As I write this, I have a bottle of Lucozade Orange (390ml) to hand; my second today. You know how it is: so much to do, yet only so much energy and hours in a day. At the very least, I can put away two of these bottles in a day of assignments, (with the Lucozade one litre bottle by no means beyond my capacity). In a move of procrastination, I take a read of the side of the bottle and SHOCK HORROR! The bottle in my hand contains 57% sugar of the overall Guideline Daily Allowance! To put things into perspective, I’m on my second bottle staring blankly at a computer with some pages to go. As I rip off the head of a Twirl chocolate bar – the omega to this afternoon’s snack – I conclude that I’m pretty much screwed..
“Your body is a Rolls Royce and should be treated in the same way”, Charlie Dark insists. The analogous metaphor isn’t completely out of context though, as it would first appear. After all, most would highly value such a car, if only for it’s premium selling price. A further comparison can be drawn from how one may power the car. If you don’t fill-up with enough – or even the right fuel, it’s prone to breakdown. The consequences for the body: exactly the same.
Following from my opening, essentially at least ONE bottle of my Lucozade bottles should be substituted with a bottle of water. In fact , we should be drinking 2 litres of water each day. All at once this may sound somewhat overwhelming, but across the day is more than achievable. Water is the ultimate elixir of the human body, serving as a very worthy ‘cleaning agent’ for the insides. Generally, your urine is a great indicator to if you’re having enough. The darker your pee, the more you need to up your H2O intake throughout the day.
As you’ve seen with my blunder, we are naïve enough to consider certain food and drinks as ‘friendly’. Lucozade is often seen as the energy-enhancing drink; few would anticipate the sugar load in the process. “Beware of fruit juices also”, Charlie adds. Just how can a drink which alludes to contain “2 of your 5-a-day” be harmful?! Well the answer is simple: as well as fruits, many fruit juices can contain up to 25% of your sugar GDA in one glass, alone. So if you’re trying to be weight conscious, note that too many of these fruit juices are likely to do you a disservice. Oh, and at this point I should mention that fruits themselves also contain sugar if you hadn’t realised, (as does flavoured water, and smoothies – two other highly sugary culprits!).
This session, we also discuss market trickery. For example, some brands will go to the extent of taking their products and aggressively launching diet versions (of course – the money all goes to the same place). Charlie reveals that some companies even buy out rival companies to increase their overall share of the market. Another observation I made is that even if you are savvy enough to read the GDA, you need to be careful. For example with the Twirl I spoke about above, rather than state the GDA for the whole chocolate, it subtly states for each finger meaning you need to be sure to multiply everything by two. This ploy, as you might call it, resembles that of carton drinks that tell you the typical values per 100ml (in a little inconspicious corner). Your eye may be enticed by the apparently low number causing the mind to think you are safe when this is far from the case.
We explore the importance of healthy eating from the start to the end of the day. This starts with a healthy breakfast, the most important meal of the day. We all know what it’s like to have missed breakfast. The result is not merely physical anxiety, but mental anxiety with you thinking about lunch all morning! If you ponder the car analogy once more, a car will not run unfuelled, and for most people prior to rising, the last time they will have fuelled would have been some several hours ago at dinner. Therefore, it’s little wonder why you feel additionally unproductive some mornings.
It’s rather important to have a healthy lunch as well. This is a pivotal point of the day although you don’t want to go down the road of overindulging. The body is required to break down the food you ingest, therefore an overindulgence at lunchtime will mean that the body has to work twice as hard, all whist you are required to return to work, leaving you with that blotted feeling. Quite obviously then, foods rich in fat should be avoided over lunch, (even if they feature on the bargain lunchtime special, just say no!)
Finally dinner (or Teatime, as Northerners have it). Whilst this is perhaps not the most important meal of the day, it is still important to restore energy lost in the day, and ultimately prepare you for a good night’s sleep. That said, some people tend to go all out on this meal, which shouldn’t be encouraged either, as after the day’s activities the body will prepare to shut down and not properly process a bulk intake. Charlie advises: “I often use a plate I deem adequate for my dinner, one not too large so I know I’m not tempted to pile too much on my plate”. For the same reason, he also recommends not leaving this meal too late else consequently, the food will turn into fat, and increase the likelihood of indigestion.
