The Only Way Is Forward…

I have often written that it’s very important to live without regrets. The reason for this is simple; every decision and life choice, good or bad, has led to who you are, right now. And who you are is pretty fantastic. Self-love and self-image are important factors to a person’s wellbeing and existence. Sometimes, life will seem rough and difficult but as the old saying goes, this too shall pass. I found the above image online somewhere and it spoke to me. I think it represents an important lesson that we all too soon forget.

I remember myself, when I was younger. A skinny, sick little bastard who got sick with every little illness that came past. I had a rough go of it, when I was younger. I was severely bullied and not the modern, snowflake version of bullying everyone complains about today. I mean four guys surrounding me in a locker room and beating the living shit out of me. But I survived. I wouldn’t wish many aspects of my childhood on anyone. But t be honest, i had a loving family who did their best, a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I was well-off in many ways that I didn’t know to appreciate, back then.

Don’t regret who you were before. That person contributed to who you are now. And the important lesson is twofold; if you’re unhappy with who you are, recognize what you want to change and work for it. If you’re happy with who you are, roll with it. The person you were paved the way for the person you are. And all that matters is who you’ve become. Food for thought… ☯️

Weight A Minute, Where’s My Cardio???

After several years of writing this blog, it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads it regularly that I’m a firm fitness advocate. I’m no Olympian or anything (Shut up! I heard that! You know who you are!) but I work hard to try and stay healthy, especially in light of having Type-1 Diabetes for over four decades. It started years ago with karate and slowly evolved into some cardio training and light weights. Like any fighting sport, karate requires that a practitioner have a reasonable amount of cardio in order to keep up with the rigours of martial arts. Some weightlifting is required in order to maintain one’s strength. So that begs the question: which is more important? Cardio or strength training?

The thing with any form of exercise is that one always believes that their way is the best way. People who focus on resistance training will always assume that resistance training is the best. People who focus on cardio will assume that whatever they do, running, cycling, swimming or whatnot, will swear that cardio is the only way. Realistically, karate is the only best way… (see what I mean?) But seriously, people will always assume that their direction is the only one but the reality is simpler than that. Proper and effective fitness will require both.

If all you do is weight lift, you may gain some static strength but it will have no practical application. Unless you’re trying to body build professionally, weightlifting is usually best done in moderate doses. The larger and more rounded your muscle groups become, the less flexibility and range of motion you’ll have. Picture those huge body builders who can’t remove that post-it note from between their shoulder blades. That’d be pretty easy shit for a person with normal muscle mass. That’s why in general and especially if you do karate, you should limit your strength training to developing actual strength and not necessarily increasing your overall size.

If all you do is cardio, you’ll have great stamina, great endurance and be able to hold out under your own body weight for extended periods of time. But you’ll need to run, if someone strong tries to get their hands on you. The caveat is that intensive cardio training will actually contribute to a bit of strength training. You can’t be a long-distance runner or a marathon swimmer without some strength thrown in there, right? But ultimately, you’ll still need some strength training included in your overall routine. Here’s where I get to brag a bit and mention that karate promotes and provides both of those things.

No matter what type of workouts you prefer, you should always work to include all types. You need some cardio. You need some strength training. And if you do martial arts, you need them both. Whether you integrate both aspects into one workout or do them separately… I like doing a routine where I’ll do my weight sets with a couple of minutes of high-intensity cardio in between. It keeps my heart rate up and makes the workout all the more challenging. If you’re doing cardio as a standalone workout, it’s important to remember that besides the normally-expected benefits of cardio, getting that heart rate up and increasing your blood flow will also help with muscle recovery from your strength training. Food for thought… ☯️

A Little Sweat Does You Good…

Last Tuesday, I enjoyed my usual routine. this routine entails working through my lunch then making my way down to my office tower’s gymnasium to make use of their cardio machines. Last year, I found a neoprene hoodie in the clearance section of a local sporting equipment retail shop. The tag boasted increasing the body’s core temperature to shed excess water weight and maintain muscle warmth. I purchased my size online and received it a short while later, performing multiple cardio workouts and loving the increased sweat and burn I got from wearing it.

