Category Archives: Health Information

Weighted!

December 22, 2014Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Informationdisbetes, gym, healthy, lifestyle, obesity, overweighttimalderman

According to the 2013 report from the Bureau of Statistics, 63% of Australian adults are overweight or obese. An estimated 280 Australians develop diabetes every day. The 2005 Australian AusDiab Follow-up Study (Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study) showed that 1.7 million Australians have diabetes but that up to half of the cases of type 2 diabetes remain undiagnosed. By 2031 it is estimated that 3.3 million Australians will have type 2 diabetes (Vos et al., 2004) – stats from Diabetes Australia. These statistics are nothing short of frightening. Every day we are inundated with conflicting impressions – both in reality and in the media – of body image. On the one hand we have a population becoming so obese it is bordering on terrifying. If the trend is not halted, the cost of health care is going to spiral up at a frightening rate. On the other hand, we are inundated with images of sculpted 6 and 8 packs, biceps and pecs that are almost impossible for us to obtain, let alone maintain. They fill my newsfeed with promos from gyms, supplement companies, models, celebrities, health and fitness magazines, clothing and underwear companies. What seems to be missing is a healthy norm. As gay and HIV+ people we are not exempt from the fat/thin dialectic. And some of it seems to be based in history. The problems of being at both extremes affects us as a population in general, and I think it heeds to be tackled from as many angles as possible.

I am just staggered by the number of over-weight (anywhere from obese to chronically obese) people I see every day. While I had a coffee at Brookside a couple of days ago, and at my local cafe today, I made a point of observing people coming and going (referred to as being a flaneur), and a good 90% of them were over-weight, and in the older age group where this is causing the most problems. Considering the constant emphasis on our increasingly over-weight population, and the regular medical bulletins on problems associated with obesity, nobody seems to be particularly alarmed about it. It really is frightening!

And the gay community is not exempt from this problem. In fact everything but! We have developed a sub-culture that celebrates over-weight men, which is certainly nothing worth celebrating!. Not only are they celebrated, but encouraged, and that is the most worrying aspect of this unhealthy adoration. An acquaintance of mine is a bear (I am not going to debate the rhetoric behind the terminology). The fact that his obesity is disguised by the use of cultural terminology, and the acceptance of this as “normal” has far-reaching implications that will only be changed by a huge cultural shift away from this behaviour. Eventually everyone subscribing to this culture will develop most, if not all, of the illnesses associated with obesity. There is no “might happen” about it. This acquaintance regularly posted pictures of himself in various stages of undress, and all the comments were of the “woof” variety. I have yet to read a comment from anyone encouraging him to start losing weight for the sake of his health. And I’m sure any negative comments would be met with a barrage of abusive comments about minding your own business, and what is “wrong with this normal guy”! Nothing like an unhealthy obsession to put the blinkers over peoples eyes. For the last twelve months I have kept my mouth shut – I really can’t see any sense in leaving myself open to abuse, even though a friends welfare is uppermost in my mind. I quickly flick past his massive underwear-clad posts on my newsfeed. After several months of health issues that had seen him avoiding medical help because he knew he would be told to lose weight, he has now been diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes. Naturally, all the comments about his health update have been sympathetic. Not one person has said…you didn’t expect this! I think he is very lucky it is only diabetes. I was expecting a heart attack. Only months ago his status updates on FB informed us of his driving to a nearby supermarket to stock up on pavlova or marshmallow flavoured ice-cream. That has changed rather quickly. To his credit, he has taken the scare seriously, has changed his diet and is losing weight. He now also advocates change amongst his peers.

So, there are several issues here. One important one is the quite deliberate action of contracting Type-2 Diabetes, a condition we know is avoidable by adopting healthy diet and exercise lifestyles. The incidence of this type of lifestyle-related diabetes is rising at an alarming rate. To actively be a member of a sub-culture that actually promotes this lifestyle aberration defies imagination. The cost to the healthcare system from the combination of this group (which is rising), and smokers (which is decreasing) is going to be staggering, and we will all have to bear the costs of both these irresponsible and selfish behaviours. It has nothing to do with personal choice, as much as these groups like to harp on about it. As soon as your lifestyle choices start to infringe on my health, or my ability to easily access good, affordable healthcare, then your choices are no longer personal. They are far-reaching.

I guess one can’t address the issue of bear-culture without looking at how it has come into being. The opposite extreme also has a lot to answer for. I, for one, am sick of looking at guys on fitness and health magazine covers, in gay magazines, in modeling, in movies, in advertising and even in pornography whereby the now accepted norm is over-emphasised washboard abs, and over-developed musculature that has nothing to do with a healthy body image. The sudden move towards this portrayal of the male physique as “normal” is as frightening and concerning as the move towards obesity. We don’t seem to be able to find a happy, healthy middle road. Given that maintaining this type of body is both time and money consuming – does in fact involve almost daily doses of gym and supplements (and for some, steroids) – and is not sustainable in the long term, it is surprising that it is promoted as much as it is. Whatever happened to men wanting to look trim, fit and healthy? Why the move away from developing lean muscle mass? Why a move away from diet and exercise that is both low maintenance, and sustainable long term? I really have no answer to that, other than to hope it is just a current “trend”. It certainly makes no sense to me. At my own gym I regularly see guys hefting huge amounts of weights, grunting and groaning and banging their way through routines, with no different an end result than my routine of combined isometric/Swiss exercise ball/body weight exercises, a method that does take longer to show results, but is easier to maintain and add to over a long period of time. As to diet, in our household it has been low-sugar/low-fat/portion-controlled for so long now that it is now lifestyle.

So, back to my acquaintance. If he had listened to the warnings, if he had seriously thought about the consequences of his choices, the outcome may have been – positively – different. To date, I have seen no signs of his fan club encouraging him. Indeed, I have to wonder just how many of them will hang around, just how many will give him a “woof” if he were to suddenly become fit and healthy. It has become notable that if parents who are obese have children who are obese, it is seen as normal. Society as a whole really needs a good kick up the arse. We don’t need to spend as much as we do on fast-food; we don’t need to eat as much as we do – we don’t heed to fill our dinner plates; we have to stop making excuses like time-poor, time-consuming and too hard as far as healthy food choices and preparation goes; we need to stop seeing exercise as something hard; and we need to stop looking at each other and thinking “they are bigger than me, so I must be all right”. We need to think of the health implications of decisions we are making NOW! Do we want to be fat; have mobility problems; increased risk of diabetes; coronary heart disease; risk of stroke; circulation problems; high blood pressure; loss of flexibility; breathing problems; low bone density; joint problems and replacements due to just wearing the joints out from having to carry all the weight around; and a multitude of other problems all of which are preventable by some simple lifestyle changes. Given the choice of a fit and active old age, or a quick decline into bad health and misery I know what my choice is! There are 168 hours in a week. Surely it is not too hard to devote two or three of those hours every week to exercise.

The HIV community is also faced with problems of obesity. There is some research into the problem that indicates that for many long-term survivors the problem is a flow-on from the dismal days of the 80s and 90s, when emaciated bodies were a common site. To them, over-weight means healthy. It appears that the longer people are healthy, the more common it becomes to end up over-weight or obese. This trend signals a need for doctors to change their approach to caring for HIV positive people. It’s time to shift the focus to the prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure and weight gain.

HIV positive people who need to lose weight must follow general weight loss recommendations. You must eat a balanced meal that does not exceed your caloric needs, and you still need to exercise and avoid junk food. If you are overweight and HIV positive, where should you start?
The best place to start a weight loss plan is a food diary. Knowing what you are eating, how much you are eating, and when and where you are eating can help you adjust your diet and eating habits. Each time you eat, be it a snack or a full meal, write down what you have eaten, how much, and under what circumstances. For instance, if you eat a bowl of chili at a party, write down how much chili you have, what’s in the chili, and the circumstances surrounding your eating the chili. Was it your dinner? Were you hungry? Or was a bowl offered to you and you ate it so not to insult your host? Enter your meal into the diary as soon as you can after eating. It is difficult to keep accurate records if you wait too long after eating. Not to mention we often underestimate the amounts we eat after too much time has past.
Like anyone who is overweight, adjusting what and how much you eat is the first step to weight loss. An all-too-common problem is that we try fad diets and quick loss diets that may work in the short term but do nothing to keep the weight off. The key to an effective diet is one that teaches you healthy eating habits that will serve you a lifetime. By learning healthy eating habits, you will take the weight off and keep it off for the long term. The bottom line: Watch your calories, your fat intake, and your portion sizes to maintain a healthy weight. If you find your are eating for reasons other than hunger, talk with your doctor or a dietitian. They can help you lose the extra weight and keep it off — and in turn that will help you live a healthier live with HIV.*

I wish my acquaintance well, and I’m truly sorry that his lesson had to be learnt the hard way. Should I have thrown caution to the wind and spoken up? Truth be told, it wouldn’t have made an iota of difference. His fan club would have beaten me down, and the cries of “woof” would have drowned out the voice of reason. People only hear what they want to hear. Until these attitudes change, until these sub-cultures are given their proper place and are not seen as ‘normal’ nothing is going to change, and stupidly, more people will get seriously ill. Time for a rethink people, before it is too late.

*HIV dietary information from http://aids.about.com/od/nutrition/a/obesity.htm

Tim Alderman
(C) 2013

An Outsiders Overview of the HIV “Industry”

December 3, 2014Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, HIV, HIV/AIDS, negative opinions on HIVtimalderman

This year marks, for me, 33 years of living with HIV/AIDS…though now it is just HIV. I consider it a landmark, as back in 1996 I was admitted to Prince Henry hospital with chronic CMV retinitis, chronic candida, chronic anaemia, wasting syndrome (48 kg and going down), 10 CD 4 cells, and no immune system, and was not supposed to leave…at least not under my own steam. I did, thanks to advances in medications at that time, very aggressive treatment and a lot of will power. I don’t give a fuck how negative many HIV+ guys are about life with HIV. For me, this was the great singular event of my life, a pivotal point that resulted in life-altering decisions, a mental overhaul, and the knowledge that there was a hell of a lot more to life than HIV. It altered the course of my life, and for better or worse I have never looked back.

