Pay attention folks because there will be a test, and if you fail this one, you die.

• The Federal Government went from spending $53 billion in 1980 to $850 billion last year on health care.  It cannot continue to run a 9.3% annual expansion rate on expense as that doubles every 7 years and change.  The government cannot keep its promise to leave Medicare unmolested for all those 50 and over; to do so it would have to spend nearly $14 trillion a year for a 50 year old person by the time they're 85.  That's roughly four times the entire federal budget today.
  
  
• Obama passed Obamacare which protects these health monopolies and cost-shifts that led to this explosion in expense.  Mitt Romney passed Romneycare in Massachusetts which also protected these explosions in expense.  Neither candidate, if elected Tuesday, will fix it.
  
  
• Either Granny eats it or the medical industry eats it.  Either way there's a Depression.  It is mathematically impossible to grow out of this.  But if Granny eats it she'll fill the government full of lead, and the government knows this.  Since they won't pull the monopoly supports and let the market force the medical industry to eat it, there is no political solution -- only a cliff.
  
  
• When the cliff comes, and it will come, if you're dependent on the medical system for your alleged "health" (or worse, your life) you will be done.  This is not speculation, it is fact.  Your options are to do something about it now, while you still can, or it will be too late.  Never mind that if the cities and towns across this country go feral at some point Zombieland style cardio capacity may become a matter of literal life and death.
  
  
• Mayor Bloom-bong-face just demonstrated for you the utter incompetence of "regulation" in health care.  Two hospitals in NYC with allegedly protected power -- utterly necessary for people on ventilators and other powered devices -- had their so-called "protected power" fail during a storm.  There was no proactive 24-hour requirement for testing as the storm approached and no proactive requirement to protect fuel supplies from flooding.  Your risk of dying due to this malfeasance was off-the-charts high if you were in one of those hospitals during Sandy.  Your only defense against this malfeasance is not to be there.
  
  
• Less than 2 years ago I had a body mass of 210lbs.  I was a "fat old bastard", to be blunt.  I cut the carbs out of my diet and stopped putting refined sugars and hydrogenated oils in my pie hole.  I also got off my fat ass.  The first few months I thought it was going to kill me, but I kept doing it.  When I started I couldn't jog for a half-mile without being completely winded and trashed.  I used my "Google-Fu" and typed in "Couch-to-5k" and followed it.  My total required investment was a pair of shoes and a watch that had a stopwatch function.  I did get a bit more fancy; I also downloaded "Myfitnesspal" on my phone and bought a GPS watch with a heart strap so I could track my progress, but that's not really necessary.  When my knees and ankles complained about carting around all that extra weight while trying to run I split the time between jogging and a bicycle.
  
  
• Almost exactly one year ago, eight months into the above, I had lost fifty pounds.  I still eat pretty much the same way -- no refined sugars (at all) and damn few carbs.  I cheat once a week, but otherwise it's veggies, a few fruits, meats, dairy and fish, not necessarily in that order.  No hydrogenated crap (butter is butter and is fine, not margarine) and no garbage.  If I get hungry I grab some broccoli and munch on it.  The joint complaints are pretty much gone, but so is the 50lbs of extra body mass, and it has stayed off.  Running 5ks is no longer hard.  10ks are now doable for fun; yeah, the last mile still sucks, but I can do them and typically do twice a week.

This is what I look like today:

And this is what I did today:

6th overall.  Not too terrible for an old bastard.

Don't believe the bull**** about carb loading and exercise that is shoved down your throat from all the so-called "experts" either.  It's crap.  Yesterday I ate an omelette for breakfast (zero carbs), a chicken salad for lunch (nearly zero carbs) and BBQ ribs for dinner (no sides, all meat, a couple of carbs for the sauce glaze.)  This morning three hours before the race I had another omelette and three strips of bacon for breakfast -- zero carbs.  If that's not zero, or nearly-zero, glycogen stores please tell me what would be.

Then I ran a 7:04 -- I caught that girl that finished behind me at roughly the 2 mile point; I'd been eying the back of her shirt for over a mile and I was going to be damned if I was going to look at her tush at the finish.  The one in front of her I could not catch -- she was leggy as hell and faster than me, but she had nearly half my age on me in youth too.  As for that guy that ran a 6:19, he's damned fast.  I'd like to get there and in a year or two I just might.

If I can go from fat old bastard to plain old bastard in eight months and stay there for a year, then wake up this morning with zero glycogen loading and run a 5k at a 7:04 pace, you can do it too.

And you better do it, because the pill factory and government-style "Wall-E" (you saw the movie, right?) couch-crap is going to kill you dead if you don't.

Besides, once you tough it out for a while you'll find that you actually get off on the exertion in an odd sort of way.  Those who run know what I'm talking about. 

If you don't, try it.

You might like it.