My number one priority right now is to face the status of my physical health. Breaking that down further I need to look at the things that make up my flesh wagon. Looking at things such as my nutritional intake, my exercise frequency and intensity, my hygiene, and my appearance. Then there is sleep, dentition, and eye health to worry about. It’s a big topic and thus requires a lot of strategy.
In terms of goals for these things, the best tactic is to create lifelong habits that support my temple. Sure, I may want to get swoll or whatever, but it is the habits you make along the way that lead to long term outcomes. I am not so much concerned with the destination as the lifestyle.
As with most things, it is good to look at the positives as well as the negatives. I am not experiencing any chronic health conditions. I do not require any sort of medication. I am not debilitated nor physically hindered. Nothing about my body is an emergency. Hell, I don’t even have allergies. I am genetically lucky and there is nothing stalking me from my family history.
The bad is that if I don’t get back into some healthy habits I am likely going to experience some kind of emergency. I am not getting younger. I want to age as gracefully as I can so I need to look at ways to maintain my bone density, muscle mass, and build defenses against cancer, heart disease, and the beetus. I don’t mind the idea of growing ancient, I just don’t want to be locked in a home somewhere not knowing who I am half the time.
To that end, dietary supplementation is in order. For some reason there are folks out there who dislike the idea of ingesting compounds isolated from food if they aren’t prescribed by a professional. I think most of these people work for the FDA. If not, they haven’t been paying attention to “enriched” foods or the fact that doctors recommend prenatal vitamins for pregnant and expecting mothers.
I mean get your bloodwork done, but for the most part there is evidence to support taking compounds you aren’t necessarily going to get from Taco Bell.
First on the list is Vitamin D. Most people need far more of this than they get. The government had this added to milk because people were getting all rickety. Of course now they say you should be taking it with Vitamin K but luckily most bottles have both. Sunshine is the best source, but my Scot-Irish meat suit is bad enough already.
Second is fish oil. I don’t eat fish much. Not that I don’t like it, I don’t like the mercury. I would rather swallow pills for my Omegas.
Next is B vitamins. There are a ton of them and so I just take a complex.
Last is the antioxidant party. This one I don’t quite get. I am supposed to be breathing, sending oxygen to the far reaches of my corpulence, but then this oxygen is getting all radicalized and I have to send the anti’s out there to send them packing. Whatever. I gulp tons of the shit.
From there I have been looking at longevity. Something about telomeres and replication damage. Like back in them olden days, if you copied a movie for your friend and they copied that copy eventually the quality would get bad. I suppose it is the same with our bodies. Every time a cell replicates it isn’t quite as good as the last one so we get gross and die.
To that end I take quercitin, fisetin and NMN. I take calcium and magnesium for bones, and zinc with Vitamin C to boost immunity. I take a berberine, a baby aspirin, and aged garlic for my heart,. To stave off ye olde heimers I take creatine, citicoline, gingko, and mushrooms.
You can find a mushrooms that is good for just about everything, not just for seeing the walls melt. I take a broccoli and eggplant extract for cancer too but I probably should just be eating more brassicas and such. I also take astazanthin for eye health. Apparently zeanthin is also good so along with fungus, algae is something we are supposed to be licking off of the rocks apparently.
Recently I have been looking into “old people smell”. Apparently eating pineapple and white button mushrooms is supposed to help with that. I am not concerned now, but when I am cruising the old folk’s community for strange, I don’t want to be known as the funky smelling cat.
When all is said and done I am putting down about 40 pills a day. I cycle so I am only taking them 5 days a week, but still. That is a lot of gelatin and whatever random powders and bug parts end up in them shits. I don’t know if is excessive. I just know that body builders have a lot more going on in their cabinets so I feel alright with it.
Do I feel a difference? Maybe. I have taken hard core meds and not felt much so I can’t judge. I have a resolute constitution so it takes a lot for me to take notice. I do recall a time when my word recall and thought processing seemed clouded. It was a high stress time, but it made me worry that it could get worse and I would lose something of myself permanently.
I took a brain booster stack then and it helped. I seem to be back to normal now so I don’t feel like I need to take the mind supplements but I do it as a precaution. For the most part, though, stress reduction had the biggest impact across the board. Once I was able to rectify the divorce and the bankruptcy and get back on solid ground, my body seemed to feel better all around.
Looks wise my body just got round.
Other than that, I need to figure out how to sleep. It has been a long time since I got a good night’s rest and my schedule is fubar. We are talking the better part of a decade or more. My sleep has turned violent. I wake up and the fitted sheet is half off the bed and the blankets are twisted in knots. It takes seemingly forever to fall asleep and once I wake up I rarely feel rested.
Most of my dreams are this anxious need to find where I parked my car. Perhaps not exactly, but in that vein. It is as if there is a situation or a responsibility that is distracting me from my purpose. The car analogy is the most fitting and while not always, the dream has manifested as exactly that. I want to get back to my car but I am getting dragged in a different direction to go on some unnecessary adventure.
That is if I am lucky. Most mornings I recognize that I was asleep and probably dreaming, but the static of being alive rushes in and takes over all thought and memory. Whatever that was is forgotten as my programming forces me into my loop. I am like a machine and the power has been switched on. No time for reminiscing on the unconscious, there is a day to tackle.
I refuse to take sleep meds. I might try melatonin but that doesn’t come without risks. Maybe just to kick start a different schedule. I have tried the meditations but my brain is like a Tasmanian devil on crack so I struggle. I have also done workouts late but that doesn’t help either.
If internet advertising has anything to say about it, I probably need a new mattress.
What I really need is to go camping.
At the very least I need the weather to cool down. I need the room to be an ice box to get the kind of sleep I like.
Then there is hygiene. This isn’t an issue outside of missing dentist appointments when I lost my job. I take care of my teeth so I am not distressed, but they need a cleaning. With the coffee and cigarette habit they could use some whitening too but I am going to put that off until I stop adding to the problem.
Last and least in terms of me giving a shit is my appearance. This would be hairstyle, beardstyle, and clothing. My hairline is complete ass so bald or near bald is the only thing I go with nowadays. I doubt there is another style I can adopt but maybe I will look into it. As for the beard, it doesn’t grow full and luscious. It looks better cropped and trimmed. It could probably use with some conditioning now and again.
Easy bucket.
Clothes. The issue is, all my good shit doesn’t fit now that I am a tub of gross. All my current wear is elastic and cheap. Just enough to keep me from being naked. Fashion is the first thing to go when the budget gets tight because fuck what other people think. I will have to revisit this once I shed some lb’s.
The last thing I need to address is my skin. There are spots on my face that I need gone. They aren’t something out of an ancient Greek epic, but I feel them and they probably need to be diagnosed.
Face cancer would suck.
All in all I don’t feel overwhelmed by my physical health needs. I am grumpy about having to actually get off my ass and do cardio. I don’t mind lifting heavy things, but I don’t like having to have an advanced degree in chemistry to get the macronutrients in check. This would be a lot easier if I could just pay someone else to do the annoying parts, but that is not my life.
At least I have a plan. Whether or not it is a good plan only time will tell. One thing is for sure, I am going to be miserable for a while at the start.
Nicotine is so yummy.