Immortality

 

 Sadly, or maybe not, there is no formula for immortality. At least not beyond science fiction and even that seems to imply there will be a price to pay if we achieve it. I don't want to be old and infirm. Nobody does, but each way of avoiding that is highly personal. Of course the easiest and least desirable way is to die young.

Other than that we are faced with a million choices. How much and what to eat. How often and how hard to exercise. Whether to exercise by day to day working, like housework, farming, etc, or go to a gym and jump on the human hamster wheel. The options for most middle class Americans are endless. My options are limited by iffy feet and ankles.

I love to eat. I don't mean I just enjoy food. I actually love, love, love, the act, taste, and heavenly experiences of food in my mouth, on my tongue, drifting through my brain. I dream of food. I am like a dog, if I see food I feel the desire and need to consume it all.

That used to embarrass me. I gain weight easily and so I have tried just about every diet there is from reasonable things like the Mediterranean diet, to less savory things like Atkins and Keto. None of those work for me due to things like food preferences, gout and diabetes. Salads are too much work and too little satisfying for me to live with them long term. Maybe if I had a live in cook, I might be able to stick with them, but I seriously doubt it.

I like comfort food. I'm 72 years old. I deserve comfort food, but honestly? I have always craved it. As a child in elementary school I loved a story where the pioneer woman served big hunks of crusty bread and butter with thick beef stew. Even then I dreamed of it. There are no diets that I know of that include those things in any quantity and I was always too embarrassed to ask how to incorporate the foods I do love in quantities I can live with.

This year I may have done that! I won't tell you what it is because I don't want your opinions of why it is not good for me. I just spent two weeks being scanned, tested, probed, weighed and investigated. My doctors concur with each other. I am doing better physically than I have in years. They are very pleased even a little shocked.

It is with minimal exercise because my feet and ankles are always in a state of flux. Pain is part of living with them. It means being very hungry between meals, but mostly just that last hour or two. I think I can do this!

It won't make me immortal, but it greatly enhances the time I have left.