Food Fight!!!

    Creature of habit, that's me. Get up, have a coffee, do a work out, have a bite, go to work (job or household), come home, lunch, back to work, come home (again), relax, supper, bed, repeat. Sounds monotonous right, wrong. It is the life I have chosen, it is comfortable, it suits me, But that doesn't mean I am not open to a little change now and then. actually, this is a fairly big change, I speak of food. 

   Food is everywhere. Let me rephrase that, bad food is everywhere, good food not so much. I can go out right now and eat myself to oblivion on crap, burgers, pizza, ice cream, chips, you name it, it is a 5 minute drive from my door to my belly. Even worse, I can now pay someone to bring it right to my mouth, just open my wallet and they will deliver it right to my colon (almost 😀), anything I want, no questions, no judgement, just pay them to slowly kill you. And don't forget the tip! And then we wonder why obesity is running rampant.

   Good food. What is good food? Do we speak strictly of taste? Or where it falls on the classical 80's food pyramid, or what a pro athlete eats, or what your Nana used to make for Sunday dinner?? Or worse yet, because it is expensive it must be good right? If you want to hurt your brain and bowels, ask the internet, I gained 2 pounds binge eating while reading about the benefits of only eating watermelon on a full moon. Sorry, I'm going off topic and starting to rant, probably the cheesecake I had last night taking hold of my brain stem. Back to my topic.

   I have changed one aspect of my daily routine. Instead of toast with honey for breakfast, I am now eating a mixture of fruit and vegetables, it consists of (usually); a banana, an apple, some strawberries, some grapes, cucumber slices, diced carrots, yellow or orange bell pepper slices, celery, and some blueberries. Sounds like a lot, but really it isn't, it's a bowl full at best. And I absolutely love the flavors in the morning. And the energy it gives me, oh baby where have you been all my life?! I'm not even going to mention what it does to my digestive track, oh wait, I just did, sorry. 

   I guess all the rhetoric I have been fed (pun intended) throughout my live may have some merit after all, you know, "eat your vegetables, those are empty calories, you eat too much sugar, limit your portion size, etc", it has been drilled into my brain since I was a kid and I always thought I knew better. Boy was I wrong.  Now at 51 years old, I know my body can no longer sustain eating just because, I must eat with a cause, to live as long as possible and as healthy as possible. This is going to be one off the hardest challenges I have ever given myself, I hope I am up for it.

Black coffee

    We are currently in Banff enjoying a long overdue anniversary celebration. Sitting here this morning my mind wanders to various things, the things we have enjoyed here, the trip home, the bill, is everything packed, etc. And black coffee. What??

   Making a coffee for myself this morning, my mind wandered to kung fu and how it has become intertwined with everything I do.  As this thought skipped through my mind, I added a little “creamer” to my coffee and watched it slowly combine with the blackness of the coffee to create something entirely different. This is what Kung Fu has done to me, I thought. Both my coffee and my life are yummier, tastier, what I want, totally intertwined and inseparable. They are one now and forever. Two separate entities that were good on their own but together, light years better. This of course also applies to my wonderful wife, Deb. 

Blogging on my phone is harder than I thought it would be, no glasses and fat thumbs, this took 2x as long. 😁

And by creamer I mean of course Baileys

Worth the Mess

   So I finally got around to putting a bird feeder and a couple of bird houses in the back yard again. Now there are birds everywhere. I love it. My dog hates it. There are so many birds that sometimes it drowns out the road noise from the summer "look how loud I can be!!" clowns. 

   This year has been transformational in our yard for trying to attract nature back. New vegetable gardens, bee friendly plants, new sidewalk, lots of throwing out what isn't needed and fixing old stuff to make it new again. And it is long overdue. But it has been a process, expensive, messy, very time consuming, never ending, and very hard but rewarding work. Wait, am I talking about the yard or Kung Fu? Yes to both. Even with my current injuries, all I want to do is yard work and practice Kung Fu. The nicer my yard gets, the more I want to go outside and do a form. The more I go outside to do a form, the more I see in my yard that needs work. The cycle seems never ending, and I love it. I had to tear down quite a lot in the yard to start to get to what I want, and I have been doing a bit of that as well with my "bad habits" Kung Fu. Both have been messy at times but well worth the effort. Yard work and Kung Fu are never done, they both need constant attention or all the work was for nothing. Time to go pull some weeds and work my upper body with maybe a hands only form ( ankle is down for the count ).

   June 14th is only 1 day away, totally excited to be back!!

Piling Up

    This past week hasn't been very Kung Fuy for me physically. Injuries and the fatigue it causes have been piling up. First it was sore shoulders, then I tweaked my back (couldn't even get up off the floor - doing sit-ups), now I seemed to have injured my Achilles tendon in some mysterious way. Physically I am exhausted, I go to bed in pain and wake up multiple times during the night with a gasp of pain, it is disheartening. When did I go and get this old? I want to train, really I do, but I think to continue with my current regiment would be a little unwise. I will modify my training until I can resume a more physical routine, maybe work the brain a little harder ( Zen time ), do some really low impact Kung Fu ( Tai Chi sounds great! ), but I will keep training in some way. Monday I will be making various appointments to get this old body in for a tune up. So to those younger students and classmates out there, enjoy your super powers while you can, cause father time reclaims them far to soon. 

Train smart.