With wisdom comes age. Now, I know you think that it’s the other way around but it makes more sense my way. At least, the smarter I get, the less it does me any good.
Take doing exercise. In my youth, I played all the seasonal ballgames outdoors for a couple of hours at a time and did not feel tired out or end up complaining about injuries. In my twenties, I played softball, basketball and volleyball and did not get winded. I broke a bone or two but it didn’t stop me from getting around.
All that sweating and physical abuse didn’t protect me from shifting body weight thirty years later. I was not much of a jogger as I have flat feet but I used to do an acceptable double time. The hop, skip and a jump over the years dragged down to a slow waltz.
In this new millennium, unless the weather is really nice and there is not much else to do, the outdoor walking is less and less. My regimen has moved indoors to the exercise room in my condo building. Now, walking is a matter of trying to find a good pace on a treadmill. My fingers also get a good workout trying to find a television show on the remote control that will hold my interest while I also concentrate on not falling on the moving walk.
Last year I took up bicycling. Not the type that required one to buy a helmet, elbow pads and water bottle for those long outdoor treks into the far suburbs. No, instead my brother-in-law gave me his old stationary bike.
It sits proudly in front of the tv set in my home office. The bike gets a good workout when there is a worthy sports event to watch. I’ve convinced myself that biking in one place for over an hour will get me that much closer to looking like an Adonis.
At the age of 16, my temporary learner’s permit (which did me no good as I didn’t get a real license until 19) proudly showed off that I weighed 156 pounds. At the time, I thought anyone who weighed over 200 pounds was fat. Well, I am not fat and I’m not skinny. Someone ought to make up a word to describe people in my weight class. You can always tell the dishonest ones on those on-line dating service profiles where the self-deniers give their dimensions and provide a picture. You just know that either the picture was taken ten years earlier or that the guilty party needs to understand definitions of words such as petite, toned, medium, Ruebenesque or just plain fat.
Friends and relatives tell me that all the exercise in the world does not do that much to help you lose weight. Exercising does tone you up but it is not going to take you down from 210 to 175 pounds. It’s all about eating less. Aye, that’s the rub. You know the old jokes, “I’m on a seafood diet. I see the food, and I eat it.†and “I have a weight problem. I can’t wait to eat.â€
I have motivation, though, to take off a few pounds. I can wait another fifteen to twenty years when a great nephew or niece gets married. I just hope they let me come to the wedding in my sweatsuit and cane.