The Intellectual Wilderness There is nothing more useless than doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Its the 22nd day of this McDonald’s experiment and I’m feeling fine. Just taking a rest day and trying to get charged up for Monday. I didn’t have much to eat today because I simply didn’t feel hungry. Yesterday was a rest day as well so I have a full 24 hours between me and any real work to suppress my appetite. Maybe “suppress” isn’t the right word… there is nothing to suppress. I simply do not need much food today so I am not very hungry.

Noming a bacon potato pie at McDonald’s… never knew they had these things…

There is really nothing much to write for a rest day. The need for rest after a long course of exercise is obvious to anyone who has engaged in serious exercise — but most people have never done anything I would consider a serious routine, so I suppose most folks do not understand the dynamic between rest and output. You can usually put out a lot more than you think you can, and you usually need less rest than you think you do. That being said it is usually a good idea to err on the side of too much exercise than too little. Once you hit your limit you will know because things just won’t work right anymore. You’ll suddenly have a day where you feel off, or you will feel exhausted right out of the barrel, or your heart will race doing ordinary things or you will simply not have the energy or strength to push yourself. When this happens two days in a row you will know that you are not simply having an off day, you are exderiencing the effects of overtraining. Overtraining can creep up on you in very subtle ways, too, but usually for me it hits me all at once. These things simply mean that we have to stay in tune with our bodies and actively try to pay attention to what is going on and what we are feeling. It absolutely does not mean that we should be searching for excuses to not exercise or finding reasons to justify our laziness.

There is a fine line sometimes between “taking a rest day” and being lazy. That is why scheduled rest days are a good thing. Most importantly, however, more important than any single exercise-related idea ever conceived is having a good partner. I have had to be my own partner throughout this entire series so far and that is fine. But I have a long history of exercise and have learned enough about myself and how to acheive my goals that I can do this on my own. I would do much better with a partner, though. Partners make everything better, even if they are not at your level. Partners are what prevent you from making excuses, give you a social reason to not be late to the gym, help manage your time by the mere fact of being. I wish that I had a partner right now, but unfortunately that is just not the case for now. When this experiment ends, however, I will move back to a partner-assisted routine.

Its day 21 of my McDonald’s experiment and I made it to the weekend without keeling over. Now I have a few rest days ahead that I feel are well deserved. I didn’t do much today but that was just fine. In fact, I did so little that this particular blog entry will not be much more than a place holder. I didn’t set my alarm and woke up when I felt like it, I ate amongst what seemed like a million screaming kids at McDonald’s, rented a movie and just relaxed today going to the park and feeling unpressured by anything.

Mmmm… Ice cream… Pretty much the culinary highpoint of the day

The most interesting thing about the whole day actually was how many people were at McDonald’s today. It was Saturday. The weather was amazing. There are a million things to do around here that are exciting and very fun when the weather is good and none of them involve McDonald’s. So why were so many people there today? It is interesting that the majority of the customers were Americans but the demographic of that area is largely Japanese. It is near a huge American air base, but there are a lot of things to do on and off the base that don’t involve going to McDonald’s. Anyway, in the end I suppose they go there because they like it… its just not the sort of place I am likely to go to on Saturday.

Speaking of that… Friday nights are also crowded at McDonald’s and the customers are usually American also. Maybe when they are drunk they stick with something that is familiar, and McDonald’s would be it around here. That kills me to think about though because an amazing variety of culinary treasures await anyone willing to ditch the invididually possessive nature of western restaraunt orders and take the time to learn how to read (granted, not an elementary task in Japanese). The food, drinks, and atmosphere are really great at the local 居酒屋 but I suppose that sort of thing is not what the younger American folks are into. For some reason Japanese people go out to drink together strictly to have fun — not to meet girls, get into fights or simply get wasted. You will almost never hear a Japanese guy ask his friends if they want to get fucked up over the weekend or go chase bitches at clubs… but its pretty common to hear between Americans talking about the weekend. I suppose its just a deep cultural difference that will not be bridged. As far as I am concerned, however, discovering new foods, places, people and drinks in the company of my friends is the fun part to me, so I’ll stick with that.