Chipotle Mexican Grill has had a tough 12 months. There were scattered outbreaks of e.coli, salmonella and norovirus. The rapidly-expanding Chipotle, founded in Denver by Steve Ells, in 1993, saw its white-hot stock drop nearly 50 percent.

Some customers never returned. Some people never liked Chipotle previously, but I’ve remained a big fan. I dropped 20 pounds about five years ago, going from 177 to 157 – and while there are multiple reasons (training,  green smoothies, and writing Core Performance fitness books with Mark Verstegen), the common thread has been eating roughly three times a week at Chipotle.

In July, in an attempt to bring back customers, Chipotle launched its “Chiptopia” summer rewards program. You earn a point for each visit, per month. Visit four times, get a free burrito. Visit three more that month, get a second free burrito. Visit another two times and get a third free burrito. At this point, you’ve reached “hot” status. Reach that level for July, August, and September and earn catering for 20 — a $240 value.

The catch is that it’s one point per visit. So you can’t place a massive office takeout order and collect 12 points at once.

Using a typical $9 burrito for math purposes, that’s nine free burritos ($81) and $240 in catering for a total of $321. Subtract the cost of 27 burritos ($243, ordering only a water cup) and you come out $78 ahead. So you can pretty much eat for free.

This assumes, of course, that you have use for Chipotle catering for 20. The promotion ends at the end of September and I have an October birthday. Looks like there’s food for the party!

Not only that, but when I have a free burrito coming, I load up on double meat (chicken plus either carnitas or steak). That’s a $2 value x the nine free burritos, but I don’t count that $18 in the equation. Besides, I always order half chicken, half carnitas or steak since that tends to equate to double meat for standard price anyway.

Chipotle has its detractors, to be sure. The food is salty and the taste isn’t for everyone. Plus, you’re not going to lose weight or lean out eating at Chipotle if you do not train and/or consume certain Chipotle ingredients.

Here’s how – and why – it works for me:

CONVENIENCE: The biggest misnomer about Chipotle is that it was founded or once a subsidiary of McDonald’s. Not true. Ells did take a massive infusion of McDonald’s cash in the early days to fund Chipotle’s meteoric growth, but retained control and didn’t allow McDonald’s to influence his vision. When Chipotle went public in 2006, McDonald’s cashed out and walked away.

But Chipotle is like McDonald’s when it comes to fast service. The only difference is that Chipotle is actually healthy food. Morgan Spurlock famously ate at McDonald’s every day for one month and nearly died. I eat at Chipotle a dozen times every month and have gotten into the best shape of my life.

I’m not alone. Chipotle is often packed – the crowds have returned in recent months – and the funny thing is that people who eat there tend to be in better shape than the general public. Heck, the stereotype of the chubby, donut-eating cop is disappearing in part because of Chipotle’s half-off policy for law enforcement personnel.

I’ve had many business lunches at Chipotle. Even with the lines, it’s possible to get in and our far quicker than at a sit-down restaurant.

Eating healthy on the road is always a challenge but it’s increasingly easy to find a Chipotle nearby. Now that Ells is expanding his Shophouse Southeast Asian Kitchen concept, an Asian-themed restaurant modeled after the Chipotle formula (with 15 locations, thus far only in DC, LA and Chicago), it will get easier.

COST/VALUE: Chipotle isn’t inexpensive. But it’s a great value. A burrito with water from the soda fountain costs roughly $9. You’re getting nutrient-dense food mostly free of antibiotics and hormones. Eating right is a little more expensive, but always worth it.

STRATEGIC ORDERING: You are what you put in the shopping cart. A person’s physical appearance is usually a reflection of what’s in their cart at the grocery store. I’ve noticed the same phenomenon watching people at Chipotle, where it’s easy to load up on too many calories.

Here’s my usual order: burrito bowl with one scoop of brown rice, fajita peppers, black beans, half chicken and half carnitas, mild and medium salsas, guacamole and lettuce. Sometimes I substitute hot salsa for medium. Sometimes I’ll go with no meat. Sometimes I just order a bowl of chicken.

Here’s what I don’t order: tortilla (290 calories and 44 grams of empty carbs), white rice, pinto beans, steak, barbacoa, corn salsa, or dairy products (cheese, sour cream).

My typical burrito, according to ChipotleCalorieCalculator.com, weighs in at 650 calories, with 46 grams of protein and 66 grams of carbs. That’s relatively modest, certainly right for a 157-pound endurance athlete.

