The Slide

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I'm coming off the back of about 4 weeks of the cold/ flu/ COVID, whatever!

Ever since I lost the function of my thyroid in 2022 these things seem to hit me harder than they used to, or maybe it's my age.

At times like this, though, it makes me reflect back on where I'm going, what I'm doing and why, and the long stated aim to work until I'm 85 and have a short retirement before I'm out of here.

In order to do that, I have to embrace the lifestyle harder and harder, more and more, the older I get, to try and maintain the energy and the vitality and the health and the sharpness to function in the world in which I live.

Lots of pressures try to counter that, and to stand against it, not least the pressure, then the urge for comfort and reward, and enjoyment for the place that I find myself in.

Over the past 6, 8, maybe 12 months, I've become more and more ‘a business guy that eats out’, and so I arrange meetings with people over a meal, and then inevitably I go and eat what I want, and then I started to have a beer when I had the meal, and then I started to have two.

It's not in any way significantly affecting the bottom line of the business, not in any way is it affecting the success of the forward motion of the business, but it's the creep, the effect that it has on me.

Two pints is now too much for me at my age and in my situation, because it affects me and my sleep, and my ability to function as high as I can the next day, and so it's a sacrifice, but I didn't see it like that, I saw it like a reward.

There was a week, a few weeks ago, when I had 3 nights in a row out like that, but it's OK because it's ‘for work’.

There's no doubt that some of the meetings that I've had have led to extraordinary opportunities for the business and extraordinary value for the business in monetary terms, and the direction that we're travelling, but I get to use it as an excuse that I deserve it, and there's a stage of life that I've got to.

That's complete bu****it.

In order for me to be here the way I want, for the time that I want, I have to reverse the slide, I have to embrace discomfort, not comfort, I have to embrace the lifestyle that I've chosen.

I go to the gym 2 mornings a week now, early doors with my friend and colleague at the practise, Stuart.

Stuart is my coach; he knows all about the gym. I know nothing about it.

It ties in with trying to ride my bike 4 times a week and run, and do some stretches as well, a programme which I almost never make on a week-to-week basis.

There is a machine at the gym that we've started to use called Boditrex.

Allegedly, it measures all these metrics and charts of progress, and it gives you a metabolic age. It was told to me the last time I've been at the gym that my metric ball at age is 39 (I’m 54). It tells me that my BMI is 23.

Neither of those feels correct at the moment. In order for me to continue to go where I'm going and to do what I'm doing, I need to rest his leg, and I need to feel like I'm 39 and feel like my BMI is 23.

Blog Post Number - 4487