“Think of the main meals as an upside down pyramid”, Charlie imparts. By this he explains Breakfast should start at the top of this with the largest portion to start off the day. Lunch should follow, taking slightly less than a breakfast portion. Meanwhile, Dinner, the triangle at the bottom of the Pyramid, should see the smallest portion so that the body may process the food by bedtime, granting you a restful night.
As we look more specifically at different food types, Charlie raises the valid point that some foods are easier to break down than others. For example, many opt for hard foods – foods high in starch like potatoes, breadfruits, etc – as a dinner meal. Whilst these foods can be advantageous in moderation, the body will have to work even harder to deal with generous amounts of these, leaving you exhausted.
Protein rich foods equally are good for building strength and repairing muscle, ideal for workout enthusiasts. Think protein and you often think meat, and a popular favourite for many is chicken. Be aware of your protein source though, such as buying chicken that in chicken shops. “The likelihood is that the chicken found in chicken shops are not free range, meaning they’ve been grown rapidly under artificial conditions. This is how the chicken shop can sell it to you so cheaply” Charlie says. But it’s not just chicken we need to be watchful of. Fish, another source of protein can often be seen in supermarkets in an array of colours, which is the modification of a natural product to encourage sales.
It’s not all gloom though. There are good foods that do not take long to process. For example most people can relate to the feeling of being ‘always tired’. Well, vegetables are extremely high in fibre and these foods release energy slowly throughout the day. Therefore you will remain content and satisfied for longer after consumption. Similarly fruits are a great way to respond to the gaps of hunger throughout the day. Charlie also notes in the session that a good drink is green tea, which accelerates metabolism.
Charlie gives a final piece of advice to runners: “Never eat any less than 15 minutes before a run”. It is also crucial to remain hydrated when running as you loose fluids through perspiration.
It’s a really insightful session, proving that the landscape of our day is truly determined by our choice of diets, and we must eat properly to physically and mentally feel prepared to combat the day. Failure to will see a weaker performance throughout the day, and a second rate version of ourselves. One should also remember that even when they have the healthy diet on point; overindulgence is just as bad as junk food. eg, fruits of healthy, but snacking on a bunch of bananas will do you no favours.
Celeste also mentions the longer term effects; and a notion of muscle memory, that the body will in years to come remember, and reflect how we treat our bodies today. It will remember its optimum strength, and even as you age be prepared to work towards its one-time peak. Almost echoing the Royce theory; a car given regular attention is likely to drive for years more than one misused.
We spoke about the Upside Down Pyramid. The reality though is that I currently live by The Actual Pyramid! More times than not, my breakfast is a banana on the Bakerloo, (and a morning fuel of Lucozade)! My lunch is often the size that my breakfast should have been! As for my dinner, I’m a beast in that department with seconds a regular theme!
Before we break, Bangs says something quite profound. “People only respect their bodies when they’re sick”. She’s absolutely right. I advise all to take heed, and I sure will too, noting physical or mental feeling differences of a better diet in future posts.
This session marks the final class-based session of our 'Youngers' Programme. Huge thanks to Run Dem Crew and Somewhereto_ for facilitating some of the most mind-opening explorations ever! I hope you've enjoyed reading the #RDCYXPerience. More entries on this blog to come..
Run Dem Crew Week 3: Creativity and Lateral Thinking
Perhaps the single greatest problem facing schools and education today isn’t cuts, underfunding or the constant intervention by curriculum editors who think they know all. No not just this..
You see, education in its rawest form is all about the extraction of information. The reality in schools though, is quite the contrary. Yes, the reality is that through schools’ ambitious and often irrational efforts to chase grades and create socially worthy scholars (that they often later claim credit for), there exists a suppression and denial of a young person’s inner needs and knowledge of self. Youngsters who opt for assertive are often perceived as aggressive. Meanwhile the kids who challenge the syllabus, are often perceived as the teacher’s challenges themselves. The result: A generation of young people that grow with a reluctance to express themselves, be confident, and have self-belief in their capabilities.
