Bike riding back to work today I put on Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life‘, and suddenly my legs felt spring loaded with burning coals and liquid nitrogen. Music blasting, I wheeled and span my way through traffic, roughly leaping over curbs, tearing down sidewalks, sliding through traffic and just enjoying the sheer vigor of pumping hard on my pedals and moving fast. It felt good. It felt terrific, and while I’m now sitting here at my desk covered in a sheen of sweat with my thigh muscles twitching and breath coming in deep, slow inhalations, I’m suddenly supremely aware of why I blog about health and fitness, why I research vitamins and nutrients, why I care about what I eat and how I exercise and the whole complex multifarious never ending shebang that is this job I have.

It’s because I want to enjoy life, I want to feel this coursing energy and positivity as much as I can, it’s because if you dig deep and push hard and try to eat well and get your sleep and become healthy and athletic the consequences are tremendous. You develop this sense of being alive, of your body being this rich and vibrant machine that seeks to perform at optimum level, that yearns to push itself and exhult in being alive.

Otherwise why bother? Otherwise why bother reading up on lignans, or threshold training, or HIIT, or spirulina, or whether to trust the FDA, or how much carbs you should eat, or whether aspartame is good for you, or whether you’re running the risk of overtraining, or any of it? Why bother getting lost in this maelstrom of information and advice, this never ending quest for the truth, the best way to live, the best way to eat, to exercise, to be?

There’s only one reason, and we should never lose track of it. We should never forget the purpose behind our quest. And that’s to feel friggin’ amazing as much as we can, for as long as we can, as intensely as we can. To live at the height of possible experience and intensity, to feel vigorous and virbrant and excited and alive. To run and jump and laugh and spin and dance and dance and dance.

So eat those veggies. Chow down on those fruits. Get up in the morning, moaning and groaning and hating ever second of the drive to the gym. Learn about what the ingredients on those food labels mean, and whether you should put them in your body. Educate yoursef, learn, and then apply all that stuff to how you live, and then, when you’re practicing what you’re preaching, when you’re reaping what you’ve been sowing, freaking revel in the feeling of being alive.