Tag Archives: health

Age and Assumptions

Most of my readership knows I’ve written before about how age is simply a number. All too often people seem to carry beliefs that some capabilities and disabilities accompany certain ages. We expect children to start walking at a certain age, give or take a month. We expect them to start talking (coherently) at a certain age, give or take a couple months. Their ability to walk is followed by run, climb, etc. But what happens when we get older? A lot of people seem to believe that with age inevitably comes infirmity. That is one assumption I wish to challenge. The other is that “age” looks a certain way. Do we have to “look old?” Continue reading →

Edit Your Subscriptions

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Do you remember when “having a subscription” meant that you were either getting a daily newspaper or a monthly magazine? If so, you’re as old as I am. In today’s world, there are so many things you can subscribe to and not all of them cost money. You can have subscriptions to someone’s social media feed (get notifications) or to magazines or to electronic newsletters or to services and products. You can have a subscription to damned near anything and every company out there wants you to subscribe to their service or to receive their products. Think about it: a subscription with dollars attached is a guarantee of at least short term repeat revenue for them, and you get what you want out of it to boot, right? Now, please think about this: what subscriptions do you have wherein the services or products are dedicated to helping you improve your health and fitness? Continue reading →

What Gifts Do You Give?

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Keep in mind that it’s Christmas Eve as I type this…

This morning as I drank my coffee, sitting at the dining room table, I looked into the family room at our Christmas tree and the gifts stacked under it. The idea of gift giving and what kinds of gifts we give began to churn through my barely caffeinated mind. The thoughts expanded to include the time of year, the pending New Year, resolutions people make and more. Soon I realized I was thinking about the gifts that we should be giving… to others as well as to ourselves. The most interesting thing, I think, is that not a single one of them can be wrapped. Continue reading →

This Holiday Season Wipe Negative Thinking

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It’s “Black Friday” 2018 as I type this. Thanksgiving is a pleasant recent memory and we can finally justify all of the Christmas commercials and music we’ve been seeing for the past two weeks. Alongside the early commercial push for “buy buy buy!” I’ve been hearing friends talk about how the holidays were going to treat them… or more correctly, how they were going to behave during the holiday season. One thing I heard repeatedly was, “Why should I start eating clean and exercising now? It never works during the holidays. I’ll just start January first and make it a New Year’s Resolution.” Because that always works, right? Continue reading →

5 Keys to Health

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There were various groups of people throughout history from whom we could learn much. That’s not to say that they were 100% right about everything all the time or that their lifestyle should be adopted in a saturation fashion. But when you think about it, there is something we can learn from everyone. When you look back in history and see a culture that significantly stood the test of time, contributed to the overall well-being of their community and were respected (not out of fear) by those they served, it’s likely a group worth paying attention to. The Samurai were such a group. Continue reading →

What’s Your Answer?

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A few years back I was working security at two parties each year. The parties were hosted at the Georgetown (Washington DC) home of a VERY rich guy and each Independence Day and Halloween he hired a team of security personnel. Every one of us was current or former law enforcement and most of us had executive protection training / experience as well. Those party assignments were the one occasion where I’d see a few people I knew; guys I’d worked with but we lived in different states and our work paths didn’t cross. Continue reading →

Fad Diets & Long Term Fitness

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It would be funny, if it weren’t in some ways sad, how many friends I have who are pursuing weight loss and better fitness. Perhaps, the older you get, the more you value your health and fitness. Certainly there’s a perception that being healthier and more physically fit will stave off our arch enemy – death. For all that, being “healthier and more physically fit” seems to somehow morph into “lose weight” all too often. Maybe it’s because general practitioners, cardiologists and every other doctor in the world seem to say, “You need to lose weight,” as if it’s a miracle cure. For sure, it can have a positive impact on your quality of life, but it’s not the end all be all of fitness. Yet the diet industry thrives. Continue reading →

Making and Breaking Habits

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According to brainpickings.org, it takes 21 days, at a minimum, to build a new habit. That’s 21 days of repeating the same action, at approximately the same time, and for something simple… like drinking a glass of water when you wake up each day. Another website suggests that it takes over two months – 66 days to be precise – before taking a certain action becomes “automatic”… in other words, a habit. Most other sites reporting on length of time for something to become a habit fall into that variation somewhere: between three weeks (at a BARE minimum for simple actions) to two months for more complex habits; or more difficult ones. Continue reading →

Weight Loss Is Only A Fraction of Fitness

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A couple years ago I was part of a team that filmed several video segments centered around the value and importance of fitness for law enforcement professionals. The video series was never published but I’ll never forget a couple of things about it. First, my partner in the series was the same height and weight as I am but our physiques were (and remain) entirely different. Second, our eating habits were (and remain) very different. Last, the amount of time each of us spends per day exercising, not to mention the type of exercise we focus on, was and is drastically different. All of that combined to create different examples of fitness and the goals we each had. Continue reading →

The Math of Weight Loss

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And why it sometimes doesn’t work…

Physical fitness has mattered to me for one reason or another for the better part of forty years. Ever since I was in high school running track, playing soccer, wrestling… I needed to be in shape. When I enlisted in the Army fitness was mandate and part of the promotion process. On the police department fitness may well have meant the difference between life and death in a fight for your life. It more often meant the difference between whether or not you could catch the suspect running away from you. What does all that have to do with the Math of Weight Loss? Hang with me, I’m getting to that. Continue reading →