I was a speaker for the Positive Speakers Bureau for 12 years before realising that when you continually tell a story you start doing it by rote. The time came to opt out before it becomes totally meaningless. I have also written for “Talkabout” magazine (the flag ship publication of Positive Life NSW – formally PLWHA NSW Inc) for 15 years, as a features writer and a columnist. I also spent many years on the Publications Working Group. As a writer I see my role as not only to inform people, but to provoke debate, at times to be opinionated, to raise questions, to address abuses and unfairness and to be, when required, controversial. Unfortunately, my time with “Talkabout” taught me that to get published in a HIV publication you need to walk the safe road. To be controversial is to be tolling your own death knell. Mind you, this censorship has nothing to do with the editors who, in my experience, have been nothing but supportive. Community Health and a certain AIDS council provide funding to the magazine, so to poke your nose into sensitive areas will ensure your censure and non-publication.

As a HIV+ person writing about HIV issues I have always found my hands tied. I have written two extremely controversial articles on HIV Issues over the years. One, on Options Employment Services using HIV clients as a free work force in the guise of “work experience” was so watered down after threats of suing PLWHA, the editor and myself (I truly wish they had) that by the time of publication was a mere shadow of its original fiery tirade…despite the fact that I had evidence of this going on.The manager even took me aside and “suggested” that I quieten down my opinions as they were providing a service to the HIV community. Shortly after, they went broke and disappeared. The second article was amongst the best pieces I have ever written, and covered the controversial area of bug-chasing (HIV- guys who deliberately have unprotected sex with HIV+ guys in the hope of contracting HIV). The magazines working group deemed that by writing about bug-chasing I may have been promoting it amongst a certain sector of the community. Considering that the practice is well documented, is acknowledged and exists I failed to see how being informative about it was in any way promoting it…oh shit! I forgot that community health and certain HIV organisations wanted to keep their heads buried in the sand about the issue…and they held the purse-strings. Censorship is alive and well within the HIV community and always has been. Want to tell the truth about what is going on or want to expose something? Not on their watch!

But despite this I continue to write, though I keep it to the more nondescript these days. I do enjoy being published! Since moving to Brisbane I have been phasing out my writing for “Talkabout” (which after 15 years of being published in pretty well every issue, has gone unacknowledged by the organisation itself, though not by the editors), and have started writing for QPP “Alive”, the magazine of Queensland Positive People. Same story, different place as far as funding goes, I’m afraid. Nothing controversial will be coming out of here either.

33 years ago at the start of the HIV shit fight, people never questioned anything about treatments, definitions, philosophies, or courses-of-action. We were in crisis mode and anything was better than nothing. We let a lot happen that in more sane times, in more accountable times, would never have been allowed to happen. This far down the line it is time to start asking questions, time to demand investigations and redefinition into many aspects of treatment, time to look back at some of the historical record and say “we were wrong”, and set the record straight. I no longer allow my doctor, or the HIV establishment, or the drug companies to dictate my path to health for me. I follow my own path, which is dictated to by knowledge and experience. 11 years ago I made a decision to halve my daily medications, and dose myself once a day only. Considering the negative impacts of huge amounts of HIV medication on the body I decided to take a risk. Well, this far down the line my health has never been better (though diet and exercise also contribute to that), my viral load has remained at undetectable, and not only has my CD4 count remained stable, it has in fact risen considerably. In fact, on my blood tests all other readings – except CD4/CD8 – are within range. Considering the recent emphasis on drug regime “compliance”, and considering my own circumstances, I am forced to ask – controversially, naturally – if the compliance issue is being driven by HIV specialists, or by the drug companies who stand to make a fortune out of HIV drugs. I will leave that question in the air for you to mull over and answer for yourself. This is a personal opinion, and one I am entitled to.

With the release of the brilliant “Dallas Buyers Club” the truth about AZT is finally out there. Pressured by my doctor to go on it in the latter part of the 80s, it is the one decision of my HIV care that I regret. I had read the report from the “Concorde” study in France, I knew it was described as “Human Ratsac”, yet I still finally gave in, and witnessed the immediate decline of my health as it bashed my immune system into submission. Needless to say, the long-term affects are disabling, and were not worth the risk. I still hear those who work in the HIV “Industry” – as indeed it was and still is – banging on about how it kept the wolf from the door – it didn’t! It poisoned and destroyed our immune systems, and left us vulnerable to opportunistic infection! It effectively killed many of us. As a drug to assist with maintaining CD4 counts it was a total and complete failure! And I am not the only one to say so! Ask any one who survived AIDS their opinion on AZT! Minor control of HIV did not start AZT situation. How the FDA in America handled the AZT situation and allowed wed the drug companies to dictate treatment options, block other drugs put out by rival companies, and chose to ignore or acknowledge research from overseas was a disgrace.

Even now in 2014 ignorance lives on. I continually hear, read and see HIV being described as AIDS! It is NOT AIDS – it Is HIV or HIV+! For fuck sake get your facts right! HIV is a viral infection, and AIDS are as the initials infer – Acquired IMMUNE Deficiency Syndrome! They are infections contracted by a breakdown of the immune system! The two do not necessarily go hand in hand, and you can have one without having the other. People undergoing aggressive cancer treatments which knock the immune system around are left vulnerable to the same infections triggered by AIDS in the plague years. Drug addicts also.

There are – and I am not being unkind nor ungrateful – those who have worked in the HIV Industry for too long. They are burnt out, and out of touch. If you only wander in HIV circles, you will only know that singular perspective. These people are indoctrinated, lacking in vision, and single-minded in their approaches to HIV and its management. They are blinkered, and only ever spiel forth statistics and the same information that we have heard for the last 30-odd years. They seem incapable of acknowledging different perspectives, new ideas, or revisiting and re-evaluating the old philosophies and education. Without an insurgence of new blood, HIV is in danger of stagnating and just at a dead end. Their current publicity of “Ending HIV” is a fantasy, and they know it. As long as HIV is in Africa, and in countries like Russia and China where education is almost non-existent or played down, HIV will never end. Empty words to seem to appear to be doing something, is just a waste of money. The HIV Industry seems to be very good at this. Always about 2-years behind actual need – just look at the employment needs of AIDS survivors in 1997/98 – when services were introduced they were way off course. You can only have so many programs that teach you how to write a resume, or attend an employment interview. Every single return-to-work session I went to do talks at had the same people in them. They just moved from one group to another, never putting the teaching into action. Where was the advice for people who wanted to be re-educated, or start a business, or upgrade a hobby,or buy into a franchise? It was non-existent. These people were the ones who fell through the cracks for lack of support and services. This has always been an ongoing problem. Naturally, the lack of funding is always blamed – though enough money to pay huge salaries – when really it is a lack of foresight, and imagination. Of course, everything is now wrapped up under the umbrella of Community Health, so any hope of imaginative thinking is now out the window. Those who hold the purse-strings control everything. It is a sad state of affairs. Groups like “Positive Life” no longer acknowledge their roots, nor do they move in the directions set down by the original founders. They are out of touch with their memberships, are indeed losing them. In the race to save money they are dropping resources that keep everyone active within the group. Even Positive Speakers Bureau inductees are now told what to talk about, and bang on about the same old messages and sprout the same old statistics. The trouble is…no one gets sick any more, so there is nothing to talk about for an hour. Perhaps it has outlived its use.

If one has to be totally frank, service delivery, information and services are no better now than they were 20 years ago! In many cases, they are worse. One friend of mine complains of the lack if easy access to HIV meds, and he has to spend a lot of time travelling to obtain them. He also comments on how he and his partner feel isolated and-reclusive due to no social groups to mingle with, and the constant heed to continually go through your medical record every time you change providers. Pretty sad state of affairs considering he only lives in Canberra.

Being my 33rd anniversary of life with HIV, and with World AIDS Day approaching I have written a personal retrospective of that period hopefully for publication around that time. It is 2,500 words long…not a lot of words for 33 years. If you are interested, follow the link. Not quite as controversial as this!

Getting On With It! A 33-Year Retrospective of Life with HIV/AIDS

For information on the Concorde Trial – http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/news/5/concorde-trial
Tim Alderman
(C) 2014

Dripping In Chocolate Pt.II

November 5, 2014Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, Nutritioneating, Health, healthy hints, healthy living, nuttitiontimalderman

In part one of this article I gave you a run down on the basic causes for an unhealthy life through bad nutrition, and the need to turn that lifestyle and thinking around.

You don’t have to turn vegetarian or vegan to eat nutritiously, though it can help and with the plethora of products and the amount of recipes now devoted to these areas of food it is certainly a more pleasant diet now than it was in the 70’s and 80’s with its slabs of eggplant and grilled vegetables slavered in some sort of boring tomato-based sauce. I have to confess to only being a “partial” vegetarian as I love poultry and bacon way too much to totally forgo them. However, my partner and I found we slipped into a predominantly vegetarian diet without really intending to. We have always eaten a lot of salads, and by taking out a lot of the red meat and substituting it wih cheeses, grains, legumes and pulses…yes, and tofu which isn’t nearly as bad as everyone likes to make out…we found we had nutritious, filling meals that more than satisfied us. Portion control is an important part of a good diet. Many of us have spent most of our lives eating a lot more food than we really need to. No wonder we are getting so fat as a nation. The fact that it is a dinner plate doesn’t mean it has to be filled to the edges! To stop doing this, use smaller plates, or move to deep bowls.

