In one of our ten thousand discussions the Shmata Queen and I spoke about the beauty of aging. We compared notes about the benefits of aging, the sudden appearance of aches and pains and a dozen other new developments.
That wacky woman made the usual crack about how men don’t appreciate what pregnancy and childbirth do to woman’s body and how in some ways we have it easier. Of course she also expressed how she would do it over again a million times, but that is a different story.
Anyway as has become apparent to anyone who reads this blog I am wrestling with aging gracefully. It is a bigger struggle than I like to admit, but that is because I am feeling less than satisfied with a number of things. Some of them are things that I have control over and some I can’t do a damn thing about.
So as to avoid being a complete hypocrite I am working on changing the things that I have control over. In particular I am less than pleased with my fitness. If you look at this picture of me at 20 you will see a man with a full head of hair and a rock solid body. That physique was the result of hours of swimming, weight lifting and general exercise.
In other words it took a lot of hard work to reach that point. (Side note, I didn’t put the picture up and I am not going to.) In truth it took years to get there. I wasn’t ever heavy as a kid. I played a ton of sports and more often than not spent hours outside.
I mention that because when I get frustrated that I can’t fit into the jeans I wore in college I need to remember a few things. Twenty years later I don’t exercise like I used to. In part that is because I simply cannot. I don’t have the time. Life and the responsibilities of father/husband won’t allow me to spend the same amount of time on myself.
Add the joy of a metabolism that doesn’t work as well as it used to and you have your recipe for looking less like Charles Atlas and more like the Michelin Man.
But because I am determined to change this I have committed to finding more time to exercise and to becoming smarter about how I do it. I have to be better than I was, at least in the sense of making the most of my time.
I also have to contend with some of the changes that the years have brought down upon me. One of the things that I have done is I have begun foam roller exercises. I haven’t been doing them for very long but am exceptionally pleased with the results. Slowly but surely I am working out kinks that just didn’t disappear. If things continue to progress like this I expect that I am going to find that my progress into improved health accelerates.
And that my friends is a goal worth working for. Exercise is going to serve as my fountain of youth. It is going to be the mechanism for insuring that I remain young both in body and mind.
Stay tuned to this bat channel and I will be sure to keep you posted on how things develop. In the future I’ll share more about the weight lifting and whether I resume swimming. I am also playing around with getting into the Russian Kettlebells. I have heard good things about it.
I’ll keep you posted.
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