Quite aptly, RDCY (Run Dem Crew Youngers), Week 3 was a session on creativity, led by Charlie Dark, and assisted by Mark Gurney and Muireann Carey-Campbell AKA “Bangs”.
“If I say to my youngest aged 4 to create me the name of a shoe, he’d instantly return a string of the ideas going through his mind. Meanwhile, my older girl would take the time to filter out these ideas returning the ones she thinks best!”
Charlie’s point drives home pretty fast. As he sets us a similar task – design a shoe – I find myself thinking up all the endless possibilities, from ethical, to the down right out of this world that I have no realistic concept of! In the end, I produce some just-about wearable sneaker in which I have the futile hope of impressing the class today, (and quite likely too, the wider network in my head). As we show and tell, on the whole, turn by turn we justify the crap we’ve conceived!
“Ideas are never bad” Charlie insists, reinforcing that such notion is an aspect of school, to be forgotten. In truth, as we discovered in Week 1, most ideas begin with ‘side ideas’, being born out of a range of mental processes. As Charlie argues, we learnt though to sift for the widely desirable returns, almost in an attempt to ingratiate ourselves with society, and not vice versa.
Intriguingly, we learn about Frank Rudy, who conceived the revolutionary Air Sole technology after being inspired by French architecture. Closely linked meanwhile, Bill Bowerman co-founder of Nike, created the ‘waffle sole’ design quite literally using his wife’s waffle maker!
It’s all about thinking differently, an attribute that is worthy of celebration, Charlie thinks. “When I look to the stretch of East Street Market, as a runner I see that as a great track space, perfect for training”.
Charlie reveals a few more tips including using the net to find out how other’s minds are thinking, and other creative enhancers. For example, the utilising of coloured paper, over plain paper, stimulates brain activity and creativity in turn! A further invaluable tip to lateral thinking: “Set yourself a regular challenge to discover something new in your surroundings”.
This week I took up Charlie’s challenge and discovered an underused promotion tool on my bike saddle; a convincing extension to my room simply by covering empty wall space with a mirror; and an entire blank canvass on my ceiling!
Creativity is all about unrestriction. In fact, somewhat inspired by a chat with David G. , I'll coin a phrase - creativity is what happens when free thought becomes superfluous; and I guess you could say potential is what happens when creativity is accommodated.
Before closing the session, Charlie stresses the importance of thinking as well as being, different. Ultimately, we stumble back on familiar territory: this all comes down to having self-belief that school hasn’t quite taught, and so needs learning fast.
Nonetheless, as we face up to the reality of increasing competition, the underlining question is what makes you different? It is a question that becomes ever the more relevant as we compete to share our ideas in a class like this; but also as we compete to share ourselves in wider society. Whatever the answer to this question may be, confidently take it, and hone it into greatness.
****Some recommended reading from this week, available cheaply: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” and “Outliers: The Story of Success”.
Life Run: As I mentioned in last week’s blog post on RDC Youngers, for all the pain, ache, and physical turmoil even, Running can equally be therapeutic, thoughtful, and reflective with a myriad of parallels to everyday life.
For my run this week, I took to the locality of where I’d spent a year on placement as a youth mentor. The run (in close proximity of the school placement) allowed me to mentally relive the mentoring experience; assess challenges with my students, celebrate barriers overcome. Ultimately, my hope was to challenge myself physically and mentally. Through the fusion, I was able to undertake an honest assessment revealing ways in I could combine both experiences – mentoring placement and the current gruelling run – to propel future successes on and off the road. I’d urge any runners to return to any local areas of poignancy to see what results a ‘life run’ generates!
Back to class in re:store, Run Dem Crew Youngers theme this week was Social Media and Blogging, led by RDC’s Muireann Carey-Campbell AKA “Bangs”. Whilst the ‘youngers’ generation has become dependant, and even at times tested by social media, Social Media can be just as advantageous to young people.