The concept is pretty simple; the garment increases your core temp, causing excess sweating and shedding water weight as well as an increased level of toxin elimination. On this occasion, I ran the elliptical until I started feeling faint. The beauty of this garment is it kind of holds everything in place and prevents all 2,000 parts of my dad-bod from joggling around violently as I run. I only put in 4 kilometres but it was enough of a sweat to tire me out for the night. The increased blood flow brought on from doing cardio work also allows for quicker recovery when taking a break from resistance training.

This garment was a bit on the costly side, having been ordered online from a discontinued product line. But you can find them quite easily in most sporting goods stores, as well as from your local big box retail locations. They won’t all fit snuggly like mine does. In fact, some of them will almost seem like you’re wearing a couple of large garbage bags over your body. But the benefits can be plentiful, so long as you remember to replenish your body’s fluids as you lose them. ☯️

To Gym Or Not To Gym, That Is The Question…

Good health & fitness habits can and should be considered a life-long commitment. Although I’m certain some people do, one should never sit back and say, “I’m no longer exercising” and let their health and fitness go completely to the wayside. The effects of a sedentary lifestyle can be seen and felt over an extremely short period of time and for someone with Type-1 Diabetes especially, it can cause damage to the body that will not only make life difficult but could potentially be deadly, as well.

That’s why it’s important, whether you have Diabetes or not, to maintain a reasonable level of fitness in one’s life. It can get difficult at times, with the stresses and rigours of life often getting in the way. The irony is working out will usually help to alleviate some of those concerns and stresses. But like the little engine that could, getting oneself started can often be the issue. However, once you get started and have a healthy combination of workout types, the rewards can be phenomenal. W

hen I say workout types, I mean that everyone should incorporate resistance training and cardio somewhere in their routine, despite what some diehard fitness folks may say. Weightlifters will obviously swear by resistance training, runners, swimmers and the like will swear by cardio and martial artists will swear by karate classes. And although that’s a normal instinct, everyone should have a bit of everything, despite what they “specialize” in. So, that raises an important question: What’s better? At home or at a gym?

Over the decades, I’ve had the opportunity to do both. I’ve had fitness equipment at home, I’ve done karate at home and I’ve paid tuitions and fees to do either of those at professional locations outside my home. I often go back and forth like a balanced scale rocking from one end to the other, and I’ve come to find advantages and disadvantages to either one. And now I’m going to share some of them…

1. Cost: Obviously, there’s a certain amount of inherent cost to joining a gym or karate class. And with the rising cost of everything these days, membership fees and tuition costs are going up as well. Without accounting for inflation, I spent thousands of dollars on karate tuition over the decades, and in recent years, I would have knocked out the same amount over a period of about five years instead of twenty. Training at home means you don’t have to pay for the locale and can work out at your leisure, on your own schedule and when you choose. But working out from home may lack a few things, bringing me to my next point…

2. Resources: There’s no arguing that your local gym will have equipment that the average person would likely never have in their home. I stand by the concept that one can get a solid sweat by doing a body-weight-only workout, but there are definite advantages and benefits from using specialized equipment that either helps with certain lifting techniques or promotes better growth. Of course, the caveat is that depending on how long you train for, you may be able to invest membership fees into purchasing your equipment, which you then own.

3. Environment: I’ll be honest; training in a dojo is far superior to training at home, alone. Besides the fact that there’s only so much you can do by yourself (kind of hard to fight with no opponent), there’s also the ambiance to consider. Training around other people can be more pleasant than training alone and certainly rewarding. Especially if there’s aspects of your fitness that you need help with. Google can’t always answer everything, right?

4. Autonomy and Cleanliness: One thing that can get annoying when training or working out at a commercial location is the possibility of others using the particular piece of equipment you need/want. This is especially annoying when they’re not really using the equipment but congregating next to it in order to chat. You wouldn’t think so but this same concept happens within a dojo, depending on the class. At home, you don’t have such disadvantages. And lastly, working out at home allows you to use your own shower without the fear of whoever else’s funk you may get on you, using public facilities.

