Well, I have to say, the past couple of days have been something else. I caught some sort of cold, just knocked the wind out of me. Energy was waaaaay low. Kryptonite, perhaps?
Anyhow, of the various factors I’m tracking, one of my first is my physical strength. I don’t just refer to brute ability, but really stamina and overall health. Without those last two subfactors a person can’t really develop deep strength. Over the past couple of decades, I’ve been a fairly successful desk jockey. In fact, I would say I got so good at it that I devoted far, far too much to that instead of keeping in shape.
There are certainly people more out of shape than I am, but that’s not really the point, is it? Other peoples’ physiques mean nothing when I know that I’m winded by stairs, and sometimes feel my heart racing at times it shouldn’t. Increasingly over this past year I’ve had this nagging sense that I had better start turning back that trend. And I have.
These days, as part of my improvement metric for Physical Strength, I’ve done a few things to break past my barriers.
I’ve really cut out carbohydrates. Not entirely, but much, much less than I used to consume. I can tell the difference, especially I feel less sluggish since I’m not trying to churn through all of those sugars.
Next, I added a twice daily cocktail of 1000mg vitamin C drinks and L-Lysine, for heart heath. The famous chemist Linus Pauling recommended this as his and others’ studies showed a strong correlation between L-Lysine intake and reduced arterial plaques. Vitamin C is a building block of blood vessels, and when deficient, the arteries try to “backfill” with the plaques to keep things together. I don’t know if it has made the major changes just yet, but I do know that I seem to feel better and my skin has improved immensely. I’ll keep at it.
Finally, I’m adding in walks. Not runs, not aerobics, just 20 minutes of walking in the morning. I am resisting diving head-first into some major workout beast regimen. I don’t want to get bored or discouraged, nor do I want to hurt myself in some misplaced zeal. Slow and steady, constant improvement, and I watch my metric rise.