When you shop, as much as possible avoid the areas of temptation in the supermarket…oh how they love to trap you! Steer your trolley quickly through the cake, biscuit, prepared sauces, and lolly sections. Try filling it with fresh fruit and vegetables, lean cuts of meat and poultry, oil-free dressings (there is a huge range now), Weight Watchers products (buy their cookbooks from the newsagents. They are very creative and easy to prepare meals that you would be proud to entertain with), nuts and dried fruits, cereals that aren’t full of sugar, wholemeal flours, sugar substitutes (though Demerara and raw sugars are okay), whole grain breads, low-fat yoghurts, canned lentils, chickpeas and white beans (rinse well before using), tinned tomatoes, low-salt stocks and table sauces…all this will give you a good start. Make your own desserts and cakes using basic recipes and substituting bran oil or grape seed oil for butter, and using natural yoghurt instead of milk, apple purée or honey as a sweetener. There are heaps of recipes around if you don’t want to experiment yourself. Oh, and shout yourself some good quality tea, and dark chocolate as both are full of antioxidants. Doesn’t mean you can eat a whole block in one sitting…but be generous with yourself. Also, contrary to popular belief (but something I have always believed) current research encourages us to eat more dairy in our daily diet, and shows that it actually aids in weight loss. As a cheese lover, I am eternally thankful (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6413146/Eating-more-cheese-can-help-fat-people-lose-weight-study-claims.html). Eat fresh fruit or process it in smoothies in preference to drinking fruit juices. They are full of sugar, and because they are separated from the flesh you miss the benefits of the natural fibre.

Now, to the question of supplements. Dietitians recommend that fish or krill oil capsules, along with a multivitamin capsule be taken every day. The fish oil is great for Omega-3, coronary and brain health, along with aiding the reduction of cholesterol, and is important for joint health if you have a rigorous exercise program. A blood test at your doctors will indicate if you are deficient in any vitamins or minerals. It is useless taking these supplements if you don’t need them, as you will just piss them away.

Some hints;
You DON’T have to drink 8 glasses of water a day. There is absolutely no research to back this up, and in fact it seems that someone somewhere (possibly a bottled water salesman) decuded thatbthisvsounded likeva great thing to tell people to do, and presto, that is what everyone believes? The amount of liquids you need depends on what you are doing, and you need to look at what liquid you get from tea, coffee, milk, fruit and vegetables etc. it is as bad for you to imbibe too much water as to drink too little. The best way to judge it…if you are thirsty, drink!
It is best to eat meals after exercise and not before, but it depends on what time you do it. If early in the day, eat some carbs and protein (like a bacon and egg sandwich on wholegrain) when you have finished to stop you hitting the wall.
Don’t overload yourself with carbs at night; if eating potatoes, rice or pasta keep the portions small. Use kumera (sweet potato) as a potato and pumpkin substitute as it has less carbs. And remember not to eat more calories than you burn.
Don’t like eating fruit? Process it with some honey and top up with skim milk or organic apple juice to make a smoothie. Add a banana and you have lunch.
Sprinkle LSA (Ground Lindseed, Sunflower, and Almonds, available health food section of supermarket for about $3.00 for 250g) on your cereal, or add to smoothies or baked goods.
Eat berries including chia and goji. They are some of natures super foods; other foods that fall into the Superfood category are pomegranate juice (expensive and just sublime), Brazil nuts, walnuts, broccoli, oysters, eggs, salmon, red capsicum, soy and linseed bread, oats to name a few.
You don’t have to stop eating desserts or cakes. Make them yourself using low-fat recipes.
The best cheeses for healthy eating are Parmesan, Fetta, Goat’s cheese, Haloumi, Paneer, light ricotta, cream cheese, Quark and Pecorino.
Change to skim milk, light yoghurt, butter and cream, and use buttermilk in baking; Use Demerara, raw or muscovado sugar instead of white; Use wholemeal flour, brown rice, cous cous, pearl barley, polenta, faro, freekeh and quinoa.
Eat wholegrain, seeded or rye breads and rolls. “Burgen” bread is at the dearer end of the scale, but the breads are both delicious and healthy. Even my mother-in-law liked it. Also, check out artisan bakeries in your area for really great breads.
Change how you snack. Instead of chips, cakes, biscuits and sweets have fresh fruit, dried fruit and nuts, low fat/sugar health bars, low-fat yoghurts etc. If junk food is not to hand then you can’t reach for it when you want to snack. By stocking up on healthier options you will eat them instead. If you are already vegetarian, you should eat some nuts and seeds daily.
If you want to count calories (and if you are overweight it is a good idea to) you can download both iPhone and iPad apps to help you. CalorieKing is an Aussie app that means the foods are relevant to here, including fast-foods. It will connect you to their web site where you can join Calorie King for free, and by entering up a few details they will work out daily food plans for you. The only problem I have with sites like this is that it is time consuming to enter up your daily food intake and exercise (though if you do enter it all it will track whether you are under or over with your calorie intake). On the upside, you can save regularly eaten foods as favourites which makes the entry process faster.
Ensure you get 20-30 minutes of sun every day to promote the production of vitamin D in the body. Because sunlight is free, nobody who makes money from vitamin and sunscreen sales is going to promote exposure. It is an important vitamin to help prevent osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer and breast cancer. To read more go to http://www.naturalnews.com/003069.html. This amount of exposure every day without sunscreen is not going to harm you.
I am always banging on about Weight Watchers recipe books, and for good reason…they are fantastic. WW learnt long ago that if you want people to eat healthy food, it needs to be creative, tasty and easy to make. Their cookbooks fulfil all these criteria, and are a good way to learn portion control. They are heavily vegetable orientated, but in a good way. If there are two or three vegetables in a main dish, the accompaniment to the meal will always add another two or three. Some of their recipes are now amongst my favourites, including their Cheesey Cauliflower with Pancetta; Ricotta Gnocci with Fresh Tomato Sauce; Sweet and Sour Chicken; Lemongrass Prawns with Lime & Chilli Salt; Roasted Tomato Soup etc. get the message! They bring out new books regularly and are available from Newsagents. We use them to eat healthy low-fat, low-sugar portion controlled meals every day. My partner has shed kilo’s since adopting them. Use their Points System if you like, but it is not essential.

Some information on vegetarian diets. If you are considering becoming a vegetarian don’t be nervous about taking meat out of your diet. The vitamins and protein available from meat can also be obtained from dairy and vegetables (depending on whether you are a ovo-lacto vegetarian (no eggs or dairy), a vegan or a straight out vegetarian). It is no longer the 70’s and 80’s with totally uninspired vegetarian fare. Today, vegetarian recipes are creative, inspired and totally enjoyable. You’d be surprised what you can serve up to friends with no inkling, and no questions asked. Like all lifestyle changes, ensure that you read up about it or ask your doctor, nutritionist or dietician. The social stigma around vegetarianism has all but died, with more and more people opting for this healthy way to eat than ever before. The following links will provide you with some basic information that will help you realise that becoming vegetarian is not the hard work you think it is. http://www.fitwatch.com/nutrition/how-to-make-a-vegetarian-diet-well-balanced-and-healthy-125.html and http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/vegetarian_eating. There are a lot of recipe books out now for vegetarians, standard recipe book often contain vegetarian sections, and cafes and restaurants offer vegetarian options in their menu’s. My partner and I have not totally committed to the lifestyle but are probably about 80% vegetarian. We still enjoy the occasional hamburger, egg and bacon roll, and we still eat cold- cuts, fish and some poultry. How far you go with it is entirely up to you.

Remember, to be fit and healthy you need…healthy eating and exercise. It isn’t rocket science, it’s common sense. The keywords to kick start your new life are EXERCISE, LOW-FAT/LOW-SUGAR and PORTION CONTROL…and NO SMOKING.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2014

Dripping In Chocolate Pt.I

November 5, 2014Article, Health Information, Nutritiongoodness, Health, healthy eating, nutrition, tim aldermantimalderman

Sucked in!

Here you are thinking I’ve written an article on my love of chocolate and the sexually deviant things you can do with it, when in fact it is an article on nutrition. That is not to say that chocolate is not good for you in moderation, though a jar of chocolate body paint can cause all sorts of …outcomes, the least being weight gain.

Diet and exercise, diet and exercise! Don’t people like me love to bang on about it! Hardly a day goes by where at some stage you are not going to run into those three words. They are becoming a modern day dictum, and with the increase in morbid obesity (well, obesity in general really!) in modern society, expect to hear a lot more. It’s all well and good to roll your eyes, let your belt out another hole or two and start buying your clothes from the Big Men’s department in “Target”, but sooner or later you are going to have to pay the devil. If you are slim, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you will stay that way forever. Gravity will eventually have its wicked way, and it’s not going to be pretty!

A lot of the blame for our current move towards junk and fast food fixes is media and advertising driven. They keep telling us how time-poor we are, how busy our lives have become, and how we need to make things easier for ourselves. Fast food chains upsize deals and give you more and more junk for your buck (look for the healthy alternatives if you find yourself in one of these establishments.Everyone has them now). Cooking programs tell us that to be good in the kitchen we need a degree in Frnch cooking, every kitchen appliance that has ever been made, three hours to prepare a simple dinner, and a cuisine vocabulary that would befuddle the best of us. I’m a qualified chef and I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) be bothered with a lot of the kitchen antics that we are subjected to on television. Quite simply, the pure joy of food and cooking is being taken away from us.

And we can’t overlook the obvious…our food culture is tied into tradition, and our families. One is left feeling that the advent of “meat and three veg” as a basis for our meals arrived with the convicts, and hasn’t changed a lot since. Fortunately as a counter-balance our love affair with Asian food ever increases, and it is perhaps here we will find our way to a healthier diet.

For those contemplating a healthier lifestyle, especially losing weight, are unfortunately going to find that it is useless to exercise without changing your dietary habits, and vice versa. There is NO easy fix, so the desire to move forward and improve your lifestyle must first and foremost be a positive drive and desire on your part. Diets are, at their best, a short term solution to weight loss and at their worst are capable of actually damaging your health. They are alsounsustainable in the long term. The whole key to healthy eating is very simple…common sense, and not depriving yourself of the things you enjoy but eating them in smaller quantities at longer intervals. You may not believe me now, but eventually you will lose the desire to eat a lot of these things at all. Good, healthy eating is about variety, what you cook, what you put in it, how you cook it and how much you serve. Recent advise suggests that we are better off eating 5-6 small meals a day instead f the three large meals we currently eat. And don ‘t forget; breakfast IS the most important meal of the day!

