I love exercising (LOW IMPACT), and I have all my life. My body wasn’t designed for sprinting, but years ago I discovered that walking was good for my fat. As a middle-aged, overweight adult, I discovered that I burned more calories especially if I was trying to lose weight… like for the 1000^th time in my life … if I jogged.

=>Tangent: you wonderful friends who say my body is just fine, I SO MUCH appreciate that, but according to age, height, & body size crap, I’m 10 pounds overweight. I’m 145 yet I should weigh 135 … I digress <=

Since Sean and I moved to our house and property here in 2004, we’ve taken advantage of our fields to keep a periphery mowed for a jogging/walking track. It is awesome, and the whole route takes approximately 12 minutes to complete. However, we appreciate diverse surroundings. Weather permitting, Carter, Ammon, Sean, and I also walk as a family every day and in various, surrounding locations. We walk approximately an hour. HOWEVER, Walking doesn’t help me lose weight, and if I choose to indulge a bit, I gain weight while STILL walking an hour every day. So, poor ol’ Haven who destroyed his metabolism by abusing his body with crash diets over 35 years ago needs to jog to help burn extra calories. The best part is that I do enjoy jogging especially in nature. When I jog by myself, it’s an introspective treat. Jogging invigorates my body, mind, and spirit whether in the hills of Southeast Tennessee, on the beach in Daytona Beach, Florida, on sidewalks along the shores of the River Thames in London, England, or down the Medieval streets of Gdansk, Poland.

I recently started watching some YouTube videos for the mind and body. The soul is still filled with prayer and daily Bible study with God’s word…. Haven’t used YouTube for the soul any. A mind over body motivational speaker, David Goggins, is on both YouTube and Instagram. I understand his motivational speaking and even SOME of his cursing because sometimes a good curse word has an IMPACT no other synonym can match. His motivation to me says, “Get up & Get at it! Stop the whining refuse (arrrgh, I want to curse!) and excuses!”   This “Get up & Get at it” is all about mind, body, and soul (my relationship with God) for Haven, but, for today’s entry, I’m sticking to the topic of PHYSICAL/CARDIO EXERCISE.

At some point every day, my lower back hurts, my right knee hurts (it has off and on for almost 20 years… Sean say’s it my meniscus), my right shoulder hurts,  and I have a 3 feet long varicose vein on my left leg that looks HORRENDOUS like disfigured looking- yet not the least bit painful. LOL. Like David Goggins discusses staring at his running shoes before he runs, I do the same: it’s like an event. This event sometimes takes 10 minutes to complete. I look at the socks, I put on the socks, I look at the shoes (sometimes boots), I tie the shoes, and I sit. I prefer jogging in the mornings. Honestly, my lower back and legs are sore the majority of the mornings, and if I have my coffee first then wait an hour, the process goes a lot more smoothly and happily. Now, after saying that, I don’t want to wait 2 hours after getting up to run. I want to do it as early as possible. Okay, okay…. Moving along… I’ve had my YouTube channel for 10 years, and after watching some mind and body influencers on it, I decided that this 55 years old fart, Haven Caylor-Brown, could diversity his YouTube channel and socialize with other old farts regarding their physical, mental, and spiritual fitness.

This morning I jogged for 1 hour and 5 minutes. It was 4.47 miles, and I burned 662 calories. It was awesome, and I have been jogging this route at Enterprise South for about 2 weeks now jogging it 3 times a week. There are plenty of spacious, paved roads with sights (deer, foxes, trees, squirrels, chipmunks, & birds) and sounds of nature, but the ground of the wooded paths are “padded”, and much easier on my knees, legs, and lower back. I do hope my jogging adventures will inspire / influence some folks to get some cardio exercise or exercise more, and as the days and weeks go by, I will be using my jogging and walking videos to weave some mental and spiritual thoughts, inspirations, and positive influences as well.