It’s the second of January 2020, which means half the world has finally recovered from the New Year’s Eve hangover, and is looking into that dreaded full-body mirror.
Ugh. Is that really me?
Ah, repentant Jan Detox is at the door, again… so full of ambition and crazy if not barely still realizable hopes!
Maybe, yes, it’s finally, finally the right time, the right moment — yet again! — to morph into the New Me.
I’m not immune to this.
I too wish to be Adonis at 20. Unfortunately, I am fat and almost 70.
After wrestling with a weight problem since my thyroidectomy in 2014, I have tried with varying degrees of success to become thin again.
Hope springs eternal, and this year is no exception.
My goal in 2020 is to go from 270 lbs in January 2020 to 190 lbs by Nov 1st. 2020.
Not too ambitious or anything, yeah?
Helping me in this effort will be the German German shep puppy that’s going to become part of the family on Feb 1st.
Geneva (Neeva is her nick) is one the cute little pups you in the vid above; nothing like trying to train, and keep up with a vigorous, healthy, young German shepherd dog, to get oneself off the potato couch and out into the real world.
Another thing I am going to start doing is increasing the distance of my bike rides.
This past summer, I was clocking 10 – 15 miles every other day, as I cycled to a local gym for my workouts and yoga exercises. Serious bikers might dismiss this distance as amateurishly trivial, but when you weight 250+ lbs, 10 miles is a long haul, fellas, and everyone passes you by, including geezers older than even you.
But then I had my awful bike accident, and regained the 20 lbs I had lost in only 2 months.
Bummer, but I must slog back in shape (to avoid diabetes, strokes, etc), despite the pain caused by the damage sustained by my left axillary nerve due to this bicycle fall.
To this end, I’m going to resume yoga exerices, and also begin doing deep stretches in the pool.
I am also planning to engage in a variety of other types of flexiblility exercises on a daily basis, such as this, this, this and this (if, like me, you have a bad shoulder).
Combined with a resumption of SUP boarding at the gloriously beautiful Jupiter Inlet, and consistent weight training (using 20 and 30 lbs dumbbells), I should be in much better shape by Spring — particularly if I manage to keep off the ice cream and limit myself to modest portions at meal time.
A fit body is only one aspect of my 2020 regen project.
The mind, too, must be exercised — at my age, which is currently 68, you lose it or lose it: thus I’m planning to tackle an ambitious but necessary reading list exercise, which I will be alluding to (no more than capsule reviews or mentions!) in future posts.
In addition, I might resume developing animated Islamic motif SVGs. More on that, too, in later posts — unless a writing project I have been thinking about since Gouna takes off.
Lastly, there is the spiritual or mental health dimension of being healthy.
It’s no secret that we are living in a time when many people in America and around the world are stressed out. Suicide is on the rise. Many despair at having to deal with a mentally ill occupant in the White House.
Under such circumstances, being trapped in an apparently hopeless old age rut — such as the one you can easily fall into while living in Florida in a gated community — can result in lingering depression, losing interest in everything, and becoming permanently enfeebled, sick and physically dependent on others.
Travel goes a long way (haha) to way to combat this tendency. I’ve done my bit in that regard, as you can see here from my Instagram pics of the 7-month trip I took to the Red Sea in Egypt back in 2017-18.
This year, I’m looking forward to returning to NYC, at the end of March, to attend Palestine Writes, the first Palestinian literary festival in North America.
Who knows….?
I might yet write another hikkaya this year.
As the fitness Guardian article states (see link above), the trick is to keep motivated, despite the setbacks that are bound to crop up along the way.
No reason to despair.
Waking up in the morning, at my age, is already half the battle won: the rest of the day is just icing on the cake!
Leaving Amerika 