Fitness

Fun with language Longtime readers may remember that most of my life I ate chips, pretzels, and ice cream almost daily. I felt helpless to stop. It was frustrating. A few years ago I switched to fruit, nuts, and vegetables for snacks. I'm never going back. I wrote about how I started calling a head of cabbage a bag of chips in my post How to eat a bag of chips every couple days and lose weight, having fun with language, since cabbage had become my most common snack. Replacing TV After years of just doing them, I started timing my burpee-based calisthenics routines. They're about 15 minutes. I do two sets daily, for 30 minutes, which is about a TV show length. In the…

I may sound like I'm bragging or humble-bragging, but I'm just sharing my results from answering the questions at a web page, Worldfitnesslevel.org, that an article in the New York Times, How to Age Well, linked to. It says that At 46 years old I have the fitness of an under-20-year-old. Old man still got it. So read it and weep, all of you who value fitness but don't practice a fitness sidcha. Burpees cost nothing and take a few minutes a day. Rowing and running take longer but are more enjoyable. To those who don't value fitness, that's your business and your values. Personally, I prefer fitness. That's why I exercise vigorously every day and have for years. If I don't, I lose my…

My post today on LinkedIn, "Among a Man's Best Feelings," begins Among a Man's Greatest Feelings I've lived a fairly academic life—earning a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA. I've kept myself in shape and lifted weights, but mostly to play sports, which kept me thin. I never consistently lifted weights. Not that I lift huge weights now, but I'm lifting consistently for years for the first time. Every man has his values and I'm not a woman, so I can't speak for anyone else. But speaking for myself there are few greater feelings than to put on a shirt that used to fit well and find it too tight around the chest from benching, or your biceps from doing curls. Or to find jeans…

I hit 100,000 burpees a couple weeks ago, on September 5th, if I remember right. Each ten thousand felt like a big milestone. Hitting six figures felt like it should be a biggest milestone yet. Instead I'm writing this minor post. It's the biggest number with the most zeros, but the greater accomplishment is to see them like brushing my teeth---not that big a deal, just something I do. I have a minimum level of fitness I consider acceptable for myself. Some people are more fit than I am, some less. Where I am feels right to me. More fit would be nice, but I do other things with my time. Less fit would be unacceptable to me, however acceptable to others for themselves. To…