Uh oh! The New Year is here, and it’s time for folks to make
their resolutions. Most of them will be followed diligently, at least for the
first 30 days. After that, we’ll settle back into our ruts and forget about
changes to our ways of life. For several years, I’ve forgone making any
resolution, but this year, I’m going to make a few promises to myself.
As of the first of the year 2018, I’m going to work on
reshaping my body. Yes, I know that I’m 65 and that gravity and atrophy have
taken their tolls. Still, I need to make a few changes.
As soon as Medicare kicked in, I joined the YMCA and began
working out. The amount of weight I lift isn’t that much, but already I can see
a difference in my strength and endurance. Three times a week I go through 14
different exercises and complete two sets of 15 reps. Some days, the workout is
easy; on other days, I struggle to finish and drag myself to the car for the
drive home.
Some folks simply love working out. They wear smiles and
perform their workouts with gusto. It’s not that I don’t like to take part in
physical exercise. No, I just don’t enjoy pushing dead weight over my head or
out from my chest, curling it up with my arms, or maneuvering it with my legs.
The
The second part of my resolution deals with my weight. As
much as I don’t like working out, I hate dieting even worse. It’s not so much
that dieting is that difficult with the programs that are available today. No,
the problem for me comes in that I’m being told that I cannot have some things
included in my food intake, otherwise known as junk food. I admit freely that I
love sweets and salami and Vienna Sausages, and bacon. Those things aren’t
found on any diet as being all right to eat. As soon as I’m told I can’t have
something, I crave it.
The second part of the problem with this resolution is my
lack of commitment to it. Like most folks, I want to lose weight, but I don’t
want to have to work at it too much. I’d rather just say I’m going to lose
weight and then let it disappear. My life is already filled with enough things
to do: getting out of bed, going to work, taking out the trash, vacuuming and
dusting the house. Another “to do” item is just adding stress to my existence.
Perhaps the worst part of this vow to lose weight is follow
through. Okay, I work at shedding some pounds and the bulging belly that come
with it, and before long I have success doing so. The real kick in the behind
is that I have to maintain this eating regimen or the weight reappears. It
seems fairer that once a person loses weight that he doesn’t need to worry
anymore about it returning.
I am not looking forward to the first of the year because I
know what awaits me. In fact, the more I think about the whole thing, the less
sure I am that this dieting thing is going to happen. I might look for a
substitute to it, maybe by swimming laps at the Y or returning to DDP Yoga, the
best workout I’ve ever used to get in shape. If I do take on this diet, try to
understand any hateful comments that I might make for the next couple of
months. My chewing people out is just a part of a new diet.
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