered my second baby. But Oprah was willing to come clean. She bared all in a way few of us could ever do.

Tyra Banks may run around her talk-show stage in a red strapless one-piece to prove how honest she is about her body, but Oprah was even more naked with us. She exposed the DIFFERENCE between her fit self from a few years ago and her present shape on the cover of O -- Ouch! Self-inflicted sackcloth! Hester Prynne only had to wear her scarlet letter around the neighborhood. Oprah wore hers on a national magazine!
Once again Oprah has inspired me. I fell off the wagon and hid, but she fell off the wagon and went full-body-shot. I still have much to learn from Oprah Winfrey. About honesty. About getting back on that horse. So once again I'm resuming the cause I abandoned with such cowardice. Here I go again. On this the first day of 2009 I declare myself ready to do whatever Oprah says. For one year. Until it gets hard. Well, at least I'm working on the honesty part.