He Must Work Out

For those who missed perhaps my most autobiographical entry (read it here): intially after finishing my undergrad, I considered being a cop. I'm not really sure why - anyone who knows me is completely stupefied by the idea - but I think it was mostly because the job offered decent pay with no additional schooling. Plus, even if I was no good at it, it would have at least been an interesting job.

But that is neither here nor there. The important thing is that ambition gave me the determination to completely change my life. I was what some would have called "skinny fat." That is, I have never been overweight (just the opposite, my lifelong problem has always been keeping weight on), but that doesn't exactly mean I was healthy either. During most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I ate horribly. Virtually no fruits and vegetables, too much red meat, and tons of carbs, sodium, and sugar. It was really kind of disgusting. But my hobbies didn't really require a lot of physical activity, so I didn't think it was a big deal.

Thankfully, in my mid-twenties I finally got more sense; and when the whole law enforcement idea was in my head, I gave my diet and lifestyle a complete overhaul. I got a gym membership, started lifting weights, and actually started paying attention to what was going into my body. A novel idea, I know. Sometimes I'm a little slow.

So for a couple years I worked out four to five times a week, lifting three to four days and jogging one to two. The whole idea was to gain muscle and finally bring my body weight up to where it should be (for reference, I'm basically right at 6 feet tall, and my weight that first day at the gym was 126 lbs). Now let it be known right here that I am by no means trying to brag about anything. At my "peak" I was 158 lbs (about twenty pounds shy of my ideal body weight, according to the trainers), jogging five miles a week, and the best bench press I ever did was a few presses of 210 lbs. It's obvious I was never going to be a body builder, but it was at least getting to be respectable.

Things have changed, though. Priorities have shifted. I've dropped the gym membership - it got to be too expensive, considering how little I went and how crazy my schedule was getting to be. I used to make time to work out regardless - jogging a little bit and doing a medicine ball weight routine... now I exercise when it's convenient, and these days, frankly, it just isn't convenient. I jog occasionally with my fiancee, but she has become a jogging fiend. She used to hate working out, especially the cardio, but for the past month she's been jogging two to three miles... every day! I can't do that! At my best I was doing two and a half miles twice a week - and she is leaving me in the dust.

The bad part is I really want to work out, I just can't find the time or muster the energy to do it. Everything I do goes in a different direction, whether it be school, work, play, family; it seems so selfish and trivial to try and work out every day when there are more important things that need to be done.

The ill effects are starting to become apparent, unfortunately. I haven't weighed myself in a while, but I'd be willing to bet that I'm down to 150 at most, maybe more like 145. What little muscle I do have these days isn't very well toned at all... I'm just a mess. I've really got to get it turned around. Maybe not as hardcore as I was a few years ago, but at least something consistent. And that's the key - consistent. I'm a firm believer that you'll be a reasonably healthy person if you are just consistent with your routine, provided the routine is reasonably healthy of course. I'll get back to where I should be, it's just a matter of balacing everything that's going on right now.