Archive for April, 2009

Surviving a year in Vietnam with nothing more to show for it than nightmares and a bad skin condition, I was able to quickly settle in to a two year stint at Camp Pendleton where the Marines threw me another curve and decided to make me an Admin Chief (civilian equilevent of office manager).

I ended up shuffling papers like a civilian pogue with a nine to five billet that was pretty much like a regular job. I lived off -base with my new wife in a fine apartment and played ball on the 7th Engineer Battalion Softball team. My first sergeant was a heck of a ping-pong player and taught me all he knew until all of a sudden my four year enlistment was over. I enjoyed the Corps and was tempted to re-up but my wife had this crazy idea that she wanted to raise our kids in one place!

Before heading off to Vietnam in 1969, right after our astronauts landed on the Moon, the Marines played another little trick on me and decided they needed more Combat Engineers than they did journalists. They sent me to Engineer School to learn how to blow things up and I enjoyed it so much I made the mistake of graduating first in my class. What an idiot! All of a sudden I became much more valuable to the Corps as an engineer than a journalist. Seems as though they had enough writers after all and when I got to Nam they threw me a bloody flak vest and sent me north – way north.

I had finally gotten my wish, I wasn't reporting the war, I was fighting it! I spent most of the first half of my tour building bridges, blowing up tunnels, sweeping roads for mines and generally leaving a smoking trail of destruction wherever I went. The only good thing about it was I made a lot of grunt friends who appreciated my skills at both spotting and spotting booby traps. I spent most of the rest of that year humping around between Dong Ha and Quang Tri, later to be transferred south to Da Nang where I finished my tour assigned to the Marine Air Wing, I have fond memories of how well the pilots of the "Wild Weasels, Gunfighter Squadron" took care of "their" Marines.

A Marine Combat Correspondent can still fight. Even though trained as a reporter fresh out of USMC Boot Camp, on an Army base no less, there is no forgetting you are a basic marine rifleman, first and foremost. You cannot imagine a worse fate for a new Marine , fresh from 12 weeks of boot camp hell, ready to avenge the deaths of friends as a marine grunt, then finding out the Corps has other plans for you and that your first duty station is an U.S. Army base.

But it happened to me. It's the height of the Vietnam War and all of my marine buddies are getting orders assigning them as 0311, grunts and related infantry MOS's and are off to jungle warfare training for more hell – learning how to fight this war – and loving it! Vietnam, watch out, here we come!

Even back then I wasn't so dumb that I didn't realize my luck. I made a fool of myself with a half hearted effort to get my orders changed so that I could die with the rest of my friends. I joined the Corps to fight – not write! But secretly, I was elated! I was so excited that I would be following in the footsteps of Ssgt Jack Rice, my uncle, the writer and my personal hero.

Chocolate really is addictive! Well, maybe not like alcohol or heroin is but there are definately some similarities. The same parts of the brain affected by chocolate are the same parts activated in drug addicts!

Blame it on dopamine, the hormone in us that is linked to the pleasure and motivation centers of the brain. If you have a problem with weight gain you may have fewer dopamine receptors and need more food to get that food "high."

I finally figured out how to describe, what's commonly known as the "angel and the devil on your shoulder" syndrome as it pertains to diet and weight loss. You know the one; you're trying to lose those extra pounds and inches when a temptation comes along, up pops the angel, advising you what you should do, and you know in order to reach your goal this is what you must do. But want overcomes right and you start listening to the dark side, "have some of that candy, darlin, you been so good you deserve it." "It's just that one piece," "just eat this donut now, you can make up the calories later" (with some exercise that never happens), etc, etc.

I heard somewhere that conscience is "internal dialog" and I immediately recognized it as the number one factor in my inability to lose weight, I would commit to dieting then almost immediately start telling myself it was ok to eat this and ok to eat that. No devil required, I was doing fine all by myself, thank you. Even though my internal dialog kept reminding me of past failures, falling off the diet wagon so many times even though successful at losing weight with plans like; Weight Watchers, Nutrisystems, Low-Carb, Low-Fat, Cabbage soup, Grapefruit Diet, I still didn't get it.

It wasn't until I could truthfully acknowlege the righteous voice in my head, a voice that allowed me to see the error of my ways and pointed me to the light of self-discipline and accountability that I was able to succeed in acheiving my weight loss goals.