Category Archives: Health

unexpected penalties

July 3, 2015 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,

You can fill up a notebook with all the tiny side benefits that getting into shape will grant you.  Unexpected little things that you never even consider but if you stop and think about it become obvious.

Like?

Well, aches and twinges and spasms that I used to get all the time and I used to take for granted as just a part of life.  Where they came from I don’t know.  What they were all about I know even less.  All I do know is that nowadays they are totally absent from my life.

Clothes fit better.  It’s pretty much an open secret that clothes were never designed for those of us that are big and tall.  They just aren’t.  Designers can work on the lines, and a good tailor can alter the hell out of them but ultimately it’s not the clothes it’s the body that lets us down.  One of the first things I noticed when I began losing weight was how suddenly this or that article of clothes started looking….well, better.

But along with the benefits come one or two penalties. I was at a small gathering of writers a few weeks back with some drinks and a couple of rounds in it hits me.  They were just beers but they walloped me like hard liquor.  I got this dizzy spinning sensation and I didn’t trust myself to stand up let alone drive so I had to wait out the effect.

It wasn’t always this way.  Some people don’t handle drinking very well.  I don’t mean the dizziness.  I mean that they change personalities after drinking and not in a good way.  They get mean, they get sullen, they become downright angry.

I wasn’t.  I would go through a couple of stages.  Firstly I would become (as has been reported to me) very fun.  I would be much more outgoing, more flirty, just much better company to be around.  After several drinks I would become introspective.  I would just sit inside my mind and stare out into nothing but inside my mind is going a mile a minute contemplating whatever it was that caught my fancy that night.

But one thing I never was, was hung over or stumbling drunk.  This is a new and I have to say unwelcome phenomena.  I put it down to two possible causes or a combination of the two.

Firstly, there is just less of me to handle the same alcohol.  Nearly a hundred pounds less.  That has to make a difference in the way you handle liquor.  Secondly, I’m just older.  My body can’t process out the toxins as quickly as it used to.

Luckily I don’t drink anywhere near as much as I once did.  On average I will have a drink once every six weeks.  This little “binge” I indulged in was in fact my first drinking session this year.  I don’t think I will repeat it very soon.

Posted in: alcohol, health, life in general

Foodie city

June 11, 2015 6:22 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Reading through the local newspaper and Houston websites I see that I’ve probably picked the worst time to get in shape and lose weight.  I read through websites like the Houston Press or magazines like Houstonia and there are always announcements about new restaurants and how up and coming chefs are migrating here.

Back in my twenties when I was just starting out we did have a bit of a food scene if you knew where to look for it.  Areas like the west side Chinatown offered up a variety of Asian dishes.  The Tex-Mex restaurant has always been a staple of Houston cuisine and we had some of the best.  Of course we also had the traditional steak restaurant.

But back then if you were to name cities to visit to experience haute cuisine or just a wider variety of dishes then Houston never even came up in the conversation.

Something happened back in the late-late nineties or early 00’s.  Here and there a chef would escape the rat races in other food towns and set up little bistros in Houston.  Not in the downtown area but near downtown where the rent was cheaper.  Chefs that might have otherwise left stayed and honed their skills.  Certainly Hurricane Katrina injected a dose of New Orleans talent into the mix.

By trial and error, by enthusiastic practice this city began building a reputation one dish at a time.

So here we are and I see that the wave is beginning to crest.  I have to admit that sometimes the temptation is overwhelming.  Just looking at the variety and quantity of places to explore makes me want to take a week or two off my diet.

Thankfully (I suppose) living out in the suburbs I don’t have ready access to these culinary wonders.  I’m not hours away from any of these places of course (I could in fact reach most of these in twenty minutes) but just far enough to put them in the slightly impractical column.

I console myself with the thought that I am working towards a worthwhile goal and that one day I will treat myself to a mini restaurant vacation.

Posted in: diet, food and drink, habits, health, Houston, restaurants

it’s never over

April 24, 2015 7:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

One of those Facebook posts that seems to circulate all over your news feed really hit home today.  It was titled “The after myth“.  The post was an essay about a fat person who took the time and did the work to lose a lot of weight and succeeded but a few years after her success realized that there is no after, there is just the now.

I’ve been on my health kick for the last four years now.  Begun as a necessity to restore my health.  Starting slowly, having several missteps and finally starting to see results in the last year.  I mean really big tangible results.  The type where the guy in the commercial holds up his giant pants and steps from behind them to reveal his “new” skinnier version.

No matter how you do it (whether it’s exercise, diet, stomach staples, whatever) these ads gloss over the time, the struggle, the long hours which stretch into days and then weeks, months, and years.  The process gets lost to get to the point on the TV screen.

