My doctor has encouraged me to try the DASH Diet. I don’t need to lose any weight, he just thinks it’s a good healthy, diet. I went back to their website and entered my data: 57 year old male, 155 pounds, moderate activity. Here’s what the DASH program recommends that I eat each day.

Man, that’s lot of fruit and vegetables. If you figure I’m not gonna have spinach for breakfast, that means I have to have three veggies at lunch and three at the evening meal. Tough. Most of the rest seems doable… but who in the hell eats 11 slices of bread a day? I guess I can do two at breakfast and two more at lunch and a couple for the evening meal. But that still leaves 5 slices! I’m sure I’m reading this incorrectly so I have to do a little more research. Stay tuned.

After almost four years of working out (weekly) with a personal trainer, I’ve decided to go it on my own. The lady I’ve been working with is very good. Four years ago an hour of her pain cost about $25. This week the fitness center (I assume it was their decision) raised her hourly rate to $50 an hour (there were a couple of bumps along with way). $2,600 a year + a few hundred for club membership and you’re right at three grand a year. I can buy a used car for three thousand dollars, so we parted ways. It reminded me of breaking up with a girlfriend in high school. Painful. I stuck as long as I did because I figured I’d stop working out altogether withour the weekly reinforcement. And now we’ll see.

I’m just guessing here, but I figure I must own five or six hundred pair of reading glasses. And I can lay my hands on maybe a dozen of those. But the good news is they are cheap and disposable. And the better news is my vision is (still) almost 20-20. That’s the word from Dr. Wankum. I was half-way expecting to need full-time specs, but not yet. Waiting for the doctor, with all the eye exam gear surrounding you, is a fine time to think about all the beautiful things there are to see.

“Virginity pledges” — public promises to remain virgins until marriage — do not protect the young people who make them from the risk of engaging in unsafe sexual practices that could lead to sexually transmitted diseases. Some pledgers engaged in alternative sexual behaviors in order to preserve their virginity. In fact, among those who had not had vaginal intercourse, pledgers were more likely to have engaged in both oral and anal sex than their non-pledging peers. Among virgins, male and female pledgers were six time more likely to have had oral sex than non-pledgers, and male pledgers were four times more likely to have had anal sex than those who had not pledged, the research shows.” .

— Study in the March 18 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health

From USAToday story: Starting at age 50, people begin to lose 12% of their muscle strength and 6% of their muscle mass every decade. But weight training can reverse these effects in a big way. Two to three months of weight training three times a week can increase muscle strength and mass by one-third, making up for three decades of loss of muscle strength and muscle mass.