Of course, you already know the obvious reasons: it's good for me, I'll live longer, I can eat more, etc. But none of those obvious reasons gets exactly at why I am so consistent about my exercise routine. The short answer is that I feel better when I'm sore. Obviously, sore muscles, by the definition of "sore", hurt, but I find that feeling so nourishing. When my muscles ache, I know that I stressed them out enough to break them down, and now they're rebuilding stronger than before. That's so cool. And because I know that keeping muscle mass is an uphill battle for people as they age, which I plan to do for a long, long, long time, I know that I need to keep breaking them down over and over to get them even just to stay the same.
But that effort is so worth it.
Have we talked about my tumor yet? I don't think so. In April of 2016, a gastrointestinal stromal tumor (that had probably been growing in me for up to a decade without my knowing about it) broke through my esophagus and stomach, causing a lot of internal bleeding that finally made my body unable to pump blood around, and well, I had to get four pints of blood just to be able to live long enough to figure out about the tumor. Fortunately, the local hospital sent me to Yale's Smilow Cancer Center (an amazing place with the incredible Dr. Cha) where the team could stitch me back together again from the inside.
Weird aside, I know, but now I'm getting back to the point. While I was recovering, both in the hospital for a few days and then at home for a month, every healthcare professional I encountered said something like, "You're recovering so well because you were in great shape."
I don't plan on having any more tumors rip me up. In fact, I'd rather not have any more hospital stays for any reason, but we can't plan that stuff. We don't even know when it'll happen. If anything medical happens to me again, I want to recover quickly, and to do that, I want to be in great shape so that I'm ready to heal.
What do you do to prepare for calamity? Please feel free to make a comment below.