It’s gratifying seeing people who I haven’t seen for a long time and having them tell me how much better I look now that I’ve lost the weight but I find it puzzling. Before the weight or after the weight, it’s still me.

I’m still the same person regardless of the weight and I found that this essay was right on the mark.  For me there is no “after”.  I have to keep to this lifestyle from now on.

Back in March I had to deal with the flu that was going round Houston.  First I had to take care of a couple of people who got sick for a couple of weeks and then I got sidelined by it as well.  My exercise routine went to hell and I began to pile on some weight.  Maybe it was not noticeable to anyone else but it was to me.  Just proved it to me that I don’t have a magical goal number to reach.  This is my life now.

My metabolism has slowed over time.  It was never very high but now it’s slowing down as I age.  I need to keep working out. I need to watch my diet, I need to keep the process going.

I am still the same person that I was at 288 pounds that I am now at 181 pounds.  I am just more aware and more conscious about the type of life I live and the consequences of my actions or in-actions.

I’m not defined by the number on a weight scale.  No one is, or at least no one should be.  I hope that I am defined by my actions and thoughts.  Hopefully those actions and thoughts will lead me to a healthier and happier life.

Posted in: activities, aging, diet, exercise, goals, health, life in general

A ripe old age

March 23, 2015 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

A few months back one of my friends that regularly eschews all health related advice was discussing longevity.  Someone pointed out that some simple lifestyle choices may help him live a longer life.  He retorted “maybe it wasn’t that he would live longer but rather that it would seem longer.”  Meaning of course that he would have to get rid of all the enjoyable parts of life and live a pretty dismal existence just to get in a few more years of life.

The reason I thought about this conversation was that I saw a couple of news articles the other day.  One was about a 100-year-old woman who celebrated her birthday by skydiving and the other article was about a 104 year old that drank 3 soft drinks a day.

How is it that some people can live seemingly reckless lives and still feel vital in their later years while others practice control and are careful and may be lucky to reach 70?

Certainly genetics plays a large role in this.  Research has shown that some people are not only genetically predisposed to live longer but also may be predisposed to sidestepping certain congenital diseases such as cancers or heart disease.

Lifestyle will of course count somewhat in how you fare in your later years.  No matter how lucky you are in the genetic lottery mistreating your body is still a terrible idea and mistreating your body to the point that you cause it severe damage is just a bad overall strategy that may mean that you will not be able to enjoy all the benefits of your body into your later years.

But I suppose the main crux of my friend’s argument is that making sacrifices for the long haul just isn’t so appealing if in the long run you have nothing to look forward to but a bland existence.  In that I think he misses the point.

Just because you don’t go out and party every night when you’re young doesn’t have to mean that you are doomed to a spartan existence for the rest of your life. Rather, living a more regulated and moderated lifestyle gives you chances to do more down the years.

I feel lucky that I have survived my younger and wilder years fairly unscathed and that I am now more serious about my health.  I look forward to many years of exploiting my continuing health to try out more experiences, do new things, and savor what the future may bring.

Sure I get frustrated when someone on social media posts about a new restaurant or when someone tells me about a hot new bar or whatever place that they went to.  I would love to do more of these things.  But then again I also hear about their hangovers and having to go to the doctor for stomach problems or having to refill prescriptions that I have thus far avoided.  They won’t get to look forward to some of the things that I will get to enjoy later in life.

As long as I can keep my moderated lifestyle going I think that over time I will be the one that enjoys life more.

Posted in: aging, diet, exercise, genetics, health, life in general

An all out effort

February 15, 2015 6:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Pressure builds and keeps on building.  That’ just the way that life is.  The more you do, the more you have to worry about and the more reactive and proactive you have to become to keep everything going at the same time.

More than once in a while things will blow up.  I think it’s inevitable.  Then of course you have to scramble to assess the damage and to try to fix things.  Nothing is ever easy.

In the course of all of this effort you might suddenly find that you’re not feeling all that great.  Maybe one morning you will wake up and you can’t quite pin it down but you know you’re not up to 100%.  The rest of your day is thrown off by this and over the next few days and weeks you start going downhill.

This type of generalized fatigue is common.  It’s the sort of thing that can’t be pinned down and will slowly but surely seep in and affect all aspects of your life.

So what can be done?  You obviously have to address this before you can continue on with any of your other activities.  But you can’t just stop everything.  Luckily you don’t have to.

The problem lies in the way you live your life and how you are living your life and the solution is also found there.  Not in one aspect of your life or one activity but in all of it.