So, there you have it. There’s some good and bad to either method of training. Working out from home or in a public facility has some good, some bad and some ugly. No matter which method you choose, it’ll likely cost you SOMETHING and will require a significant commitment on your part. ☯️

Commando: A Review (Heavy Spoilers)

It feels like I’m writing a fair bit of reviews on films and television series… And that’s because I am! No big secret, I’m a fan of a god flic, especially something that was aired in the good ol’ 1980’s. There’s just something about that decade that’s near and dear to my heart; likely the fact that my formative years took place during that decade. But there’s something about watching a solid action film that doesn’t stress out too much about the script or even the plot points and focuses on plenty of action and explosions. 1985’s Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is no exception.

Commando tells the story of a retired Special Forces commander named John Matrix who lives a secluded, quiet life with his young daughter, who just happens to be played by Alyssa Milano. I was a HUGE “Who’s the Boss” fan, so Milano is just the icing on the cake. Their lives are disturbed when members of Matrix’s team are systemically killed and the military assumes Matrix is next, and warns him. Matrix’s daughter is kidnapped and Matrix is blackmailed into performing a heinous act to get her back. Of course, instead of complying, Matrix becomes a one-man army of vengeance as he works to getting his daughter back.

I’d like to say the movie still totally holds up to modern times. The truth is that I likely only think so because I was a child of the 80’s. Most people nowadays likely wouldn’t get the references and comedy behind all the violence. Basically, Matrix makes his way back and enlists the help of an unwitting flight attendant who not only helps him gear up and get equipped to rescue his daughter but ends up being a key point to the story. It should be noted that the girl’s mother is never mentioned or referenced during the movie.

The movie reaches its climax when Matrix flies to a remote, private island where he absolutely decimates an army of opposing soldiers who are guarding the antagonist holding Matrix’s daughter hostage. Although I’m sure there are plenty of forums and discussion threads that would identify the impossibilities or inconsistencies of what takes place in this movie, sometimes it’s important to just sit back and enjoy the ride. This movies does just that, providing a gratuitous amount of action scenes while managing not to take itself too seriously.

As one would expect from a classic 80’s action movie, matrix rescues his daughter, annihilates everyone in sight and manages to kill the bad and save the day. The movie ends on a pretty cheesy note, with matrix marching down to the beachfront where U.S. Army forces storm the beach and somehow immediately recognize Matrix as a friendly, despite the fact that majority of them likely never served with him. He’s permitted to simply walk away and fly off with his daughter and newfound “associate,” without any debrief or information on what went down during his time on the island.

Honestly, it’s a pretty fun thrill ride, if you can get past the dated format of the movie and its plot points. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, worthy of being included among classics like Conan the Barbarian, Predator and Red Sonja (yeah, I said it! Fight me!) I know not many people were pleased with Brigitte Nielsen’s portrayal of the famous, red-haired comic book heroine, but I think it totally stands up. If you’re looking for something action-packed, fun and easy to watch on a Saturday night, Commando is currently streaming on Disney+ and I highly recommend it. ☯️

Quality Over Quantity

One of the more complicated things with being a content creator of any kind, whether it’s a blog or one of the other, stupider forms of content creation (I swear I’m not bitter) is that the online world has more than its fair share of artificial people and fake followers. You know the ones; people who comment on posts even if it would be easier and simpler to just scroll on by and not comment at all. Or the ones that like to incite arguments and troll people from the safety and comfort of their keyboard. Such is the way of the world, these days. I don’t always agree with other people’s perspectives and opinions and the light knows I hate this stupid TikTok trend that everyone is on, but I keep that shit to myself. For the most part.

The bigger problem is when people shop for likes. What I mean is people who will click like on a post or an article or even follow someone’s account in the hopes that it’ll be reciprocated. My follower-ship has grown significantly in recent years. It’s a slow process and I’ve come to appreciate all my followers and the people who take the time to read my content. But I always find it interesting when a post goes live and someone will like it almost the same moment as its posted. For those of you who have noticed, I usually put up my daily posts between 6 to 7 am, so depending on what time zone one happens to be in, it’s FAIRLY unlikely that someone will have read some of my lengthy shit within a minute.

