In my experience, you're better off building some margin into your life and settling for something less than perfection

Whether or not you're the sort of person who makes new year's resolutions, you may be thinking about some changes in your life as the calendar turns to 2025.

For me, these thoughts always center around health and wellness. That's because I'm inconsistent when it comes to taking care of myself: In some areas I'm pretty good, in others...not so much.

Part of the reason for this is that I've never yet found a diet and exercise routine that's sustainable, or at least not one that's sustainable for me.

Until recently (I think).

I'll tell you what I'm doing these days when it comes to what I eat and how much I exercise, but this post isn't really about me. It's about you. What I'm doing isn't going to mean much, but maybe reading about it will convince you to allow yourself a little grace.

Because that's my problem, you see. I've never allowed myself any margin for error, and I get down on myself whenever I fall short of my poorly set, overambitious goals.

I've known for years this isn't the ideal way to approach life, but I've never been able to break the cycle.

Again, until recently (I think).

Eating-wise, I consume about 2,600 calories a day, with heavy emphasis on getting 150 grams of protein. 

This is more food than I usually consume when I'm trying to lose weight. In the past I've tried to eat around 2,000 calories daily and sometimes less.

This works just fine until it doesn't, which is usually after a week or two of starving myself.

2,600 calories will, in time, probably get me to a comfortable 190 pounds and likely no less, and this is just fine. Previously, I wouldn't have thought it was fine because it still places me in the "Overweight" category on the BMI charts, but I've finally learned to ignore those.

In terms of exercise, I go to the gym four days a week and lift weights. I also do endurance exercises there that get my heart rate going.

For a while I was going to the gym five days a week and trying to get in extra cardio on the off days, but again, it simply wasn't something I could keep up.

The fact is, while I enjoy strength training, it beats me up. I've been trying to get a left shoulder injury to heal for a couple of months now, and both forearms have minor strains resulting from poor lifting form.

Not to mention my weak hamstrings and quads after leg days, and the jelly-like feeling in my triceps and core muscles after upper-body workouts.

As a man of somewhat advancing age, I need time to recover. And right now, three days of recovery each week is perfect...much preferable to my previous two days.

This routine will never get me looking like Chris Hemsworth, but then again it doesn't have to. My health goals are to feel stronger and more energetic for as long as I can, not to star in the next Marvel movie.

Theoretically I should be doing a bit more cardio, along with additional flexibility and balance exercises.

But I don't. Nor do I plan to. What I'm doing now is what I can do, and that's good enough.

I am actively allowing myself to be less than perfect. There is part of me that sees this approach as weak and soft, and another part of me that understands it's all I can do when you combine it with my home, work and PA announcing schedules.

Now, whatever challenges you're facing in life, I hope you approach them with an eye toward pushing yourself to be better, but doing so in a realistic way that leaves a little extra time in your schedule (the "margin" mentioned in today's headline) and that you can keep up without flaming out.

Maybe you already knew this, but it's OK to approach life this way. It really is.

You'll be better off for it.

Three things my all-or-nothing attitude prevents me from doing

Something I've never liked about myself is my inability to be OK with "OK."

Meaning, if I can't do something perfectly, I don't want to do it at all.

Sometimes this works to my benefit as I push myself to accomplish a difficult task or reach a high level of proficiency in a challenging skill.

More often than not, though, it means giving up early and not at least achieving something simply because I'm disappointed I can't do it exactly right the first time. Which isn't so good.

This approach has cost me in a lot of ways, but here are three in particular:

(1) Consistently eating well: Ever since I started going to the gym, my exercise habits have been great. I've built muscle through weightlifting and have improved my cardiovascular health and endurance by getting my heartbeat up (sometimes way up) several times a week. But diet is more important than exercise when it comes to long-term health, and I find that if I eat something that makes it more likely I'm going to blow my calorie budget, I just give in and eat whatever I want the rest of the day. "I'm going to miss my target, so I might as well eat a whole cake," is the way I end up looking at things.

(2) Being productive at work: I set myself a pretty ambitious to-do list on work days. Most of the time I accomplish it, but when I realize I'm not quite going to get to everything because of an unexpected circumstance or a long meeting, my motivation plummets. Can't finish the list? Well, I guess I'm going to stand here in my office paralyzed rather than accomplishing at least a portion of it. I can't explain why I'm like this.

(3) Trying new things: I often joke about how bad I am at fixing things and thinking mechanically, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't at least try to learn a few things. Yet I don't, because in my mind, since I can never be a master carpenter, there's no point in even making any attempt. Which I know is stupid, but that's me.

Maybe I can figure out how not to be like this before I get to my late 50s, but chances are I can never fully change, so....say it with me...why bother?

With gainful employment on the horizon, I need to get back to my 5am wake-up time

It is rare that anyone in the house is awake before me. Even over these last couple of months of not having a job, "sleeping in" for me is when I don't roll out of bed until after 6am

I have always been an early riser, and presumably I will always be an early riser.

Still, my current schedule, while not exactly what you would call "decadent," won't do once I start work at Goodyear next week. I need to get back to setting that tried-and-true 5am alarm.

