It is really very hard to be deployed and not to lose some fat, gain some muscle, and generally come back in better shape than prior to deployment. This is because of two things:

• Everyone here is in great shape, which makes a weak, pasty muffin like me feel some obligation to man-up a bit.
• There is absolutely no way that anyone here can state that they don’t have enough time to exercise.

Hence, everyone exercises during deployment, in one way or another. Most of my colleagues who deployed before me came back looking thinner, more muscular, and generally healthier. In a couple of cases, the difference literally caused jaws to drop; one doctor from Eisenhower dropped 50-plus during her fifteen months in the field.

So, I, too, have been exercising. Today, I biked 14 miles (a loop around the air field), and then got off my bike and ran for a few more. Sort of my own “marshmallow man biathlon.” I don’t think I’ll end up as one of those guys who gains 25 lbs of pure muscle out here, and I definitely won’t be ready for a marathon the day step off the plane. Too many other things I like to do more than I like exercising (write, read, eat, sleep, stare vacantly at the wall, stick needles into my eyes, listen to Al Gore speak, jump off a cliff into a valley of razor blades after first dousing myself in rubbing alcohol, etcetera). But I have lost a wee bit o’ flab to-date, and I’ve managed to re-locate a couple of muscles which had been missing since sometime around third grade.

Still looking for those pecs, though…