Roses are red my love

This is a shout to all married middle-aged men to not forget that special valentine wife in your life today. 

The standard safe practice is to bring home a dozen roses.  Cheapo middle-aged men might not want the shrink their fat wallet with a dozen roses, instead opting for a nice greeting card or a small box of See’s candies.

Whatever your trick is of getting the job done and staying off the couch, you may be searching for something a bit cleverer, something that’s creative, makes you vulnerable and requires more effort on your part.

This middle-aged man has his own, think-outside-the-box, idea and has been practicing behind the scene for some time in preparation for today’s big day.

What might this be?

A karaoke-style delivery of an old-school song from long ago sung the great Bobby Vinton, who has been described as the most successful love singer of the early rock and roll era.

Hey middle-aged man, today’s your big day.  Clear your throat, take a swig of water, grab your mic and sing to your little lady, roses are red my love.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Than they are

We’ve probably said it before, perhaps often enough that it sounds like a broken record.  It never seems to annoy us so why does it when someone else says it?

What is it I’m talking about?

When that “pretty boy” middle-aged man mouths off saying, how people always tell him he doesn’t look his age but 10, 15 or 20 years younger.

Someone within my reach said this recently.  My first reaction was to pinch my nose because it smelled like a skunk had entered my mindscape.

It’s well-known that oftentimes when we find annoying the company of someone, their behavior or what they say, it’s because it mirrors something about ourselves that deep down inside, maybe at a sub-conscious level, we find annoying. 

So, in my continuing personal growth of ridding myself of my own annoyances, I’ve resolved to no longer banter my audiences with prideful boasts about how someone told me I don’t look my age.  I’ve decided to take a different approach.

This approach pays no disrespect to the person paying me the compliment, but it doesn’t create a “tit for tat” obligation for me to return the favor by uttering the falsity, “And so do you.”

Rather, I’ll take the compliment, thank the person and demonstrate appreciation of their benevolent intention.  Then, I’ll privately remind myself that I do look my age.

Oftentimes, compliments like this are given by people who look older than they are.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Prescription for today

Eat and exercise as little as possible to be as fit, functional and strong as you need to be living the life you've chosen.  Anything beyond this "as little as possible" prescription provides recreational and social benefits more than extended life expectancy benefits.

The research on calorie restriction (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF) protocols of eating for good health are convincing.  I've practiced IF several times over the past 7 years, and am currently doing it again, this time with a 5-hour eating window in a 24-hour day.  It takes about one to two weeks to reprogram the brain and clock-driven habit eating most of us practice.

"Oh, it's 12:00 noon, time to eat lunch."  Maybe you're not hungry.

Based on my own experiences over more than 25 years of playing this fitness, health and wellness game, I honestly believe it doesn't matter what you eat so long as you just eat less.

If you practice IF to eat less, it's all about picking a smart feeding window that considers your work and other activities.  Sometimes it's hard to do this unless you're a one-man band because you've got to be mindful of what's the best time to eat as a family.

And if you're eating less, you must be mindful of exercise volume because of the appetite it creates.  The calories you burn from running hard on the treadmill for 30 minutes can be eaten in about two minutes.  I have a saying: "The cardio pony will make a stallion appetite."

I've exercised "beastly" in the past with unbelievable training volume and some relatively-speaking great performance progressions in my chosen fitness activities.  While it felt great to be super-fit, run faster, lift more and be more skillfully-agile, honestly these accomplishments probably didn't do much adding to my potential life expectancy from what I'm now doing, exercising three times a week for 20-minute workouts.

But that beastly training did fuel a gigantic appetite but I could “finance” the calories consumed because of all the calories burned from my beastly exercising.

Eventually, we fitness beasts decide that we've had enough and decide to taper our exercise intensity and volume.  We make a "business decision" to take a different approach that may have minimalist leanings.

When this day of reckoning arrives, unfortunately, our appetites don’t automatically taper to align with our new minimalist fitness lifestyle, because our minds and pleasure systems have grown comfortable with eating big.

There starts the problem for many middle-aged men.

So, for all “been there and done it” fitness beasts who are now embarking on doing something different with a minimalist leaning, read my lips: "Eat and exercise as little as possible to be as fit, functional and strong as you need to be living the life you've chosen."