Were I to put the same burrito on a tortilla with cheese and sour cream, however, I would end up with an 1,160-calorie, foil-wrapped, 112-carb bomb with a whopping 2,710 mg of sodium – more than the 2,300 mg daily allowance recommended by the U.S. Health and Human Services.

My burrito has 1,920 mg of sodium, still a concern but at least lower.

Why no dairy? No matter how much you emphasize light cheese or a little sour cream at Chipotle, they’ll give you too much. Plus, I gave up dairy (other than whey protein) several years ago. Jack LaLanne never consumed dairy, stressing that humans are the only species to consume milk (let alone from another species) beyond the suckling stage. Jack still was doing badass athletic things when he died in 2011 at the age of 96, so he has some credibility there.

Ordering half chicken and half carnitas is for variety but also because you tend to get a little more meat than ordering just one.

You’d think more restaurants would take a food-with-integrity cue from Chipotle, which gets its meats from family farms as opposed to scary factory operations. Taco Bell officials recently started talking smack about how they will introduce a similar menu. That’s unlikely to make a difference since the 3 a.m. drive-thru crowd doesn’t place a premium on whether its munchies come from sustainable sources. Nor is Taco Bell likely to provide it.

I keep thinking I’ll get sick of Chipotle, which despite its few ingredients has thousands of combinations. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long for a Shophouse to come to Tampa Bay.

In the meantime, I’ll keep living in Chiptopia and collecting my free catering in October.

 

The USA turns 240 today and we’ll mark the occasion as we always do with food, drinks and fireworks. It’s one of the highlights of the summer calendar.

During the Revolutionary War, many colonists saw their homes ransacked, burned to the ground, or otherwise taken over by the British. Those colonists sacrificed everything for freedom, including their lives in some cases. Others were left with only the clothes on their backs.

To look today at our American consumer culture on steroids, it can seem as if we’re celebrating our independence by accumulating as much stuff as possible. To support such a lifestyle, we sacrifice that hard-fought independence by going into debt, working long hours in jobs we don’t especially enjoy, and becoming slaves to fashions, trends, and must-have possessions.

By overeating and drinking, we relinquish independence by creating fat, inefficient bodies that no longer allow us the energy and strength to accomplish our dreams.

Here are four areas where we can create more lasting independence:

DOWNSIZE: You need not wait until the kids are grown to downsize. By going with a smaller home, you can reduce waste and expense and create more time and freedom. After all, a big house sucks time and money. One of this year’s best-selling books is “The More of Less” by minimalist expert Joshua Becker, who has inspired millions to embrace the freedom of living richer lives by owning less stuff.

Boaters know that the second-happiest day of boat ownership is the day they sell the burden. Homeowners know that feeling, too. More really is less.

LEAN OUT: If you’ve done any overnight hiking, you know the relief that comes when you’re able to finally take off that heavy 30- or 40-pound backpack. But many of us willingly choose to carry the equivalent of that pack all the time in the form of extra weight. That burden robs us of energy, makes us more vulnerable to illness and injuries, and keeps us from being more productive.

There’s tremendous freedom that comes from losing the weight. You will look good in anything, especially your birthday suit. Body acceptance is a wonderful thing, of course. But why not feel the freedom that comes from having more energy? Why carry extra weight around?

UNSUBSCRIBE: This July Fourth, declare your independence from e-mail. Unsubscribe to a minimum of 25 things – retail store emails, alerts, newsletters, and groups in which you no longer participate. The latter can be awkward, so include a brief note expressing gratitude for the invites/information but explaining that you’re no longer in a position to appreciate it.

GIVE AWAY: As I’ve given away half my possessions over the last few years, I’ve felt an enormous sense of freedom each time I leave a carload of stuff at Goodwill, deliver something to a Craigslist buyer, or just give stuff away to friends or those who need it.

Less stuff = more time, freedom and money.

That’s really what our Founding Fathers were fighting for when they declared their independence: time, freedom, and money. Thankfully, we only have to fight that battle these days with ourselves.

 

I received just one A+ final grade in college, which I’ll always remember since I earned few As and only a handful of A minuses.

That A+ came in Public Speaking as a freshman in 1988, two years before Microsoft officially launched the corporate plague that is PowerPoint, now embraced by everyone from the military to businesses to academics as the training wheels of public speaking, the lazy person’s way to make a presentation, the guaranteed way to suck the energy and enthusiasm out of a room.

The problem with a PowerPoint presentation is that it has neither power nor a point. Powerpointless, it’s often dubbed. It’s no coincidence that PowerPoint presentations stink.

