Eat Ice Cream With Your Guinness

I got home to California for the holidays on a beautiful sunny day, and I couldn't help but take off my shoes and shirt and run barefoot to the nearest park for a quick bout of metabolic conditioning.

I was so happy to play outside for the first time in a while. (I'm not used to Carolina winters so my exercise has been indoors lately.) All of a sudden, a huge branch decided to fall out of a Magnolia tree.

I covered the back of my neck with my right forearm and tried to get out from underneath it, but I failed. It missed my arm, and hit me directly in the back of the head, fracturing my skull and making me see spots of white. Oh, and my ears were ringing loud. And it felt like I had the worst brainfreeze plus the worst migraine all at once.

I was in bed for several days barely able to move, eat, or drink. After day 5, I had sciatic pain so bad that it replaced the pain in my head as the principle concern. After day 8, I was eating and gaining back weight again -- I had lost almost ten pounds in water weight and through muscle atrophy.

Three weeks later, I'm almost fully recovered. I'm still way out of shape and I lost some sense of smell, but otherwise glad to be alive. Paleo logic appears to be intact, and I can't wait to hit the reset button on my paleo lifestyle and come back at everything from a new angle. Here's one thing I took away:

Life's too short to be perfect. At the point of the accident, I was nearing 7% body fat and held personal records in various off-the-wall tests of performance. What I mean is: eat ice cream with your Guinness. Life isn't about perfect health or perfect performance. Life is about all the awesome experiences we have before we die. Health is important, but perfection is unnecessary. Cheating should be done with intention and should not be half-assed. But that might just be the brain damage talking.

"Everything in moderation is what some advocate. I dunno. Sounds extreme. EVERYTHING? I say moderation in moderation." - Unknown