This is my middle-aged man fit, health and wellness prescription for today.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Sniff it first

In what’s not new news, but it’s to me, I recently read how a simple peanut butter test can be used to confirm the presence of Alzheimer’s disease.

University researchers conducted a study on 90 participants in 2013 using a peanut butter smell test.  From this test, researchers confirmed early state Alzheimer’s diagnosis and other forms of dementia.  This test also confirmed that other participants had no diagnosed cognitive or neurological problems.

Apparently, only those participants who had a confirmed diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s found it difficult to smell the peanut butter.  And the trouble they had was harder when using their left nostril.

This middle-aged man is prone to memory fog, now and then, and he likes peanut butter. Being ever mindful that my gracefully-aging journey will likely bring on more instances of progressive memory challenges, maybe what I need to be doing before shoving a whopping tablespoon of peanut butter down my throat is to, using my left nostril, sniff it first.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

No fake Pierini Fitness allowed

There’s been a lot of news reported about “fake news” that, interestingly, has been reported by some of the biggest producers of fake news such as The New York Times and CNN to name a few.

How is fake news being defined?

One definition I read is that fake news, or hoax news, is deliberately published hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news, often delivered via social media to drive website traffic and amplify their effect.

Apparently, it’s a real problem; hasn’t been for me, but so I’ve read.

Rest assured, you’re safe here from the perils of fake news, and fake middle-aged man reflections about living and dying, gracefully aging and trying to live a good and honest life.

That’s because, no fake Pierini Fitness is allowed.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

An elderly man

Pierini Fitness' great-grandfather enjoying time
as an elderly man and grandfather, circa 1920's.

I was recently mentioned in a letter written by someone who’s doing some advocacy work for me.  In this letter, I was described as “elderly”.

I’ll have to be honest; at age 61 years and 99 cents, I’m not quite ready for this “elderly” hashtag.  Even though I’ll be eligible to start collecting Social Security benefits in a couple weeks, elderly I’m not I shout!  At least that was my first emotional reaction when reading a draft of this letter.

I suggested to the person, writing this letter on my behalf, that he find a different adjective describing who I am.  He gave me at least 100 good reasons why that wasn’t a good idea so I decided to accept, just for this letter, this elderly description of me.

Honestly, when I read this elderly word describing me, it seemed that when I stood up to stretch, suddenly, I felt like I had weak knees and a wobbly balance.  Was it my emotionally-injured mind playing a game with my manly-body?  It felt like a long-ago boyhood experience of the time I got smacked in my juvenile gonads by a baseball.

So, what’s the modern dictionary definition of elderly?

The online version of Merriam-Webster defines the adjective elderly as “rather old; especially: being past middle age” and “old-fashioned”.  In terms of popularity, Merriam-Webster ranks the word elderly as being in the bottom 50 percent of words. 

Well add my vote to this bottom 50 percent list.

I like the definition someone else offered; elderly is a person who’s 15 years older than you.  That’ll work for me.

In the middle-aged man advocacy work I’ve done since founding Pierini Fitness over eight years ago, I’ve routinely defined the middle-aged man as someone enjoying the golden years beginning at age 45 and continuing until he becomes age 70. This I’ve proclaimed in an old Pierini Fitness blogflection, and in my book.

So, this means I’ve got some time to go enjoying my middle-aged man time.  It’ll be another eight years, in my book, before I’ll officially consider myself an elderly man.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Don't die full

Last week I read an article that inspired what I’m sharing today.  The article’s title was: “Is skipping breakfast bad for us?  New study finds links with heart disease and obesity.”

The skinny of this article was summarized in its opening paragraph:

“Skipping breakfast or eating late in the day could raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity according to a new study. The study from a group of American researchers suggests that the time we eat our meal is equally as important as what we eat.”

This middle-aged man, who has an above-average interest in stuff like this, decided to go directly to the source where the research was published, a journal of the American Heart Association named Circulation.