“We all socialise through social media, companies use social media to enhance their brand, yet few consider how we might use social media to build a brand for ourselves”, Bangs says. She did. Bangs proudly boasts authorship of two successful blogs: fashion and lifestyle blog ‘Bangs and a Bun’, and fitness blog ‘Spikes & Heels’.
“Everyone has something that they wax lyrical about; something that they have an expert voice on or are passionate about. Everyone seems to have something to say about X-Factor! If you can produce content on influential topics, that’s your blog right there”, Bangs insists.
It might not even be something you feel seriously about. “I’ve come to become known as the go-to person for coffee”, chips in RDC’s Mark Gurney, pointing out that a blog idea may even be staring you in the face.
For Bangs, this was a simple issue of her taking an everyday life passion: Fitness. The creation of this personal blog, began to accrue numbers who had a brief interest in fitness. As her blog entries numbered, so did the weight of Bangs’ credibility and voice in the area. Soon enough, the fitness followers turned into advertisers, converting Bangs’ pastime, into vocation, in months.
Social media is gradually shifting from being merely a trend, to a very relevant skill almost, Bangs emphatically illustrates in our session. Bangs takes us through the highlights and challenges experienced as she acquired greater share of the internet.
We explore learning from various writing styles, ranting and the value of consistency as a blogger. Bangs also discusses analytics, which is analysing your blog’s success, monitoring stats such as readers and their location.
“Be it Twitter, or blogging, be weary of what you upload”, Bangs warns. “The more controversial the topic, or post, the more likely it is to gain traction and peddle the net”, she cautions, professing that such has formed a pivotal part of her learning experience. Tied into that is the issue of negative feedback, and the necessity to be incredibly thick-skinned if you’re going to promote yourself publicly.
Blog created, the next step is to get promoting, Bangs says, which is where the social networks come in. There are even apps you can get to schedule your tweets, such as Co-Tweet, Hootsuite, and SocialOomph. “It’s all about creating traffic to your blog, with Twitter, Facebook and other social media”, Bangs imparts, and advises ways in which to do so with ease.
Before we break away to hit the streets for our run, Bangs informs us of the key blog providers for those starting out:
Blogger: This affords a key advantage that it is inbuilt into all Google accounts, meaning if you have Gmail you can start right away. It suits a longer-post blogger, although can equally be used to good effect for a photoblogger (or shall I say ‘blographer’!). You can also use Google’s social network ‘Google+’ in the process.
Tumblr: Suited to the image-based blogger. I personally view it as Twitter with more words. Why? You follow other users, can ‘reblog’ other people’s posts (like RTs), and view a timeline of those you follow – albeit a more detailed timeline – on your homepage.
WordPress: Is a site-based provider. You have more freedom with Wordpress, naturally suiting a long-form entry writer.
“Find out what works and what doesn’t” Bangs suggests both of a provider, and the content you choose for your blog. With a highly insightful class complete, and all youngers in position to create blogs of our own, we’re on our way to polish this week’s 5k. It is visibly darker and it’s apparent (despite the heatwave promised this week) - summer is quite behind us. This week though, our collective is clearly more determined, as we take in the sites of Burgess Park, and dirtbikers! It’s a much longer effort than last week, but we are determined to push.
In truth, today’s session has taught a lot, but crucially speaks wonders about tenacity. “When I started blogging, I was working a nine-to-five, and spent the rest of the day writing building up my repertoire”, says Bangs. We take from this session that a dream takes as much hard work and determination, as it does creativity, which is hugely inspirational.
Blogging has led to Bangs becoming a fitness consultant, working on projects with the likes of Nike and Puma. She’s taken her fitness blog to a television series, and has created an e-book “Guide To Running”. Ultimately, Bangs advises: “It comes down to getting out what you put in”, a lesson
“It’s YOUR idea - sell it!” Charlie demands of a shy member of the group having enlisted us with the thoughtful task: what innovative things can you do with a brick? Charlie’s tone is candid, uncompromising even, but he knows the time he has with us is truly, of the essence..
