Life Change #3: I Swear (way) Too Much

Shit. This is gonna be hard. Really hard.

OK…I can measure exercise (did I, or did I not, exercise?), I can measure water consumption (1 2, or 7 glasses of water drank today—I can count), but swearing….yikes, this will be a challenge. But it has to be done…aside from my weight, nothing gets more commentary from my wife and daughter, neither of whom swears so far as I know.

This life change will be difficult because there are certainly times when swearing seems to be the right thing, at least in my mind. I mean, if you stub your toe….what are you going to do if you cannot curse? On the other hand, these are after all just words….can "God damn it" be easily substituted with "gosh darn"….not sure, but I can try. I will try. This is a life changing experience, after all.

I think part of the problem is that I am a sponge, especially when it comes to words and language… and I note that swearing has become almost a cottage industry in many movies and various comedians cannot utter a sentence with out dropping the F-bomb. It seems as if some folks get paid per f-bomb they drop, hence they drop it an awful lot. In fact, some times the words themselves are intended to make the joke funny. Thanks Lenny.

When I sit up late and watch “The Daily Show”…they simply silence the swear words, but they are still in the script…if anything, this calls MORE attention to the words. Perhaps John Stewart says “Karl ‘fucking’ Rove” while what you hear is “Karl –pause for silence—Rove” as he clearly mouths the word “fucking”--the impact, seems to me anyway, funnier than if he simply said it out loud…everyone watching the show knows what he said, and no one would be the least bit offended had the word not been censored out, but they have found a way to actually make it funnier, by calling attention to it, BECAUSE it has been excised from the soundtrack. Like spraying orange paint on a scratch or dent on your car (assuming of course, you don’t drive an orange car).

I opted to deal with this bad habit early in my personal journey so I would not be inclined to use profanity in later writings….I can easily see that tackling some bad habits (“I drink too much Coffee” or “I eat too much sugar”) might cause me to swear simply on principle alone…and in truth, as much as curse words flow out of my mouth, I almost never enjoy reading them in print. Somehow it seems when writing…when afforded with the time to select the right word, then it should almost never be ‘shit’ or even ‘crap’ (which is NOT a curse word, but seems to lack grace anyway)…sometimes those are the right words, but at some level it seems lazy. When speaking however, there is often not time to find the right word. You are driving along and someone cuts you off, causing you to swerve and spill that hot bucket of Starbucks all over your shirt. It hurts. If it makes your lap, it hurts a lot. Your clothes are a mess (and quite possibly ruined) and now you need to stop and get more coffee. This merits AT LEAST a “God Damn it!” and more likely a string of expletives. And the finger. Definitely the finger.

I will have to search inside myself to see if I consider the”finger” a bad habit or not. It is such a personal act…most of the time the “other guy” does not even see it given to him. On the other hand, if he does, it may precipitate a much worse confrontation…but is it the same as swearing, or a bad habit all its own? My sister had wanted to purchase a bumper sticker she saw that she thought appropriate…”Horn Broken…Watch for Middle Finger”. I suppose if she has that impression, perhaps it is a habit I need to break. OK, for now, no “finger” either…such a shame…just saying “flip ‘em the bird” has such a poetic lilt to it. I’ll miss this more than the words, I suspect.

This is also a relative issue…..some words that might be offensive to some would be wholly reasonable to others. I guess I am speaking of words that they would bleep out on TV….”tit” and “fart” are both harmless, even though they might not be able to say them on Letterman. I do not use them enough to matter, and frankly when I do, it is completely in context. “Tit” seems at least as cute and harmless as “boob”, and the alternatives to “fart” (pass gas, flatulence, etc) are simply laughably contrived…a fart is a fart folks…get over it. “Ass” is not a swear word…it is part of the body or a smallish horse…and actually, I think the word “butt” is funnier than “ass”, and no one considers “butt” a swear word. Hell is a location, if not in fact, at least in mythology. “Dick” and “cock” are a little rougher, and though I use “dick” as in “that guy is a dick” or even “I caught my dick in the zipper again, and so I am on the shelf for a few days”--can’t really use any other word in that situation. I pretty much never use the word “cock”, and I have no explanation for why that would be…but besides, it is also a rooster…I think John Stewart can say “dick” on TV…so that will be the bar we set….if he can say it on the Daily Show, it is not a swear word, and therefore, I can use it. I think we are really talking about 3 words and/or expressions: “fuck”, “shit” and “God damn” and all their related modified states (i.e.: motherfucker)

