karl.tsakos.us/blog

And, I got nothing. I have some ideas, but no form of concentration with which to assemble them for your reading pleasure.

Perhaps soon I will. But now I don’t.

Well, I walked one day this year. That’s a start. But my back, my achin’ back kept, well, achin’. You’ll recall from my last post that I keep over doing it with my back. I decided to do something about it; again.

I read a short article in National Geographic Adventurer magazine about another gentleman’s struggle with back pain. He hooked up with the Aspen Back Institute. It’s a two year old institute dedicated to back and body health. More specifically, and not holistically, how the core and back muscles are the key to a healthy, painless back. They are the alternative to surgery for many people.

So, after reading the article I looked up their website and saw they had a DVD which I ordered. Since then, I have been waiting for it to arrive as they are waiting on their resupply (I guess a lot of people read the article). So I am not doing anything that will hurt my back before the DVD arrives. I will have more on it when it does.

In other news I heard from my friend Rick Waln again after a long period of not hearing from him. I was pleased to discover the list of people reading this blog has increased by 1. That brings the grand total to something like, hmmm (divide by eighteen, carry the one) oh, something like 8 people. At this rate it will be 9 before the end of February. Well, maybe early March as February is a short month.

Well, I think that about does it for now as I’m in work mode. You can tell when I am in work mode, because I don’t blog as much. In the before time, when I blogged more (late last month) I have vacation time. The last day of my vacation amazingly enough was the last day of my blogging. Well, I’m back at it, so watch out.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I ordered a new lens for my SLR and borrowed my friend Shawn’s LensBaby. Hopefully they will inspire my photography again. Stay posted.

I’m rather proud of some of the things I accomplished in aught-seven. Chief among those was loosing weight. I have never been a fat person, but I lost 20 pounds just to see if I could (and a little because I was aware that it was creeping up as I was aging). Turns out a healthy diet (were not talking scientific here, just what appeared to be healthy), some self control (we’re talking size and quantity of portions), and some exercise is all it took. I was amazed at how much I could eat and still lose weight. It just takes a little thought.

As of late, my self control hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be. My weight was averaging around 163 which is around what I weighed in my mid twenties. For 5′ 9″, at 38 years old, that’s pretty good.

Interesting aside, the scale I have that measures percentage body fat and all of the charts say that I am on the heavy side of what normal for me should be. Still, people were concerned about my health and wether I was too skinny. Just goes to show you what our body image for healthy really is as a society.

Anyhow, the point of this protracted tale is that I was fit and healthy. Then I stopped exercising because I couldn’t find the time. I still kept the weight of though. That was until the holidays hit. I tried to start exercising again. But then there was a hurt back from over doing it followed by a cold followed by another hurt back from over doing it. I took a week off from doing anything and let my back feel better. Then I over did it and hurt my back again. So as of a couple of days ago, I was sloth like and my weight was climbing out of my comfort zone.

That brings us to this morning, New Year’s Day. As I sat around wincing when I moved in a direction my back didn’t want me to, I thought about those people you read about. You know the ones, they haven’t taken a sick day in thirty-five years or they have run at least 3 miles a day for the last 20 years. What is wrong with me that I can’t have that ind of conviction?

Well, with this being the first day of a new year I decided my goal shouldn’t be so grand. I just want to go through a single year feeling good. Sure, when I am very active I can strain muscles or overheat myself by pushing too hard, but I recover quickly when I’m fit. There’s none of this sitting around for 5 days waiting to be able to move without pain, and then thinking about exercising in a few days.

Now, I’m the last person to make New Year’s resolutions, so that is certainly not what I have decided to do here. No sir. However, keeping with the occasion, it being the start of a year and all, I have decided I will make a valiant attempt to exercise once a day. Of course, we need to define what it means to exercise within this context. Simply, I will do an activity which is not a required part of my day which causes my pulse to raise above resting for a sustained period of time greater then or equal to twenty minutes. For example, my back still hurts, so I’m not about to go jogging or something like that which will aggravate it. However, studies these days say that activity is good for the back. It uses and strengthens the muscles while keeping them limber. So I went for a thirty minute walk. As I strengthen my back I will endeavor to increase my activity to where my daily exercise is at least thirty minutes and causes me no pain. We’ll see how that goes.

I also brought my pocket camera with me. I haven’t taken many pictures at all since last fall. I need to return to taking pictures as well. But that’s a whole different story.