The first ten years of my life I was not much of an athlete and was usually not picked at all for games like kickball and dodgeball. Sometime around the age of seven I convinced my mother to send me to a gymnastics day camp. I had been going to day camp for a few years and it was never a very good experience. I just didn't seem to make friends easily or quickly like the other kids. My counselor at gymnastics camp mentioned that they were looking for some new members for their competative team. I was really surprised when I was asked to join the team at the easiest level and started that fall. Over the next few years I practiced for about two hours per day and four days per week. I was never an excellent gymnast and most of my medals were from meets where I had no competition. For sleepaway camp I went to a gymnastics training center in the Delaware Water Gap region of New York. Although I was not any more comfortable at this camp than at my other camps, I went there for several years in hope of becoming a great gymnast someday. By seventh grade I was beating everyone in my class at tests like number of sit-ups or pull-ups. I was still very skinny but that didn't seem to slow me down. I didn't see myself as an athlete. If you were to ask me about myself at that time I would still tell you that I was getting picked last for sports teams. Sometime in high school we started playing lacrosse in gym class. After a few classes another student and I asked when we were finally going to play a game. "Not everyone here is an athlete like you guys are," replied the teacher. I was surprised to hear the term used in reference to myself. Unfortunately, my sports had taken a toll on my body and especially my back. By my senior year I was taking Advil several time per day just to be able to walk. The doctors told me that I would have to stop doing all of the sports that I had come to love and identify with in order to manage my back pain. I quit the swim team where I had been a diver for four years and had trained over summers and on weekends at Columbia University. I went on one last ski trip with my family. After that I quit doing all the sports that had been so important to me. Having recently started smoking I decided there was no reason to hold back since I could just as easily have a piano fall on my head as get lung cancer. At the time it seemed to make sense. I had been trying to gain weight for several years by eating whatever I could, like milkshakes and hamburgers. So I started college eating like I was still an athlete but wasn't doing any sports. I had also started to have terrible acid reflux. It might have been all the Advil I had been taking, or it might have just been something I was born with. Either way I couldn't bend down and touch my toes without feeling like stomach acid was pouring out of my ears. So between my back and my stomach I stopped doing just about any exercise at all. Over the next decade I began to gain weight slowly but steadily. I spent my twenties eating like I was still skinny. By the time we were pregnant with our first child I noticed that I was still gaining weight. Whenever we went to the obstetrician and my wife got on the scale I would get on right after her. It started out as a way to support my wife, but I quickly realized that I needed to make a real changes in my life if I even hoped to stop gaining weight, let alone lose some. The first thing I did was stop eating any fried food and soda that wasn't diet. I had just discovered breakfast sandwiches, which are really tasty but were probably not helping with my weight gain. They had to go too. I was eating like I was still an athlete, but had not even been been to the gym in years. I believe I was drinking about 1200 calories per day in soda alone. All those changes did help slow down how much weight I was gaining. When I turned fourty I had a physical and my doctor was concerned about my blood pressure. Rather than go on medication, I asked if I could go to the gym and try to get it under control that way. The problem was that my stomach was still making it impossible to work out. My doctor put me on daily medication to manage my heartburn and scheduled an endoscopy to see what was going in my stomach. On the way in to the endoscopy the anesthesiologist asked if I had sleep apnea. I told him that my father had a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea, and though I snored, I had never been diagnosed with it myself. So I went in and had my endoscopy. When I awoke I was very groggy, but the anesthesiologist was there, and the first thing he said to me was, "You definitely have sleep apnea." He emphasized the word "definitely." Next came a doctor who told me that I had severe esophagitis and Barret's esophagus, and quadrupled the dosage of antacid I had just started taking. When the sedatives wore off, I thought a lot about all the things I had just learned about myself and my health. From what I had learned from my father and his experience with sleep apnea, losing weight was more effective than a CPAP machine or even surgery. I decided that I was going to lose some significant weight, and I settled on losing thirty pounds in six months. I started by changing my diet in some real ways, like larger salads and cutting out carbs. I also made a commitment to go to the gym at least three times per week, and I posted that commitment on Facebook. I also committed to my weight loss and decided that I would post every workout and my weight after each workout. My friends were very supportive and helped me out when I started to lose hope or got bored with what I was doing at the gym. I discovered that a few of my friends were even personal trainers, and when I thought I had achieved a lot of my goals and was feeling pretty good about my fitness one of them suggested I try a workout class. My friend recommended a total body conditioning class and I walked into the room feeling confident that I had the stamina to handle it. I did not. About half way through the class all I could do was lay face down on my mat and try not to cry in public. I had made a lot progress, though, and I had my doctor re-test my blood pressure. It came back in the normal range, which meant I had achieved one of my main goals. I kept going to the gym and to the class for months and kept making progress in a lot areas, except for my weight. All that working out and classes and even lifting weights had started to add muscle and my weight had rebounded before I achieved my goal, and I hadn't even gotten rid of all my fat. People noticed my body had changed and often commented on it. I had become one of those people who went to the gym all the time and had a favorite locker and treadmill. At my workout class I was the guy who welcomed new people and encouraged them to pace themselves. People now used me as inspiration for their own weight loss goals. It was strange to have people look to me that way, as I still thought of myself as a shlubby middle-aged guy. I managed to keep it all going for over four years, until covid struck. All my work and good habits disappeared quickly and my blood pressure went higher than before. I was really disappointed when I had to start taking medication for it. It has almost been two years now since I last went to the gym. Once I was surprised at my own image in the mirror, as my spare tire was back. With all these changes I had made to my life, and all the health-related things I had learned about myself, I was surely in the third quarter of my life. One difficulty with writing a story like this at a pace of one word per day is that my life is changing faster than I can record it. When I started this story I was at my peak of my fitness. I was sure that my body and body image had settled into a new phase and would stay that way for some time. The title of this story was based on that idea and assumed that I would keep my habits and my body image for twenty years. I had meant to end the story there, but five years and one pandemic is a long time, so how should I conclude a memoir that takes longer to write than to live?
Last updated: Thu Apr 07 2022 20:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)