When you speak with nothing more than notes, if that, you’re forced to convey your message precisely and effectively. Without the crutch of PowerPoint, you’re inspired to practice your talk many times, which automatically makes you hone your message and timing, thus making your delivery tighter and more compelling.

Stand-up comedians understand this. So do actors, broadcasters, commencement speakers, preachers, motivational speakers, effective teachers, and even politicians, though admittedly most of them are the human equivalent of wind-up dolls, repeating a dozen familiar talking points.

There’s nothing lean about PowerPoint presentations. They’re bloated with stats, figures, graphs, charts, research, stock photos, and other yawn-producing clutter and filler that steal the power from your message. There’s nothing wrong with video snippets or a few photos. I once watched an executive from ESPN deliver a speech pegged to the history of the sports network by calling up familiar ESPN house ads from over the years. It was effective, funny, and memorable.

Usually PowerPoint fails. There are junior officers in the military that spend most of their time doing nothing but creating slide decks. Ditto for folks in the corporate world. We’ve trained a generation of kids in schools on PowerPoint instead of public speaking. What a waste of human capital all around.

Last week I attended a three-day conference where every speaker delivered a PowerPoint presentation, one after another. Some panels had five presenters, each droning on via PowerPoint for 20 minutes each. It was torture.

One panel consisted of five lawyers. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back. There’s nothing worse than listening to a group of guys conditioned to talk long – since they bill by the hour – deliver PowerPoint presentations. If there is a hell, I imagine it will consist of listening to lawyers go through slide decks.

In fairness, one lawyer didn’t use PowerPoint. He got up and spoke off the cuff for about 10 minutes. Maybe he went longer, but it didn’t seem that way. He told amusing stories and anecdotes, railed against the hypocrisy of his little corner of the legal world, and spoke with passion. A week later, I don’t recall a word he said but I do remember his delivery and enthusiasm.

There’s no more underrated skill in life than the ability to speak effectively in public. That’s why I’m so proud of that A+ in Public Speaking. It took a lot of practice that semester to tweak each one of those speeches, none of which I delivered with more than a prop or two. The routines and rituals I learned to prepare and deliver talks in that class I still turn to more than 25 years later. If you weren’t fortunate to take public speaking in school, there are plenty of opportunities. Thankfully Toastmasters still is thriving. It’s now teaching a lost art.

The next time you’re asked to present a PowerPoint presentation, ask if you can go without the slide deck. If someone insists, just go with a couple of video shorts (10-15 seconds max) or a few photos. Skip the bullet points and all of the numbers. Practice your presentation in front of the mirror with a stopwatch at least a dozen times so that you can deliver it without notes. I bring notes just in case, but I rarely use them. I end up rolling them up and using them as a prop, like a basketball coach on the sidelines.

Get the audience looking at you, not a boring slideshow. If you get uncomfortable making eye contact during a speech, glance from person to person, looking at their hairlines. They’ll still think you’re looking at them.

By speaking this way, you’ll come across as more confident, smart, powerful, and funny. The audience will listen to your message and remember it. You’ll learn that butterflies are merely a burst of adrenaline that will drive you to deliver the talk naturally, since you’ve practiced it a number of times already.

You’ll have the satisfaction that comes with commanding an audience and nailing the speech. It will advance your career and business. You’ll get lean in yet another aspect of your life, cutting the fat and excess time from presentations and developing the ability to deliver messages quickly and effectively.

And you’ll put another nail in the coffin of PowerPoint.

 

I play a game with people in the gym, though they’re unaware of it.

When I see someone near me fiddling with a smart phone, which happens pretty much every time in the gym, I see how many sets I can do in the time they’re playing with the phone. My record is 11.

That occurred one morning when I was doing a CrossFit-style WOD (workout of the day) consisting of pull-ups, pushups, air squats, burpees, moutain climbers, and crunches. I do four sets of each, non-stop, for a total of 24 sets. It takes just 20 minutes and it’s one of the toughest, though most beneficial, 20 minutes I spend all week.

One day I made it through nearly half the session while a guy played with his phone between sets of dips. I imagine he scrolled through social media and email, perhaps sent a text or two, or scanned the headlines.

Regardless of what he was doing, he was sabotaging his workout. Not only was he resting way too long between sets, he was bringing no focus or intensity to his training and, thus, likely would receive little benefit.

It’s a shame since he accomplished the hard part by getting to the gym before 6 a.m. He paid for the gym membership, after all, and at least on some level committed to training. But like so many people he no longer can disconnect from the digital world for even an hour. Instead of feeling the endorphin rush of training, he craves the dopamine fix of digital media feedback in the form of social media likes, text responses, emails and other notifications.