So…in giving up swear words, I need to be fair to myself. It will not happen overnight…there will be slip ups. (Again, I am not running marathons yet, even though I have begun exercising…baby steps people, baby steps!) And, there will be occasions that it is totally necessary. For instance…the word “shit”, when preceded by the word “dog” creates a noun that is part of the language with no reasonable alternative. If I observe dog shit on the lawn, that is a fair use of the word. I have never been fond of the expression “dog crap”…seems somehow harder to say and crap is much better as a verb…as in “that dog crapped on our lawn” Dog poop seems juvenile, dog scat seems too scientific, dog mess too British, dog stuff too constipated. So, until I can be convinced otherwise, “shit” is still fair game if it sits on the lawn.

‘Shit’ also makes a wonderful descriptor of a gathering of debris, usually personal, in a place it ought not to be…as in “can you get all your shit off the dining table so we can eat dinner?” Somehow, “can you get your pile of books and math homework off the dining table so we can eat dinner” lacks urgency and emphasis. ‘Shit’ is your stuff that I have no regard or need for….it is important only to you, and now it is in my way. And I cannot think of a better single word that describes that circumstance, and around my house that circumstance is all over the place…yep, there is shit all over my house.

And of course, there is no word that deals more eloquently with the matter of the unflushed toilet. OK…I know there are other words…stool, feces, bowel movement, defecation…even crap…but give me a break….this is not a clinic or laboratory…it is my house…if you do not flush the toilet, there is shit in it…simple as that. Of course, if the toilet always got flushed, we would not have to have this discussion.

Shit will be a difficult word to stop using…but I will try not to use it casually, and will only use it in the descriptive sense where it is appropriate and proper. Fuck is a different matter. It seems to be a universal word—really THE universal word…used as a modifier, (you’re fucking kidding me), a noun (get the fuck out of here), surely a verb (don’t fuck with me!)... and as an expression of confusion (what the fuck is that?)...but it is also a word that simply occupies space in simple sentences….(“I fuckin’ hated that fuck of a movie”, or “fuck if I fuckin’ know”)…and NONE of these uses are really descriptive of the actually meaning of the word….describing the sex act seems to be the last possible use of the word nowadays, and it is never used when there is any true love or feeling involved…”can you believe that John is fucking Sheila?” is not nearly the same as “can you believe that John slept with Sheila?”, or the far more hopeful “can you believe that John and Sheila are hooking up?”.

Fuck is also still the shock word of choice, which is odd since it gets used so generically and without regard to its intended or really any meaning. “Fuck you!” still carries a fair amount of weight when uttered directly and with little modification. It seems to get used casually, indiscriminately, and then suddenly it emerges as a resonant word filled with meaning—usually anger or confrontation. A word for all seasons, a word for all reasons. A powerful word that seems to offend 50% of the population, while it rolls easily and frequently off the tongue of the other 50%. It is divisive. It is a Blue State word, in a Red State World. Oddly, it seems I use it most when discussing our highest ranking Red State politician.

I have noted that as we grow more used to hearing this word, it seems to need to be used more in order to create the same shock value….Generation Y and Z (by the way, who comes after Z? Do we start at A again?) today seem to use the word more than they should (perhaps THEY should give up this habit…right along with me)…in fact, if you eliminated the following words from their lexicon, it would be hard for some to have a conversation at all: fuck, like, uhh, nope, whatever, party, chill, and dude.

But I will give up the word “fuck”….no more “f-bomb” for me…I will limit my use of the word “shit” to appropriate circumstances and context. “God damn” seems almost quaint when measured against other words, but it is offensive to some and surely there are alternatives that I can use. When I slip up, I will try to apologize to whomever hears me. (assuming there is someone present---I sometimes swear at inanimate things! In fact, this will help me with a future life change as well (Life Change #34: I have trouble apologizing).


Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Three):

Seems an odd side effect, but even after increasing my water intake for just one day (Life Change #2: I Don’t Drink Enough Water), I cannot help but feel like I am a bit more thirsty…that’s OK…that should make it even easier to get my quota in today. Disaster struck on the exercise front…yesterday’s dead I pod battery morphed into a dead I pod…I still managed to get in my whopping 32 minutes on the elliptical trainer, but I suffered with out the music…Life Change #3B…I NEED A NEW IPOD!!!

