I took the real age test on realage.com. I'm 4 months older than my biological age. Not too shabby, you may be thinking. At least in my head, that's what you may be thinking. In reality you may be thinking, Damn! Someone isn't taking care of themselves! And that would be correct. Because the things I have going for me are the things that can't be changed: I have good genes. But the things that stop me from being a decade or so younger than my actual age are entirely under my control and I am pretty disappointed in myself that I've been given the gift of good health from a genetic standpoint and I don't do anything to hold up my end of the bargain. I just coast along.

I don't exercise on a regular basis, especially in the winter. I may go for fits and spurts of trying to get in 30 minutes of cardio every day, but it eventually tapers off at some point. I have a healthy BMI and so it's easy to forgo a little thing like making sure the vehicle that carts you around is in good working order.

I don't eat as well as I should. Shocker, huh? But wait aren't you always yammering on about food safety and organic this and grow your own food that? Well...yes. But yesterday, for instance, I had two yogurts and a veggie burger. Not as bad as say a bag of jellybeans and three trips to McDonald's, but notice the suspicious lack of fruits and vegetables. Not good.

I get points for having a happy marriage, a good support system of family and friends,"owning" a dog, not smoking, and being a healthy weight. But I lose points for not belonging to any organizations and not attending church on a regular basis.(By which I mean I go at Christmas.)

I have to say, I'm feeling pretty ashamed of myself. (Hence the public outing in a public forum.) I do all the maintenance to keep my faulty disc in place, and I do the maintenance to be able to breathe with my 9237 allergies. It's incorporated as part of my day because those things have a minute by minute effect on how I am able to live my life. I can't even walk around for too long in the mornign without doing my back exercises because I will experience pain. But if I would do the maintenance in all the other areas, I will be much less likely to ever even have to know how they could negatively impact my life. I don't really want to get to the point where I have to be in pain to make changes, or where all the changes in the world won't help me regain my lost health.