Taking The Long View

Health on a more realistic timeline. 

I tweeted yesterday that my new health goal is to lose 1 pound in the next 10 years.

I was serious.

I’m about to turn 30. 10 years from now, I’ll be 40.

If I’m a pound lighter at 40 than I am today, that’ll make me a statistical miracle.

I’m about to enter the expanding phase of male existence.

Where life and job and kids and travel and stress combine to slowly, incrementally turn me into that guy at the airport, red-faced and wheezing as I struggle to yank a suitcase off the conveyor belt.

Most people don’t ‘let themselves go’ overnight. They do it 1 kilogram per year, every year for the 30 years after they finish school.

1 kilogram per year. That’s about three grams per day.

And then suddenly you’re sitting in the Doctor’s office like a stack of old tires, listening to the concern in her voice as she explains to you the risks of high blood pressure.

If I can make it out of the next 10 years in the same physical state I’m in today, then I will be rightly proud.

It’s not going to be easy.

But it’s health on a more realistic timeline.