You Are Probably Basically A Zombie

by Cassie Byard Women’s Director at Veritas Life Adventures (This is part 1 of 2 blogs. Part 1 highlights the problem, part 2, the solution)

  Maybe you’re not eating brains or covered in blood (I hope), but chances are good (and that’s bad) that you’re one of the 70% of Americans infected by a deadly epidemic.  I’m not trying to be dramatic or anything, but most of us are basically walking dead. Okay, maybe that’s a tad bit dramatic, but seriously, we are being plagued by problem that is causing cancer, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, allergies, and depression.  I think the worst thing about this affliction is that most of us think it’s no big deal, when reality says its repercussions are deadly.

It may not be an actual disease, but sleep deprivation is a legitimate health issue. It seems menial because most of us live with it every day and still function relatively well, but sleep deprivation is no small thing. According to social psychologist Dr. James Maas, nothing predicts longevity of life better than quality and quantity of sleep. He states that lack of sleep “…makes you clumsy, stupid, unhealthy… and it shortens your life.” Sleep is not a luxury available only to “time wealthy” people.  Sleep is a necessity; not treating it as a top priority will bite you badder than a bitter bulldog.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Dr. Maas entitled “The Science of Sleep: Everything You Wanted to Know about Sleep But Were Too Tired to Ask.” As a self-proclaimed nerd, I found these few hours of facts quite fascinating, and as an advocate of holistic health, I feel I must share this information with you.

What is sleep deprivation?

A lot of people know they’re sleep deprived because they’re tired all the time. Others seem to function just fine in life and therefore think that their 5-6 hours of sleep at night is appropriate for them. But science shows that humans need between 7.5-9.5* hours of uninterrupted sleep each night for optimum health and performance. See how you fare in Dr. Maas’ sleep deprivation test:

1. Does a heavy meal, low dose of alcohol, warm room, boring meeting or lecture ever make you drowsy?
2. Do you fall asleep instantly at night?
3. Do you need an alarm clock to wake up?
4. Do you repeatedly hit the snooze button?
5. Do you sleep extra hours on the weekends?

How’d you do?  Did you answer yes to more than one of these?  If so, you’re pathologically sleep deprived.  Pretty crazy, right?

Teenagers, you guys need around 9.25 hours of sleep each night.  Guess what teens are averaging these days?  6.1.  Do you know that getting 6 or less hours of sleep per night for 2 or more weeks impairs you as much as being drunk?  Yeah, a lot of us are driving drowsy, which is the same as drunk driving.  I’d call that a problem.  Know what else happens to your body on 6 or less hours of sleep?  Your immunities drop 50%, your brain cannot function properly, and all the information you learned during the day gets forgotten.

While you sleep, your brain kicks into superhero mode, essentially putting new information (e.g., your athletic training, test studying, vocab building) into long-term storage. It is your sleeping brain that converts short-term memories into permanent knowledge (in other words, all those hours of studying for tests is virtually wasted if you do not sleep long enough for your brain to move it to the proper brain folders to keep it in your head for good). Not giving your brain enough time (9 ish hours) to run its diagnostics and back-up means you’re running on a faulty hard drive. Here are a “few” more results of sleep deprivation according to Dr. Maas:

sleepdep

Sleep deprivation is no good. Hopefully we get that now.  But what’s to be done?  With all we have going on during the day, we surely don’t have the time to sleep 9 hours each night, right?  Yet when you get the proper amount of sleep, you are capable of so much more than you accomplish when you have a sleep debt.  If you function well on 5-6 hours of sleep, you are still underperforming.  You are capable of MORE!  Zombieism is slowing you down.  Don’t let it.  Put that inner zombie to sleep.  Literally.

* Everyone is different, but very few people (aka, you are probably not one of the very few) need less than the 7.5 hour minimum.

