Fitness.

It has been six weeks since the last time I had an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie from Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s been four weeks since I’ve stepped into the Dunkin’ Donuts near work. I wish I could say that I don’t miss the occasional cookie one single bit, but that would be a lie. I do miss the cookie. I just don’t miss the calories (FYI a hamburger from McDs has less calories) associated with eating the cookie. Even though I ride my bike a LOT these days, I still feel like I’m not doing enough exercise. I envy these folks that can afford to spend three, four, five hours in a gym on a daily basis, grunting and making noises as they fling hundreds of pounds of weights around like it’s nobody’s business.

Skipping the cookie and eating healthy in general has been good for me. My body has some sort of threshold at around 194 pounds. Above 194 and my blood pressure gets weird and I occasionally get little rumbles in the chest area that are not scary but just noticeable enough to encourage my head to say “you’re getting at the upper end of the spectrum, bippy.” Below 194 and the blood pressure settles down to a reasonable level, the rumbles are gone and I have more energy. So skipping the cookie has been a good thing.

But I still miss the taste of a cookie.

Some have suggested making similar cookies at home with Splenda. Not a fan of Splenda. At all. Anything related to the chemical wizardry of Sucralose gives me a headache. I’m suspicious of stuff that tries to circumvent the laws of nature by claiming you’re eating no calories. The only thing worse than Sucralose for me is that Olestra stuff; feel free to ask me to point out the tree along the Thruway that was a makeshift porta-john after eating chips with the cleverly marketed “O-lean” the next time you see me in Albany.

I don’t want fake cookies. I want a real cookie. I’m going to need to schedule a couple extra hours of workout time to take care of this craving.

I didn’t work out this morning. The rational side of me knows that every body, no matter how fit or how bionic, needs a break from working out once in a while, but the irrational side of me feels guilty for not working out this morning. So apparently my way to combat this is to drink extra gallons of water so as to flush the guilt away. I’m trotting back and forth to the rest room like crazy today but I don’t see any guilt in the urinal. I bet that’s not a sentence you read very often in a blog.

My hip is pretty sore after that fall I took on my bike on Saturday. I just realized that I didn’t write about that here, I posted about it on Facebook. That’s not a habit I would like to get in; falling nor posting things only to Facebook. The fall was because I maneuvered a railroad track crossing in a bad way and got my tire caught in one of the slots for the rails. My cyclist instincts kicked in though and I was able to twist my feet out of my pedals and kick the bike out of the way on my way down. I landed hard on my left hip though. Three drivers stopped to make sure I was ok and that was very much appreciated. I continued on with the ride afterwards and rode again yesterday, so all is well but I’m still pretty sore today.

I think taking a rest on a Monday might not be the best way to go, because I need something to kick start the whole Monday experience and the past several Mondays have been acceptable after a workout.

Maybe I just need a nap.

So in mid-August I set some health-related goals for myself. Today I conquered the second goal and because of this, I am feeling quite good today.

The first goal was to stick to a plan while not going off on some weird diet tangent that promised to reduce me to the size of Twiggy in a month but then would blow me up to twice the size if I inhaled anywhere near a Pop-Tart.  I believe eating normal, regular food but at reasonably sized portions (I call it “Leave It To Beaver” portions) is the way to go. With the help of MyFitnessPal (as recommended by our friend Jeff), I can say that I have gone for over 25 days of sticking to my plan. Goal #1? So far so good.

The second goal was to get my weight to Army standards. Now I know I’m not in the Army nor have I ever been in the Army (back then they would have asked, I would have told…) but I figured that the goal of being within Army regulations was a good milestone along this path I had plotted for myself.  So this morning I felt quite good to see that the scale gave me the number that put me within regulations. I even jumped on the scale three times to make sure that the number was consistent.

I don’t like throwing out numbers, but I’m going to:

29 Aug 12: 209.0 lbs
05 Oct 12: 191.8 lbs

Watching what I eat because I record everything I eat has been a really good first step. Earl and I have been walking after supper at least three times a week for the past several weeks. We recently moved our walk from the nearby high school track to the mall, where there’s more to see, it’s warmer and we can be like old people racing around the perimeter of the mall.

I have also pledged to continue cycling until the snow plows chase me off the road. When that happens I’ll move the road bike into the basement (for days when we can’t see beyond the front porch) and start taking the trail bike out on days when we’re not having a blizzard. If the snow becomes an issue this winter, I’m going to take up snowshoeing. I hear that’s a great cardio workout.

My next goal is known to only Earl and me and I’ll probably peacock (using peacock as a verb sounds a little dirty) when I reach that goal, but for now I’m feeling good and I’m feeling more _balanced_ than I have in a while.

So as predicted to myself this past weekend, I have started finding my meditative center again through my cycling. I went for an hour ride this morning before work, but it felt like the ride was only five or ten minutes long. As a result, I have felt pretty good today and I have been productive at work. My stress levels are lower. I’m handling things better. Thing are all good, and for the benefit of another blogger, less squishy.

Because the United States insists on playing God with the position of the sun in relation to the time, it is now pretty dark when most folks are getting up for work, and it will continue to be like this until the second week of November. This is unfortunate in many ways, one of them including the fact that there are folks that would like to exercise in the magic of the autumn morning breezes to give their day a kickstart. I saw several other cyclists, walkers and joggers as I made my rounds today. Exercising in this manner requires dressing up nearly like a Christmas Tree. You have to be as reflective and noticeable as possible, lest you get hit by a driver who is busy trying to send a text message on their 2005 flip phone while speeding along at 60 MPH.