Stopping one activity or one part of your life will not get rid of your fatigue.  I mean maybe one part may be more directly responsible than others but I think it has to do with your life as a whole.  You have to modify everything you do to cure this disease.

So in no particular order.

Exercise – Maybe it’s time to cut down one part of your exercise regimen or change it up so you focus on another exercise.  Then again maybe you’ve not been getting enough exercise.  Add up all your weekly exercise hours and think to yourself “Is this too much or not enough?”

Diet – We all eat crap.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable.  You get invited out to too many meals with clients or family or friends.  Sometimes we indulge in a little treat and before you know it that treat becomes a regular meal.  Sometimes you find yourself eating “lunch” at 3PM and dinner at 10PM.  Try to exercise a little diet discipline.  On the other hand eating the same healthy foods all the time may make your system acclimated to a certain energy level.  Shake up your routine.

Work – The 40 hour work week is a poor joke to those who want to get ahead.  But 80 or even 100 hour weeks?  Come on!  Realize that there are only 168 hours in a week.  At some point in each day the line has to be drawn and that line cannot be crossed for anything.

Other work – You may have some outside interests or some other venture going on outside of work.  The same advice from above applies.  Remember that this was supposed to be a side project not the main focus of your life.  Treat it accordingly

Personal life – The main problem here is lending too much weight to this aspect of life. Sometimes you may have a problem in this aspect of your life and this bleeds over into other parts of your life.  You have to either address this problem or compartmentalize it.  Although I don’t advise doing the latter too much as it will inevitably escape out.  The other problem concerning personal life is that sometimes you don’t have one.  Focusing on work or exercise too much will over time lead to a hypnotic like state where you really don’t what you’re doing.  Break up the monotony.  Take time to do something pointless just for the sake of doing something pointless.  See some friends, talk to complete strangers.  Get another point of view in your life.

None of these suggestions will work on their own.  Rather it will be a combination of efforts in several different fields at various levels of intensity all working in concert to keep you balanced and working at the optimum level of efficiency.  There’s no one solution or one single therapy that will work universally.  What worked last year may not work this year.

All that I can advise is to keep vigilant and constantly reassess your personal needs with relation to your life.

 

Posted in: diet, environment, exercise, health, illness, life in general, rest, thought

living with your choices

January 24, 2015 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 strokes.

1 stroke over from my last lap.  Have to reach farther with each stroke on the return lap.  I’m in the Memorial Athletic Club at 6 on a Saturday morning.  Outside it’s freezing and I’m the only one here swimming laps.  I’ve been assigned to swim laps by my trainer for the next 3 months.  Something that a few years ago I would not have dreamed of doing. Not because I couldn’t because frankly I just wouldn’t.

Sometimes you just have to do things for yourself.

I’ve had friends offer to set me up with trainers and recommend clubs and regimens to get fit but none of it seemed quite right.  I mean I’m sure the trainers were great and the facilities were top-notch and the exercises probably work but it never seemed to be quite right for me.

Still feel like a jerk for not taking what they offered but in the end it’s me that has to put in the effort, right?  I have to be comfortable with the choices I make and then follow through with them.

Return lap, I get a nose full of chlorine water, snort it out and keep paddling.

Another good example, I got into the real estate game last year and another friend offered up some contacts in the Sugarland real estate market.  Sugarland is a nice place to live, probably lots of good houses and opportunities and probably a good investment but I just don’t know the area.  I don’t know how the traffic patterns run, what the school districts are like or where most people like to shop and a myriad of other things.  Whats more I don’t have the time to research it all so I said thanks but no thanks and went ahead with an area I did know.

You’ve got to have confidence in your choices.

If you go in with confidence in your choice then you are much more likely to engage with that choice once you get involved and you are much more likely to make the best of it.  With a choice that you don’t have confidence in you will likely be tentative, you will be slow off the mark and lose time, you won’t get the full advantage of your decision.

Walking back to the locker room.  So cold.

So is it the old dictum of “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow“?

Sort of.  More like a “A good choice you can work with is better than a perfect choice you can’t live with”

Or something like that.

Posted in: activities, business, decisions, health, life in general, thought

Running past the app

December 25, 2014 7:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

When I began trying to get fit I knew that I would need something to gauge my level of health.  This was around 4 years ago and the last time I had been in a gym or run a lap was over a decade earlier.  So I was starting from scratch and hadn’t a clue about anything, not even about how unhealthy I was.

After reading some books and websites, and then consulting a trainer I decided that walking and running would be where I would start my fitness crusade.  The general consensus was that in order to start getting healthy that I would need to walk at least 10,000 steps per day.  So I would need a pedometer, a little device to count my steps.

