Ouch !

Well yes, what a crushing surprise, I've hurt myself from exercise. Again. Take a look at that diagram to the left and most of those muscles are currently hurting me. So much so that at the end of last week I couldn't move for three days. Is this clever, no, clearly not. But when you do get inured there is the temptation to look in the mirror and say "well, that'll have to do" and then stop.

But this would be a colossal mistake, namely to assume that exercising or healthy living in general is something that has a finite ending, as if one day you can finally stop and start eating twelve Big Macs a day. The truth is that it is a never ending habit, that must be endured for life - that is if you want your life to have any sort of quality and length.

I no longer drink alcohol regularly, and I don't miss it a bit. I also like the fact that I can see the muscles on my body that I didn't even know I had. This is not to say that I am 'ripped' as the common parlance has it, mainly because I swim rather than work out. But I am healthier than I have been since school, and given that I'm nearly 40 that's something I'm pleased with. But I know that it doesn't end here, and that the second I feel okay it's back to the grindstone. Because the one thing I have realised is that a healthy lifestyle must be a permanent state of affairs. It can't be picked up and put down as you fancy it, it's a life sentence or there's no point in bothering.