Since I re-entered the cycling arena nearly 12 years ago I have noticed a considerable decline in my safety comfort level while riding the streets and roads of the area. I have to be more cognizant than ever of what’s going on around me. I obey all traffic signals and signs and I ride my bike as if it were a motor vehicle that is being powered by human means (but not Taco Bell gas). My bike is fitted with a very bright headlight, a flashing tail light, about a dozen reflectors and reflective tape. My cycling jersey has reflective tape on it and my shoes have the same. To make me even more noticeable, Earl brought home a fluorescent safety vest from work that I wear over everything. I can’t help but think that folks can see me, however, there was one close call this morning where a car came speeding down the hill on the non-motored side of the white line that denotes the shoulder of the road. I quickly veered into a driveway to avoid having to eat some gravel.

Of course, we have the other side of the coin of all this as well. There’s a part of me that thinks that common sense would dictate that when one saw me with all this gear on, riding a decent bike and following the rules of the road, then I must be someone that knows what the heck I’m doing on a bicycle. However, every once in a while someone will blare their horn right behind me or slow down to my speed and just tail me down the street. I find this disconcerting. I appreciate that they’re considering my safety and welfare but on the other hand, I think I’m showing signs that I know what I’m doing. Perhaps I’m a little cranky. I guess it’s the effort that counts.

The ride this morning lasted just around an hour. The last third of it was in the rain. Luckily I had my rain gear on. The rain was quite enjoyable and didn’t bother me in the least. It didn’t snap me out of my meditative state, in fact, it helped the situation. I enjoyed it so much that I took a break from work this morning and walked for 15 minutes in the pouring rain.

And it felt good.

Earl and I were out for a ride on Saturday afternoon when he asked me one question.

“Will you stop drinking pop?”

I have to admit that this question kind of surprised me. It’s not something that I would expect to come out of his mouth; he has drank diet Pepsi and the like right along side me for years. I have noticed over the past week or so that he had stopped drinking pop and had opted for water or unsweetened iced tea when eating out.

I asked him what brought this question on and he talked about a conversation he had been part of at one of his last company meetings. The subject was about the dangers of artificial sweeteners and the effects they have on the body. Mentions of memory impairment, bloating and the like were reminders of things that I had read in the past. It’s good to be reminded of these things.

Because he asked me this simple question, I had a simple answer: “Yes.”

And like that, I’m done drinking pop.

This spurred a reassessment of my eating and exercising habits and made me realize that I need to start living healthy again. So, for the 87,123rd time in my 44 years, I’m trying to live healthier. I was up at 5:15 a.m. (it means more to me when I refer to it as 0515 ET) and walking and jogging under the stars of the twilight. I had the opportunity to see the sun rise this morning and it was beautiful. I started the by making one step towards exercising in the morning: I now charge my iPad downstairs, off the nightstand and away from my grasp. I’ve had the habit of grabbing my iPad and reading in the morning for 30 minutes or so before hitting the shower. That’s not a very productive way to start the day. Getting up and out of bed to work out is much more productive and I’m feeling better for it today.

So, while I have given up pop completely and without question, I am also trying to be more motivated about my health in general.

All it took was one simple question.

So I just made an appointment with my friendly neighborhood chiropractor. I haven’t been able to visit the chiropractor since starting my current job over two years ago; with a 1 1/4 hour commute in each direction, there isn’t really time to squeeze in a chiropractor appointment without using PTO (benefit) time. I have missed going to the chiropractor because I firmly believe that it did me good when I was going there regularly, and now that I have a little more flexibility in my work schedule I’m anxious to start going first thing in the morning before starting my work day. I get to go tomorrow because it’s my on-call week, so today is my Friday, tomorrow is my Saturday and Friday is my Tuesday. Yes, it’s one of those weeks.

We have a friend that’s a very good chiropractor but he’s too far away to visit him, so I settled on Dr. Tim a few years ago. When I first started seeing Dr. Tim I had quite a few headaches and after a few sessions with him the headaches went away. I continued to visit him for maintenance/wellness purposes and I felt much more grounded then than I do now. I really do believe that going to the chiropractor made me feel better and not going lately has been a little bit of a deficit in my life. I’m not a big fan of deficits.

I know some people get nervous about the cracking, snapping and popping sounds that might happen during an adjustment, but like the freak I am, I find it all quite fascinating. The second time I had a neck adjustment I got a little dizzy afterwards but it was kind of cool and I felt a VAST improvement. A “better balance” is the best way that I can describe it. These days I don’t have the headaches that I had before my first visit to Dr. Tim, but I do feel a certain amount of tightness in my shoulders and neck area. I’m hoping that after a few visits with Dr. Tim that tightness will go away and I’ll be able to spin my head like an owl again. I’ll even hoot once in a while.

When I was a kid I remember asking my mom what a chiropractor was and she was kind of vague on the subject, stating that they moved bones. I remember finding this rather startling, because I liked my bones right where they were. It was only after gaining interest in holistic and natural healing methods in my early 20s that I really knew what chiropractors did. My bones stay where they are, they just get some routine maintenance now and it certainly helps me feel better. Anything that helps keep the results of stress at bay is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. I know that there are many that don’t believe in chiropractic adjustments but I know what works for me and that’s what’s important. If loosening up my neck and shoulders helps reunite my mind, body and spirit, then I figure I’m doing a good thing, and that’s what matters.