Air of Agility

2011.05.26

You want to know the secret to staying healthy? Eat right, and exercise.

What, you need more? OK, eat fruits, avoid excess starches and fats, and do aerobic exercise 3 times a week for 30 minutes or more.

If we keep going further, we could get into a variety of prescriptive systems for achieving a balanced diet and exercise routine. Assuming you find a winner among the proposed systems and you have detailed advice on how to achieve an ideal eating and active routine, at best what you have is a blanket set of guidelines.

And truthfully, the guidelines will most times not be far from what’s common knowledge on the subjects of eating and exercise. People don’t hire personal trainers and pay for dietary meal plans because they haven’t figured that fast food and sedentary habits lead to double chins. They pay for these things because they need help with practicing within guidelines. They know and have likely tried to practice within commonly accepted guidelines, but for a number of reasons it’s usually difficult, and the status quo wins. Guidelines are often hard.

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P90…g

2011.05.10

So, I’ve become disgusted with my body image. I suppose it’s how you know you’re a thirty-something married parent.

This isn’t the first time, and in the past, I’ve had canned responses to the issue. Basically, I’d run a lot. 4-5 times a week. And I’d skip lunch most days. It wasn’t so much a starvation technique as it’s been almost my daily cycle, recovering from dinners where I’d gorge on food. It’d go snack, skip, gorge. Yes, that’s the title of my next health-centric book. “Snack – skip – gorge, you fat bastard.” I expect readers will be even more disgusted with themselves after a thorough reading.

Anyways, recently I discovered I was mortal. Apparently this happens to a lot of 30-somethings.

Normally, I could break a 2 month exercise fast with a 6 mile run, no stretching, no problems. The next 4 days I’d be sore, but functional. This had been true back through my Marine Corps days through the worst of my training – if I was sober, I could perform. Sometimes even sobriety was optional.

Then, last week, my knee started acting up. Not cool, first off. I mean, why wait until I’m 32 to give me crap. But then it wouldn’t go away; my knee was a consistent nuisance for almost 2 weeks. I’d had a few points during this period when I woke up early to jog / run, only to give up until my joint was fully healed.

This morning was the final straw. I woke up, laced up, got outside and started one of my usual routes… only to crash to a halt before the first stop sign. That friggin’ knee.  I’d been feeling the effects of excessive laziness and consumption already, and a morning of no exercise would only exacerbate the mood. After a day of not “feeling it”, I came upon a lark. Why not commit to 90 days of exercise? Put my 24 hour turn-key gym to work!

Generally I despise discussing physical fitness progress, technique, or pretty much any other aspect of my well-being (this post is part of a brief departure). But for some reason I feel like there’s merit in committing to a “90 day challenge”. I think that’s likely the largest appeal of P90X, which I’ve had passing interest in so far. Folks cling on to personal challenges, so I’m going to try to do the same; commit to an harsh goal and add it as a blog post for some shred of commitment. It worked briefly with A Blue Screen (which was my previous webcomic that I’ve since lost all data and access to…. because Mochahost has terrible security).

So anyway, for the next 90 days, I will use the local gym for at least 30 minutes each day. Not exactly a mission to Mars, but more a modest proposal for consistent effort toward some physical betterment. Today was the first day. I’ve got a sheet of where I’m at on my various exercises, so it’s hopefully onward and upward from here. The next biggest hurdle is tomorrow.