Instead of working out, he’s suffering from fear of missing out (FOMO) even at 6 a.m.

I’ve trained at the same gym for more than a decade, long enough to see the smart phone era evolve. I marvel at how people set their $700 phones down on weight benches or even the floor where they can be stomped on or crushed by dumbbells, both of which I’ve seen happen. Some people even carry around iPads to serve as nothing more than giant stopwatches.

Disconnecting from media has numerous benefits in the gym. When you focus more on the movement of your body, you train more effectively. It’s impossible to create intensity and focus when you’re stopping for minutes at a time to visit the world of social media and email. It takes several minutes to return to a focused state at a desk, let alone in the gym.

I train at 5:30 a.m. And since I live on the East Coast, there’s nobody that needs to reach me at that hour. That’s one reason I train at that time; nobody can steal it away from me. Turning to my smart phone would be no different than inviting business commitments into the gym with me. Not people who want to train with me; that would be fine. No, it would be like bringing work to the gym.

One reason CrossFit has soared in popularity is that it forces athletes to train non-stop. If you’re following the designated WOD, your goal is to do AMRAP (as many reps as possible) in the allotted time. Not only that, there’s a communal aspect to it where you’re pushing your fellow athletes.

Which isn’t to say phones don’t appear in CrossFit boxes. But thankfully the culture is one where it seems like a breach of etiquette to do so. That’s not as true in conventional gyms. I take a 5:45 a.m. spin class several times a week and I’ll often see folks checking their phones during class.

Then there’s yoga, which many people turn to in order to find that mind-body calmness that’s so lacking in modern society. You’d think people might leave their phones in the car or in a locker. No such luck. Instead of the lying or sitting on mats quietly before class, some will look at their phones. When there’s a pause in the practice – say for a water break – some will glance at their phones. Even in yoga, some cannot disconnect. No surprise since some can’t make it through church services without checking a phone.

Call waiting and digital media made it possible for us to screen calls and take them on our time. But we defeat that purpose by interrupting ourselves throughout the day to check social media and email.

Never is that more apparent in the gym, which should be a sacred time.

My CrossFit WOD is coming up tomorrow. My goal is 12 sets while someone near me is on the phone.

Sadly, it’s a goal I’ll probably reach.

 

As a kid in the 1970s and ‘80s, I was a big-time collector. I went through stamp, coin, and beer can phases, but my biggest passion was sports memorabilia.

I started with baseball cards and graduated to autographs. One summer when I was 14, I wrote to every living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This being 1984, before the autograph market exploded, most of the baseball legends sent my items back signed. (I knew to always include a self-addressed stamped envelope.)

There were many positives to plowing a good chunk of my lawn mowing money into sports memorabilia. I learned at a young age the value of my work and how that translated into consumer goods. I was forever organizing baseball cards, either alphabetically or by number, and that improved my math and reading skills. Because I looked at all those faces over and over, I’m convinced that’s why I’ve always been good at remembering names and faces.

My obsession with sports memorabilia collecting, coupled with my passion for sports, gave me a head start on my career. I knew exactly what I wanted to do on the first day of college and I graduated with a job as a baseball writer for USA Today, which was years beyond an entry-level gig. In my twenties I wrote two books on the sports memorabilia industry.

Perhaps collecting was in my blood. Dad collected Lionel trains and Hummel figurines. Mom had record albums and sheet music.

But collecting, whether sports memorabilia or anything else, has a downside. It produces a mindset that everything has value and that you should continue accumulating until you have the definitive collection. You spend a disproportionate share of your time on collecting stuff rather than doing things.

Eventually you lose interest or no longer have space and must dispose of the stuff. That’s when you realize how much – or rather, how little – your prized collection is worth.

People don’t collect like they did a generation ago and on one level that’s good. No longer do they fill their homes with collectibles and knickknacks. Our society is more fast-paced, or at least digitally obsessed, and people are less likely to spend an afternoon tinkering with Lionel trains or organizing baseball cards.

If nothing else, hopefully people have learned a lesson from the crash of the sports card industry in the 1990s and the implosion of the market for beanie babies around the turn of the century. When items are mass-produced and marketed as can’t-miss investments, they’re unlikely to have lasting value.

These days the motto for many folks is to collect experiences, not things. Experiences produce more lasting, personal memories and don’t take up space.