HIV people face a number of problems as far as nutrition goes, and like the condition itself varies from person to person. We are beginning to understand that long term dosing with our medications can potentially have serious health implications. You dan’t take the number of pills we are prescribed over a long period of time (for many of us it is going to be a period of 40+ years) and not expect some problems, especially coronary, renal, mental, and the possibility of cancers. It worries me, so I’m sure it worries you! I have made a lot of drastic changes to my life, albeit at this late stage when I’m approaching 60. It is no longer good enough to shovel in the meds, put on heaps if weight, eat unhealthy food, sit around doing nothing and expect everything to tick along nicely forever. You simply can’t live from blood test to blood test, and expect things to get better if you don’t take the actions to help improve the situation.

So as an ageing HIV demographic, what are the things we need to concern ourselves with, and keep an eye on? Well, the sme old culprits that we have all been trying to pretend aren’t the problem. High cholesterol (the bad type); too much fat, sugar and salt in our diet; too much processed food especially in the form of quick-fix meals, canned and bottled pantry items; way too much fast food of the unhealthy kind; and a tendency to see cooking, especially just for yourself, as a chore. Few people stop to think that it takes about 15-30 minutes to heat a ready-made meal. You can make a healthy salad with grilled or pached chicken and oil-free dressing, or a stir fry in the same time…and be a lot healthier for it. I know from personal experience in the past that a daily intake of cigarettes, alcohol and shit food is not going to give me the nutrition to lead an active, fulfilling life…yet still we do it – or at least USED to do it. So I’m her to give you some strategies for change, simple effective ways to shed the kilo’s, and get those blood test results scoring an A+…and it ain’t gonna hurt a bit. Well, maybe a little bit!

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2014

Seeing In Time

November 4, 2014Gay Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDSAIDS, blind, CMV, HIV, hospitals, legal, vision-impairedtimalderman

This article – now edited – was written in 2001. I intended to sue St Vincent’s for causing my loss of sight by not testing me for CMV in 1996. I had been given a list if solicitors by HALC (HIV/AIDS Legal Centre), and had picked one out. It was pro bono, and I had several discussions with him. However, charges such as searches and photocopying etc were my responsibility and when the first bill for $1500 came in, I just had to drop it. 13 years on, the predicted retinal detachment has happened and a lot if other shit besides. I am now contemplating having my left, totally blind eye, removed and replaced with a prosthetic. What happened here was just an introduction!

I have come to realise, perhaps a bit late in life, that you spend far too much time bending in the general direction of things instead of sticking up for yourself and saying no, this is not what I want, or the way I want things to go!

I have decided to sue a local hospital. That I have chosen to do this has come as a tremendous shock to me, though those around me seem to have been waiting for me rectify what has been, for me, a life changing event.

By 1996 I had accepted that sooner or later, AIDS was going to get me. What I hadn’t counted on was that St. Vincent’s hospital was going to assist in my chances of survival! – and in the one ward they had where I always felt I would be safe – Ward 17, the dedicated HIV/AIDS ward.

It was a sudden change in health status that delivered me to the A&E department. I had collapsed outside my apartment building, gasping for breath, clutching my chest, thinking that a heart attack was going to beat AIDS to the crunch, or that PCP had finally caught up to me, as it seemed to do to all in my state. It turned out to be neither – I had a collapsed left lung, though being HIV, they moved me into Ward 17 after inserting a tube to keep the lung inflated. Most of us assume that we go into hospital to be cured of health problems, or at least receive a better standard of medical care to assist you to a slightly higher standard of health than you have when you enter. Well…I have to tell you it doesn’t always happen that way!

I firmly believe that some people go into health care because they truly believe in what they are doing. They truly believe they can make a difference, that they can benefit people who are ill or are disabled. These people are not professors of medicine, do not have a fancy examination room with a prestigious address, and are not heads of departments. The well-heeled medico’s who share these attribute have strings of initials after their names. They do ward rounds with a string of nose-in-the-air arse lickers and sycophants. St Vincent’s at this time had more than its fair share of the latter, and unfortunately, some of them were in HIV medicine!

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I was just in hospital with a collapsed lung – it was more complicated than that. I was in the midst of changing doctors, so didn’t actually have a GP when I was admitted to Ward 17. My scripts for AZT had just run out, I had chronic anaemia, chronic Candida, and weighed in at about 50-something kilos. In other words, I was a very sick boy. Now, under normal circumstances, with a CD4 count of about 10, they would test and examine you for ALL AIDS related illnesses – PCP, CMV, MAC, neurological and psychological problems. For some unknown reason. Sure, they treated – and eventually repaired – the collapsed lung. They tested me for PCP – negative result – and gave me a blood transfusion, but that was it. No eye examination, no dietician, no occupational therapist – no, that’s a lie, I did have one session with an OT, and though she promised other sessions – she never quite madeit back.

So I lay there for 10 days, drifting in and out of sleep, as you tend to do when you are in this bad a condition, suffering in silence the daily ward rounds with a
professor who seemed more interested in prestige than care, with his little band of sycophants, who seemed to assume that this was what was expected of theM. No one seemed to particularly care, so I was thankful for friends, for without them I think I would have gone mad.

Death seemed pre-ordained at this time I felt I had outlived everyone else anyway, and that my time was drawing to a close. I had predicted 2 years when I quit work to go on the pension in 1993, and had managed 3, so in many respects I felt I had survived beyond expectation, and short of a miracle, I was going through the final stage of my life. I was, to all intended purposes, fulfilling expectation.

So, with a repaired lung, a couple of pints of fresh blood, and some Candida medication, I was discharged 10 days later. No HIV medications, no doctor. I had my discharge papers sent to a local HIV GP, who I didn’t know from a bar of soap, hoping that she would feel sorry for me, and rush me through the waiting list. Thankfully, she did just that!

Two days out of hospital, and her receptionist rang to say my discharge papers had arrived, and that even though they didn’y know who I was, the doctor wanted to see me. I would like to think, in hindsight, that this was almost like some sort of sign, as having my hospital discharge sent to her was an act of providence that probably saved my life.
As soon as I mentioned to her that my vision had been ‘greying over’ for a couple of weeks, she was immediately on the phone to the Prince of Wale’s Hospital Eye Clinic at Randwick. They promised that somebody would stay back at the end of clinic until I arrived to have my eyes checked. They thought at that stage that I had CMV retinitis, but could not be certain enough to confirm the diagnosis. I had to travel to Hurstville the next day to see a leading ophthalmologist, an expert in CMV. He confirmed the diagnosis, and by the time I arrived home that afternoon, their was a message to ring the doctor. She wanted me admitted to Prince Henry Hospital straight away.

Prince Henry added other health items to the list St Vincent’s had. On top of chronic anaemia and Candida, and my 10 CD4 cells, they added chronic bilateral CMV retinitis, and Wasting Syndrome. Pandemonium was about to strike, but at least this time I felt as though people cared. Prince Henry was much more grounded in reality than St Vincent’s, and whatever my prognosis may have been – mortality was never discussed – they went out of their way to help me. Sure, I had a drip in both arms, was being transported to Prince of Wales twice a week for intraocular injections of ganciclovir, and I was a bit of a guinea pig because of my condition – medical students must love people like me, as we become a living text book – but they did care. I had a dietician who planned meals and snacks for me, and nurses on hand to help me during my night sweats. I even had a reporter from Japan interview and photograph me, as he was doing a piece to be published in Japan. After seeing me, he was concerned that the Japanses ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude to HIV/AIDS was something to be seriously concerned about.

To be honest, the two weeks in Prince Henry gave me a different perspective on many aspects of life. There was the guy in the room next to mine – I had a huge room to myself in Marks Pavilion, and the windows looked out over Beauty Bay – who had terminal cancer. Not once, despite whatever he may have been going through, did I hear him complain or whinge about his lot. He virtually lived in the hospital, and even had his own stereo moved in with him. And the young guy who was at the opposite end of the ward to me. He also had CMV, but fuck, he was so young, so innocent! We sat together in the eye clinic one day, and he grasp[ed my hand, cuddled up to me, and cried. I wanted to give him some hope, but I would have felt like such a hypocrite. I didn’t know if their was hope for me at that stage, let alone try to give it to someone else who I knew was worse off than I was.

Well, they saved my sight – sort of! The injections, and eventually $10,000 worth of ‘Vitrasert’ ganciclovir implants managed to save the sight in my left eye. As for my right eye, the optic nerve was damaged by the CMV, and despite efforts on everyones part, I lost 80% of the vision in it, and the impact on my life has been…disconcerting. I have regular checks every few months now, and I have to be careful not to bump my head hard on anything. The scar tissue in the left eye is so dense that they are concerned now about me ending up with a detached retina. I’ve also had two operations to remove cataracts caused by the implants. They originally estimated a 4% chance of cataracts from the implants, but 12 months later this prediction was upgraded to a 100% chance. Some odds you can’t beat.

But this has been the least of my worries. Sure, my right eye has, in some respects, compensated for the loss of vision in my left, but not entirely. It took me twelve months to adjust, but that twelve months was not without incidents, such as tripping over some tree roots in Crown Street, and landing flat on my face in front of some people coming in the opposite direction. I also tripped and stumbled a great deal as my vision tried to compensate for a change in everything, including perspective. Stairs with contrasting edging strips became ramps – at least from my perspective – and ‘I’m sorry!’ became part of my everyday vocabulary as I bumped and staggered my way around. That is something that even 5 years down the line, I have never quite gotten used to. This would not be the first time I have stated that in some respects, it would have been easier to have ended up completely blind. At least that way, I would have a white cane, or a dog, and people would know I was definitely blind, and not give me condescending looks every time I run into someone. For some unknown reason, it has always ended up my fault. I just accept.