I could get up later than that, but I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of my morning routine, which will generally look like this on days I'm in the office:

5am-5:30am: Get up, get dressed for exercise, get the cats fresh food and water, scoop their litter boxes, sweep around those litter boxes

5:30am-6:10am: Exercise, cool down

6:10am-6:30am: Shower, get dressed (only 20 minutes...this is the advantage of being a 51-year-old man)

6:30am-6:50am: Eat breakfast, scan the papers

6:50am-7:00am: Brush teeth, get ready, get out the door

7:00am-7:45am: Drive to work

7:45am-8:00am: Get in, get to my desk, get coffee, and get going

Right now Goodyear staff are only in the office two days a week, and that arrangement is likely to last several months while they figure out what their workplace model is really going to look like. I could potentially sleep in a bit on work-from-home days, though I'm still likely to be up at 5:00 and maybe exercise a while longer, or take some extra time to empty the dishwasher, start laundry, etc.

I know many of you get up much earlier than 5am, and many are up, shall we say, significantly later in the morning. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting back into more of a rigid schedule.

How long do you want your parents to live?

I know, that's a horrible question even to ask. "Forever," is the correct answer, of course, and I get it.

But realistically speaking, is there a point at which we may be better off just, well, not being around anymore? The point where the difficulties of everyday living outweigh the benefits?

I suggest there is, and it's obviously different for everyone. Somewhere along the way, it gets too painful to move and breathe, and no amount of medicine can fix it. That's the time when you just hope you can gracefully exit stage left and be on your way to the next great adventure.

I bring this up because this Sunday would have been my dad's 86th birthday, and I have to tell you, there was no way that man was going to make it to 86. Or if he did, there's no way he was going to do it comfortably.

Dad tried to take care of himself somewhat in his later years, but decades of smoking, drinking and questionable dietary practices were inevitably going to take their toll. In fact, they did take a toll when a heart attack whisked him away at age 70.

As I mentioned to a work colleague recently, we're all ultimately "terminal." It's just that some of us will get to the end faster than others.

All I'm looking for is to have as many years as possible of relative good health and pain-free living. Then, when it's my time to go, I'd like the decline to be quick and easy.

None of us has full control over whether that happens, but we do have at least some influence through the way we choose to live. Exercise, stress management, a good diet, maintaining social relationships, always having something fun to do. These are key elements of a long and happy existence.

Just so long as you recognize that this life has an unavoidable expiration date, as do your parents' lives, and that you can make the years prior to that expiration date happy ones, then you're doing this whole "life" thing correctly.

Someone just tell me exactly how much I'm supposed to exercise and which pills I'm supposed to take

Once every month or so, I agonize over whether I'm properly taking care of my body.

This takes the form of me checking out a few library books on health and wellness, consulting several websites on those topics, and generally complaining to my wife that I don't have a lot of spare time and I'm not sure whether the physical activity I'm doing is sufficient.

There are at least four things that prompt this behavior:


(1) I think I'm neurotic. I had no idea until just recently.

(2) I'm approaching my mid-40s, which I guess is a time when you start thinking about things like this.

(3) I have very limited time in the mornings to exercise, so I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

(4) I have a family history of heart disease that's hard to miss.


My dad passed away at age 70 from heart failure, as did my oldest sister at age 56. As I always (morbidly) say, at least I have a good idea of how I'm going to go when my time comes. We don't get cancer in my family, but we're all pretty good genetic bets to have ticker trouble.

The two ways in which I fight this hereditary curse are to try and maintain a relatively healthy weight and to exercise regularly.

The weight thing I've told you about recently, ad nauseum. I think I've also mentioned the fact that I run regularly. Not as far as I used to, but generally 15-20 miles a week almost without exception.

And there's where the trouble starts. Depending on which author/doctor/health professional you consult, running is either the greatest exercise known to man or the worst thing you can do to your body.

You can find well-designed scientific studies that support both points of view. The pro-running crowd will tell you that man was, biologically speaking, born to run. Long-distance running is something that only humans really do, and are in fact built for.

The anti-runners point to joint problems and indicators of arterial inflammation among runners as signs that maybe lacing up the Nikes five times a week isn't the best idea.

I have no idea what to believe. I like running. I enjoy the act of getting out on the road and ambling. Because I really do "amble" nowadays, at least compared to a decade ago. I'm still faster than a lot of people I know, but various factors have combined to limit me to somewhere around 9-minutes-per-mile pace on most runs.

But I know I should probably also do some strength training, something I've never enjoyed and never gotten into. My doctor says my running is sufficient exercise and poo poos the idea of hitting the weights. And since that's what I want to hear, I believe her.

Yet a lot of authorities will tell you strength training is better for you than cardio work. And maybe they're right, I don't know.

I also take a variety of nutritional supplements every day. So many that I have one of those old-person pill cases to keep them all straight. My 17 daily pills, all of which are voluntarily ingested and not prescribed by a doctor, consist of a multi-vitamin (cut in half so I count it as two), two baby aspirin, three fish oil capsules, three calcium/magnesium/zinc pills, two Vitamin C pills, and individual Vitamin B6, B12, D, E and folic acid supplements.

I've built this regimen through my various readings and not from one authoritative source, which is probably not good. And quite likely a waste of money. But they make me feel like I'm doing something to beat the grim reaper, so I keep buying them.

The one thing I've always wanted and never found is a single book or a single website that tells me what to do: Do this much of this exact kind of exercise. Take only these particular supplements. Get this many hours of sleep. Do all of that, and you'll live a happy, healthy life to the age of 200.

This won't happen, of course, and I'm destined to drop dead someday of a heart attack, probably no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'll drive Terry to her grave with my constant whining and self-doubt, which is the most ironic part of the whole thing.