I sold the bulk of my sports memorabilia collection last year. Selling a collection is almost as time consuming as accumulating it and the best way to do it, if possible, is to dispose of it at once. No matter how realistic you are about its value, it’s worth less.

Dad recently asked me to help sell his Lionel trains collection. I have fond memories of our basement train layouts but have neither the space nor the time to put together a similar display in our home. Since Lionel train collectors are an aging demographic – Dad is 77 – I’m unlikely to find a buyer under 65. Unfortunately, most train collectors are downsizing themselves.

My sons already have gone through several brief collecting phases: Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains, Legos, and Magic the Gathering cards. None have taken hold and perhaps that’s a good thing.

For unlike Dad, who played with Lionel trains as a way to de-stress from work or how my involvement with sports memorabilia served as career training, collections today don’t seem to provide much value in our digital world.

Today, for better or for worse, they’re just clutter.

Cleaning the kitchen is an endless chore. No matter how diligent we are about it, it never seems totally clean. The bigger your family, the more food and traffic is involved. The sink, counters, floors, appliances, and cabinets take a beating.

Here’s one simple way to keep your kitchen cleaner: Don’t eat anything that makes crumbs. Much of the mess in the kitchen – or elsewhere if you or family members eat beyond the kitchen – is caused by food that makes crumbs. Coincidentally, almost all food that makes crumbs is stuff low in nutritional value.

Name anything that makes crumbs – bread, most cereals, chips, cookies, cake, pie, crackers, donuts, pretzels, and almost anything that comes in a box or airtight bag – and you’ll find something that is dirtying your home, attracting pests, and making you fat. All of this food should be eliminated to live lean.

This is not to say that vegetables, fruit, and lean proteins aren’t messy. The difference is we tend to notice the mess from slicing these food sources and clean it up immediately. Plus, there tends to be less mess with these whole foods. Crumbs tend to go unnoticed.

This also is true of drinks. You can spill water pretty much anywhere in your home and not do damage. But spill a soft drink, milk, coffee, or alcohol (especially red wine, as we’ve learned!) and you’ve got a sticky mess – and possibly some permanently damaged upholstery or carpeting.

By eliminating stuff that makes crumbs, you’ll also clear out lots of space in the refrigerator and pantry. In fact, you might no longer need a pantry. Food that makes crumbs is produced to last for months, even years, on supermarket shelves – and in your pantry. It’s a natural attraction for bugs and rodents. So, too are crumbs in the home.

The key to eating lean, saving money and time while maintaining a lean physique, is eating fewer foods. The easiest way to cut back is eliminating the ones that make crumbs. Clean the diet and your home naturally will stay cleaner and you’ll spend no time dealing with crumbs.

 

 

I still have the blue backpack I’m wearing in this 1987 photo. I haven’t kept many things 30 years, but this pack is a reminder to live lean.

Upon graduating high school in that year, I had the great fortune to backpack through Europe. A former classmate who finished high school in Switzerland invited me to travel with him and three others. He’s on the right in this photo.

I arrived at my buddy’s home in Geneva with an overstuffed suitcase. He tossed the contents on his bed and shuffled through them, shaking his head. He presented me with the blue backpack, identical to his red one, and said everything I could take needed to fit in this pack.

For the next five weeks, the five of us – just 17 and 18 years old – traveled through France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Greece with only these packs. We slept on trains, ferries, park benches, beaches, campgrounds, and the occasional youth hostel. My companions had grown up mostly in Europe, spoke five languages between them, and we breezed through the continent on about $25 a day, a pittance even by late ‘80s standards.

Since 1987, I’ve stayed in luxury hotels, traveled the world, and spent a good chunk of my twenties living in Marriott properties. But I have never traveled as efficiently nor experienced as many things as I did in that five-week stretch.

That’s because we traveled lean. We managed with a capsule wardrobe of one pair of jeans, sneakers, light jacket, ball cap, three T-shirts, a collared shirt, two pairs of shorts, swimsuit, underwear and socks. We each carried a foam sleeping pad, a sheet, and between us hauled three tents. Throw in toiletries, decks of cards, small journal notebooks, pens, and the small cameras of the era and that accounts for everything we carried – all on our backs.

This being 1987, we carried no digital devices, just maps and Eurail passes. Our parents would not have known what country we were in on any given day. Sure, we got lost a few times, even waking up on a train one morning in Belgium instead of Germany. We drank too much on occasion but managed to avoid getting into serious trouble.

Because we traveled lean, we spent little time packing and unpacking or checking in and out of hotels. That’s because we only had our packs and managed to live, as some might suggest, one standard above homeless people.

