Burning Calories

An enormous, old, dead tree stood alone in the field, I sat in the back of my Dad's truck, my Dad and two other men were working at the base of the tree. They alternated between using a chainsaw and hammering wedges into the cuts on the tree. Occasionally the tree would groan and shift a little. Finally it started to lean, then it rolled to one side just a bit, then with a pop and crack the beast of a tree was falling, crashing to the ground.

After my family had moved out of town and into the country we had to adopt certain new chores. The only heat in that house when we moved in was a propane furnace which didn't provide enough heat and cost us a lot to get the propane refilled so we got a wood burning stove and had to get firewood and split it. There was no trash pickup, so we had two methods of dealing with trash, a drive to the dump or the burn barrel.

While I was out on my long run today, I was thinking about the phrase "burning calories" (I think about all sorts of things while out on a long run) and it occurred to me that different people have very different ideas about calories.

I've divided people's thinking about calories into two categories. There is "burn barrel" thinking and "firewood" thinking.

Burn Barrel Thinking

Growing up, one of my chores was often to monitor the burn barrel. All the paper trash would go into the burn barrel and be lit, then I would be left to make sure nothing fell out or drifted out, and to occasionally throw in more trash or stir the trash in the barrel to keep it from smothering itself out. We burned all the garbage, the idea was to get rid of it, get it out of the house, dispose of it and not deal with it anymore.

Burn Barrel thinking when it comes to calories is viewing the calories the way we viewed the garbage. It was something that came into our house and we needed to get rid of. It was undesirable, it was sort of the enemy, it's only place was to be disposed of.

Burn Barrel thinking is when the workout serves the purpose only of getting rid of these awful calories that we consumed.

I challenge any burn barrel thinkers to start adopting firewood thinking.

Firewood Thinking

Firewood thinking is almost the opposite of burn barrel thinking. Yes it is still the process of burning something, and getting rid of it, but approaching it from a very different perspective. Firewood is what kept us warm and safe in the winter. Firewood made our house comfortable and livable. There were so many evenings in the winter that I would eat a big bowl of my Mom's Chili, then lay on the floor next to the wood burning stove and take a little catnap in the heat from the stove.

So firewood was not something we desired to get rid of. We knew that to keep our hose warm (to fuel your body), we needed to get firewood (you need to consume calories). My Dad had types of wood he preferred over others, he really liked to burn hickory (there are foods you should prefer too). Firewood was not the enemy, but something we needed to fuel our home (calories are what you need to fuel your body). The colder the winter was, the more energy we needed to expend to warm the house, so the higher quality and higher quantity of wood we needed. (The tougher your workout, the more energy expended, so higher quality and quantity of calories you need to fuel your body.)

Of course, that doesn't mean the solution was to cut down every dead tree, cut it up, split it, and stack it. If we got too much, it would not all get used and it would sit in the stacks and rot. The goal was to get the right amount of the right kind of wood to provide the fuel we needed.

When it comes to calories, I want you to think of them as the fuel you need to get through your life. Make sure to get the right kinds and the right amount. Not too many, not too little, and not garbage. Garbage goes in the burn barrel.