Tag: fitness

Basic Health and Fitness Techniques for Creatives and Fans!

If you’ve followed me on social media or know me personally, it’s pretty clear that I’m big on fitness, working out, and eating (reasonably) healthy choices. We’ll discuss whiskey and beers later 🙂

First, let’s talk about something basic. If it separates you from the ground, that’s a good place to spend money. You want to wear good shoes, sit on good chairs, and sleep on good mattresses. Doing the best you can with these items will save you tons of pain with back and feet problems through your live.

Second, drink water. Drink water throughout the day. You need about 80 ounces of water (a little less than 2.5 liters). This will help keep your body operating well, and flush out waste products your body creates. Additionally, you’ll be able to avoid a lot of other people’s drama simply because you’re in the rest room 🙂

Third, you can get a lot of exercise simply by going for a 5 minute walk every hour. Whether you’re writing through the day or working a day job, just going for a short walk every hour will get you 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise in a normal 8 hour work day.

Fourth, you can do body weight exercises anywhere and at any time. I suggest, if you don’t have a fitness program, that you do planks first thing in the morning and right before bed, and squats at least once an hour when you stand up from a chair or the couch.

Fifth, stretch. You can stretch whenever you want to. If you’re an author or use a computer heavily, stop and rotate your wrists every couple of hours to loosen up your wrists.

Sixth, sleep. Set an alarm to go to bed on time, and get up on time. You need about 8 hours of sleep daily to be rested, healthy, and largely functional. So make sleep a real priority.

Seventh, prioritize eating healthy foods. Plan your meals so you have good options for breakfast, healthy meals for lunch at your work, and you can be prepared for good dinners. Don’t keep lots of unhealthy snacks in your house, and do keep healthy snack options, like fruit and nuts, so you don’t go for a drive to keep unhealthy snacks.

While this isn’t a total list for every possible health and fitness option, it should provide a good start. If you need more help, or want to develop a more detailed plan, email me at keith@keithhedger.com

Upcoming Events and Future Plans

It’s true. I’m only held back by the need to sleep, have a day job, physics and law enforcement!

First things first: I’m working edits and story selection for Tales of the E4 Mafia 2, and Butter Bars! Large and (not so) In Charge! These are the next two anthologies from Henchman Press that I’m leading, and so far the stories are hitting all the marks: irreverent, action packed, funny, and, most important, good reads. I’ve even got a story set in my Burn and Bad Karma setting that takes place in the events in Sandblaster written by a friend of mine. It’s got a bit to go, but it is so funny. So, I’ll keep you posted as we get these anthologies closer to the publication mark.

Next, I’m presenting at Des Moines Con! I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, but I’ll repeat here:

On May 31st, at 11 AM, I’ll bein Panel 4 (Rooms 313-314) presenting Fitness for the Time Crunched Creative. This is for anyone in the creative world (fan or creator) who wants to improve their basic health and fitness, but doesn’t have the knowledge of what small changes to make or how to make them a habit so that they keep improving! No one will have to do burpees, but I’ll talk about hydration, better nutrition, sleep, exercise basics and how to make your medical team part of your fitness team.

On June 1st, at 3:45 PM, in Panel Room 3 (Rooms 315-316) I’m presenting Everything I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing. We’ll cover productivity, editing, the importance of covers, networking and finding your community, building a fan base, and all the questions the audience has. If I can answer it, I will. If not I’ll direct you to other sources who are more knowledgeable.

If you want to see the full schedule of panels and events at Des Moines Con, please go to the Schedule Link!

And, finally, in a move that is terrifying, I’m working on a script and schedule for creating a video channel! This might be a couple of weeks before I have the first video up (I have a lot to learn, including video editing software), but it’s coming soon. Since I’ve posted it on the internet, now I have to do it!

Let me know what your interested in most!

What’s Going On?

Now that Tales of the E4 Mafia out in the world (and even selling copies!), it’s time to give an update on what’s going on in my life.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I’ve spent a lot of years running long distances. Like crazy long distances. 5k, 10k, half-marathons, marathons, and ultra-marathons. And a lot of them. Of course, I’ve a bad knee for a longer time, and periodically it’s come back to trouble me. After 15 years, I’ve finally accepted that I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of long distance running. So I switched over to cycling. We’ll see what kind of adventures that leads too!

In the writing world, I’m editing a new Burn and Bad Karma novel, with a working title of Chicago Cycle Book 1. Bad Karma goes to Chicago, with no adult supervision. Burn is kidnapped. And Micky is trying to solve the Burn kidnapping before Bad Karma finds out.

I’m also working on two more anthologies for Henchman Press. Butter Bars! Large and (Not So) In Charge! followed by Tales of the E4 Mafia 2: Specialist Bugaloo. These are both working titles, and have not been approved by the publisher 🙂

So, thanks for keeping up! Feel free to reach out and let me know what you think and how things are going for you!

Keith