I would argue we traveled like kings. We saw Barcelona, Paris, Nice, Lyon, Cannes, Geneva, Milan, Florence, Rome, Munich, Brussels, Athens and the Greek islands. We already were independent teenagers, but getting around Europe for five weeks took things up a notch. We lived like locals and ate like natives.

Imagine today’s helicopter parents, the ones who issue iPhones to their 11-year-olds “for safety,” sending their 17- or 18-year-olds to Europe to travel unsupervised with friends for five weeks? That would never happen even if Liam Neeson hadn’t made the “Taken” trilogy.

We’ll leave the modern child rearing discussion for another column. The lesson from our trip is that you could literally travel the world with a backpack and no itinerary. And if you could do it as a teenager, the world is your oyster.

My buddy grew up living all over the world; his parents worked for the State Department. He returned to the United States a week before college started and we were freshmen roommates. He had only a suitcase when my parents drove the two of us to school; I had a suitcase and a fan.

After spending five weeks with backpacks, that seemed like more than enough. Other kids arrived with U-hauls of dorm furnishings, clothes, and electronics.

Eventually we needed winter clothes and a few other things; we rented a small refrigerator. His parents bought him one of the earlier Apple computers, a 1987 version that used discs that were literally floppy.

But we continued to live lean. After traveling for most of the summer, making up our itinerary as we went along and grabbing food wherever, it seemed odd to go back to a school schedule and adapt to a spoon-fed life of dining halls and dorm life.

As for the blue backpack, that was not its last trip. When I graduated college in 1991, it went back to Europe on another five-week barnstorming tour. In 1998, it returned to the Greek islands on my honeymoon with my wife carrying a similar pack. We checked no bags, got off at Athens, and boarded a ferry with only our backpacks and no reservations.

Now a family of four, we take most of our vacations in the form of long driving trips where the challenge is to pack only what can fit in a minivan for a month or more. That’s a live-lean challenge of another sort.

My wife and I will celebrate our 20^th anniversary in 2018. We plan to return to the Greek islands.

Guess which backpack will be coming along?

About three years ago I replaced my traditional fruit-heavy smoothie with one dominated by greens: spinach, avocado, kale, etc.. I typically drink one in the morning or post-workout and sometimes a second one mid-afternoon. The results have been dramatic, both in terms of body composition and energy levels. The smoothies also guarantee that I’ll be getting more than enough green veggies every day.

The most encouraging thing is that one of our two sons will drink what he calls “green juice” and I’m working on the other one. There’s no way I’d get them to eat a plate full of those foods (lucky if they’d try just one), but when it goes into the blender and comes out as a smoothie, the oldest actually enjoys it.

I’m forever tinkering with the formula, but here’s what’s working right now:

12 oz of water

6 ice cubes

1/2 avocado

1 cup of Costco “Power Greens” (a mix of kale, spinach and chard)

I eat asparagus several times a week for dinner, but don’t throw it into the smoothie. It probably would work very well.

For taste, I add half a frozen banana and half a scoop of chocolate whey protein powder, which also provides 14 grams of protein. I’ll also add 2 ounces of orange juice and also strawberries, when in season.

Transitioning to green smoothies can be a challenge at first, which I why the sweeter ingredients are important. But like anything else, it’s possible to train yourself to like anything and gradually scale back on the sweeter stuff.

That’s why I also throw in a cap-full of apple cider vinegar. When I had a kidney stone five years ago (before reforming my nutrition program), I was told apple cider vinegar can help prevent stones. Maybe it’s an old wives tale, but when you’ve had a kidney stone, you’ll do anything to avoid another. I couldn’t stomach ACV at first, but now I throw one cap-full of it into the smoothie and do another shot straight up. Good stuff.

For the smoothie, consider ACV optional.

Avocado is a key ingredient as it gives the drink more of a smoothie texture. Otherwise it’s more of a juice. You could go with a whole avocado, though that’s a lot of calories.

I use a BlendTec Home Total Blender, which admittedly is a pricey item (starting at $399, though occasionally less at Costco). Then again, it has a 3 horsepower motor and is quite durable. I’ve put mine to the test. According to its digital counter, I used it more than 3,000 time this morning since getting it late in 2006. That’s just 10 cents a use. I can’t think of anything motorized or electrical I’ve owned since then that’s still operational – let alone that works so well.