Bikinis & Cottage Cheese

by Cassie Byard Women’s Director at Veritas Life Adventures

When I was in the second grade my teacher had our class make our own personalized greeting cards. With my incredibly insightful 7-year-old wisdom, I selected my card’s cover: a magazine advertisement with a picture of Garfield looking disapprovingly at the image of his backside in a full-length mirror. The caption read: “You know it’s time to go on a diet when you start getting dimples in the wrong cheeks.” I had no idea what it meant, but I thought it was brilliant. And then, years later, my 13-year-old, 85-pound self suddenly looked in the mirror and saw that I had dimples in “the wrong cheeks.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think a lot of people have a certain idea about what “healthy” people should look like. The truth is, there is no perfect standard for what a healthy person should look like.  There is no perfect standard of what a person “should” look like period.  A friend of mine frequently pokes my stomach to see if my abs are doing any better at revealing their existence (they’re not). She has to poke past a little barrier of squish to find them.  Another friend has poked my belly only to declare, “Your stomach is too hard.”  A woman should be soft, she implies.  So which is it?  Is my tummy too soft or too hard?

Think about it.  If I ask you to imagine a person with a “perfect body,” what image comes to your mind?  I’m going to venture a guess that the person you imagine is young, muscular, toned, maybe tan* and in a swimsuit?  We (or maybe it’s just me) have been trained by society to associate these traits with perfection and health.  But is that reality?

The moment we demand to our bodies, “I should look like that,” or “This area needs some work,” we are giving illegitimate authority to a body-shaming culture that declares itself the legislator of standards.

In my last blog I “confessed” to having love handles and cellulite.  Someone commented that they disagreed with my assessment, as though to quell my presumed low image of self.  But the idea that I might (or should) feel bad about my body because it fails to live up to society’s ideal is the very idea I am trying to counter.  It is okay that I have love handles and cellulite.  Could I “get rid” of these traits?  With lots of VERY dedicated (arguably obsessive) work, possibly.  MAYBE.  But the point I’m trying to make is that if I am pursuing health and not a certain body, then I don’t need to worry about love handles or cellulite.  What my body looks like is not the point of the journey of health.

Am I saying we should throw discipline to the wind and accept whatever happens to our bodies as a result?  Absolutely not.  Nor am I saying it’s bad to have six-pack abs.  But the reality is that most people cannot (and, I could argue, should not) sustain the kind of lifestyle necessary to achieve and maintain society’s idea of a “bikini body.”  Sometimes the pursuit of the “perfect body” distracts from the pursuit of health.

When we invite you on the journey to health with Veritas, we are not talking about pursuing a certain body image.  I have cellulite.  I am not going to work on changing that.  But I am going to strive for physical strength and endurance, nutritional balance, and spiritual and emotional stability.

That is Veritas.  That is truth.  Seek it with us.

*The fact that I (and many others) tend to default to Caucasian imagery is a topic worth addressing.  This book does a great job at it.

The One vs. The Many

The One vs. The Many / The One for The Many

By Grant Boatwright, ED Veritas Life Adventures

The History:

A man stands alone, really little more than a boy, his nation at his back defeated and dismayed. A giant stands before, the epitome of the word in every way, the pride of His nation that is behind him, just waiting to devour and destroy all the man boy holds dear. The man boy, David, stands; equipped with only a small sling, a stone, and a faith he holds which is all that keeps him standing. David stands, one man, courageous and steadfast, the sling spins, the stone flies, and the giant falls. One man, with one act, inspires and saves a nation.

One woman, compelled by the needs and suffering of the less fortunate in the world, armed only with her compassion, faith, and support of others for the tools of her work, takes it upon herself give of her life completely. She utterly pours out of herself to those who need love and the sheer basics of life. Her generosity, charity, and good works singularly elevate the standard of giving and becomes the benchmark name, that all who feel the tug at their soul to give, have at the tip of their tongue: Mother Theresa.

A culture drives itself towards perfection, and in doing so reduces the value of lives seen as imperfect, encouraging the discarding of its undesirable young to level of “infanticide.” One man, brokenhearted but not broken over this tragedy decides to take in all the “unwanted” that he can. He does so through a ‘drop box’ where those who make the decision to give up their unwanted child can anonymously drop the child off; thus retaining their dignity even through a difficult decision. This pastor, Lee Jong-rak, literally saves multitudes of precious infant lives, who have no power to decide for themselves whether or not they are wanted or what they are worth, by his ‘drop-box’ ministry.

