Welcome To My Blog!

Part I. Introduction.

Well Hello! And welcome to my awesome blog!

You're probably wondering about the title.

This is my personal blog about my journey with fitness and health.

Have I developed some new miracle program that converts fat to muscle mass on a chocolate and bacon diet? In just no time at all? No. If I had done that I would have retired long ago.

Before we get to that, here's a bit about me.

At age 35, I was a pack-a-day smoker. And a fifth-of-vodka-a-weekend drinker. At 6' 2" with about 30 pounds of body fat, I was not extremely overweight, but I was far from healthy.

But lets back up a little further.

I was a very shy child. In fact well into my twenties I suffered from an almost crippling shyness that I still sometimes struggle with. It was palpable. It was the elephant in the room. It was off-putting. My first two years of college I never left my dorm room except to go to class, and I existed on snack food because I was too shy to go to the dining hall. Today we would it call it a severe case of social anxiety disorder, but we didn't know that back then. You were just expected to sink or swim. It was like, what's so hard about it? Why are you so quiet? Get involved! Secondly, I was never athletic. I always dropped the ball, and I was always picked last. PE during my adolescence was a nightmare for me. Then when I was sixteen I was sent to a boarding school due to failing grades and my withdrawn nature. I think my parents thought maybe a new environment and closer supervision would be good for me. Instead it just seemed to magnify my inability to fit in. Of course, when you're sixteen everything seems magnified, and like it will last forever. It was like the other guys were speaking a foreign language, or were playing by some other set of rules that no one had let me in on.

In the middle of all this, we had to participate in athletics. (YIKES!!!) Well, I couldn't throw, couldn't catch, I didn't know what the hell Lacrosse even was, but I figured I could run. Not much coordination needed for that, right? Just get out and run. Okay. So I signed up for the cross-country team.

For someone who had never exercised in his life, or willingly participated in any sport, you can imagine what my endurance was like. And remember, I didn't sign up for cross country out of a love of running or fitness, nor did I see athletics as any sort of character building experience. I was told I had to do a sport. So I did as I was told, figuring running would provide, if anything, the least possible amount of humiliation.

I never will forget that first day. I was so ill-equipped. Of course there were plenty of other boys on the team who had done this before and were quite good runners. So we did our stretches, and off we went, on a hot Virginia afternoon in early September.

I don't know how I got through those first two weeks. I was, again, terribly shy so I know I wasn't eating well. I had shin splints so bad I could barely walk down a flight of stairs. The hot, sticky Virginia afternoons were brutal, with the hot pavement reflecting the heat back at you as you ran down the road. And of course, of course, there was a dead skunk on the side of the road in that 90 degree heat. While you're just trying to keep up without hyperventilating, and everyone else is at least half a mile or more ahead of you. I came back to my dorm room those first two days and collapsed on my bed in a daze, wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into. (And forgive the curmudgeonly digression, but in those days in the dormitory, there was no air-conditioning).

So, all this to say I was not impressed nor did I have any interest in being an athlete. But, being a guy, I did often wish I was in better shape. So where do you start? The summer I turned 20, I joined the local YMCA, and signed up for a weightlifting class. I was taken to the room with all the Nautilus equipment by some skinny blond who could be described as charm-free. She handed me a clipboard and a blank sheet of paper. She pointed to a file cabinet in the corner. She said this was the form to track my progress, and I could keep it in said filing cabinet. She then gestured toward the Nautilus equipment, said "Okay there's the machines. Always wear shoes in here, no flip-flops allowed. See ya." And with that she sashayed out of the room and that was the last I saw of her.

That was the extent of my weightlifting "class."

I wish, at this point in my life, I had had some real guidance. I think the best thing for me would have been for a real trainer to do an assessment of me. My measurements, my core strength, balance, my one rep max, etc, and started me on a full-body program. Now, again, I was terribly shy, still. It was difficult for me to connect with anybody and even harder for me to communicate with anybody, and, thus, it would have taken a trainer with a PHD in Psychology (and incredible patience and maybe even mind-reading abilities) to get me to open up. I was not overweight at this age. But I felt out of shape. And I had no clue where to begin. And, that, I think, is where so many of us find ourselves. But more on that later.