Can we fix chronic health problems and undo the middle age body shape ourselves?

That's what I'm going to try to find out with this blog. There will be mostly diet and fitness discussion here. A regular accounting of what the goals are and what I have done to reach them and what has worked and what hasn't. I have learned some things over the years.

Generally speaking I know that conventional wisdom on diet and exercise is largely wrong and perhaps deliberately misleading and the health care industry is a chronic sickness industry, and if we want fixed we need to fix ourselves. And most of the effort needs to be directed at perseverance and accepting the obvious rather than complexity or attempted objectivity or science. Stop fooling yourself and get on with it. Stop listening to people that want to sell you something.

 This is a place to stay focused and to remind.


I'm a 50 year old physically active male, 6 feet tall, 185 pounds. Apparently slim and muscular but with a gut, mostly visceral fat. 18-20% body fat, all in the mid section. I ride a bike 30 miles every day I go to work. Not fast. Upright, comfortable, regular clothes, regular shoe on pedal, no spandex. It takes about an hour to get to work, 1.25 to get home (the hills are more up than down and I'm tired). I don't ride for workout or cardio as much as freedom, psychotherapy, meditation, and fun. I love it. It gives me more than it takes.

I've done daily bodyweight calisthenics for several years. Some variation of pushups, pullups, dips and squats. No weights, no machines, no equipment, no special clothes. I can't remember the last day I didn't do any calisthenics. I used to lift weights for size and strength (at my best I benched 235 for 11 unassisted reps) and have had better strength gains with bodyweight calisthenics. I hate gyms. I change up the workouts but average about 8 sets of each exercise a day, sometimes done as supersets all in one session and sometimes spread throughout the day. The sets are in the neighborhood of 10 pullups, 12-15 dips, 25+ squats, 25+ (usually Russian) pushups. For the last few weeks I've done that and lately I have thrown in "lighter" movements for more reps and today I tried to see how many reps total I could get with three total sets of each exercise. I have enough foundation now that I can start playing around with things.

Health-wise I have borderline blood pressure (usually in the 140s over 90s), enough to prompt most doctors to try to medicate me. But I won't take drugs if I possibly can avoid it. One goal is to get bp in the normal range with no drugs and last trip to my doctor I achieved that. 122/70 something. I believe this was from intermittent fasting and alcohol moderation. More on those later. I have mild to moderate digestive issues at all times, from GERD to IBS and similar. I had an endoscopy a few years ago with no cancer but irritated stomach lining and admonition to decrease alcohol intake. Again, more on that later. The most troubling medical condition is high internal eye pressure. This is new and I cannot feel it but this is the kind of thing that can lead to glaucoma. I have no evidence of glaucoma and doctors wanting me to medicate as a preventative, but again I want to avoid this.  I also have nearly constant allergy symptoms that are more annoying than anything - itchy throat and eyes, asthma-ish cough and wheeze usually in mornings.

I am interested in and generally follow paleo, low carb and intermittent fasting. The fasting is the most exciting to me. The paleo is a good idea with a bad metaphor but if you keep it to real whole food, avoid grain and sugar, it works. I generally try to eat within an 8 hour window and fast for 16. I believe all of these things help to allow me to get away with my biggest vice, which is drinking beer and sometimes whiskey. I drink too much. I'd like to fix the health stuff and get the body I deserve based on the amount of exercise I do and know that moderating the beer intake is the biggest key.

Most of the health problems I focus on here are related though seem separate and stem from gut issues. One goal will be to keep this in mind and work on it.  I'm trying to eat fermented food every day and will also try to add in collagen/bone broth.