One God gives to humanity His only Son. This Son gathers and trains a few, some skilled some unskilled, some upstanding some despised; men that take His teachings and change the course of human history and its future forever. This Son, Jesus Christ, lived and taught the love of the God who created all life and its’ systems, gave his life to the point of public execution without committing a single crime, and raised again so that all would have a way to know and love the God who sent Him.

The result:

Lets face it, our world, our history, our design, and most of our truly inspirational and influential accomplishments are marked by ‘the one’ and not ‘the many’. An entire nation was saved by a harp playing shepherd, thousands were helped and cared for by the compassion of a single nun, multitudes of unwanted babies were saved by one man’s desire to love the unloved, and the way was provided for all of us to have a relationship with our Creator by the sacrificial love of His only Son.

In a world that likes to determine its success by the quantity it affects, provides, and accomplishes it might be prudent to take a step back and look to the quality for a change. It just might be that we find it was the quality of these singular men and woman, or the small group of misfits under Jesus’ tutelage, who decided to make a change around them, which impacted the many. We might realize that it is not just ‘the many’ who can make large transformations. That it could be argued based on the previous and so many other examples, that ‘the one’ or even the few have a far greater, further reaching effect on the communities around them: even the world.

One of the most frequent questions Veritas Life Adventures gets is, “Why do you only take 10 kids a year, shouldn’t you want to affect as many as you can, at least more than 10?” To which my answer is, “Of course we want to affect more, which is why we only take 10.” Because we understand from these past examples, if we gain 10 youth who have a drive and potential to be the leaders of tomorrow and take the in-depth time and effort to equip them with the tools and opportunity to do so; then they will be the names our future generations will read about, aspire to, and learn from on how they impacted humanity.

Do we not desire and see the positive effects of smaller teacher to student ratios in our public schools?

Have you ever been shocked by the change you saw when you were instructed by a personal trainer compared to doing large class workouts?

This is why we know that keeping our goal of training ten Seekers a year in the program will have a far better outcome. That from these ten Seekers, tens of thousands they later lead will be motivated to change and grow, just as they were through the program.

Because they are ‘a’ soul, a potential great soul, created in the image of God, both fearfully and wondrously made. Made for a purpose, be it great or small, yet to be fulfilled.

So you tell me which is greater, ‘the one’ or ‘the many’? …

Or maybe, just maybe, we should start seeing it as ‘the one’ for the flourishing of ‘the many’!

Why Looking Up Will Change Your Life

By David Valentine, co-founder of Rethink and partner/practitioner of the Veritas Lifestyle and Veritas Life Adventures

I've got a stress problem. You probably wouldn't know it talking with me. On the surface I am calm, whimsical, and light. It's at the depths of my being anxiety lurks. The place which dictates my mental, emotional, and physical health.

At this point you're probably thinking, "Dude...go workout."

Yes,

absolutely,

I've tried that and it only works in degrees. The entire workout I'm focusing on those situations which are stressful. I exhaust my body, yet my mind continues to churn.

A few months back when my stress level was at an all time peak I took my two dogs for a long run. Like most people I look straight ahead while running outside, because it's the best way not to become a spectacle to passersby.

On this day though I did something absolutely revolutionary

I looked up.

The blue Texas sky reaching from horizon to horizon, the tree branches illuminated by the mid day sun, and the birds which flew by with effortless strokes captured my every thought.

I took a deep breath to remind myself I was alive.

When I looked up to the infinite sky I was reminded of a fundamental truth.

There is more than this.

I am not alone. God is here, and

He

is

good.

There's a verse from Paul's letter to the church in Colossae where he states, "...in Jesus all things hold together."

The cosmos is held together by a God who is good.

My anxiety slowly began to melt away as I marveled at my smallness.

The exercise wasn't relieving my stress, my perspective on life, reality, and truth eased the pressure.

Just then I tripped over my dogs and almost face planted into the concrete. In my attempt to not face plant, I lunged into a pole for a sign reminding patrons of the park to keep their dogs on a leash (you can't make this stuff up). Luckily I held onto the leashes of both dogs. I also avoided anyone seeing me crash, and there was no evidence that I nearly killed myself.

If you happen to be driving through the North Arlington area you may see me running my two dogs looking up towards the sky. Reminding myself, that I am small and God is holding it all together.

Oh and if you see me knocked out next to a sign please assist me.