My post of yesterday describes the most important but not the only aspect of my daily life. Being an artist doesn’t absolve me of the need to keep my body working at its best so that I can do everything I need to do to create art and just to live day by day. To stay in shape, I follow a rigorous diet, described in an earlier blog post, assure that I get plenty of sleep, and work out every other day.
I only eat twice a day. My diet emphasizes vegetables and fruits. Despite the restrictions I impose upon myself, I have never before enjoyed food as much as I do now. Beyond raw vegetables and fruits, I limit myself to two different soups and beans served on rice. I allow myself small quantities of ground up meat for flavoring in the dishes I prepare, and every third day I eat eggs and meat as an entrée. I have refined the recipes for these dishes over time, adding onion, garlic, seasoning, and spices until I have achieved unparalleled savor. I don’t think of myself as a cook, but my experiments have resulted in wonderful tastes.
Equally important to my health is my workout routine. Every other day, I lift weights for two to three hours. I do three sets of at least twelve reps of thirteen different exercises including bench and military presses, rows, and a variety of curls. Most of my life, I have been a runner and a weight lifter, not for health reasons but because I enjoyed the exercise. I can’t run any more thanks to a botched knee replacement operation six years ago that left me with a slight limp. Nor can I do lower body workouts. So I emphasize what I can do with my upper body. To keep myself going while working out, I have music playing on my stereo, always classical, often Mozart and Bach.
Since my life work (writing and reading) is sedentary, staying physically active is critical to my health. I’m blessed that I enjoy working out, although, granted, not as much as I did when I was younger. Nevertheless, in many ways, I count myself as the most fortunate of men.
Tom Glenn, Writer 