Most pedometers I’d seen were in the 40 to 100 dollar range.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make that much of an investment in something I might drop a week later.  Remember, this is at the beginning of the process and I was not all that sure of things at the time.

I was in a dollar store picking up some cheap batteries and next to the batteries was a pedometer.  A little cheap plastic device with a digital counter and a start and stop button and nothing else.  This was the most primitive type of pedometer, a pendulum pedometer.  Basically anytime you shake it back and forth you cause it to tick off one more step.  You could vigorously shake it in your hand for a minute and tick off a couple hundred “steps”.  The price was right and for my purpose it was perfect.

The next day I clipped it on and went through my normal day and lo and behold I barely took a thousand steps in a day. Depressing but eye-opening.  I took the pedometer for a few test walks and found what it took to get to 10,000 steps and did it.  After that I got a better sense of things and stopped using it.

A year or so later I stepped up the game and bought a pedometer watch.  It was much more accurate than the previous pedometer and could calculate distances and give me miles per hour for when I did run.  But I never really took to it.  After a couple of months I stopped using it.

My next couple of years were about building up my fitness habits.  I wasn’t really looking into better performance but just building up the  routine to make it habitual within myself.

But in 2013 I got a new smartphone that had a built-in fitness app.  This app used the phone’s built-in GPS application to plot my running routes and give me the amount of time I spent running and the distance covered.  This was quite handy as I could strap it onto my arm and not even have to set it up.  Just go and run and let the app do its thing.

I used it for over a year and watched my daily distance run over time grow and grow.  If I missed a day the app would show that on a bar graph and tell me how my average compared to previous months.  A handy motivational tool.

Then one day someone at the developer decided to update the app and erased all my records for the last 15 months.  In the blink of an eye all that hard work was gone.

Stunned doesn’t cover it.  Angry?  yes, a bit.  The new app works but I now have to log in before each exercise.  Not as automatic as I’d been used to before.  On top of this I now have to store my results on a cloud based app where it’s vulnerable to hacking.  I know, not a huge deal but still, why couldn’t it be stored on my phone.  Not the same easy experience that I was used to.

Along with this development I had been in a bit of a funk about my running lately.  I’d been missing days and doing less and this whole app mess didn’t help things.

I went on vacation and realized how much more I needed to do.  The vacation allowed me to set my goals for the coming year and one thing I realized is that the fitness doesn’t depend on the technology to work.  All the apps, and the watches, and the fitness bands are great but at the end of the day they don’t do the work for you, you do.

So the day after I came back I went out and just ran my regular route without the phone.  I’ve been running every day since that without needing to be prodded.  My fitness goals have been set and I’ve already contacted my new trainer to begin working out in the new year.

The technology was a good way to get back to where I needed to be in my life but it’s not the most crucial aspect of my fitness.  The point of it all is to feel better and to become the person that I want to be and no device will do that for me.

Posted in: activities, exercise, goals, health, running, technology

the price

October 30, 2014 6:27 AM , 2 Comments ,

How can my arms feel like both limp spaghetti strands and like lead weights at the same time?

The plan sort of took shape about four years ago.  The general idea was to get back into some sort of shape after decades of neglect.  The first phase which I must say that I’ve thoroughly mastered, was the walking and then running phase.

This was where the heavy work of weight loss was to be done.  For the most part that has been accomplished.  From an all time high of 292 pounds I have reduced down to 184 pounds and still counting.  Right now I am probably at the tail end of what I can accomplish through running.  I will probably continue to lose weight but I won’t be able to garner as much benefit through running anymore.

The second phase, and what has turned out to be the harder phase, the upper body and torso phase began this year.  Exercises to increase muscle mass, exercises to burn fat, exercises to increase flexibility.  So far it hasn’t gone very well.

Let me be clear.  I am not expecting to look like some sort of body builder at the end of this process.  My philosophy behind this fitness plan is somewhat similar to the train of thought that I took when purchasing my Dodge Charger.  I was not looking for a car to go out racing every weekend but at the same time I did want a car that would have the muscle to get around other traffic when and if necessary.  In the same way I don’t expect to be overly muscled at the end of this process but to definitely have the strength and flexibility necessary for whatever eventuality arises.

Unfortunately (or maybe I should say fortunately) you can’t just go out and buy a body like that from a showroom.  You have to be willing to put in the price in both time and sweat.

First I had several abortive attempts to self start the process and those sputtered to a halt after a week or two.  Then after I realized that I needed someone to keep me on course I went looking for a trainer.  Apparently a much harder chore than at first blush.

