Inside Out Health in NYC

I don't look my age, according to Miguel, my Uber driver ferrying me.

The train station is 1.5 miles from work and if I make it, I can be back in NYC to work out before the gym shuts. Usually I'd walk or ride the miles with my bicycle but I switched to taking cabs as soon as the weather changed because of an unwillingness to feel the cold.

 "You look like 20 year old college student," Miguel remarks, eyeing me in the rear view mirror of his Mercedes as we cruise to Edison Station in New Jersey after small talk about kids and family revealed my real age. Miguel has 3 kids about to start college.

"That's because I stopped abusing myself with drugs and Tequila 20 years ago," I inform him. "I got all that stuff out my system." This is my default answer, punctuated with a laugh, whenever someone comments about my age or looks.

What Miguel didn't know was, like most Americans, I was addicted to wheat, meat, sugar as well as fried and processed foods; and that my body was a perfect acidic storm for disease influenced by SAD, the standard American diet as well as a sedentary lifestyle.

Unless he was clairvoyant, Miguel couldn’t have known I was battling a serious skin infection several years in the making because of choices I'd made. I looked OK on the outside but inside I was a mess.  

So I joined a gym, the New York Sports Club (NYSC), where I pay $60 a month to run, lift weights and sweat indoors, so I could reverse what I created. If I don’t make it tonight, I’ll just have to work out at home where I have a chin up-bar, some free weights and a boatload of vitamins and powdered foods in place of bread and Cheez-its. My go to vitamins are: Ashwagandha Extract for anti-viral, calming, anti-stress, Emergen-C for ascorbic vitamin c-anti-viral, nutrient dense, Arjuna for blood circulation and Red Marine Algae for an immune boost.

As we pull into Edson Station ahead of the hour long ride back to NYC, I think about my work out, the reps to complete, the sweat that will pour out of me in the sauna, the internal war I will rage within for bread, for comfort.

Hopefully by April my skin will be back to normal and some semblance of happiness will return to me. In the meantime, I have to work on regaining my joie de vivre through diet and exercise.

“You take care of yourself,” Miguel says.