Life Change #2: I Don’t Drink Enough Water

I realized immediately after exercising--I was thirsty. If I am going to do one life change (exercise), I really ought to do the obvious other life change (drink more water). This seems to be an easy enough habit to avoid. I basically don’t drink enough water for one simple reason: I forget, at least when I am not exercising!

Water is the most perplexing of drinks…it has no real flavor, but good cold water really tastes good….and when you drink water that does not taste good, well, you know it, don’t you? Some water has a sort of thickness to it which is really not thirst quenching and I suspect it is not that good for you either. Some water veers toward saltiness, some water leaves a sourness on the tongue. Most of us have water delivered through the tap in our home, but as a nation we still spend a tremendous amount of money on bottled water, some of it sparkling, some of it imported from distant lands, some purports to have health benefits, and all seem to claim that theirs tastes better than everyone else’s. And yet, with all this water available in stores, restaurants, kitchens, bathrooms,…even gardens (though I suppose you are not actually supposed to drink out of the hose), it is said, by whoever says these things, that we do not drink enough water.

We are supposed drink 8 (eight!) 16 ounce glasses of water everyday…and though I cannot say for sure that I will hit that objective everyday, I have decided to add several glasses of water to my daily beverage list, and perhaps thereby eliminate some, if not all of the juice, soda, beer, wine, cocktails and coffee that I drink. Except, I will not eliminate the coffee. (I will still drink my two tall cups of coffee each morning). I expect, as a result of this additional water intake, I will need to make another related change in my life (Life Change 2A: Pee A Lot More).
For me, water has to be COLD. Not tap water cool, but at least refrigerator cold, but I am most fond of water with ice. The stuff you buy in the stores starts out nice and cold, but on those hot days when you really want it cold…it warms up too fast unless you guzzle it down right away…I guess that is why they make such small bottles…so you can drink one and leave the others on ice, but for me, I like a big bottle, or a big glass of water, with condensation forming liberally on the outside of the vessel. I also like a wide mouth. The little bottles with standard necks require you to sip…water is meant to be drunk…not sipped. Aquafina makes a bottle with a wide mouth…they get almost all of my bottled water business. Of course, the standard Nalgene bottle, popularized by backpackers, sets the bar…a large enough mouth so that it allows, if you wish, for a trickle to stream down on either cheek--if you really want to get into drinking water demonstratively…or not.

We are confounded with so many options other than water…ironically, most of them are simply water liberally polluted with sugar, and juice or infused with tea, vitamins or carbonated and mixed with a healthy does of artificial this and that to create a drink that could never be found in nature (what is cola, really?). To say nothing of the sports drink concept….the beverage which is “better than water”. How did we mange to break any kind of sweat without replacing those valuable electrolytes. Pass the salt shaker, please.

These selections don’t count as water, or so they say (at some point, we will have to look into who “they” are, but for now, let us assume they are learned and have our best interests at heart). These alternatives to water are like the junk food of the beverage world…lots of calories, not so much benefit. Despite my enjoyment of water, I find that sometimes, against all better sense and even contrary to my own taste bud’s desires, I will select a soda over water even though I am quite thirsty and water would be a much better choice…something about “it’s just water, and I want something a bit less watery when trying to quench my thirst”. Must be the mind control substances in the sodas that cause us to select them…no way they do their job as well as water.

Think about a hot dusty day…out in the sun, working hard…the back of your throat is dry; your tongue feels swollen and shriveled all at once. YOU are thirsty….what is it gonna be?…A Coke? Pepsi? or…WATER?. Of course it is water! (with deepest apologies to beer…though to be fair, no one has suggested that we, as a nation, do not drink enough beer!)…And though, a vigorous argument could be made for lemonade, perhaps with a sprig of mint leaves along for the ride, surely, it will be water that does a better job of slaking that thirst. I have heard it said that sugary drinks actually increase your thirst…not sure how that gets measured, but in terms of actually making me feel like my thirst has lessened, water is top dog!

Even if water is what we should be drinking in lieu of Snapple and 7up, there is still peril, or so it seems. Is our drinking water safe as delivered through our kitchen faucet? Some seem to question that….perhaps I should buy a filter!…replacement cartridges are only about $30…and when the filters are disposed of, it says you are supposed to treat them as a BIOHAZARD. Yikes!…so, one day, we are drinking the water that flows through this contraption, the next day, we are disposing of it at the bottom of some 2000 foot deep salt mine in the Nevada dessert for fear of what may be growing in it…what exactly is it taking out of our water? Should that stuff be in there to begin with?

And what about those bottles of water that are so convenient and stocked in plentiful supply at every convenience store in the land. I wonder if the bottled water boom isn’t a sort of plot by a coalition of petrochemical manufacturers….there is a lot of plastic surrounding all that water. Most of it is labeled “Pure Spring Water” or “Bottled at the Source” wherever that might be. If, as we assume but don’t readily acknowledge, those bottles are simply filled at some tap in a bottling facility in Pennsylvania, or Virginia or Arizona, who is to say that those taps are any safer than the one in my kitchen…assuming of course that it is safe! Do they have a filter?…(how do they get rid of theirs?). Troubling stuff indeed…what happens if my eight glasses a day kills me...won’t be very good for any future bad habit remediation…though I will admit it is a pretty powerful life change (Life Change #2347: I Don’t Breathe Enough Air).

I wonder sometimes about these “sources”. When I was a kid, I used to spend a great deal of time in the Rockies, near the head waters of the Colorado River. We would hike and fish and spend all day in or around water, and when we got thirsty, we’d simply cup our hands and dip them into the freezing stream and lift as much water as we could hold to our mouths and drink the freshest coldest water you could imagine; likely it was snow earlier that day, and it quenched the thirst, it tasted so good, almost sweet, but with a clean finish that suggested pine and it slipped down your throat like a shoe on a mossy rock….and we never got sick…we drank all we wanted, left plenty for the fish, and never thought about anything in the water that might hurt us….
Those same streams now are replete with the Giardia bacteria, (so called Beaver Fever) and no one drinks from the streams without elaborate treatment devices and tablets….water that used to flow into the town’s water supply now needs filtration, ozonation, chlorination, and all sorts of other “nations” in order for it to be deemed safe. SO…what is that “source” that is advertised on some bottles, and how is their source more protected than other sources? Sort of makes me wonder if I should make this change at all.

The one “nation” liberally added to water is “carbonation”. I have wondered if water ever really occurs naturally carbonated. I guess in fact I have not wondered very much, since I could probably “Google” it and find out, but in any event, I have noted that despite the fact that, though bottled water already costs more than gasoline, to really maximize profits, a water producer can simply carbonate the water and then really bump up the price. Is it expensive to add carbonation? Perhaps so, or not, but either way, this gives water a snobby cousin…SPARKLING WATER….and they bring it to us from super cool places like Italy, France and Northern California. Folks add a lemon or a lime and pour it over ice, and I am left to wonder….do they make carbonated ice?

I also think it funny that some folks scoff that “water costs more than gasoline” at least in terms of the price in bottles….it seems pretty clear to me…shouldn’t it be? Isn’t it far more important to have water than gasoline? If we took all the gasoline away, we would be able to use our cars for planters or storage or really big paper weights, but without water, we’d use up all the gasoline driving around looking for water.

Since I LIKE water and water seems available without much effort, I will happily add this to my list of Life Changes, commencing today, and see if the results are worthwhile. I can see already one other change headed my way: Life Change #9: Put the Toilet Seat Down!
So I filled and froze a Nalgene bottle (warning: if you try this at home, only fill the bottle about 2/3 full to allow that pesky ice to expand, otherwise, you will need a generous supply of Nalgene bottles). I slurp down about 3 full bottles over the day (the equivalent of 6-7 glasses of water). Some of it streams down my cheek and misses my mouth, thereby giving the back of my hand the chance to purposefully wipe the liquid from my lips and face. I supplement this with a glass of water before bed, and I will be darn close to the target. Just like I didn’t run a marathon the 1st day of exercise, there seems to be no strong reason to drain the swimming pool the first day of expanded water intake. However, instead of lemonade, or Orange Juice at lunch, I stuck with water…that felt pretty good, except now I gotta go pee….

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Two):
Well I made it…but it is after all only day two (Life Change #1: Start exercising). I weathered the worst of all possible stumbling blocks as in fact I had failed to plug in my I Pod overnight…YEP…dead. Oh well…I turned up the radio loud and worked through it…it was hot as well, but since I am drinking all this ice cold water…

Life Change #1: I Don’t Get Enough (or any) Exercise

My wife says I need to lose weight. My mother says I need to lose weight, my daughter says I need to lose weight….I have acquired nicknames ranging from “jelly belly” to “fatty”…all of course intended to be terms of endearment as opposed to outright slanders….Thing is, losing weight is not so much a change I can make (Surely, if I could lose 50 pounds today, I would do it!---and man would I look good!)…No, I think losing weight is a goal, not a change, so I will start with the change that makes most sense….EXERCISE!

Like most Americans, I have been on some kind of diet since I was about 22 years old….and really, I was on a diet before that, just headed the other way…The first time I ever heard my weight challenged was in high school while playing basketball….the coach told me I was too skinny, and that I got knocked around too easily on the boards…I was not amazingly tall, just over 6’-0”….skinny players who are not too tall have a nickname….they call them “Subs”. I became familiar with the sights and sounds at the end of the bench….and I seldom had to shower or launder my uniform after a game. But since the coach did not like how much I weighed, I figured I would do something about it…..Chocolate Mint Ice Cream! It was my favorite…bright green with all those flecks of chocolate…just about a carton every day…all in the name of gaining some weight and perhaps getting a bit more playing time. I ate ice cream, extra helpings at dinner, two bowls of cereal in the morning…my mom would pack two sandwiches (I never liked that part…I think she gave me the same amount of meat, just laid between four slices of white bread rather than two). I never thought twice about what or how much I ate...

Thing is…even though I was not playing in the games, I was still practicing every day…running jumping, sweating…playing basketball…pretty much every day. In fact the days that I got almost no exercise were, ironically, game days…on those days, I would rest up! I gained not a single pound, so far as I could tell…and if I did, it sure was not obvious to the coach…I was still skinny…but I was eating a lot of ice cream, so life was good!

And when I stopped playing basketball, and as you might guess, I stopped eating all that extra food. Well, not exactly. That would have been a smart plan, but actually, I was pretty set in the rhythm…open up the freezer each day around 4pm and whittle away at a half gallon of ice cream, drain a bottle of apple juice, and then sit down to dinner and eat a full plate or two, depending on if I liked it or not. And then, ice cream for dessert. I sure never stopped to add it all up, but I think it might have been about 8,000 calories in about a 4 hour time span.

Initially, I stopped playing basketball, because I blew my knee out, had surgery, and got to sit on my ass for like 6 weeks. Seems pretty obvious now, but I had no idea at the time what that would mean…all that time just lounging about (pre video games, if you can imagine) watching TV and eating to kill the time….and when I was sort of done with the recuperation time…finally, I noticed, I had gained a little weight!...Too late for basketball season, and pretty much none of it above my waist where I could really use it trying to grab rebounds. NO, at age 18, I had a little paunch…kinda cute at the time…my legs and arms were still skinny, my butt as flat as the bench in our high school gym, but the beginnings of a belly…

After my knee was healed up, I went back to playing sports of all kinds, mostly pick up basketball games, softball, flag football…all the sort of things you play in college intramurals, and with friends…and I didn’t gain any more weight, but I don’t recall ever losing the little belly that had joined me. And I noticed that when I went home from college for holidays, ate well, and neglected the activity for even a few days, the pants got a little more snug…the belly grew just a bit…weight gain seemed to be a one way street….

I finally got the clue…obviously too late, that eating a ton of food and then not exercising is not such a good idea…and since I have sworn that I will not buy any larger pants than the size 38 waist I presently wear, I figure it really is time to stop “adding to the belly”—otherwise I’ll need to simply walk around in my boxer shorts…since none of my pants will fit, and frankly, that has a real sad ring to it. If I stick with the exercise, perhaps at least I will stop growing, and then perhaps when I get to one of my later Life Changes (“Eliminate Food from my diet”, or something like that), I can finally start to reverse the 30 year growth trend that is my belly!
I am not alone. Many of the folks that suggest that I lose weight, should also lose weight themselves…I have never known if a proper retort would be something like, “I’ll drop 20 just as soon as you Buck-o!” I am pretty sure if I said it to my wife, she’d help me to stop eating by knocking out all my teeth. Really though…we are all fat, or so many are, that I wonder if maybe this is the way we are supposed to be. Everyone, thick or thin, seems to be on a sort of continual diet that is nothing more than an expression of guilt over their eating habits. I always thought it interesting that the word “diet” starts off with the word “die”, and though it seems so ripe for some sort of clever pun or joke, I can never think of one. Maybe the thin people are really just too skinny, and they should consider a half gallon of ice cream a day as a sort of therapy so they can catch up!

There are some people that remember me skinny (hard to imagine, since I really cannot recall that myself), and they are the some of the most biting critics….”why you used to be thin as a rail, and just look at you now!” The tough ones are the few folks that I know that have no weight problem at all. They often barely say a thing, but instead mutter asides barely audible but loud and clear all the same…as if to say, “You are weak…why cannot you be like me and show some self control?” I imagine them saying that in a sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, and I resent them, because, in my heart of hearts, they are right. After so many years of trying to “diet” or exercise or whatever else you can do to lose weight (which in my case was pretty much confined to thinking about losing weight), I was pretty much a failure…I have managed to add a pound or two…maybe even more, every year that I live…the slow, inexorable march toward obesity…or at least to a size 40 waist!

The critics that most ably break down my defenses are those that play the health card. “You really should lose weight…you don’t want to wind up like your father”. He lay dead on the bathroom floor of my parents home at the age of 61…far too young for a man with ambition and a lengthy “things to do” list. Nope, I was hoping not to wind up like that…and if something like that can’t scare you into change, then it truly is a long uphill fight. I know there is the health thing, the heart attacks, the diabetes, the huffing and puffing up the stairs…and for some folks that is (or should be) the most important thing. I think I am in that group…but the fear lays dormant in favor of my taste buds that still want that second helping or a bowl of ice cream just before bedtime (another wildly bad “no-no”!....).

I still think it is mostly because we want to all “look” a certain way…sort of like Jason Bourne or even Indiana Jones (in the early days)…I’d love to take my shirt off at the beach or the pool, but frankly, I just could not put those folks through the trauma of that, to say nothing of how mortified my son or daughter would be! But the fact that I still WANT to take my shirt off but refusing to do so puts me in that category of folks who are still uncomfortable with how they have let themselves go to seed. I admire, in some weird way, those dudes that peel off the shirt only to expose the huge mound of flesh that is their belly, jiggling, usually pale and pasty, sometimes hairy, but primarily BIG. What self confidence! Or cluelessness…or perhaps I am witness to the simple acceptance of reality. Perhaps that is it. I have failed to grasp what is obvious to everyone else…I’m a fat guy.

Thing is…I don’t feel that fat…it is that belly thing again…it keeps growing…but my feet are not fat…nor are my legs or hands, or arms…or even my butt….sure, I could lose a pound or two in the face, but it is still all about the gut! I am just a good Photoshop session away from looking marvelous….at least in my own brain…of course in that same brain I am also about 22 years old and were it not for my gut, I’d have to scrape the hotties off with a spatula. Maybe it is because I buy loose fitting clothes (Translation: XXL!) and it hides the girth a bit. Sort of like wearing a tent as a disguise, or standing next to something huge, so that by comparison, I appear small. Just a thought…but maybe if they slid all the sizes down, so that what passes for an XL today, might morph into a Medium….at least we could feel a bit better about ourselves.
I marvel at the self confidence some folks have when they pack themselves into tight fitting shirts daring the buttons to pop….in the case of women, I think there is some sort of brainwashing going on that tells them to wear it tight whether they are a size 8 or says 18. Perhaps none of us feel fat…even if we are. Perhaps we all see ourselves as svelte 18 year olds. Perhaps we all buy clothes assuming we are about to lose weight. I have a fair assortment of pants that I hang onto just in case…

Exercise takes time, or so it seems despite all the claims that you can lose a pound a day by shoving this thing between your knees and squeezing for just 10 minutes a day, and then the whole contraption slides under the bed for easy storage…that way that you can more easily forget that it is there….and that you spent 3 easy installments of $29.99 on a piece of crap that probably cost about $1.50 to make in China (Free! Lead paint included!). Because they sell so much of this stuff, I must be the only person that reads that part of the ad that says “Individual Results may Vary”, or “Results not typical”….that seems to drain all the water out of the bucket for me, so I have never made the purchase, and so the underside of my bed is reserved for old shoes, cat hair and a lost remote or two. Perhaps I need to heed the request from my wife that I stop being so cynical about everything I read or see on TV. I’ll add that to the list of things I intend to change…”stop being cynical”…that shouldn’t take more than a day…

Oh but today we are all about the exercise. Like so many Americans, my days are filled with sitting at a desk, pounding away at a computer terminal, and compressing the cushions on the chair on which I sit. Exercise does not seem to erupt spontaneously in my day. No one stops by with a basketball under their right arm and suggests we head down to the park and shoot some hoops for a while. Frankly, the walk back and forth from the coffee machine is not much exertion, though I have detected lately that I grow winded even doing that….I either need to get in shape, or perhaps give up coffee so I no longer even need to make that walk…a change I am not presently willing to make, despite the fact that I have heard it said I should do it. I believe the only people who suggest that you give up coffee are people that DON’T DRINK COFFEE. Currently, the folks at Starbucks are hunting all those whacko's down and so they won’t bother me much longer….still I might add it to the list…”Give up Coffee”…yeah, right.

See how exercise seems to get pushed aside? Even as I write these words about adopting exercise as a life change, I keep getting off message. Same way in real life. I find so many things to do instead of exercising…cleaning my desk (Life Change # 23), or Surfing the Net in search of football news (to be addressed in Life Change #19). Somehow, everything seems more important than exercise. So I made it number one on the list. I figured it could use the emphasis such a declaration would add. Even still, I imagine I will need, at some point, to make Life Change #7: I find too many excuses (not to exercise, wear sun block, etc); though hopefully I will never again have to make Life Change #27 (Start exercising again).

The odd thing is: I really love it RIGHT AFTER I AM DONE….there is this sort of high…I have heard it is the result of endorphins, but I thinking it is really the absence of guilt about what I will have for lunch or dinner…I feel like I have taken my body out for a test drive and rather than staying in the parking lot or in the residential areas of town, I have taken it out on the freeway (though perhaps not into the fast lane just yet!), and pressed the accelerator pedal just a bit. I feel more alert and focused all day long, and I always wonder why didn’t I do this sooner…why do I put off exercising?

For me, the toughest part is the continuity, and the question of how much is enough, and how much is too little. If I exercise 3 times a day…basically every other day…that seems like not enough. Though I am sure that exercising 7 days a week is probably the best solution, it sometimes is simply not convenient. Work, travel, and life’s little complications all seem to conspire at times to keep me from making my appointment with my cardio vascular system…and if two days in a row are like that, it often derails my progress entirely. If I keep up steady progress, then I miss it when I don’t do it…but if I don’t do it for more than a couple of days, I shift from missing it to dreading it…and it becomes all too easy to find easy excuses not to do it …”I have a hangnail today”, or “I have no clean socks in which to sweat”…or the worst, most legitimate excuse: MY IPOD BATTERY IS DEAD!

On the other hand, on those few times where the momentum has truly taken over and I sustain my effort for several weeks…there is that moment…I put on my pants, cinch up my belt tight, and …”WHAT IS THIS???!!!—do I need to tighten my belt to a previously undiscovered notch?” Or…when a person you have not seen for awhile sees you and asks “have you lost weight?” WOW…better than any drug I have tried or could imagine (Life Change #84: Give up Drugs).
As far as ownership of this particular habit, I know I am in a really big club…maybe the biggest club of all. You cannot spend any time channel surfing without stumbling on an infomercial selling Bow Flex, or some sort of exercise programs involving weights or judo, or dancing or yoga or big round balls, or spring loaded contraptions that look so cool on the screen and promise dramatic results in as little as 5 days! QVC sells a parade of similar crap, and there are countless books, tapes, and thousands of health clubs around the country. Exercise, it seems is everywhere….why then are we so fat?

I stop to think about all the things I have bought that were intended to help rediscover my love of exercise…..mountain bike, jump rope, punching bag, boxing gloves, tennis racket, rowing machine, bike rack for the car (so I could haul around previously mentioned bike), countless gym memberships, a basketball, a volleyball, a canoe, walking shoes, stair master, weight set, stationary bicycle, and an elliptical trainer. I think I still have most of this stuff, but the elliptical trainer sits in my office (the only place in the house that it would fit) and so I see it every day…just as soon as I knock the cobwebs off and give it a thorough dusting, I climb aboard that machine and begin my first life change…to start exercising.

After 27 minutes at level 3, I figure that is enough change for one day, I climb down, dripping wet, thirsty, but on my way to the greatest reclamation project in (my) history.