I found several ads for trainers in the local papers and websites but the offers ranged from fairly clueless people who seemed to know less than I did to die-hard workout fanatics that would have me exercising 24 hours a day.  The local health store manager offered to connect me to a trainer he knew but the trainer never called back.  Finally I got a trainer through a local gym but things didn’t work out after a month.

So I’m almost back to square one.  I know a little more about the process than when I first started and I have made some inroads into forcing myself to work out 4 times a week without excuses but I know that I am all over the place.  I need to be more focused.

The plan right now is to first of all continue working out.  Some sort of exercise is better than nothing after all.  Next to re-double my efforts and find that right guide to get me on track.  Lastly to carry on.

The plan is working.  It’s not going to be one of those overnight success stories but it will succeed.

Posted in: exercise, habits, health, life in general, plans

in defense of bad dietary habits

October 2, 2014 7:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

A series of articles have come out in the last year concerning the intake of salt in our diets and its impact on our general health.  One study concluded that there was no marked benefit in limiting salt intake and another concluded that there were some risks in having an abnormally low salt diet.

I have also read reports on the benefits of caffeine and negligible risks posed by caffeinated coffee for seniors with Alzheimer’s disease.

Quite a turnaround from the late 60’s onwards when these were demonized food items to be avoided at all costs.  Now of course these recent studies come with all sorts of conditions and caveats about not overdoing it.  But back when these dietary restrictions came into place there were no stipulations made.

All of these recent findings began in the late 80s with studies looking into the benefits of wine for people with heart disease.  This was based on anecdotal evidence and folk beliefs among Europeans that “wine cuts grease” and that imbibing wine helped people digest food with high fat content.  The benefits were not all that great but they are somewhat present.

When we started getting warnings about salt, caffeine, and other things that we ingest, the studies back then didn’t blush or mince words.  They were unapologetically negative about these things.  No reservations, no qualifiers.  These things were bad.  Avoid at all costs.  Better to err on the side of safety and all that.

But now we get revised research and we do get conditions.  What’s a person to believe?

Perhaps people should follow their common sense more and listen to speculative research less.  I don’t expect any time soon to see a study lauding or praising the benefits of smoking, or binge drinking, or an all lard diet. Even the most rudimentary common sense tells you that inhaling smoke isn’t good for you.  Your liver will take issue with you over drinking all the time.  Your bowels will exact revenge for eating so much fat all the time.

I think we all know what we need to do.  Namely don’t overdo it on any food item and get off the couch more.

No one can seriously believe that chain-smoking or drinking all the time will lead to a healthy life but I don’t see the harm of occasionally indulging in some “forbidden food” or treat that was considered bad for you for so long.  As long as your overall eating habits remain healthy and you live an active lifestyle I say pass the salt, please.

Posted in: culture, diet, health

shedding habits

August 21, 2014 6:29 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Shedding habits is a habit I’ve picked up in the last decade.  Things that I thought I could never do without have so far been fairly easy to give up.  It all started about 7 years ago with soft drinks.

Whenever we have some big holiday the local supermarkets and retail stores put out their food specials.  They lower prices on things that they know that everyone will buy and will stock extra supplies to avoid running out.

Soft drinks are the first thing that they stock up on and advertise.  Seeing the low, low prices reminded me of when I was in high school and working at the local grocery.  It was 4th of July weekend and the local grocery had put out 6 packs of soft drinks for 50 cents.  For reasons I can’t really fathom my family and I decided to build “a tower of soft drinks”.  we bought day and night till we created an 8 foot tall tower of soft drinks.  Who knows how many sodas that was.  I think we had sodas on hand till September.

How could I give up a habit so deeply ingrained?  Soda drinks, particularly cola drinks were an integral part of my life for years. Upwards of 5 or 6 sodas per day.  With meals, by themselves, morning, noon, and night.  Warm or cold, bubbly or flat, didn’t matter.

Yet I did it.  One lent season about 7 years ago I decided to give up sodas for lent and never looked back.  I feared I would get withdrawals or that my willpower would falter but the days went by surprisingly fast and after lent I just kept going and never looked back.  So it was with many other habits I had picked up over time.

I count myself lucky and don’t for a moment imagine that it’s this easy for other folks.  I suspect that for many people these habits have a deeper psychological root that can’t so easily be removed.

On the one hand I’m not really sorry that I developed these habits.  I think it has helped to broaden my perspective and that kicking these habits has helped me understand people who have to kick addictions and bad habits, if even just a little.  On the other hand I do think I could have spent my time, money, and health in better ways.

Maybe those were the price I had to pay to gain perspective.

 

Posted in: habits, health