It’s the day after Thanksgiving, America’s paean to personal overconsumption.
It’s an ideal day to search for another way of life. And that’s what I did.
Many years ago, a friend — an outsider, who had lived large — told me that one of the problems folks in our small town created for themselves was that they thought too small. He was speaking about economic development (and his large-think gave the city some great infrastructure), but I got to thinking that concept could be applied personally to attributes other than finances.
Why not health? I’m indeed a 56-year-old male and I’m overweight. Okay. I’m technically obese. But rather than just losing a few pounds, or quite a few pounds, I’m going to attempt a more difficult feat — I want six-pack abs!
I was once athletic, playing high school football and basketball and doing them quite well. But that’s also where I injured myself, getting triple-teamed in football practice and getting my knee torn up. I lived with it for a while and kept playing at sports until college, when I tore it so much that I couldn’t straighten my leg. That led to surgery and to what should have been a more docile lifestyle. My doctor said I should take up poker.
But I didn’t stop, kept hurting myself and eventually got to the point where there wasn’t much I could do, athletically. Unfortunately, I kept eating as if I were physically active. That put the weight on faster. At 6′3″, with “big bones,” I surpassed 200 pounds at age 13, much to the joy of my football coach. By the end of high school, I was at about 230 and stayed at under 250 till I was well into my 30s. But that kept edging upward, to about 275 in my mid-40s to some 325 today.
Any physical act is difficult
At that weight, with bad knees (and as an extension, bad ankles), it’s difficult to do much at all physically today. The energy isn’t there. The blood pressure is too high and even walking very far is difficult.
The good news is that when I take off even 10 pounds, I can tell it in the way I walk up stairs or through Wal-mart. That means I feel even better, physically, if I took off 20 pounds. Imagine the freedom of movement if I lost 30 pounds! And on and on.
But that won’t be the case if I delay weight loss a few more years. Not only will it become more difficult to lose weight, but my health will be less should I finally do so. So, if I want to hike down the Grand Canyon, I need to start losing weight now, and significant amounts.
Not all at once, to be sure. But steadily, maybe a pound or so a week. It took several decades to put it on, so it can take several years to lose it. That’s okay, especially since each pound lost make the next one somewhat easier.
More than just losing weight
But I want to go beyond losing weight. I want to gain something that I’ve never had before — six-pack abdominals! Though I was quite powerful as a young man, I always had that layer of fat over my abs. Now it’s more like a bear getting ready for hibernation. So to achieve what I want, I’ll need not just to take off fat, but build the muscle under that fat as well.
I searched through numerous programs and concepts until I found one that had a) an exercise program that sounded logical, could be done by someone so out of shape and wouldn’t require untold hours, and b) had a nutritional component that fit well into what I knew was based on good science and wouldn’t be oppressive.
The changes for me will be immense, without a doubt. But I know there’s no such thing as a magic pill or a magical device that’s going to do it for me. Acquiring the weight required decades and, truth be told, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I should be willing to invest a few years in deaccessioning it. The plan will require that most of my meals be at home, so I’ll actually spend less on eating really good food than eating really bad food out. And that will be good for the rest of the family as well. (It’s fortunate that I’m the cook.)
And no expensive lotions, potions or devices are needed. Not even a health club membership and the concomitant time, which can be even more expensive. Obviously, there will be a lot to learn, but I can take it a bit at a time, sort of on-the-job training, because each step will be in the right direction and will be of some help, regardless of whether it’s perfect.
So here I go. You’ll get to watch the progress, and lack thereof. Comments will be welcome, whether ideas, encouragement or simply kibbitzing.
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