Musings Of A Middle Aged Man on His Birthday

Musing of a Middle Aged Man on his Birthday

I turned 49 today. I remember when I was 20 and I couldn't wait to turn 21 so I could drink everywhere even though the drinking age was 19 at the time. It didn't matter, it's one of those milestone ages. I remember 30 and 40 as being relatively uneventful blips on my time line. I can also remember being 10 and my grandmother telling me not to be in such a hurry to grow up. What did she know? She was old and being older was the greatest thing on the planet. So here I sit on the ledge of the second half of my life.

I always get kinda weird around birthdays. I think too much anyway but I put it in overdrive when another year clicks off. I start asking myself the really good questions like what have I done with my life? Have I made any progress over the last year? What will I do with the next year and what will become of that? Being painfully self aware is a mother trucker.

I was looking at some pictures of my version 1 kids when they were teens and then looking over at my version 2 kids. The v1 kids were teens yesterday. I mean it seems like yesterday. That's how fast it happened. I look at v2.1 and v2.2 and realized that I'll be 64 when V2.1 is 20. That'll be tomorrow. What will I do with the next 15 years of my life to reach my goal of changing the world and making my mark on mankind?

I have to finish that degree I've been fooling around with for the last 10 years or so. I had some dumb luck in my life and some of it got me distracted. I had this whole pipe dream thing going on about how I was going to do my 30 and sit at home tinkering around the garage for the rest of my life. Terrible idea really but it made sense at the time. Having had the opportunity to “sit around” for a while really put things in perspective. I keep saying that I'm too old and that I don't want to borrow the money, stuff like that. My better half explains to me why that is ridiculous through story after story. She tells me about the woman she knows that came here from the middle east where the only way one went to college was a lottery system. To her the US is the greatest place on earth..."I can go to college and I can borrow money to go? Sign me up." The story of the 53 year old woman that went to nursing school (when the wife was a student) and graduated and went on to the career in the medical field she always wanted. No my wife doesn't want to hear about why I'm too old to go to college or why borrowing money to do so is dumb. She's tired of listening to me bitch and wants me to be happy. Really good wives are a very precious thing.

Short term goal. Get back to Columbia Southern and work on a couple classes while I get geared up to go back to University. It may take a while to get where I need to be but as long as I'm heading that way, it's all good. You can work a dead end job for crappy money if there is light a the end of the tunnel. There isn't any reason why anyone should be doing nothing. Life is just too damn short.

Happy Birthday self, now get your ass in gear.

Vegetables Need Not Apply

I started my journey into juicing with the intention of writing about it on a daily basis. It hasn’t worked out that way. The main reason being things happened too fast to keep up with for the most part. I’ve lost a couple of pounds almost every day but as the experiment went on the whole process became less about losing weight and more about nutrition and the food that we put into our bodies.

I have spent some time watching documentaries on the subject of food and how it’s produced: “Knives Over Forks,” “GMO OMG,” etc. These shows have had a profound effect on how I look at the food that I have spent my whole life eating. They have shined a light on how food in this country is now being produced and how it is engineered to be consumed in great quantities. You hear that there is an obesity epidemic in this country…I would suggest it’s almost been manufactured by the large food companies.

Most of the food that the average American consumes is processed in some way. If it’s processed, you can pretty much guarantee that it has lost most if not all of its nutritional value. The result of this is a body starved for the real nutrients that it needs to function and it constantly nagging that it’s hungry. It is hungry but on a cellular level. This produces a cycle. You eat, stay hungry and eat some more. You eat foods that are high in fat and sugar and that are converted to fat almost the minute they hit your stomach. You are then bombarded with media telling you that meat has protein, eggs are filled with omega 3 (which you HAVE to have), and that milk builds bones. All of those statements are true on some level I guess but when you peel back the layer of bullshit you realize that you don’t need nearly as much as meat as you think you do (palm of your hand sized about once a week if at all), eggs that come from commercial chicken farms are loaded GMO’s and a bunch of other stuff your probably could do without, and milk is not the cure for osteoporosis but can be the source. Now I know what you’re thinking, I live in Oregon, we just legalized pot, and I must be smoking it in great amounts. Nothing could be further from the truth. All the data is out there…reams of it. I would suggest you go find out for yourself. If you want the short version watch a documentary called “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” by a guy named Joe Cross. It’s where it started for me. He keeps it simple and is a great jumping off place.

The recommended amount of fruits and vegetables that should be consumed is 7 servings of veggies and 5 services of fruits. If you pile all those greens up you can see really quickly why juicing is such a cool alternative. It makes consuming all those greens a lot more manageable. I started doing a 10 day juice only fast. I am on day 7 as of this writing and I have consumed nothing but juice and water over the course of those 7 days. When the fast comes to its conclusion I plan on going on a plant based diet. I am still on the fence about dairy but I feel like I will most likely move away from that as well. If you have every had a meal with me and watched me throw a beat down on a plate of pasta or a rare steak you should really question what would get someone like me in this mind set. There must be something to it. There is: it works and it just makes sense.

Should you choose to try this experiment yourself let me give you a couple pointers that might help you. First, it’s hard initially. Not going to lie, your body is filled with junk and getting it out can be painful. The good news is that it won’t last. By day 3 you should be feeling much better. You should juice about 4 times a day (every 4 hours or so). You consume about 12 – 14 ozs in each instance. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but you would be surprised how much mileage you get out of it. Juicers aren’t cheap. I paid $150 for mine and its middle of the road. Do your homework but I would suggest you go lower end (around $100) until you decide if it’s something you plan on doing long term. Check Craiglist for deals. I was really surprised how many people were selling juicers and I wish I would have started there first instead of Sears. Juicing isn’t cheap either. Produce, depending on the time of year, can be costly. If you go organic the costs can go even higher. Don’t stress about organic initially. Buy what you can afford and just stay with it. My go to juice is something called a "Mean Green." It gives me lots of energy and its relatively inexpensive to produce. As you educate yourself you can make your own decision as to where, what kind, and how much. The juicing part is really easy. There isn’t a whole lot of prep for the food. Most things that can be juiced go in whole. Things like oranges get peeled but that’s about it. The cleanup is pretty straight forward and easy.

On the upside you will start to feel better almost immediately. Over the course of a week you will find that your skin, hair, and nails get clearer and stronger. In my case, I found that my concentration and memory functions improved significantly. Lots and lots of energy: the kind that I could never get drinking energy drinks or gallons of coffee. I feel like I did 20 years ago physically. My joints stopped hurting and I found that my general overall outlook and attitude improved a truck load. I haven’t had heartburn since I started which means the omeprazole magnesium that I was taking every day is no longer necessary. The physical benefits have been significant enough that I have to really wonder what’s going on with the food. It needs closer scrutiny but that’s the topic for another rant.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself. It requires a mindset. Mine came from education. Learning what was really going on in my body as it relates to the food I eat. There’s a lot there to process but if you start with small bites, you can finish the elephant.