Rules of our household – don’t leave anything sitting low on the floor, or hanging to my left when I don’t know it is there. When walking down the street, keep to my right. If you don’t keep to that side, expect me to keep moving to ensure you are there. Go into the city? Not on my own these days. As much as I love the city, and love to watch it grow, it is a place for people in a rush, not a place for people who are visually impaired. Too many people, too many doorways for them to rush out of, and too many people crushing into confined spaces. I miss it very much, but it is not a place for me anymore. I shop locally, and that is hazardous enough for me. Do anything during the peak hour rush? Not likely these days. I had to meet David at 6.00 at the Entertainment Centre, to attend a couple of concerts. I actually mapped out a way to get there that would have a minimum of people that I would have to avoid. I go to daytime lectures and tutorials at UTS to avoid travelling too and fro during peak hours. I’m also trying to get them to contrast edge-strip the black granite stairs in the Tower Building, so that visually impaired people can see where the stair edges are. That is one fight I may yet win. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget that I kick small children.
David, who is my partner, and I went for a walk down Hall Street, leading to Bondi Beach, for one reason or another – we were probably looking for somewhere to eat breakfast. Sure enough, for a split second, I wasn’t watching where I was going and the next thing I knew, this kid had run straight onto my foot as I took a step forward. He just came out of nowhere, as kids do, and I managed to literally lift him into the air with the forward motion of my step, and launched him off to the side of the footpath. Thankfully, he landed in the grassed area around some trees growing on the footpath. I would hate to think what may have happened if he had landed on the footpath itself. I don’t know who got the biggest fright – the kid, myself, the kid’s father, or David. The father came running as I picked the kid up to make sure he was okay, but the look on the father’s face said it all – It was my fault, and I should have been watching where I was going. Even an explanation that I was
partially blind, and hadn’t seen the kid coming didn’t seem to sit well with him, nor did a multitude of apologies. Now, I dare say the kid probably forgot the incident 10 minutes after it happened, but It is still a nightmare with me. Whenever I think about the state of my eyes, that is the one instant that comes straight to mind. It’s not just the incident with the kid – I’m aware of that. It is that in some way, these sorts of things happen to me everyday, though fortunately with larger adults, not small kids. Despite all my precautions, despite taking my time getting around, despite walking metres up a street to use crossings or lights, despite great care at intersections I feel it is only a matter of time before I either seriously hurt somebody, or they seriously hurt me.

So I’m not just going to sit back and cop it sour anymore. Somewhere along the line, in a hospital, on a particular time on a particular day, somebody, for whatever reason, decided not to do something, and now I’m paying the price. Well, it’s time for someone to pay for their oversight, and the time to pay is NOW! My health is as good as it’s going to get at the moment, and with it being unlikely that I will ever return to full-time work, or to any job that requires me to get stressed, it is time to take action. I’m not going to ignore it anymore, or pretend that it just didn’t happen. It did, and my life has never been the same since.

Personally, I think that they, like Prince Henry, and certainly me, never expected me to live, so just doing a minimum of care in 1996 may have been acceptable practise, especially in an area of medicine that has always been cash strapped. But I didn’t die! I am well and truly alive, and the time for revenge is at hand. I hope that at the end of the day, they will learn several lessons. Never assume anything; never underestimate the strength of the human will, and mind; and never think people are just going to forget about it! We Don’t!

Tim Alderman
Copyright ©2001

Reclaimations

October 1, 2014Article, General Interest, Health Informationageing, fitness, gym, Health, nutritiontimalderman

Getting older is one of those things that seems to have caught up with me very quickly. One minute I was 40, then 50 and now at 57 rapidly approaching 60. I’m not complaining. I’ve survived AIDS (with a couple of disabilities but nothing to hold me back), and when all is said and done I am really enjoying the experience of getting older, the quietening down of life and the intuitiveness that seems to come with it. HIV is no longer something I feel concerned about – in fact, it is very much a backwater in my life. Everything is under control, and has been for a long time, so as far as I am concerned it is no longer an issue. It is just something that is, and is so integrated into my life that it is not a seperate issue.

However, there are aspects of ageing that I have not liked. I may be approaching 60 but there is much about the contemporary world that I love – like the latest music (and I still collect dance music) and technology and all the wonders it brings for starteres. I still like to dress well (though I try to avoid the mutton dressed as lamb scenario), I still groom myself well and like the fact that despite my age I can still look pretty good when I hit the streets. However, 12 months ago I started to notice things about my body that were in stark contrast to what I liked to think and feel about myself. Having been blessed with good genes that have allowed me to keep all my hair (most of it in its original black shade) and for most of my life a slim profile I was disconcerted to find that gravity was finally having its wicked way and changing – for the worst – my body shape. I was becoming flabby with a very discernable spare tire waistline, flabby tits, mishapen arse and bad posture. I was actually starting to look so “old” that it was starting to depress me and really knocked my self-esteem around. It also didn’t fit in with how I dressed and groomed myself and I was really aware of the fact that I wouldn’t go out in anything that clung to me, or in anyway showed off my body shape. To make matters worse, I started to go up in clothing sizes (from SM to M in shirts, and from 32” trousers and shorts to 34”. I wasn’t happy! Other nasty things that were happening were finding myself sitting on the edge of the bed to put on trousers and shorts, having my partner comment on how bad my posture was getting (that was a real “shit – is it” moment), and the doctor had started me on cholesterol meds, which was an additional pill that I really wasn’t happy about having to take.

Like others that I know, when I lived in the Eastern Suburbs in the 80’s and 90’s, I made a decision (despite the fashion for toned bodies at the time) to avoid going to the gym. They were places full of gay guys who were there not to get fit but to mould themselves into an image of what it was preceived that gay men looked like. They posed, preened, plucked, depilated and fake-tanned, and when they went oiut to the bars, only ever hung around with, and picked up, guys who looked like themselves. I made sure I hung around with the scrawny brigade so as not to feel out of place. It was a form of body fascism that I disliked then, and still do. However, a move to the outer edges of the Inner West brought about a change in my thinking and perceptions. With the body rapidly getting out of shape, with my self-esteem taking a beating, and with the prospect of 60 looming (and a potentially rickity ride into an unhealthy mature years) it was time to do something about it, so it was off to the gym in Marrickville. The fact that I added the word ‘gym’ to my vocabulary was a good start.

I loved – and still do – the gym, which sort of came as a bit oif a shock to me. From the word go I was made to feel comfortable, and a lot of the fallacies that I attributed to going to the gym were dispelled. To start with, no one else cares about what you are doing, and nobody is actually watching and assessing you (except yourself). Everyone else is too busy doing their own thing, and are too much in their own world to care about what you are up to. I had an initial assessment with a personal trainer who in no way criticised how I
looked, but she did help me to set some goals – the major ones being that I wanted to get fit, I wanted to loose excess fat, generally tighten my whole body up, fix my posture and inprove my general health. I wanted to reclaim my hips and arse, both of which had long ago disappeared. In other words, I had a determination to transform myself. And at 72kg, I wanted to do all this without losing weight, as weight wasn’t the problem. The other encouraging thing I found about just going to a local gym was the number of other mature aged men and women who were there, and really working hard and doing their best to get fit and healthy. There is now a few older role models around to encourage us to do something about being fit and older. Actors like Rob Lowe (God, how hot is that man), Rick Springfield (who despite his demons looks fabulous for someone in his 60’s), and dare I say it – Tony Abbott (hate his politics but admire him for his committment to fitness) – have given us a new way of looking at ourselves as we get older.

So, having set goals, and having been given a regime to follow, it was off to the beginners studio for a 10 week starters program. The first week…I suffered. Every muscle ached, and I looked at the piss-weak weights I was starting with, and wondering if I was ever going to be able to do things at the heavier end. And don’t think it doesn’t get tedious! Doing the same routines over and over again can get very boring. I started to vary things myself, made a lot of changes to what had been set out for me and found that helped me to get through the boredom barrier. I started going three days a week, for 1 hour each visit. And I bloody worked hard! Nothing was going to deter me from my goals. Within 7 weeks of starting, the miracles began. I was using a lot of resistance equipment, and found that the weights started to increase. The spare tire didn’t just reduce – it disappeared. I noticed my pecs tightening up and starting to show a firm profile, muscles appeared in my arms. My energy levels also increased, as did my flexibilty. My self-esteem started to go through the roof, and in turn this promted me to work harder, to really start to challenge myself. At the end of the 10 weeks, I looked fantastic. I couldn’t believe just how different I looked and felt. It was noticeable at the gym how regular I was and how hard I worked, and the gym staff gave me a lot of encouragement.

So, after the 10 weeks in the beginners studio it was time for another assessment, and a harder program of work, starting in what I jokingly called “the big boys room” where all the weights and serious resistence equipment are. I continued to flog myself three days a week (still for a total of three hours a week), and the changes continued. I was still having some problems getting a flat stomach (I wasn’t after a six-pack…I could probably get one but at my age it would be a constant battle to maintain it) so the tweaking of our diet at home started. Now, I’m sure everyone knows from my last column that I cook, so doing a diet tweak wasn’t a big issue as I knew that I had the recipes to over-ride any chance of blandness or boredom. I should point out that I don’t approve of diets, especially fad ones, but I do believe that you can create a healthy diet for yourself without going to extremes, without adding supplements, and without cutting out carbs and proteins. Your body needs these things to function properly – it is all a matter of proportion and balance. We cut out a lot of fatty foods, a lot of sugar (I have a terrible sweet tooth so this wasn’t easy), and increased the amount of raw vegetables, fish and poultry in our diet. This helped a lot, as well as a lot of repititions on the Ultimate Abdominal machine at the gym, and a lot of suspension work (whereby you suspend yourself, and lift your legs as high as you can for as long as you can, or hold your legs out at a 90° angle – you can really feel the pull on your abs). So I pulled, and pushed and strained and grunted through the main weight floor of the gym for the next 3 months.