Enjoy and please let me know what green smoothie ingredients work well for you

 

 

 

 

Nobody has time to read. We’re a fast-paced, overscheduled, digitally-connected culture incapable of giving our attention to anything more than 140 characters. Perhaps a short blog post or text. Maybe an actual newspaper or magazine article, but only if we can find it on our smartphone quickly.

A book? Well, only if it’s short. And only if it can be read on the phone.

I don’t buy that. Not for a minute. Nor should you.

It’s never been easier to find the time to read. Stephen King, the prolific thriller author whose best book, ironically, might be his autobiography/writing advice book On Writing, says the key is to read in sips rather than gulps. If you wait for a long stretch of time to read, it probably won’t happen, though we recommend using the last 30 minutes before turning off the light at night to read.

But we agree with King that there are numerous 10-to-15 minute windows to read during the day. How about while parked – parked, not moving or at a stoplight- in a car line waiting to pick up kids? Or standing in line at Chipotle? Or waiting for the doctor or dentist? Or while waiting for food to cook or laundry to wash? Or while waiting for the kids’ practice to end? Or for the mechanic to finish with the car? How about while waiting for your co-workers to inevitably arrive late for the meeting? If you watch televised sports, how about during the endless commercials?

How about at the airport, a series of waits to check bags, board (inevitably late), take off (delayed again), while in the air, and later sitting on the runway waiting forever for a gate to open. King, a huge baseball fan, takes a book to the ballpark and reads between innings. Why not? What else are you going to do?

Most of us spend more time in the car than we’d like. Why not listen to books on CD or digital download? It beats talk radio, morning zoo deejay nonsense, and listening to the same tunes over and over. Plus it’s a lot less safer than using a smartphone in the car.

You no doubt have at least some of those opportunities above. It’s easy to fall into the habit of spending that time mindlessly reaching for the phone, checking social media and email, or watching whatever nonsense there is on TV, especially now that televisions have been mounted anywhere people wait: doctor’s offices, the mechanic’s wait room, restaurants, etc.

I attend several book festivals, sometimes as a presenting author myself, and it’s always amazing to see people standing in a long line with a book they just purchased, waiting for the author to sign it, and yet they’re either standing around bored or, more likely, scrolling through a smartphone. Just a thought: Why not start reading the book you just paid for and are waiting to get signed? Or some other book? You’re at a freakin’ book festival!

Here are just a few reasons to read:

 It sets a good example: If you want your kids to read, shut off television and digital media and read yourself. Set aside family reading time. Read books together. The young adult genre is the strongest segment of literature because the books appeal to kids and adults. You’ve no doubt seen the Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Divergent movies. Why not read the books with your kids? There are plenty of other similar series our family has read together, including Gregor the Overlander and The Unwanteds. Go back further and try The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia, to name just two. If you read, the kids will read, learn, thrive in school and establish a lifelong habit of learning. What a wonderful gift.

 You might, um, learn something: As a writer, I talk to high school and college students that aspire to write. When I ask what they like to read, I get puzzled looks. They don’t have time to read. They might keep up with the news via social media. Such a shame. The only way to build vocabulary and writing ability is by reading. Aspiring to be a writer without being a voracious reader is like wanting to be a singer or musician but not listening to music.

It’s mostly free: As someone who has made a good chunk of my living writing books, I’m hesitant to admit this. But I rarely buy books. That’s because the public library is America’s best bargain. You can check out virtually any book for at least two weeks. And if you’re not done with it, you usually can renew it for another two weeks. If it’s not a new release, you can get another two weeks. How cool is that? Not only that, you don’t have to search for the books. Get a library card, go online, and see if the book you want is available at your local library. If not, they’ll track it down from a neighboring one, have it brought over, and send you an email when it arrives, giving you at least three days to pick it up.

Not only does this save money, it keeps you from accumulating clutter. Books are heavy and take up space. Rarely do you read anything twice. For those occasions, just retrieve the book from the library. I once had a massive home library, but I donated or sold 90 percent of it since I could retrieve the books from the library or the information online.

Sure, you might have to wait for a new best-seller to become available at the library since many others have discovered America’s best bargain. But there are hundreds of thousands of terrific older books to read in the meantime.

I rarely do any book reading online or on a device, unless it’s an e-book not available as a physical product. That’s because it’s too easy to get sucked into the Internet or social media rabbit holes. Plus, reading on an electronic device at night affects sleep, making your mind believe it’s still light outside. Physical books and magazines are preferable.

The key is to take a book or magazine wherever you go to take advantage of the opportunities to focus your attention on what you want, not the tired magazines in waiting rooms, the nonsense chatter on TV, or searching for something on your phone.

