Middle Age Renaissance

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Disclaimer..............................................viiIntroduction............................................xi1. How I Got Started....................................12. Choices And Decisions................................193. Getting Started......................................294. Make It Forever......................................455. Our Body's Journey...................................576. Our Mind's Journey...................................657. Back To The Basics...................................798. Our Spirts/Ourselves.................................899. Inner Vision.........................................10110. Expectations........................................123Appendix A. Suggestions For The Gym.....................135Appendix B. Suggested Reading List......................141

Chapter One

When someone comments positively on my physique, not that it happens that often, I am sincerely flattered, but humble about it. I usually say thank you and something to the effect, "I have the body of a nineteen year old and he wants it back because I'm getting it all wrinkled." It hasn't always been that way. There were more than a few periods in my life when I was anything but happy with the way I looked physically.

I can still remember as an adolescent being overweight, and totally uncomfortable with how it felt. It was precisely at the time in a young man's life when girls start to become an issue. And there I was, overweight and lacking in confidence. I would fantasize about girls telling me they still liked me even if I was a bit chubby. In fact, some of the girls in my fantasies even preferred me "husky."

Husky. What a word. It's a word to describe overweight boys without being too cruel or obvious. My Mother would take me shopping for clothes in the husky department and I hated every minute of it. Sure, I hated the shopping part in general, but I hated having to shop in the husky department even more. I hated the way my fat spilled out over the tops of my pants when I tried them on. I hated how they seemed to restrict everything, even my confidence. My Mother always commented on how well the pants fit even though they were about six inches too long in order to accommodate my waist. I wanted to wear the ratty old pants that were finally broken in, contoured to my body but too crappy looking to be presentable. I had to sneak out of the house if I wanted to wear my comfortable pants. I even hated walking by mirrors in a department store because of the truth the reflection offered. It wasn't fun, and I just wanted to get something to eat and go home.

I don't think I correlated eating with my weight at that age. It didn't seem America was as overweight in the early sixties as it is now. There was little if any information for adolescents to consult for all of the angst we were feeling about all kinds of things. We were raised by parents who had weathered the Depression, so we were constantly required to be grateful for all kinds of things, including the food we ate. We were always told how lucky we were; no matter what we had we were lucky to have it. Our parents never had anything we had: clothes, food, books, TV, toys, a short walk to school, and everything else that was supposed to make our lives so complete and wonderful. I often wondered how our parents survived at all. I could picture my Mother digging in the dirt for grubs in the thirties just for strength. When my Mother gave me a hard time for complaining and told me to count my blessings. I never came up with a very long list.

There were a lot of things I remember that didn't seem particularly like blessings. I hated the teachers at school making me feel stupid and worthless. When I came home and told my Mother that Sister Lady of Bleeding Gums doubled up her chubby little fist and sent me flying down the hall, she told me I probably deserved it. When I showed her my bloody knuckles from the trumpet teacher hitting me with a steel edged ruler when I hit the wrong valve, she commented on how much my playing had improved. I hated having to adjust the vertical and horizontal hold on the television. I hated having to wear a yellow rubber rain coat in the rain, and those dumb black boots with the buckles. I hated having to wear a hat with ear flaps. Sure we didn't have to stand in line for food, or use ration cards for gas and stuff but we did have to carry out ash cans and be nice to old people and consider all adults, even the stupid ones, as superior. It wasn't easy, and my love life was suffering because of my weight.

One of my first loves was Mrs. Mason, my ninth grade English teacher, and boy was I crazy about her. This was in the mid-sixties, and Mrs. Mason was one of the first hippies I encountered. She wore her hair long, always tied back with sort of a rippling quality to it. She always smelled so good. When she stopped at my desk to help me solve a problem- I had a lot of them - I would almost get dizzy taking in all of her wonderful scents. She smiled and walked really good. I especially liked to watch her walk away. I had even convinced myself that if I wasn't husky she would probably have fallen in love with me. I think the only thing that I learned that year was that I was in love with an older woman who would never notice me because I was fat.

I would even envy my thin friends for the way their clothes fit and how all of the girls seemed to give them more attention than me. I almost felt like a non-person at times. I struggled with my weight for the next three years; high school can be a miserable experience for a lot of reasons. My wardrobe was limited throughout high school; we didn't have a lot of money and I guess my mom thought that I was pretty much on my own when it came to those kind of things after the age of thirteen. I mean, I had a job through high school.

I bought a car and paid my own insurance and took care of my basic needs, which consisted of paying for gas for my car, eating as much fast, crappy food as I could, and trying to figure out how to find somebody who was old enough to buy me and my friends beer for the weekend. So, like a lot of young men my age growing up in the sixties, I was pretty much on my own when it came to trying to figure out who I was and whether or not I had any value. It wasn't long before the government, through the draft, let us know what our value really was. But that is just one of the many things we baby boomers struggled with as far as our identity was concerned. Who I was eventually bolstered in my senior year of high school when a young woman came along who really liked me for who I was, not how much my tummy didn't spill over the top of my jeans. I finally had a true girlfriend - such a neat idea. "I have a girlfriend - oh, my girlfriend and I - it's my girlfriend on the phone." Having someone really care about you does help, but more importantly, having someone to care about is even better. But I was still the husky guy, or as my friends would occasionally say, "fat boy." I didn't like that, although I would laugh along with them when they said it. I was too embarrassed not to. We did or didn't do a lot of things because we were too embarrassed. Hey, I didn't want to come across as wimpy and unmanly. Looking back, I think, why the hell did I give a shit? But I did and I was fat.

I graduated from high school in 1971 and was grateful I did. I spent the summer after high...