By this stage, I have to say that I was starting to find it harder and harder to get myself to the gym to go through the routines. I realised that I needed to add some sort of variety to my program, so at New Years weekend this year I decided to do my first class. I looked at all the alternatives, and assessed what I thought I could do, and couldn’t do. I have done yoga before (and enjoyed it) but felt that it wasn’t dynamic enough to maintain the body profile I was aiming for. I still haven’t tried pilates, but it is on my list. Anything that involved balance was out (I have peripheral neuopathy…the numb type, not the painful. This means I have no feeling in my feet and ankles), anything involving too much co-ordination was out (I’m unco-ordinated at the best of times), and anything done in dark rooms – such as Spin – was out, as I’m partially blind and have night-blindness. So, this left me with Body Pump, a class that involves work with weights, and is very dynamic and very muscle and cardio-orientated. You really push your heart rate up doing these classes. I found I really loved Pump, and have stuck with it right through to now. I avoid lunges (for balance reasons), and do squats instead, which means a double session of squats every class, which can really push you to your limits, especially when you have 25- 28 kgs of weight sitting on your upper back to add to the challenge. The routine (all Les Mills classes are done in most gyms these days, so it doesn’t matter where you go, you will always know what to expect from a class) changes every three months, so just as you are getting bored with it, it changes. So, I started doing two morning classes a week (on Monday and Friday, and usually the token male in the class at that time of day), and did one day a week in the weight room to work whatever muscles didn’t get worked in the class. Having just moved from Sydney to Brisbane, I found the break in routine, and to a new gym and environment a bit unsettling.I have just got back into my two Pump classes, and will probably get back to my resistence work sometime in the next couple of weeks.

So, what has the end result of all this been. To be honest, the result has been staggering. I still look in the mirror and think to myself “Is that really you?”. I have my hips and arse back big time, and can walk around in a singlet without feeling embarrassed. I have pecs, I have muscled arms and legs. My posture has improved, as has my energy levels and my flexibility. I have gone off my cholesterol meds. My self esteem has gone through the roof, and I can honestly say that I feel absolutely fantastic, and that is reflected in how I look and dress. I have come to realise that there is more to me than I ever thought there was – I can set goals and challenges and achieve them, I can push myself beyond my limits when I have a reason to, and that I can establish routines and stick to them when I have an end objective. I now feel that I can go into my elder years truly fit and healthy, and that in many ways that is going to help cut back the risks that I would have faced without going through this metamorphisis. I can move forward knowing that I am still flexible, that high blood pressure and cholesterol aren’t going to plague me, and that problems that result from being over-weight have pretty well been eliminated.

What would I recommend to other guys my age? If you smoke…STOP! If you have a bad diet…FIX IT – it’s not rocket science. Don’t think that walking the dog is all you need to do – if you are over-weight, do something about it. Look at the long-term, not the short. It is not about having the body beautiful (though it helps) it is about being fit and healthy, and prolonging your prospects for good health and wellbeing as you progress through the years. Don’t think (like I did) that looking fit and healthy is just for the young. The flow-on affects of a good exercise routine are endless, both in your public and private life. Look good and feel good – you’ll thank yourself for it.

Eat To Your Health

October 1, 2014Article, Health Information, Nutritionfitness, Health, healthy eating, nutritiontimalderman

In my last column I talked about starting out at the gym as a way to start getting your fitness on-track, and since that was written there have been several articles out in HIV journals stating that diet and exercise are important for guys (and girls) in an ageing HIV population to promote a longer and healthier road to old age, and as a way of fighting off problems associated with obesity and bad diet. As a population in general, obesity is a big problem, especially as we get older, and lazier. One of the things that prompted me to get off my arse and start doing something about my health was observing people around me who were my age or older, and telling myself “that is NOT how I want to end up” as an older person. I don’t want to be fat, and wear my trousers up around my nipples; I don’t want to be stooped and crippled, relying on Zimmer frames and mobility scooters; I don’t want to have to rely on others to help me get about and just get through my everyday life; and I don’t want to be shuffling around and taking all day to move from one place to another. I saw a LOT of this in elderly people, and for me…it’s just not on!

Okay, so hopefully we have prompted some of you to start looking after your weight and mobillity. I brushed over diet in the last article, but in reality exercise and diet go hand-in-hand, even more so as you get older. It is such an easy matter to tweak your diet from unhealthy to healthy that I often wonder why people think it is so hard. There is very little that you have to give up in a balanced diet, though the emphasis does change from one of ‘oh, that is too much trouble’ to one of ‘okay, I’ll give that a go’ if you know you will achieve positive results.

I would like to think that we had all moved on from the diet we were presented with as we grew up, especially those of us brought up with the “meat and three veg” mentality of the 50’s and 60’s, though I do know of guys my age who still stick to that prescription, and have NEVER ventured outside the box. The move from ‘bad’ eating to healthier eating for me occurred with the discovery of Asian cuisine.The entire Asian approach to cooking (despite being a bit preparation – intensive, though fast to cook) with using all the proteins, plus fresh herbs and vegetables and sauces that were both tasty and healthy appealed to me from the very beginning. It is strange how my foods have changed over time, from a heavily red meat orientated style of cooking to a more poultry, fish and almost, on accasions, vegetarian styled cuisine. This was never intentional, it just seemed to happen, especially enhanced by the new exercise regimes I was putting myself through. As I mentioned in my last piece, I have a severe sweet tooth. I am one of those people who reads the dessert menu first in a restuarant, then decide what else to order from there. I have a weakness for potato chips, donuts, finger buns, cheese, chocolate and little cakey things from cafe’s. Have I given all this up in the rush for a better diet? Not on your life, though I do eat them in moderation these days. I have had finger buns twice this year – quite a severe deprivation for me, though I can’t say the same for chocolate. Full of antioxidants (I love really dark, bitter chocolate) is my excuse. So, what have I done to improve my diet? Nothing terribly radical, I have to say. To start with, I have never really followed diets, though did give the CSIRO diet a good bash, though I found it a bit too heavy with protein for my evolving tastes. I have to say it did work, and both myself & my partner lost weight while on it. I am currently personally promoting the Weight-Watchers recipe books, which are available from most newsagents. They started putting recipe books out about 10 years ago (originally only available through the WW organisation), and even then I was impressed with the variety and range of their recipes. I don’t follow their points system, though you can if you like – I just like theirrecipes, and they cover everything from breakfasts, to light meals, to main meals, desserts and snacks. They are one organisation that has moved with the times. There is a heavy emphasis on vegetables in their recipes which I personally like. So, what else can you do to help improve your eating habits? Eat a lot of fresh, raw leafy vegetables. With summer coming on, our diet will shortly go almost totally salad. It isn’t boring – there are many recipe books around now that just concentrate on healthy and interesing salads. Cut down on the amount of sugar and fats that you use for cooking. Use “Splenda” if you require a sweetener (it can be used for baking): substitute wholemeal plain & SR flour in baking: swap over to other oils for cooking such as Azalea, rice bran or grapeseed oils; use yoghurt and oil as substitutes for milk or cream in cooking; don’t overcook vegetables – vege cooking is one area where microwave ovens are great. Vege’s should still be a bit crisp when served; dry fry where possible, or grill; gives things like tofu a go – ignore the bad press, and make decisions for yourself (though I still hate soy milk). Cut back on coffee and drink tea instead. Limit alcohol consumption without going ‘dry’. All this will not cause miracles, but will be a good start and will give you the impetus to trial things yourself. A good, well-balanced diet will mean that you shouldn’t have to take supplements, though it seems to be very fashionable to do so. It is true that some ARV’s do cause depletion of certain vitamins and minerals in the body, though discuss this with a doctor or dietician before starting up on any supplement regimes. Don’t do things just because your friends do!

Now, for the big question! Do I believe in Superfoods? The short answer is…yes! The term “Superfoods” is used to denote foods that are packed full of nutrient and cover the gammit from exotic to mundane. The latest list includes Acai and Goji berries (it is well-reported that ALL berries are good for you and jam-packed full of goodies to help your skin, brain and heart, as wel, as helping to lower cholesterol; Coconut water which doesn’t taste half bad, and comes with some yummy additives these days – considered fashionable, especially amongt gym junkies; Probiotic cheese though I’d rather stick to a good sharp cheddar or a gooey brie myself; Omega-3-rich milk though there are other ways to get Omega-3, such as fish or fish oil capsules. If you do go to gym regularly, taking these fish oil capsules can help with your heart health as well as joint protection (not to mention assisting memory); Maitake mushrooms (yes, you read that right), though mushrooms in general are very good for you; Vine-ripened tomatoes, though the health benefits of tomato-rich diets are well known now – and how can you hate tomatoes!; Blue-Green Algae (Spirulina) is one I’ll pass on, thanks!; Yerba Mate (a South American tea) is something I’ve tried, but haven’t developed a taste for. There is quite a ritual involved in preparing it; Pomergranate juice expensive but oh so gorgeous and addictive it;s worth going into credit card debt for; and brazil nuts, which fortunately for me come in blocks of chocolate, so yeah, I eat them. I highly recommend you doing some internet research on superfoods, then pick out the ones you enjoy and include them in your diet.

So, the rules for good healthy eating are:
• Keep it fresh – fresh vegetables are not expensive, so stock up and learn to be creative. USE RECIPE BOOKS, don’t just steam and boil things…boring!
• Don’t deprive yourself of treats, just cut back on how often you have them. Keep health bars or trail mix in the cupboard for when you get those junk cravings – it works.
• If you get that ‘do I have to eat that’ thought when you are cooking a meal, then don’t cook it. If you don’t enjoy it you are not going to want to eat it. Nothing worste than making meals a chore.
• Cut back on fats and sugar – don’t cut them out, just rethink them. Remember that fruit juices are not always a healthy, sugar-free option.
• Don’t overcook foods like proteins and vegetables – you cook all the nourishment out of them by overcooking.
• Shout yourself a take-away occasionally – even I go to Hungry Jacks 2-3 times a year.
• Don’t cut out carbs and proteins from your diet – your body really needs them to function properly. If like me you go to gym early in the day, have a bacon and egg toastie after, and don’t feel guilty about it. Without the carb & protein hit you will go home and hit the wall. You burn a LOT of calories when you exercise.
• Eat as many raw vegetables as you like – they are so good for you.
• Don’t knock frozen and canned vegetables and pulses. Most vege’s are snap-frozen, and are often healthier than cooking them yourself. If you buy tinned beans and lentils, rinse them thoroughly before eating.
• Look at vegetarian options – you may be surprised. It is no longer the 70’s and 80’s, and slabs of eggplant with a melange of bland steamed vegetables.
• Buy wholegrain bread instead of white. Your body needs to work to get through all those seeds, so you feel full for longer. Also, rye breads and malted breads.
• I still like my full-cream milk, but there are plenty of options now. Don’t get caught up with all the trendy additives etc in milk now – these are things that are present in a balanced diet, and they really shouldn’t be in milk

Whatever you do, enjoy your food. It is one of life’s pure pleasures. But, like sex, think before you put it in your mouth!

