A Healthy Lifestyle

I'm not sure I can claim to maintain a thoroughly healthy lifestyle, but in my own way I suppose I try. Except that I'm not keen on the concept of a 'lifestyle'. It's more the case that I regularly do stuff that is intended to help me stay as healthy as I can. This includes deliberately doing a lot of walking around at work, even when I don't really need to - including always using the stairs and avoiding the lifts. Then there's going to the gym - my target being three times a week for an hour of the torture machine what I think is generally known as cardio and some fiddling about with weights. And, finally, I try to eat sensibly.

I reckon this regime, though far from perfect, does some good. I don't get ill too often and, usually, late in the day, can call upon some energy from somewhere. And I seem to be sleeping quite well lately, rarely suffering from insomnia. Above all, my comeback from the breakdown I suffered in September - October 2022 has been pretty sensational. When I got out of hospital I thought I might manage to eventually function at something like 80% of my former self, so getting back the full 100% has a faintly miraculous quality about it.

But one thing I've noticed of late is a distinct sense of peaking in terms of what I can manage in the gym. This afternoon, after a consistently maintained three sessions a week for seven weeks, I noted that I'd still not got back to the numbers I posted in early May before the lay-off forced on me by a busy end of term and our journey to Malaysia for the vacation month. Not that this bothers me too deeply. I'll most likely get there in a couple of weeks, assuming I avoid the crankiness of lower back pain that sometimes puts a stop to any possibility of exercise. But I know that despite my best efforts that level of fitness will drop away once life and its attendant circumstances messes up my efforts at maintaining regular sessions.

The simple fact is that, if I'm lucky enough to keep going to the gym for a few months, I'll always face that sense in the first ten minutes that my body isn't quite what it used to be, and then the painful awareness that keeping going is just very hard work indeed. But the funny thing is that I sort of don't mind as long as I can walk about after its all over and not feel like I've reached one hundred without noticing.

So, despite the not-so-good bits, it's all good, if you see what I mean.