An abstract of this research appeared on the Circulation website is as follows:

“Eating patterns are increasingly varied. Typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals are difficult to distinguish because skipping meals and snacking have become more prevalent. Such eating styles can have various effects on cardiometabolic health markers, namely obesity, lipid profile, insulin resistance, and blood pressure. In this statement, we review the cardiometabolic health effects of specific eating patterns: skipping breakfast, intermittent fasting, meal frequency (number of daily eating occasions), and timing of eating occasions. Furthermore, we propose definitions for meals, snacks, and eating occasions for use in research. Finally, data suggest that irregular eating patterns appear less favorable for achieving a healthy cardiometabolic profile. Intentional eating with mindful attention to the timing and frequency of eating occasions could lead to healthier lifestyle and cardiometabolic risk factor management.”

Over his gracefully-aging middle-aged man journey, this middle-aged man has tried it all in the nutrition department.  He’s done the low-fat thing, low-carb thing, intermittent fasting thing, and “nutrition confusion” thing by mixing up what he eats for breakfast lunch and dinner.  An example of the latter is eating a hamburger for breakfast or bacon, eggs, potatoes and toast for dinner.

What I think it really all boils down to is something so simple, just eat less so that, when our day comes to meet our grim reaper, we don’t die full.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

One hour a week

I must remind myself that the name of this blog is Pierini Fitness so it would be a good idea, now and then, to share something about fitness, such as my fitness training.  It seems my proclivity as of late is this middle-aged man reflection stuff about living and dying, gracefully aging and trying to live a good and honest life.

So, let me share another recent workout.  The stuff I’ve been doing and will continue to do can best be described as abbreviated, done in my office, wham bam and thank you Mam now get back to work.

Here’s what I did on Wednesday, my last workout; I included kettlebell (KB) work in what I did:

A superset of these exercises:

(1)  Standard pushups x 10 reps, then

(2)  One-arm kettlebell Pendlay row x 5 reps, right side first and then left side, using a    24kg KB, then

(3) One-arm snatch x 5 reps, right side first, swing switch, and then left side, using a      20kg KB, and finally

(4)  Bodyweight full-range squats x 20 reps

This little superset constituted one round.  I started a new round every 4 minutes.  I completed 5 rounds that took 19:32 to complete.

What is it about workouts that make them seem simpler when they're being designed sitting on my butt compared to the reality of being in the work zone doing them?

This workout, done in the evening, had me huffing and puffing at the end, and bordering on breaking a sweat.

That was it; quick, simple and yet effective.  Chalk up another one for the Gipper.

These are the kind of workouts I’m doing the next couple months; three times a week for about 20 minutes a pop for a total of one hour a week.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

When it was big time

The recent blogflection about my boyhood memories watching Northern California big time wrestlers – the good guys and bad guys – brought joy to my oftentimes numb middle-aged man mindscape.   I still have these amazing memories watching the wrestling matches on television and upfront and close in person at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.

In my nostalgia-mania, I stumbled across a new book that chronicles a one-hundred-year history of Northern California professional wrestling.  My impulse got the best of me so I treated myself and bought this book.  I seldom buy things on an impulse but I couldn’t help myself with this one.

It arrived in yesterday’s mail.  I was blown away by its sheer vastness.  This 349-page book is loaded with fine print content and lots of classic black and white photos.  I can’t imagine how long it took the author to write this treasure chest of Northern California big time wrestling history.

I do know one thing:  I’m going to have a great time with my new book about Northern California professional wrestling’s glory years; when it was big time.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Book on my head

This middle-aged man has many occupational hazards this time of the year being so busy with work.  One hazard is having little time to exercise and the other is sitting for a living.

I’ve found a solution for the little time to exercise hazard and recently shared a video demonstration of my “punch for lunch” solution.  I have other quick workouts I’m doing lasting 20 minutes or less that can be done at work allowing me to manage this risk.

This sitting I do for a living hazard requires special effort to manage.  Certainly, the exercise helps but I do need to find time to do some hanging.  I’m not talking about the hanging with a noose around my neck but hanging by gripping a pullup bar, for example, and allowing bodyweight-amplified gravity to give my spine a nice align.

The other thing that would be good to do is practicing good posture while seated and standing.  There’s something about working on a desktop computer all day while sitting that seems to cultivate a “vulture on a power line” posture.  Imagine a Dilbert character dressed in a Hunchback of Notre Dame Halloween costume.

One clever and challenging reality check of how upright and preferred is my posture is something I’ll try to do a couple times a day while at work.  What is this reality check?

It’s walking a straight line with a book on my head.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum