Saturday, March 19, 2005

The realization

During my rare free time, I like to browse bookstores. I like the feeling that I'm in the presence of life-changing ideas and that they are waiting to speak to me if I just pay attention. Well, it was during one of these bookstore safaris that Bill Phillips book, Body for Life, jumped off the shelf and knocked my world sideways. As I paged through it, I realized two things. First, I saw that I resembled the before pictures much more than the after pictures. Second, I understood in a flash of insight that my body had become an anchor in a life that desperately wanted to move forward.

Twelve or thirteen years ago, I was a distance runner. I was never particularly fast, but I had a lot of heart. I completed the 20 mile distance five times and even finished one marathon. At my peak, my aerobic capacity was in the 70's and my resting heart rate was around 50. Lately, however, I'm getting winded going up four flights of stairs. I checked my blood pressure at the discount store today and it was 128/92. The little placard on the blood pressure machine says that's in the borderline range between healthy and unhealthy. Borderline? How did I go from elite athlete to borderline?

I had actually started a weight training program on my own before I encountered Body for Life. My thinking was that building some muscle mass would boost my metabolism, which along with my biking and martial arts, would start reducing the abdominal fat that's been driving me crazy for the last three or four years. I also had some vague ideas about increasing my aerobic exercise to something more than walking two to three times a week. But, since reading Body for Life, I'm thinking bigger. I'm trading my vague ideas for specific goals and I'm aiming a lot higher. I'm thinking about those washboard abs I never had. I'm thinking about a better way to eat. I'm thinking about a life with more action and fewer excuses. And, yes, I've signed up for the Body for Life Challenge. The competitor's guide came today.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

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