I work from home remote­ly from my com­pa­ny’s office.  It is a curse and a bless­ing.  I can get a LOT done in a short­er peri­od of time because almost as soon as I wake up, wipe the sleep out of my eyes, I am at work… When I need some flex time to go to the doc­tor, pick up some­thing at the post office, etc. it’s a dream.  Work­ing from home helps me to be much more pro­duc­tive in my life.  My com­mute is lit­er­al­ly one bed­room to anoth­er bed­room con­vert­ed into an office, which inci­den­tal­ly hous­es some of my food stor­age, office sup­plies, etc.  The com­mute is 10 steps from bed­room to bed­room… A far cry from com­mut­ing to and work­ing in NYC and walk­ing an aver­age of two to three miles a day for what I will call pas­sive exer­cise.  Ms. Prep­per works in NYC and has the com­mute from hell twice dai­ly.  I do not envy her.  When I worked in NYC, the walk­ing from place to place alone helped to keep 10 — 15lbs lighter on my feet.  When I start­ed work­ing from home in 2008, in just a few months, I put 10lbs on, and I can tell you it was­n’t mus­cle weight.  I con­tin­ued eat­ing at the same rate as I was when I was run­ning around NYC, and it has been a real chal­lenge over the past sev­er­al years to keep the weight off, and to lose it because my lifestyle has become more seden­tary.

I think it took six months of work­ing from home, and I was 20lbs heav­ier.  Seri­ous­ly.  Crazy, right?  10 steps and sit­ting behind a desk for 10+ hours isn’t any­one’s idea of active, and when I trav­el on busi­ness, for­get it.

In the past sev­en or so years since I have worked from home, I’ve found it hard to lose weight.  I’ve also found it hard to pull myself away from the desk to work out.  In addi­tion, I fear that the time behind a desk only steps from my bed­room has helped to con­tribute to a few oth­er med­ical issues accel­er­at­ing, such as arthri­tis in my right knee and slight arthri­tis in my neck from sit­ting in front of a PC for so long every day.  This does­n’t sound like such a big issue, but I recent­ly found out, it can be.  These days I am tip­ping the scale at just under 250 lbs.  Just under the heav­i­est I have been anoth­er time in my life.  I recent­ly also start­ed Krav Maga class­es.  Enter the arthri­tis pain in my knee.  Trips to an ortho­pe­dic sur­geon added some cor­ti­sone shots for the pain, as well as some­thing called Syn­visc.  It helps to lubri­cate the knee, and should last four to six months.  It lasts me about three before the pain starts again.  Insur­ance only cov­ers it every six months.  Even with the cor­ti­sone and the Syn­visc, my knee will feel like it’s going to explode a day after Krav Maga class­es due to the warm up cal­is­then­ics they put us through. It’s a lit­tle men­tal­ly defeat­ing when you’re try­ing to do some­thing pos­i­tive for your body, and you’re body fights back.

To define the title of this post, phys­i­cal fit­ness, I feel is a “Does Your Job Help You Stay Prepped, Trained, and Fit?” I am ever feel­ing that my abil­i­ty to be phys­i­cal­ly fit is an essen­tial prep.  And that my cur­rent and lifestyle of recent has not (and i have not giv­en prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion to), afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay that way.

With my new, echem, dis­abil­i­ties, I plan on con­tin­u­ing Krav Maga, par­tial­ly because I com­mit­ted finan­cial­ly to a year, par­tial­ly because I have always want­ed to learn it, and par­tial­ly as a way to hope­ful­ly lose some of those unwant­ed pounds, strength­en my heart, low­er some blood pres­sure, and get in bet­ter over­all phys­i­cal con­di­tion.  I have also been encour­aged, many times, by Ms. Prep­per to take some Yoga class­es to help elon­gate my spine, stay more lim­ber, as well as strength­en my core.  I’m final­ly con­sid­er­ing tak­ing her up on that.  Ms. Prep­per is a Yoga instruc­tor, so she has a bit of prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in this area.

Some oth­er down­sides of the arthri­tis and my new found hand­i­cap at the ripe age of 46 is odd­ly con­fronting my mor­tal­i­ty.  Not in a life and death way, of course, but in such a way that you real­ize that you have “lim­i­ta­tions” and that you’re not as inde­struc­tible as you thought you were.  Addi­tion­al­ly, oth­er thoughts cross your mind such as, “am I going to be able to bug out on foot if I need to?” Or, “If I bug out on foot, how far will I get before the pain kicks in?”  The ques­tions go on and on.  It def­i­nite­ly makes you think dif­fer­ent­ly about bug­ging out, pre­pared­ness, bug­ging in, or many oth­er “what if” sce­nar­ios going for­ward.