After too long a hiatus, I’m back to running, and on Thursday gone, I joined an innovative project by running enthusiasts 'Run Dem Crew'. RDC Youngers South excitingly brings 18-25 year olds together for five weeks, witnessing an unlikely marriage of fitness and creativity, underpinned by an effervescence of youth. Each week some twenty “youngers” will come together for a weekly run, followed by insightful creative workshops, with the ultimate creation of a magazine for distribution across London, post project. RDC Youngers South is led by RDC (Run Dem Crew), namely collective trio Charlie Dark, Mark Gurney, and Muireann Carey-Campbell AKA “Bangs”. The project is facilitated bySomewhereto_, an initiative to grant young people access to unused spaces throughout the country.
Meanwhile, it’s about 30 minutes into rush hour in East Street, Elephant & Castle, home of Somewhereto_. A score of Youngers are dotted around what we soon come to know as a classroom, within the School of Dark, gaining a dosage of wisdom from Poet and Run Dem Crew founder Charlie Dark.
As he continues from the above, Charlie underlines the importance of injecting confidence into anything that comes to you if you want to progress in a competitive world. Intermittently, he backs up his points with examples:
“I remember some twenty years ago being in a TV board room with ideas swarming. When it came to my turn, I came with the absurd notion that we should introduce a show where people eating worm sandwiches on live television! I put every bit of assurance into submitting my idea, even though I knew it was a risk. Lo and behold, months later the station welcomed in the rise of ordinary people willing to do anything to get on TV!”
Among many morals in Charlie’s anecdotes, we soon learn that every idea – no matter how seemingly unconventional – has the potential. Much though depends on if people are willing to buy into it. The first buyer though must be the supplier, and that in the foremost comes down to self-belief.
In just a short while, we’re ploughing through a handful of crash courses on confidence, self belief, the art of persuasion and more. This includes how something as basic as eye contact can affect or even disaffect your chances of connecting with key audiences, and consequently opportunities, not just in job interviews, but opportunities that you may not have even realised were on offer. It’s a range of advice that is too relevant for our age bracket, a young collective all competing in an apparently at times barren society.
Baptism complete, we swap classroom for the streets of Elephant & Castle where we are soon to enrol in the start of physical education. We’re promised this time to go easy, though this is clearly a run with a difference as we are armed with disposable cameras to take snap of any ‘interesting’ sights on our travels!
As we take off, it’s a somewhat frenetic start. A once united class are now in dribs and drabs across what has become a trail of perhaps even ten metres between first place and twentieth.
Charlie, Mark and Bangs are quick to remind the importance of unity, and stress the importance of patience in group exercises. It’s a very valuable lesson here: Teamwork is crucial to most daily exercises, and even more so if applied to working environments where you may not always connect with colleagues, or (as we witness here) have the patience for slower or faster counterparts in our jobs. The group run does much to fathom ‘How can we work best with each other to achieve common goals?’ In fact, often our personal goals are intertwined in the actions of others; how best therefore can we work most effectively to enhance the actions of other team mates.
We head North down Walworth Road, towards central Elephant and Castle and we enter the nearby green to complete circuits. Gradually we are adding to our overall 6 mile target, and we’re all still standing which is a great sign.
Completing circuits, double, triple, and probably more, soon takes its toll. The once adrenaline pumped collective start to ache and fatigue, and as it gets late, clouds of doubt appear on cue. Bangs, Mark and Charlie notice the strained faces, and are on hand to offer advice: “Keep pushing - it’s all in the mind”. They stay strong with the encouragement; soon enough we push through till we all return to base, ready to run another day!
In truth, we can learn much from the run. Though our lives, daily, and further apart; we come through stages of fatigue and doubt. Sometimes we unwittingly choose to fall short – even though we know deep down our capabilities are far beyond. We sometimes happily settle with Silver, when in many cases a Gold place is achievable. Perhaps then we can learn from runs and, as we’re reminded, tell ourselves: ‘If I push until the finish, or goal, so long as I don’t die, I can be happy with my result.’ The choice to do so comes down to you alone.
A good mileage covered, and a bundle of wisdom, for just the first week. As with all races, there’s much to be said about a good start, and we’re off to a flying one.
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