I make a point that I don’t like someone’s post unless I’ve taken the time to read it completely. That’s a point of pride for me. Wanna know what another point of pride is? Knowing that people are actually reading what I post. This blog started a few years ago as a way to keep my writing skills sharp and to allow me to share decades of experience about Diabetes, martial arts and health & fitness. I’ve enjoyed it and its become an integral part of my life and my weekly routine. In a few weeks in fact, I should strike 1,000 posts in a row. That’ll be a milestone for me. Can’t wait. ☯️

Weekend Wackiness

As I’ve often written about, we typically use the weekends to bring the boys somewhere fun to entertain them. This usually involves indoor play structures, jungle gyms and play places. I’ve taken to writing about these outings because it provides some balance and contrast to many of the posts I write about the negative effects and pitfalls of Diabetes. Watching my children play is effectively how I live vicariously. When I consider that most of my childhood involved being in hospitals for either myself or my brother, suffering through comas and complications, knowing that my boys don’t hav to deal with all that shit makes me feel a little bit better.

The downside to these outings is that although small children understanding “playing,” they don’t necessarily understand the cost that’s associated with all of these little outings. Last weekend, we brought the boys to a place called “Get Air,” which is an indoor trampoline gym. It has the potential to be loads of fun for a kid, so long as you can afford the special socks required and don’t mind paying about half a tank of gas worth in entry fees. But fuck me sideways, we paid for it. Nathan is at an age now where he can socialize and play with other kids without much concern. Alexander is a bit more of a problem…

Although three years’ old now, he still functions on the premise that once something catches his attention, it becomes the centre of his focus and won’t do anything else; no matter how much daddy paid for him to be DOING that something else. We paid for an hour of jumping time, only to have him focus on all of the fuckin’ dollar rides that we had no change for. Lovely. He got pretty pissy when we kept trying to steer him towards the trampolines, although he did mingle for the last ten minutes until we had to go. Then he got REALLY pissy. At least when I told Nathan we had to go, he didn’t object much. Especially since the plan was to take them to McDonald’s for lunch and further playing in their play structure.

Once at McDonald’s we managed to get some food into both kids before they disappeared into the play structure. Things reached a head when Alexander couldn’t make his way back down from the structure and my wife had to climb up there to get him. I could have climbed up but there’s a very real chance I’d get wedged in there somewhere. I don’t need the embarrassment of the fire department coming into cut me out. I mean, it would make for a great story and I’m not saying I’m fat or anything, just bulky.

Our afternoon closed out by going home and putting Alexander down for a nap. My wife and I decided on napping as well because, well… life, you know? Nathan doesn’t nap anymore and hasn’t in the past couple of years. I set hm up with some things to do and he decided to stay at the kitchen table while everyone else enjoyed family nap time. I awoke about twenty minutes in from low blood sugars. I corrected and was awoken another half hour later when Nathan wouldn’t stop humming and singing out loud. I swear, that kid likes to do everything he can to exhaust me to the point where I usually get more rest on Monday morning when I go back to work. ☯️

From The Least Likely Sources…

I kinda like this. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Robert Downey Jr. has been involved in movies for decades before the MCU “made him famous.” Personally, I thought he was great in Sherlock Holmes and Tropic Thunder. But from an 80’s standpoint, Johnny Be Good, Weird Science and The Pick-up Artist comes to mind. A great actor. But the thought provided above does get one thinking. Depending on who you’re dealing with, sometimes there’s no winning and you’ll just have to forge your own path regardless of what others think. ☯️

There’s No Gym Like Home…

Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying a certain level of fitness within my own home. Over time, I accumulated enough equipment that I could get a decent sweat going in my home. Due to different circumstances at different times, my workout areas have been taken apart and dismantled. A few years ago when my basement shifted and I had to have it demolished and braced, i moved my workout area to the garage. That was okay for a while, but colder weather made it problematic. Plus, everything that was in the basement had to be stored somewhere.

