Tag: health

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

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