Daily (Or When the Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Sugar and Junk Addiction. Obesity? What Obesity?

September 24, 2013Health Informationtimalderman

Sugar, salt and junk processed foods! As you do your weekly grocery shop, have you stopped, looked and contemplated how your local supermarket encourages you to buy shit food? Whether intentional – money and profits would never come into it, would they! – or just demand-driven, they are, in a very large part, contributing as much to the obesity epidemic as fast-food chains are.

So grab your shopping trolley – watch the wonky wheels – and lets shop. We start in the deli/fresh fruit and vege section. Probably the worst things I can say about this section is that a lot of the deli meats contain nitrites that aren’t good for you in large amounts, and the ready-made salads should be avoided as they are quantity produced, so full of salt in the dressings not to mention fat. The fruit and veges are, in the greater part, not fresh from the farmer but from cold storage so are depleted in nutrients, and generally don’t last all that long when you get them home.

On the borderline of this section, and before you hit the aisles are eggs – avoid caged at all costs, and encourage the supermarket not to stock them…not that this will stop them, as they are cheap so customers buy them – “fresh” cakes, biscuits and bread are lined up for you to grab. “How convenient”, you will think! Sure is, and lots of specials on things like slices, biscuits and donuts, all mass-produced, all full of sugar and fat. Handy positioning in fump-bins so that kids can grab them in passing. As you turn into the bread section, if you bother to glance to your far left you will see a chiller section for everything soy/tempeh/vegetarian orientated – in a need-to-know position as…well..we don’t want to promote that, do we! And we turn into the fresh baked bread section – not! As we found out recently, and rather controversially, none of it is actually freshly made. The partially cooked products come from places as far away as Ireland. Why they can’t be baked here is anybodies guess, though agsin, undoubtedly, it comes down to profits. Not being freshly made, it is going to be lacking in wholesomeness and nutrients. Already we are starting to put on weight.

So we turn into our first aisle. Bread, including “white death” – my terminology for any white bread. If people haven’t learnt by now, they are not going to. There is probably one healthy brand there. Opposite are ” Health” bars…a misnomer if ever there was one. Again, about two reasonably healthy brands. The rest are full of sugar, fats and artificial products. Hint – if they are made by a company that also makes cereal, avoid them! At the end of this aisle are health foods, and possibly the only genuinely healthy products you will find in here, despite my sceptacism that the supermarkets house branded organic products are possibly not all that organic. Let’s face it – the term is trendy, and generic now. The end positions of these aisles are populated by catalogue specials – chocolates, soft drinks and chips.

We now hit the cereal aisle. A whole side of the aisle. Overall – mainly rubbish. All salt, sugar, fats, artificial colours and flavours. Frightening shit. Even most of the muesli’s are rubbish. If you sre lucky, maybe five or six items are actually safe to eat. Cereal drinks – yes, you read that right. Msy as well drink a cip of sugar. Opposite are dessert choices, all in packets to be mixed, or sugar and artificial everything syrups, or canned fruits – possibly the wisest choice. Turning into the next aisle we find peanut butter, Vegemite honey and jam at the end. Even I’m leaving this alone because I do eat them. Jams need sugar to set them, honey is a natural product that in pretty well unadulterated, and I tell people that a good breakfast on the run is wholegrain toast with peanut butter. Move on! Ah…biscuits. Processed, sugar, fat, palm oil, artificial everything. Opposite is hot chocolste, tea and coffee. There are about two organic or free-trade hot chocolates worth buying, the rest have artificial sweeteners. Tea is safe. Ordinary instant and bean coffee is safe. The problem here are the flavoured coffees. I suppress a shuddet! Full of artificial flavours, artificial sweeteners, whiteners. Death in a cup! Rounding the end to proceed into the next aisle, we encounter a Milo cereal promotion. The front of the box is a flashing neon light of goodness – 50% wholegrain, two essential vitamins/minerals, Heart Foundation tick and dome ither tick which just seems to be decoration. For a mum-on-the-run a dream come true, a miracle cereal that just screams goodness! Goodness! Goodness! However…..the side nutritional panel – confusing to read at the best of times – tells a different story. High amounts if salt, fat and carbohydrates in the form of sugar. What a shock! Next aisle – what a shocker. Sift drink for miles. Full of sugar, and worse for the diet ones that like to scream “Zero” sugar. Not exactly a lie as they don’t have sugar. They have something even worse – Aspartame. Opposite are shelves of energy drinks which should just be banned. Not only full of artificial shit, they are basically tins of sugar, which is where the energy rush comes from. Sports drinks ditto! Bottled water, for fuck sake. Companies actually rake perfectly fresh – and free – drinking water and put it in a plastic bottle that people then pay money for! Crazy? And cordials (artificial flavours and sugar), and the tetra-pac drinks that are also full of artificial everything and sugar. Next aisle – pasta. That’s fine, then we get to the sauces. Processed to within an inch if their life – artificial volours, flavours and tons of salt. Taco meal packs the same. Asian foods – a mix of healthy and unhealthy. Soups which are nothing but processed crap and salt, along with artificial colours and flavours. Next aisle peanuts and nuts – many with too much salt. Lollies of every description full of sugar and artificial colours and flavours. Chocolate – the dark, healthy variety in the minority. Potato chips full of fat, salt and artificial colours and flavours. Next aisle stocks – at least you can get salt reduced – spices, oils, vinegars, baking requirements, packet cake mixes – like cakes are that hard to make yourself. And so it goes on. Instant noodles full of salt and artificial everything, condiments full of salt and artificial everything, dressings full of fst, sslt and artificial evetything. Seems to be a recurring theme here.

Then we get to meat. Poor quality, over-priced, full of fat. Freezer cabinets full of pre-prepared meals that are basically processed, full of salt and artificial crap. Prepared chicken and seafood meals that are the same. Frozen hamburgers, pizzas, pies, sausage rolls all full of salt and ditto ditto. Ice -cream…okay, I eat ice-cream so we’ll leave that alone. Pre-prepared desserts like cheese cakes, pies and danish full of sugar and fat. Bacon and cold cuts full of dangerous nitrites. Margarine – don’t even start me on how unhealthy margarine is. Fruit juices full of reconstituted fruit juice and sugar. Dog foods and kibbles that should never be fed to pets due to the amounts of rubbish in them, treating our pets like they don’t even matter. Full of meat by-products – read offal, carcasses and diseased meat, corn with no nutritional value, and plain crap. It gisgusts me!

Body Work

June 13, 2013Article, Health Informationdiet, exercise, fitness, gym, Health, nutrition, obesity, old-agetimalderman

According to the 2013 report from the Bureau of Statistics, 63% of Australian adults are overweight or obese. An estimated 280 Australians develop diabetes every day. The 2005 Australian AusDiab Follow-up Study (Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study) showed that 1.7 million Australians have diabetes but that up to half of the cases of type 2 diabetes remain undiagnosed. By 2031 it is estimated that 3.3 million Australians will have type 2 diabetes (Vos et al., 2004) – stats from Diabetes Australia. Throw an ageing population into the mix, and you have a nightmare. These statistics are nothing short of frightening. Every day we are inundated with conflicting impressions – both in reality and in the media – of body image. On the one hand we have a population becoming so obese it is bordering on terrifying. If the trend is not halted, the cost of health care is going to spiral up at a frightening rate. On the other hand, we are also inundated with images of sculpted 6 and 8 packs, biceps and pecs that are almost impossible for us to obtain, let alone maintain. They fill my newsfeed with promos from gyms, supplement companies, models, celebrities, health and fitness magazines, clothing and underwear companies. What seems to be missing is a healthy norm. And gay and HIV+ people we are not exempt from the fat/thin dialectic. And some of it seems to be based in history. There is some research into the problem that indicates that for many long-term survivors the problem is a flow-on from the dismal days of the 80s and 90s, when emaciated bodies were a common sight. To them, over-weight means healthy. It appears that the longer people are healthy, the more common it becomes to end up over-weight or obese. This trend signals a need for doctors to change their approach to caring for HIV positive people. It’s time to shift the focus to the prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure and weight gain. The problems of being at both extremes affects us as a population in general, and I think it heeds to be tackled from as many angles as possible.

Getting older is one of those things that seems to have crept up on me very quickly. One day I was 40, then 50 and now at 59 rapidly approaching 60. I’m not complaining. I’ve survived AIDS – with a couple of disabilities but nothing to hold me back – and when all is said and done I’m actually enjoying the experience of getting older, that quietening down of life and the intuitiveness that seems to come with it. HIV is no longer something I am concerned about – in fact, it is very much a backwater in my life. My health is under control, and has been for a long time, so as far as I am concerned it is not even an issue. Some things, even disabilities, become so integrated into your life that you just carry on regardless.

However, there are aspects of ageing that I have not liked. I may be approaching 60 but I live very much in the contemporary world. There is a lot about it I love, like the latest music – I still collect dance music; technology and all the wonders it brings; the sheer quantity of goods available for sale, and I am unashamedly a consumer. I still like to dress well, though I try to avoid the mutton-dressed-as-lamb scenario. No skinny jeans for this boy! i still groom myself well, look after my skin, and like the fact that despite my age I can still look pretty good when I hit the streets. However, 4 years ago I started to notice things about my body that were in stark contrast to what I liked to think and feel about myself. Having been blessed with good genes that have allowed me to keep all my hair – and still all black – and for most of my life a slim profile I was disconcerted to find that gravity was finally having its wicked way and changing – for the worst – my body shape. I was flabby with a very discernible spare tire waistline, flabby tits, mishapen arse and bad posture. I was actually starting to look so “old” that it was beginning to depress me and really knocked my self-esteem around. It also didn’t fit in with how I dressed and groomed myself and I was really aware of the fact that I wouldn’t go out in anything that clung to me, or in anyway showed off my body shape. To make matters worse, I started to go up in clothing sizes, from SM to M in shirts, and from 32” trousers and shorts to 34”. I wasn’t happy! Other nasty things that were happening were finding myself sitting on the edge of the bed to put on trousers and shorts, having my partner comment on how bad my posture was getting – that was a real “shit – is it” moment. The doctor starting me on cholesterol meds, which was an additional pill on top of what I was already taking, was a real eye-opener.