By limiting your screen time, you’ll discover a dozen 10-minute windows a day — two hours — to read. Combine that with 30 minutes of reading before going to bed and you’ll be one of the most avid readers in America. Your knowledge and focus will expand, your productivity will soar, and you’ll live lean.

 

 

 

You’re stopped at a traffic light, perhaps three or four cars back. The light turns green. Three seconds pass, then four, then five.

Finally you blast the horn, alerting the drivers in front of you who have been staring at their smart phones. If you’re lucky, they respond quickly enough so that you make it through the light, a not unreasonable expectation for someone only three or four cars back.

This happens to me at least twice a day, every day. It wasn’t that long ago that we rarely used our car horns and then only to avoid a collision. As a young adult in Virginia, I’d dutifully take my car in for an annual state inspection, part of which included honking the horn. Since, until recently, most of used our horns only a few times a year, it made sense to test the horn to prove it was in working order.

We don’t have state inspections here in Florida. Heck, we know our horns work since we use them every day to wake up other drivers so addicted to their phones that they must send a text or check email or social media at every stoplight.

If anything, we’re wearing out our horns.

This isn’t about being considerate and not wasting other people’s time. This is about safety. When your eyes are focused on anything else but traffic, even while stopped at a light, you’re a distracted driver. You’re not scanning oncoming traffic for people running red lights. You’re not noticing animals that have wandered into the street. You’re not aware of runners, cyclists, and pedestrians, a group that’s increasingly dangerous themselves since they move about distracted by their own smart phones and ear buds.

No, you’re a distracted driver, one who is going to jerk forward as soon as you hear that horn and realize you’re holding up traffic. Hopefully there’s no cyclist, runner, pedestrian, or animal nearby because you won’t see them.

Some might think using those idle moments at a stoplight to catch up on things via the phone is a wise use of time. Heck, you’re living lean, making the most of every second!

Actually, that’s not the case. Much like frequent checking of email or social media at work or at home distracts you from the task at hand and requires you to re-focus, it’s also true when behind the wheel. It also reinforces a mindset that you must be doing something and have outside stimulation at all times.

Because of smart phones, many drivers are completely unfocused while stopped at lights. I used to be one of those people. I’d save certain phone calls for when I was in the car. At least that way I wasn’t wasting time. I checked my smart phone at lights constantly. By golly, I was making the most of my time.

Then I realized I wasn’t more productive. If anything, I felt less efficient, more frazzled. That’s because I was compounding the stress of traffic with that of trying to do work. I also was setting a horrible example for our children. I couldn’t very well limit their screen time and preach the value of living in the moment, in real time rather than online, if I spent so much time on the phone – especially in the dangerous environment of driving. We’ll have a teenage driver in our home in a few years, a scary prospect in the world of distracted driving, and he is learning from me right now.

So about four years ago I put the phone away. I turned it to silent and placed it in the console between the seats. This was about the time texting became ubiquitous. Since the phone rarely rings, I no longer have to worry about missing a call. There’s no text or email that can’t wait until I’ve arrived at my destination.

Once I eliminated phone use from the car, I found myself cutting back on the radio. I’ve adopted a low-information diet, eliminating as much useless chatter from my life as possible. So there’s no need for sports talk, news talk, no morning zoo deejay nonsense or rambling traffic and weather updates, and certainly no satellite radio, which we canceled in both cars. (Sirius XM gives it away for free for a week every month or two, which seems to always coincide nicely with our long road trips.)

I can get all the news I need each morning with 30 focused minutes online and with newspapers – yes, I still read physical newspapers.

Instead of driving being stressful, it’s become relatively enjoyable. I use it as time to chat with the kids or my wife – no devices in the car – and to actually think in quiet when I’m alone.

About two years after I adopted the no-phone, low-information drive time, I was in the first car accident of my life. A careless woman, speeding in a 25 MPH zone, blew through a stop sign and T-boned me, totaling our van and leaving me with injuries I likely will deal with for life. (Thankfully I was driving alone). She was uninjured but no doubt distracted, though we’ll never know for sure since she died of unrelated causes seven months later.

Was she using a phone? Or was she like many people who have become so stressed and rushed because they must fill every waking second with some sort of digital stimulation, giving up any focus to their lives?

I’ve forgiven this woman. Dead or alive, it makes no sense to spend energy on someone who has done you wrong. But I think of her daily when I see people behind the wheel with their eyes focused downward.

Whether the car is moving or at a stoplight, it’s hazardous to all of us.

And no way to live lean.