When the basement was completely braced and secure, I bought a bunch of floor matting and created a makeshift dojo in my basement. Once again, when the time came to renovate and rebuild the basement (it was down to bare concrete) I had to pack up the floor mats and I lost my workout area once again. Given that I was stuck at home and contemplating a job back in New Brunswick, I sold off most of my equipment in anticipation of moving away. When that didn’t happen, I found myself in a position where I didn’t have many options at home. Body weight workouts will only get you so far.

Last year, I learned that one of the benefits of my job is a flex benefit that can be used on anything fitness or health related. Although I used that flex benefit on my karate tuition last year, I didn’t need it for that this time around. Instead, I chose to use it to purchase a bunch of fitness equipment for my newly-renovated basement. As you can from the photo above, we have new flooring, newly-drywalled walls and a drop ceiling with recessed lighting. A full bathroom with a standup shower is included. Listen to me, I sound like I’m advertising my basement for rent.

I started with a simple curling bar and some weight plates. From there, I got the bench, straight bar and more plates. The half bosu is useful for lunges, squats and developing balance. 10-pound ankle weights, a weighted vest and a set of kettlebells completed the set-up. I also grabbed some heavier dumbbells as the ones I had were starting to lack a certain, shall we say, challenge. Combining all of this has given me the opportunity for a number of different workouts while keeping everything fresh and new. The small table in the corner holds my phone cradle that allows me to play music while I exercise.

I don’t think I need to stress the importance of exercise and proper fitness to someone who lives with Type-1 Diabetes. Proper diet and blood sugar control aren’t enough. You gotta keep that engine revving. It’s like the simple formula of life that I discovered, decades ago. Life brings movement. Movement brings energy. Energy brings life. Eliminate any of those three and it’s a recipe to end one’s life. Good movement is integral to good health. And working out at home is awesome! There’s no better gym than the one you create for yourself. Food for thought… ☯️

“Wine-ing” About Carbs…

Having Diabetes makes almost everything food and fitness-related more difficult. That’s why when I find something that boasts being “sugar-free,” I jump on that shit like, well… me! I’ve been fooled on a number of different occasions, where things like sugar-free candy still have carbohydrates that affect overall blood sugar levels. This is part of the struggle that most people don’t understand. That’s why, when I found a bottle of wine boasting “0g sugar,” I couldn’t help but grab a bottle. Although several different blends were available, I opted for the Pinot Noir, since it was on special and a couple of dollars cheaper. What can I say? I’m cheap…

Bask is a Canadian-made wine that appears to be recently featured at my local liquor store. Sitting at 12.5% alcohol ( as though you couldn’t tell from the photo), this pinot noir has a pleasant taste and a light finish that goes quite well after stuffing my face with buffalo chicken dip and nachos. But I digress… Unlike most other wines, there’s a full nutrition label on the back of the bottle, which boasts 7 grams of carbs per 188mL, which means approximately 21 grams of carbohydrates for the entire bottle. If accurate, that’s almost more than double the carbs in the bottle of shiraz I usually purchase.

So, the irony here, and what’s difficult for most Type-1 Diabetics, is that many are often fooled by a claim that something is “0g of sugar” or sugar-free. Although sugar in and of itself may be low or excluded, the total carbs will still affect one’s overall blood sugars. It will be interesting to see how this bottle affects me. I’m not bolusing for the drinks I’m having but rather, I’ll correct for any rises in blood glucose that I note in the next hour or two. What’s funny is that the nutritional label even talks about the sugar content that MAY be contained within…

By that count, there could potentially be 2 grams of sugar within one full bottle. This would be included in the total 21 grams of carbs, based on the nutrition label’s count. It’s a decent wine, the flavour isn’t my favourite but it’s good enough for the experiment at hand. Plus, it gave me a reason to sip wine. Not this morning, mind you. But let this serve as a PSA for all my fellow Diabetics out there. “Sugar-free,” “No Sugar Added” and “All Natural” may mean nothing, in terms of total carbohydrates and how it may affect one’s blood sugar. Food for thought… (pun fully intended) ☯️