The Perfect Paleo Day on PaleoJays Smoothie Cafe podcast

Today I had the perfect paleo day- in fact, I’m still having it, since now I am communicating with my tribe of ancestral people on this very podcast!  

Like most of my perfect and near-perfect days, the vast majority of the day was spent outdoors, in nature.  The sun shone brightly pretty much the whole day, and wonder-of-wonders: here in mid-April the snow is finally melting!  Still big clumps of white persist, but primarily in the deep woods on my property, so I pretty much stayed in the open areas.  

I started my perfect day as I recommend you start your own- by exercising in front of your television.  Actually, the TV is optional, but since I had a movie queued up and also wanted to watch Fox business first, I set myself on my yoga mat in front of the TV.  I started into my preliminary stretching, followed by my visualized resistance exercises, and then more stretching on the mat. 

Then, I did isometrics holds for all of my muscle groups, pushing and pulling against an old Exer-Genie.  This tool, developed in 1961 for training astronauts in deep space to maintain their muscle and bone mass, is an amazing piece of equipment that has stood the test of time.  I think it is a testament to its wondeful utility that it has never become a big fad, like jogging, aerobics, or heavy weight training.  It’s just a common sense tool that works, and that just isn’t exciting and sexy to most folks.  

It works amazingly well for isometric holds- I do sets of three holds for each muscle group, in three positions each withing the muscle’s movement plane.  To cover my whole body, shoulders down to lower back, takes me about 10 minutes total- truly my ‘most bang for the buck’ part of my routine. 

I got mine off of Ebay, back when Ebay was pretty new, and the Exer-Genie from in the 1960’s came really cheap!  They still make them, and you can probably find one on Ebay, and that would be cost effective.  New ones cost well over $200 though, and my 1960’s model works like a champ!  In addition, you can use a simple long nylon strap just as effectively, standing on the strap for resistance.  That’s what I did for years, and it’s almost as good.  

 I finish up this basic workout of mine with rebounding while doing two more cycles of visualized resistance exercise covering every muscle group in my body.

I started this workout by getting up quite early in the morning, since for me that is the very best time of the day.  I make my dark roast coffee in my French press, and love padding into the living room with my steaming cup, and sipping it between exercises.  

Next, after showering, I drank my green Paleo smoothie from my refrigerated canning jar, and taking my next cup of coffee with me, I drove off towards our wonderful meat locker here, or which we have several.  I had decided that this was going to be a ’steak day’.  

One of my favorite things is to declare a day a ‘steak day’, which means probably just one big meal that day- a steak along with a baked potato and some kind of salad.  Of course, I had already had my smoothie, so I was covered on all of my nutritional bases already…

There is something incredibly satisfying about driving leisurely along through the rural countryside, anticipating the sights and smells of the market, early on  a weekday.  Admittedly, I do have the wondrous privilege now of being retired, and I will tell you truly- when you look back over your life (this was done numerous times in surveys of the elderly, meaning folks in their 90’s), every single person surveyed said that the happiest days of their lives were from when they retired, until they lost their health.  Every single one.

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