Tuesday 5/14/24
Some health and fitness accounting.
Awoke with a headache and sore threat. Need to shake them off.
On Thursday I ran 1000 stairs and did 100 push-ups. Same number of push-ups on Friday and ran 3000 stairs. Did seventy-five circuits at the Connecticut gate stairs on Saturday and did 300 push-ups and walked five miles. Did 105 circuits on Sunday, 200 push-ups, and walked another five miles. Yesterday I did fifty circuits, did 100 push-ups, and walked three miles.
Pants are looser and hanging down.
Friend of nearly thirty years standing opined that I look to be in the best shape since he's known me but I am not where I want to be and have a ways to go on that score.
I read over the weekend that drinking two cups of black tea a day reduces one's chances of dying of anything by 13%. It was put that way. So obviously if you drink eight cups a day then the percentage goes up to 100%. It doesn't work like that? Hmmm. Bottom line: Black tea is very good for you. Obviously straight and without milk or sugar.
Was at Trader Joe's the other day and walked past some pasta meals and it occurred to me that I eat next to no pasta. I may have some once a year at most if I go to the Admiral and the Captain's. I wasn't totally sure if this was good or bad so I looked into it and it's more good than bad. Many foods have some health value. It's going to come down to how those positives stack up against the negatives. Pasta is high in carbohydrates. I have really limited carbs, I think. I gave up bread, too, with my new dietary approach.
The publishing system does not like white males (unless it is an old white male who has been around forever and is granted automatic privileges--T.C. Boyle, for instance, or Dave Eggers or whatever fossil joined the system ranks by dint of blood and connection in 1971; why do you think Bradford Morrow has a Guggenheim?)--but if there is going to be a white male, the publishing system wants the white male to look a certain way. That is how far this goes. In a future entry I will show examples of what is meant by this/preferred. We'll do like a line-up and have ourselves a game of "Which of these is not like the others".
Stocked up at Haymarket on Saturday. Lots of red peppers, strawberries, bananas, blueberries, blackberries. Got some green apples at the Golden Goose. Couldn't locate any at Haymarket. Ate one last night. I should be doing the apple a day thing, which is a responsibly accurate maxim, if not a literal one.
I read a lot of health studies. I think I have a strong sense for the more worthwhile ones--there are others that feel flimsier. Yesterday I read some comments from a doctor saying there is nothing good whatsoever with drinking any amount of alcohol and to never have any. I'd likely have serious health problems right now if I had kept drinking like I was. I could perhaps be dead. I wonder if I would have made it through the pneumonia of 2016, but even if I had, I wouldn't have liked my chances. If this is ever going to work out, what an important decision that could turn out to have been. Sunday marked 2863 days, or 409 weeks, without a drink.
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