NatNews

Numbers surround us in so many areas of our lives, including when it comes to diet and exercise. Some people count calories consumed and burned, miles run and at what pace, minutes spent in the gym, weight lifted and reps done, milligrams of caffeine, amount of sugar in a drink or meal, and a number of other numbered concerns.

In terms of nutrition, Dallas-area resident JT Gordon said he pays close attention to calorie and sugar intake as well as weight.

“I have a scale in my living room just before the kitchen,” he said. “I’m trying to be at a caloric deficit.”

Not everyone prefers to monitor such numbers, though. Arin Mearig, who lives in the Phoenix area, said she is not too concerned with the figures involved in her day-to-day nutrition habits.

“I’ll sometimes look at calories, and I’ll usually look at sugars, but most of the time, I’m just checking the ingredients, not the numbers,” she said. “And I rarely check my weight.”

Dallas-area resident Rachel Balthrop Mendoza puts in a significant amount of miles on her feet running in various areas throughout the metroplex, but like Mearig, she said dietary numbers are not top of mind for her.

“I am the poorest example of a nutritionist there could be,” she said. “Please do not go by my example. I run so that I can eat mostly what I want (within portion limits), and my diet varies wildly on any given day. I do not take into account any of those things and know and understand I eat way too much sugar and processed foods. I balance where I can and when I think about it, but I am generally not a model for proper eating habits.”

When it comes to working out, though, Balthrop Mendoza said it’s a different story. As a long-distance runner who stays more competitive with herself than with others (though don’t think she won’t pick off people in front of her one by one during a race), she is mindful of her mileage and pace.

“Depending on the time of year (I have only done a few races during the summer months because Texas), I may either be maintaining my long-distance base or training for either a strong half or full marathon,” she said. “A training program worth its salt will have some components of time, mileage, and pacing built in, so if that’s where I am in a cycle, I will follow it. But I admit that I need programs that are fluid and flexible. I don’t care for rigidity in plans because life happens, and you need to be able to adapt. Don’t skip—adapt.”

However, Balthrop Mendoza said other health stats are generally not as important to her, so she doesn’t monitor aspects such as heart rate as much.

“I’ve been running long enough to know what my zones are and where I should generally stay on different types of runs,” she said. “And since it’s hard for a wrist-based watch to get an accurate reading, I don’t put too much stock in what it’s telling me my heart rate is or what my calories burned are. If I cared that much, I’d go buy a chest strap. And I just don’t care that much.”

For Gordon, paying attention to running stats is essential, as doing so helps him gauge his health and how close he is to his running goals—and he has a certain race approaching that he is vying to win.

“Numbers are important if you have a specific goal,” he said. “They are very important if you’re going for a third mile championship like me. I think it comes down to what you’re willing to do to reach your goals. The numbers help you be more precise.”

Such stats are not as crucial to Mearig, who said she mainly pays attention to calories burned and not much more when working out. In general, whether in regard to nutrition or exercise, she said there should be a balance when it comes to numbers, as they can be more necessary in certain situations than in others.

“I think if people are too focused on numbers, especially on a scale, they’ll get discouraged when it’s not the number they want, even though it could just be a bad representation—maybe the number on the scale didn’t change, but people also could be losing fat and gaining muscle, which is good,” she said. “If you do want to lose weight, you have to be in a caloric deficit, meaning you can’t eat more than you’re burning and lose weight. So, depending on someone’s goals, they might need to look at numbers. But counting calories religiously can be detrimental if someone struggles with self-image, body weight, etc.”

For this reason and more, Mearig believes that when it comes to nutrition, looking at ingredients is healthier, as is looking at portion size to make sure that one is not overeating. She said she also thinks when it comes to exercise, doing at least something is better than doing nothing.

“Lately with life being busy, I’ve just gone on 20-minute walks each day, and that’s good for now,” she said. “Ideally, I would like to work out longer, but I don’t put a time on it. I just move my body as much as I can. So, overall, I think numbers are helpful to see some data, but in my opinion, they shouldn’t be the main focus when it comes to diet and exercise.”

Similar to Mearig, Balthrop Mendoza also believes that numbers can be helpful to monitor sometimes, but it is contingent upon each person and his or her personal goals and circumstances.

“In general, I think it just depends on where you are in your fitness and nutrition journey as to how important numbers should/would be to you,” she said. “Whether you’re looking to lose weight, get faster, get stronger, or otherwise improve, I think it would be difficult to see progress without monitoring some kind of numbers.”

Beavers can stay underwater anywhere from 6 to 8 minutes and can swim up to 6 miles per hour.

While Facebook first began in 2004, and Instagram made its way into our lives in 2010, there were other former ways people socialized with one another behind screens.

AOL Instant Messenger and Myspace have entered the chat.

AOL Instant Messenger (more commonly known as AIM) was originally released in 1997 and became an integral means of communication, especially for many teenagers and college students. While this might be a difficult reality to fathom, these were days when texting wasn’t the go-to option. Rather, you logged into a computer—often using dial-up internet—and sent messages back and forth with friends and crushes and hoped that no one called your home phone and kicked you offline. You were even able to create your own unique screen name, such as dAyDrEaMeR04 or weezergurl88 or bballerj0sh, that generally told people something about yourself.

