Fred Aiken Writing

Daily writing prompt

What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

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None whatsoever. I sometimes like to think that I have a strategy to maintain my health, but I’d be lying. I’m horrible at maintaining anything resembling a diet or consistent exercise routine. If anything, the one thing I do fairly well and consistently is walk every day for thirty minutes during my lunch break. And, not to brag, but I am pretty consistent with eating three meals a day rather than starve myself for some ghastly reason.

But my gastrointestinal engorging would probably be classified as unhealthy. Not terribly unhealthy. But I’m sure most, like 9 out of 10, would agree that I need to eat more vegetables. Not fruits. I eat plenty of fruits. Perhaps too many fruits. I have a horrible sweet tooth, and fruits, if anything, are the one thing I do not need to be convinced to eat more of.

It’s mostly just a lot of processed type of foods, though, that I would imagine a dietician would tsk-tsk me into guilt and shame until I stopped. I did attempt to do that whole literary exercise of reading the packaging labels of the foods and beverages I consume, but I find the whole exercise terribly boring, terribly laborious, like the food labels were written by Herman Melville and the sole purpose of food labels are to bore me into submission or, more than likely, bore me into hunger, especially since I am very quick and prone to be at my hungriest during the day when I am also at my bored-est.

I did go through a period of purchasing quite a few pieces of home gym exercise equipment, like a treadmill and a weight lifting bench and a pull-up bar. But alas, I feel as if the dead skin flotsam has a better exercise than I, and I often find myself apologizing to the exercise equipment for their state of un-use as if it were some sort of abandoned child left out in the elements to fend for itself.

I would probably classify myself as being a perpetual starter of diets and exercise routines, but in terms of any sort of long-term strategies, well, that I unfortunately tend to fall rather flat on my face due to the lack of upper-body strength I have in my mid-thirties.

Though I suppose I’m not all too bummed about my lack of physical health. In a way, I guess I’ve devoted the time and energy I should have been exercising and eating right to more so doing the things and activities that I enjoy most, like reading, playing chess, and watching movies. And eating a lot of ice cream. Perhaps a unhealthy amount. But considering my general practitioner hasn’t said anything about it during my annual physicals, I guess I’m alright.

So, I guess one could say that I have bit of the old cognitive-smognitive sort of health. The ole happy-and-I-know-it so I occasionally-clap-along-to-the-tune-in-my-head sort of health. What I’m saying is, my strategy to maintain my health and well-being is to never listen to an advertisement, spend virtually no time on social media, and try in every possible way to do the exact polar opposite of what Elon Musk would do each and every day. And that, in short, makes for good livin’.