When I lived in the Eastern Suburbs in the 80’s and 90’s, I made a decision – despite the fashion for toned bodies at the time – to avoid going to the gym. They were places full of gay guys who were there not to get fit but to mould themselves into an image of what it was perceived that gay men should look like. They posed, preened, plucked, depilated and fake-tanned, and when they went out to the bars, only ever hung around with, and picked up, guys who were mirror images of themselves. To ensure I never felt out-of-place I hung with the scrawny brigade. I viewed the gym bunnies as body fascists, and in some respects still do. However, a move to the outer edges of the Inner West brought about a change in my thinking and perceptions. Then I had my “mirror” moment! Stepping out of the shower one morning, I caught sight if myself in the mirror, and the first thing that crossed my mind was…who is the tubby old man in the bathroom. That was a provocative moment, and the impetus for change. Burdened with the prospect of the body rapidly getting out of shape, with my self-esteem taking a beating, along with the prospect of 60 looming, with a potentially rickety ride into unhealthy mature years imminent, it was time to do something about it. The word “gym” entered my vocabulary.

I loved – and still do – the gym, which sort of came as a bit oif a shock to me. From the word go I felt comfortable, and a lot of the fallacies that I attributed to going to the gym were dispelled. For starters, no one gives a fuck about what you are doing, and nobody is actually watching and assessing you – except yourself. Everyone there is too much in their own world to care about what you are up to. An initial assessment with a Personal Trainer helped me to set some goals – the major ones being to get fit. I also wanted to loose excess fat, generally tighten my whole body up, fix my posture and improve my general health. I aspired to reclaim my hips and arse, both of which had long ago disappeared. In other words, I had a determination to transform myself. And at 72kg, I wanted to do all this without losing too much weight, as weight wasn’t the problem. The other noticeable thing was the number of other mature aged men and women who were there, really working hard and doing their best to get fit and healthy. There is now a few older role models around to encourage us to do something about being fit and older. Actors like Rob Lowe (God, how hot is that man), Rick Springfield (who despite his demons looks fabulous for someone in his 60’s), and Robson Green, who looked so hot in “Being Human” he almost gecame a masturbation fantasy.

So, goals set, and with a regime to follow, it was off to the beginners studio for a 10 week starters program. The first week…I suffered. Every muscle ached, and I looked at the piss-weak weights I was using, wondering if I was ever going to be able to do things at the heavier end. And don’t think it doesn’t get tedious! Doing the same routines over and over gets very boring. I started to vary things myself, made a lot of changes to what had been set out for me and found that helped me to get through the boredom barrier. I started going three days a week, for 1 hour each visit. And I bloody worked hard! Nothing was going to deter me from the goals. Within 7 weeks of starting, the miracles began. I was using a lot of resistance equipment, and found that the weights started to increase. The spare tire didn’t just reduce – it disappeared. My pecs tightened up and I started to show a firm profile. Muscles even appeared in my arms. My energy levels also increased, as did my flexibility. My self-esteem started to go through the roof, and in turn this prompted me to work harder, to really start to challenge myself. At the end of the 10 weeks, I looked fantastic. I couldn’t believe just how different I looked and felt. I started getting encouragement from others, and that really started me pushing the limits.

So, after the 10 weeks in the beginners studio it was time for another assessment, and a harder program, starting in what I jokingly called “the big boys room” where all the weights and serious resistance equipment was. I continued to flog myself three days a week, still for a total of three hours a week, and the changes continued. I was still having some problems getting a flat stomach – I wasn’t after a six-pack…I could probably get one but at my age it would be a constant battle to maintain it – so the tweaking of our diet at home started. Thankfully I love cooking, so doing a diet tweak wasn’t a big issue as I knew that I had the recipes to over-ride any chance of blandness or boredom. I should point out that I don’t approve of diets, especially fad ones, but I do believe that you can create a healthy diet for yourself without going to extremes, and without cutting out carbs and proteins. Your body needs these things to function properly – it is all a matter of proportion and balance. We cut out a lot of fatty foods, a lot of sugar – have a terrible sweet tooth so this wasn’t easy – and increased the amount of raw vegetables, fish and poultry in our diet. This helped a lot, as well as a lot of repetitions on the Ultimate Abdominal machine at the gym, and a lot of time in the suspension frame. So I pulled, and pushed and strained and grunted through the main weight floor of the gym for the next 3 months.

By this stage, I have to say that I was starting to find it harder and harder to get myself to the gym to go through the routines. I realised that I needed to add some sort of variety to
my program, so at the New Years weekend I decided to do my first class. I looked at all the alternatives, and assessed what I thought I could do, and couldn’t do. I have done yoga before, and enjoyed it, but felt that it wasn’t dynamic enough to maintain the body profile I was aiming for. I still haven’t tried Pilates, but it is on my list. Anything that involved balance was out due to peripheral neuropathy in the feet…the numb type, not the painful. This means I have no feeling in my feet and ankles. Anything involving too much co-ordination was out as I’m unco-ordinated at the best of times, and anything done in dark rooms – such as Spin – was out, as I’m partially blind and have night-blindness. So, this left me with Body Pump, a class that involves dynamic work with weights, and is very muscle and cardio-orientated. You really push your heart rate up doing these classes. I found I really loved Pump, and have stuck with it right through to recently. I avoid lunges for balance reasons, and do squats instead, which means a double session of squats every class, which can really push you to your limits, especially when you have 25- 28 kgs of weight sitting on your upper back to add to the challenge. So, I started doing two morning classes a week on Monday and Friday, and usually the token male in the class at that time of day, and did one day a week in the weight room to work whatever muscles didn’t get worked in the class.

Having just moved from Sydney to Brisbane, I found the break in routine disconcerting, and it took time to get back into the rhythm. But a deal from our local Goodlife gym got me back into the groove, and I returned to my Body Pump class. Having done this weights class for four years now it has its disadvantages. Because of the pace of the class, you don’t really have the opportunity to challenge yourself, as you don’t have the time to swap and change weights. It had reached the stage where I was really using the class for its cardio benefit, and boy don’t you get a cardio workout! I have had three different resistance workout programs on the main floor, including a isometric/fitness ball/body weight program which I derived a lot of benefit from.. However, we have moved on again.

I have now gotten so tied up in the fitness and health lifestyle that this year I decided to get my Certificate III in Fitness at Southbank Institute of Technology. This has had an incredible influence on how I now view fitness in general, and exercise. A dispute with my Goodlife gym when they ripped me off when canceling my membership – DO NOT USE GYMS THAT TIE YOU INTO CONTRACTS – has meant I have moved on to a new gym and now use my local Jetts’. So, no group fitness classes any more, but with my new knowledge I’ve also moved on from that style of exercise. Having used gyms now for four years to just get fit and maintain it, it’s time to up the ante. There is nothing wrong with just staying fit, but without a real challenge it can be demotivating. Personal Trainers are affordable through Jetts. If you can workout unsupervised, you pay them a monthly “retainer”, and once a month they do your body fat and muscle mass measurements, do a fitness test and set you up with a new program. I am now moving on from general fitness, into the world of hypertrophy – building up muscle strength and mass. This really is starting to push my limits, and is really inspiring me to challenge myself. Six weeks in and big changes are happening already. I am slowly starting to bulk up, and my strength has increased considerably. I’m starting to pump weights that really surprise me, and every time I think to myself “I’ll never get through more than one set at this weight”…I get up to three sets. Limitations really are in your mind. I am also now doing what I said I would never do – supplements. I use a pre and post workout amino acid supplement, and mid-workout boost supplement. Why…well, I’ve been researching, and the consensus seems to be that they are beneficial. And they really do give you a boost, aid the prevention of muscle fatigue during my workout, and help with muscle recovery after. They only seem to last for the period of my workout, so no lingering affects. However, I had stipulations; they couldn’t overtax my system, had to have some ongoing body fat burning benefit – called thermogenesis – and no side effects. I have around 8% body fat that I shouldn’t have, and it is sitting around my stomach and hips – typical male – and just will not go. Time to get the big guns out! My goal for this summer is to appear at the pool in Speedos, and not feel self-conscious. I don’t feel the need to have a six or eight-pack abs, but I would like a “V” shape, and a flat stomach. I feel that goal is within reach at this time.

So at this point in time, where do we sit? Our diet continues, but no longer to lose weight. It is now being used to maintain it. We have lived low fat/low sugar/portion-controlled for a couple of years now, and it has been very successful, and easy to maintain. With my new routine there will be some changes as I need to increase my calorie intake to about 2000 kilojoules a day so the body gets enough energy for the now tougher workouts, and I need to add in more fruit – I have never been a big fruit eater – so have started adding bananas and berries into my diet. I look great. I’m trim, have full flexibility, heaps of energy, and some body definition now. The cholesterol meds have gone bye-bye, one of the great benefits of being fit and healthy. I am now hopefully looking forward to a progressive ageing that will see me avoiding most, if not all, of the illnesses and crippling conditions currently associated with getting older. No walking sticks, Zimmer frames or mobility carts for this boy! I intend to be still pumping out sets of squats when i’m 80 – just watch me!

What would I recommend to other guys my age? If you smoke…STOP! If you have a bad diet…FIX IT – it’s not rocket science. Don’t think that walking the dog is all you need to do. You need to exert some energy! you need to sweat! If you are over-weight, do something about it! Look at the long-term, not the short. It is not about having the body beautiful, though it helps. It is about being fit and healthy, and prolonging your prospects for good health and wellbeing as you progress through the years. Don’t think, like I did, that looking fit and healthy is just for the young. The flow-on affects of a good exercise routine and good diet are endless, both in your public and private life. Look good and feel good – you’ll thank yourself for it