Reverb 11, December Eleventh

Health and wellness - What did you do in 2011 to improve your overall health/fitness/wellness? What unhealthy habits would you like to break in the new year? With what healthy habits would you replace them?

 Once upon a time, in the throes of my denial, I ignored my health. Defeated by the certain knowledge that my body would fail me without warning or provocation, I did nothing to guard myself against that frequent occurrence.  Worse, I hastened each occurrence. I played too hard, slept too little. I drank and smoked and otherwise defiled myself.


Time has passed; I have matured.  Still, this was the first year in over a decade that I made any precautionary effort to safeguard my health.  I did so in meager hope (that my efforts would succeed) and great fear (that my own body would mock my safeguards). This semester has been week after week of underpaid sunup-to-sundown work punctuated on both ends by grueling travel.  (And manoman, I love it.) So far, so good - I made it through without major incident.

Several minor ones remain. Last Sunday, I flew from L.A. to Salt Lake with a migraine that would not bow before any form of OTC painkiller. It persisted throughout the afternoon, into the evening and well into the night.  I had to drive with that sucker; I gritted my teeth, I wept pained tears, I drove on with what felt like an alien trying to birth itself through my left temple.  I checked into the hotel - the registration clerk must have thought I was on one, dripping sweat in the Utah freeze.  I stumbled to my room, dropped my bags, shut out every photon of light I could, and I slept.  Monday morning, you bet your ass I got mine up and into the shower and off to work.

(Not to worry, I dressed first.)

I have taught my body that it's going to take more than pain to put me down. My body, like any bad gambler, tends to fold when its bluffs are called. I press on, despite this evidence of victory, in meager hope and great fear. It's better than the despair I appear to have overcome, finally.

The next battle is over my dietary habits.  I remain an adolescent in this most unhealthy of ways: I am a McJunkfood junkie.  I've got about 25-30 lbs. I could stand to lose.  I bet that if I change my diet, they'll fall off relatively easily. With that change and minimal exercise - the only sort of which I'm capable - I'd feel significantly better about myself.  Physically, that is; the rest of the battle is internal.