Dallas resident Jenny Schultz said she used AIM toward the end of her time in high school and enjoyed that it allowed her to talk to her friends without having to call them and that she could chat with multiple people at once. Like with many internet-based forums, though, there were certain concerns.

“It was after group calling but before texting was as easy as it is now,” she said. “I did not like how random men would pop up with inappropriate things almost all the time, though. I am OK with it not being around for this reason. If we had not covered anatomy in school, I would have had a full education on the male reproductive system, if you catch my drift. Just creepy stuff.” 

Myspace, on the other hand, was released in 2003 and allowed users to create profiles that were set up like their own personal websites that featured photos and interests and could link to other people’s profiles. People even became surprisingly skilled with HTML and CSS while customizing their pages. Dallas resident Aaron Byrkit said he had a Myspace but didn’t get on his page very often, though he did use AIM.

“AIM preceded texting in my mind,” he said. “It was fun to communicate with people sporadically by writing.”

Myspace began to decline in 2008 because of Facebook’s growth, though it technically currently still exists. AIM, on the other hand, met its official demise in 2017. Byrkit said he doesn’t think AIM would appeal to as many people now that there are so many other options available.

“For me, AIM was replaced by texting for communicating with friends and things like Teams or Slack for work,” he said. “I don’t know that there would be a place for it today. MySpace might be a fun option to still have. I feel like it would offer more room for creativity than current social media.”

One beloved feature of AIM was the away message, which allowed a user to appear like he or she was not at the computer, regardless of whether or not that was actually the case, and put up a message that could be anything from cryptic song lyrics or an inspirational quote to a short message of what the person was actually doing (e.g., “brb, doing homework”). Dallas-area resident Stephanie Hone was a hardcore fan of AIM and, more specifically, the away message.

“It could be funny, emo, mysterious—those were the days,” she said. “I also used to put song lyrics on my profile and would change them each week. It was usually some Dashboard Confessional song. The only downside of AIM was dial-up internet, but we didn’t know any different.”

And while Hone doesn’t think such an option for communication would be as appealing to the masses as it once was, she also doesn’t think revisiting something of the sort would be the worst idea.

“The youth of today would not know how to survive if we had something like that now,” she said. “As far as ‘chatting’ goes, I think we still have a variation of that communication but through business with things like Microsoft Teams. It’s hard to say if I wish we still had those methods of communication because technology would almost have to go backward—which, honestly, I think we might need a reset.”

Technology has certainly advanced and increased in availability, as even Facebook was only available to Harvard students when it originally launched and then only to college students before it became available in 2006 to anyone older than the age of 13. Schultz said she recognizes how different the technology we have today is, and she is rather grateful that the outlets to which she has access now weren’t options when she was younger.

“I am glad I had a mostly social-media-free childhood experience, with the exception of my junior and senior years,” she said. “I hate that kids and even adults find social media so difficult today. Comparison is the thief of joy, and so many people today use social media as a tool for comparison.”

And those comparisons were not as easy to come by so many years prior, as people’s lives and highlights were not as displayed. Connection methods like AIM and Myspace thrived when life was simply different.

“I feel like they came from a time on social media when it was more innocent—when algorithms weren’t optimized to keep our attention and play on emotions like fear and outrage,” Byrkit said. “I think we’re beyond a point of putting the cat back in the bag, but I do feel nostalgic for the time when those technologies were novel.”

It certainly would be difficult to backtrack, especially with people having access to almost anything right in their hands when holding cell phones. Hone said the social media available to people now is much more effective because it’s able to reach a mass amount of people so quickly.

“Everything now is instant,” she said. “It’s almost scary. Social media and communication outlets, while they can be great ways to connect, are becoming toxic and dangerous to our society, in my opinion. I mean, I still use them, but there are times when I have to disconnect because there’s just too much.”

And as a former middle school teacher, Hone said that seeing the younger generation’s dependence on social media and phones is quite alarming.

“These kids need to understand the pain of dial-up internet,” she said. “Yeah, let’s go back to those times. And, hell, while we are at it, can we have them all trade in their smartphones and experience landlines? Let’s get back to the basics. Excuse me now, got to go put up my away message on my AIM profile. Sincerely, CottonSocks100.”

WEEKLY PHOTO OP

NatNews dear readers Jerod Honrath and Kevin Roberts enjoyed a beautiful weekend filled with football and friends in Wisconsin

Monday, September 16: Mexican Independence Day Celebration at Legacy Hall
Tuesday, September 17: Free Rooftop Movie — Anyone but You at Sundown at Granada; Nicki Minaj at the American Airlines Center
Wednesday, September 18: Young Professionals Panel & Happy Hour at Communities Foundation of Texas
Thursday, September 19: North Texas Giving Day; Alanis Morissette Tribute — Ironic at Legacy Hall; Addison Oktoberfest at Addison Circle Park (goes through Sunday); Dallasites101 Speed Dating & Singles Mixer at Thirsty Lion
Friday, September 20: The Village Main Street Fest; Plano Balloon Festival (Thursday through Sunday)
Saturday, September 21: WRRC Saturday run from Taco Joint; Tour des Fleurs at the Dallas Arboretum; Stars vs. Blues (preseason game) at the American Airlines Center
Sunday, September 22: Rangers vs. Mariners at Globe Life Field; Cowboys vs. Ravens at AT&T Stadium