Recently in Personal Fitness Category

Walking on the Center Harbor Woods trails, where a couple of years ago when it first opened I had an unpleasant encounter with a mother bear and her cub, I had another one, a nuisance/aggressive coyote.

I saw it around 7 am near a small stream . My golden retriever, Ruby, went off on the scent, going the wrong way, while I saw the coyote up close and personal. The corpulent chocolate lab, Beau, who's a lot smarter, was on the hunt. But I able to restrain him with a voice command.

I called "Booby," my nickname for Ruby, the voluptuous dumb blonde, and she came back. But shockingly to me, never having experienced anything like this in all my thousands of hours dog walking in the woods, the large coyote didn't hightail it, began barking, and even followed at an uncomfortably close distance.

Coyote harassment on the trail!

Yep. So says the Consumer Reports that just arrived in the mail. I'm astonished.

It seems to me I recently heard of a bevy of problems associated with surgical mesh, which can be used for hernia surgery like I had in Aug. 2001. I feel lucky I was spared the smesh.

Too bad, though, I experienced a gruesome dislocated right thumb injury a week ago climbing Mt. Percival with the two meatheads, Ruby and Beau. I think a pin may have been put in.

And no, I didn't cry, except when nurse Anna typed in my biographical info. My grandmother of the same name would have been 98 the following day. I had been thinking of her.

My manual labor job at UPS won't pay for disability since I can still (sort of) work another job, which I do as a boarding school teacher. The school gave me the day off, and I was nearly ecstatic to be putting it to some good use on such a glorious day. Except for the nose dive just coming down from the summit.

One of the hikers I encountered on the way down I thought was going to throw up. He called me a "poor bastard" three times. It looks worse on paper than the way he said it.

First it was McMansions. Now it's McVictims.

This crap is getting old. Call these folks what they are: self-indulgent fatties not willing to admit the reason they're fat is because they eat too damn much, eat the wrong things, and don't exercise. It's easier to blame someone/something else rather than take responsibility for their own actions.

But then that's been the way over the past 40 years or so - it's always somebody else's fault.

New recruits for the Army just aren't as fit as they used to be, necessitating changes. I've been told there are jobs available to fit candidates as prison guards. It's difficult, however, to staff the positions because most people just don't exercise enough nowadays.

It's the best way to reduce stress and help the brain function effectively.

I don't do fadish diets. Period.

But after listening to a fascinating podcast with Russell Roberts and Arthur De Vany, who counsels eating like our stone age ancestors, I've given one a go. I know that a well-preserved body found in Europe five or six years ago shows our ancestors ate like wolves: lots of meat.

And I know I don't eat enough fruits and veggies, and the daily consumption of a bagel, which my farmer friend down the street used to feed to her pigs only to see them bloat up disgustingly (day-old products from a store), has been conducive to giving me a gut. I was receptive to the Evolutionary Fitness diet.

Well, after a week, the change in my energy level and the decrease in my belt size has been nothing short of dramatic. At this rate I'm going to blog topless and will need new belts.