Fit in my 50s

  ‘We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. It’s as simple as that.’ When our kids were small, we avoided giving them sugary, fizzy drinks. Instead, we gave them healthy, vitamin C rich fruit juices. After all, fruit was good for you! Fruit is good for you. Good healthy stuff! Wholemeal bread? Marvellous! Brown rice? Super! Eggs? Deadly! Saturated fat? Lethal! Full fat dairy? It’ll kill you just by looking at it! But fruit and fruit juice was considered the best choice you could make, just ask the man from Del Monte. Well, it turns out that it is not quite that simple.  Our son in particular loved the stuff. We called him the Fruit Bat. He would go through a kilo of grapes as quickly as a plague of locusts, leaving just the woody vine stalks in the bowl as evidence he was ever there. He would reduce apples to just the pips before demolishing piles of satsumas and other juicy fruity offerings from the fruit bowl. Through the day he would sip orange juice ...

BMI Baby! Not the budget airline, but Body Mass Index. We have heard a lot about this measure and the use that doctors make of it as an indicator of general health. Basically, if your BMI is too high it’s not healthy so lose some weight! Fair enough. But what is a BMI? What is your BMI? What is my BMI? Wikipedia describes the Body Mass Index thusly: ‘Body mass index (BMI) is a value derived from the mass (weight) and height of a person. The BMI is defined as the body mass divided by the square of the body height, and is universally expressed in units of kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and height in metres. The BMI is a convenient rule of thumb used to broadly categorize a person as underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese based on tissue mass (muscle, fat, and bone) and height.’ Fortunately, you don’t have to work out your own BMI using the calculations above, you can use an online tool like this one . Once you have loaded your personal details and the website has done ...

One year from now, you will wish that you had started today. According to Lao Tzu, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. My journey began on Tuesday morning with a cookies and cream protein shake.You have to start somewhere! I have shared this blog with friends, colleagues and family because sharing your goals with others brings with it a commitment to see things through. Set a goal and share it; you are more likely to achieve it. Those with whom you share your goal, if they care for you, will help keep you committed to the task at hand and help hold you accountable for your progress and outcomes.  If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. George Harrison Without a clear goal or target, it is more difficult to remain focused and far easier to become distracted. In the GROW model of coaching, Goal setting comes first. Goal, Reality, Options. ‘W’ can stand for any of the following What, Whom, When, Will. Very simply, my GROW plan looks a bit ...

August 31st 2020. May you live in interesting times. I first came across the saying, “may you live in interesting times” in Terry Pratchett’s discworld novel entitled, oddly enough, “Interesting Times.” In this book Rincewind the Wizard, the ever reluctant hero of so many of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, is subject to far more adventure and excitement than he wants or feels is good for him, his preference being always for a quiet and restrained life. After all, he’s not very good at magic anyway and can’t even spell the word wizard. The phrase “may you live in interesting times”, it is claimed, is an English translation of a ancient Chinese curse. According to Wikipedia: "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that purports to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones...