What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

I need to de-stress but am stressing out over how to do it

Having a family history of heart disease, I have gone to some lengths to try and lessen my risk of dying prematurely from coronary artery disease or similar ailments.

I eat fairly healthy.

I exercise.

I (try to) maintain a healthy weight.

I'm generally a happy person with a reliable network of social support around me.

Those are all boxes I can tick off  on the "prevent a heart attack" checklist.

But that list invariably includes a fifth item on which I fall short: Stress management.

Stress is a killer. Just ask any primary care doctor or cardiologist and they can probably give you examples of patients whose early demise can be traced back to allowing too much stress in their lives.

It's hard for me to say how stressed I am versus the average person. Like I said, I tend to be fairly positive, but I constantly worry about various aspects of my job and family life. Am I on top of everything? Am I doing what I'm supposed to do? How am I going to get everything done that's on my to-do list?

It's fair to say that I do register somewhere on the stress scale, at least enough to the point that managing that stress and its ill effects is something I should, um, worry about.

But how to do it? The options vary.

A lot of books and health blogs tell you to meditate, particularly in the morning. And I should probably try it. But I already get up way too early for my own tastes (4:45 a.m. most days), and even setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier is a deal-breaker for me. So finding time is a problem.

How about massage? Ugh. I know that many people – my wife chief among them – are big fans of massage. She even bought me a gift certificate for Christmas for a free massage from a friend of ours who is very skilled at it.

But...I don't know. I'm just not into having people not named Terry Tennant engage in anything resembling extended physical contact with me. Rather than relax me, I'm afraid massage will just cause me to tense up even worse. So I'm not sure there.

How about reiki? Not familiar with it? Go here for a quick explanation. My sister Debbie is a trained reiki practitioner, so I've got an "in" on this one. Reiki is a really cool Japanese technique that aids in stress reduction and relaxation, both of which I could obviously use. The only downside here, again, is time. Gotta find time to get together with Deb so she could do her reiki magic on me, a service for which I would be willing to pay her. But when? I don't know.

They also tell you that simple deep breathing helps, and I've tried it before. It does work, but it's difficult for me to get into the habit. And it's such an easy fix that part of me doesn't trust it does anything tangible, which just goes to show you I apparently have issues that go far beyond simple meditation or deep relaxation.

Ultimately, what I'll probably die from is a heart attack brought on by years of indecision over how to de-stress. That, in one sentence, describes the paradox of being me. The whole thing just stresses me out...

Learning to live in the now...now

As I type this, I'm sitting in Starbucks with a mocha light frappuchino and a piece of coffee cake, and all is right with the world.

It has taken me the better part of four decades to learn that. Dozens of times a day, I get to do things that make me happy, and for most of my life I've been utterly incapable of appreciating them. It has always been about accomplishing The Next Big Thing, whatever that may be...a new job, another child, running a marathon, whatever. I always find myself on the way to doing something, rather than enjoying what I'm doing at the time.

Does anyone else have trouble with the whole Living in the Moment thing? I do, but I'm happy to say that if nothing else, the year 2011 has made me (a) recognize what I was missing, and (b) start to learn how to enjoy the present.

Terry always says I don't know how to relax, and honestly, she's right. I'm always moving, always planning, always restless. What's wrong with just sitting? Why can't I do nothing at all and not feel guilty about it? Well, I'll tell you what, that's going to change. The only goal I'm setting for 2012 is that by this time next year, I'm going to be a pro at doing nothing. I'll be the king of inactivity.

That's not to say that productivity is bad. We all lead busy lives, and stuff has to get done. Nothing wrong there. But being in Accomplishment Mode 100% of the time is bad for you in so many ways, as I've learned over the last several months (funny what an E.R. visit for chest pains will do for you). Slowing down is not the same as slacking.

Of course, having the option to relax is a byproduct of living in a crazily affluent society like ours. If you're constantly worrying where your next meal is coming from, sitting under a tree reading poetry isn't as much of a viable choice. So simply living where we do is a reason to be thankful, and I am.

I suppose these are the kinds of things we think about on the cusp of a new year. It's a good time for reassessment, reflection and planning. We set New Year's resolutions, and if you're as tightly wound as I am, they're usually laughably unrealistic and you're forced to give up on them by mid-January. I've finally come to the realization that one modest resolution fulfilled is a thousand times more valuable than 10 crazy resolutions left to die.

How come nobody told me that 20 years ago? Well, actually, my mom did, and still does. I always thought I was one of those people who was good at listening to what their mother tells them, but I suppose not. My mom's constant admonitions to slow down and relax have, for the most part, gone unheeded.

But not this year. Not this time around. For my family's sake, and for my own sake, I guess, it's time to learn how to dial it down a notch or ten. What worries me, though, is that even as I write those words, I'm thinking to myself, "I've spent too long on this post. Gotta finish up and get some other stuff done."

Apparently this isn't going to be easy...