feldman

I have a choice. It seems like I always have this same choice, and
really, I do, every fucking day. I will always be at this crossroads
and I will always have these two options before me. I can live an
easy lifestyle, or I can live a healthy lifestyle. This body is the
end product of evolutionary pressures very different from the current
environment. I can either supplement what is missing, or endure the
fallout of that deficiency.

That deficiency is the necessity of working my ass off to survive.
Really the necessity hasn't gone away, it's just that winter and
starvation won't kill me quickly. My thrifty genes will kill me
slowly and inexorably like a packrat suffocating in a house full of
newspapers and canned goods, until one day a stack of National
Geographics will topple over on me in the form of a plaque of
something lodged in heart or lung or brain.

I cannot make peace with being doughy, because less than two year's
inattention to exercise has made the difference between health and
moving toward metabolic syndrome. My cholesterol and blood sugar are
still good, my blood pressure's high for me but still objectively low,
but my triglycerides are very high and my insulating layer is not as
pear-shaped as it used to be. This is scary, and frustrating, and
unfair. And none of those reactions changes the fact that if I don't
want to be diabetic in five years, or have heart problems in ten, or
start going out piecemeal through dozens of little strokes in fifteen
or twenty, I need to get my shit together right fucking now.

Talk about a kick in the ass to one's brand spanking new running
program. Suddenly it seems less proactive and more like running for
my life. So this is the goal, to produce a downward trend in the
triglycerides when I get it rechecked around my birthday in spring.
I'll be pounding the pavement 3x a week and doing the following:

1. oatmeal+wheat germ for breakfast, more often than not
2. eat more plant proteins, complex carbs and salmon, take fish oil supplements
3. dial down the pop, beer, simple carbs and animal fats

Right, then.