I want a Divorce

*knock knock*  Is anyone out there?

It's been a while.

I'm not writing this post for anyone except myself.  If you're reading it, it's not because I led you here.  I'm just trying to give myself a swift kick in the ass.

It's time to wake up.  It's time to stop screwing around with my life.  It's time to start behaving as if I want to live.

Because right now, I'm dying.

I'm not in immediate physical peril, but I am dying.  My biggest issue is that I'm accelerating the process with choices that are obviously detrimental to my well-being.  In the last couple of years - the time between writing my last post and this one - I've seen some pretty dramatic (and mostly negative) changes in my corpus mundi.

First and most obvious is the fact that I am bloated and fat around the middle.  I'm squeezing my ass into 38" pants - a far cry from the 34" pants that I was wearing just a couple of years ago.  How much discomfort is required to break the pattern of destructive behaviors that will quite literally kill me much sooner than I am ready?  Reflect back to yesterday and the 36" adjustable waist pants that you were wearing that felt like they were crushing your junk every time you sat down.  Do you need to feel like you're trapping your nuts in a fabric vise every day before you say, "Screw this.  Let's fix it"?

You haven't slept in a proper bed for years.  The couch is being ruined because your loud-ass snoring self is sleeping on it night after night.  The effects of this behavior are obvious - your wife sleeps alone in a separate room because your wall-shaking snoring keeps her awake; your relationship with her WILL suffer ill effects of such separation.  Do you even care?

Your body is constantly racked with pain.  Your knees are being stretched beyond their normal limits.  Your shoulders are constantly in pain due to the way you fold them over each other at night.

Your example to others in the dojo is not a good one.  You are yudansha.  Your body is one area of the self that you should control, and yet you treat your body with contempt.  Is that what you want for students who look to you for what it means to be yudansha?  Is that honor so insignificant that you blow off the responsibility of being a proper example?

Let's not forget that nidan testing is coming, and in your condition the test might very well kill you.

Yours is not healthy behavior.

And what's with all of the shit you are eating?  Your online bank statement reads like a who's who of fast food joints in town.  Whatever happened to eating food... you know - REAL food.  Fruits, vegetables, whole meats - that stuff that is good for you - should be the norm, not the preservative-laden pseudo-food that you've been eating non-stop for the last few years.

Let's list a few other symptoms that are besetting you right now:

• heartburn
• abdominal pain
• ulcers
• headaches
• fatigue
• sore feet
• mood swings
• digestive issues
• crappy skin
• chest pain/pressure
• numbness/burning in your leg (compressed disc)

Man.  Looks like life is great.  You appear to be doing everything right - if you're looking to park yourself in a 6' hole...

Yep.  Time to fix this problem.  And not just for yourself.

C'mon man!  Look at this website you've built here.  Look at the after pics from just a few years ago.  YOU LOOKED EFFING GOOD for a dude in his late 30's/early 40's.  GET THAT SHIT BACK while you're still alive to enjoy it!

Last point, and maybe this will push you down that better road.  4 kids.  You've got 4 kids that are counting on you to see them graduate.  2 girls that want you around to walk them down the aisle.  2 boys that would probably want you to see the kind of man they grew up to be but still need to call when they have a question.  4 kids that want to have a father for years and years to come.  You're dicking around with THEIR futures, pal.  Not just your own.

Now.  When you get home this afternoon, you greet your wife.  You tell her, "Honey.  I love you and the kids very much, and I'm sorry I've been treating my body like shit.  I'm changing things, starting right now."  Then get a bottle of water and drink it.  Grab some good food and eat it.  Then walk that beautiful woman you married down to work and get your ass home, into a change of clothes, and off to the gym.

Sweat.

Breathe.

Struggle a bit.

And live.

And when you get home, take a long hard look in the mirror.  Tell that dying entity looking back at you that you're tired of being in pain.  You're tired of the struggle.  Tell him that you're done with him.  You're moving on.

I want a divorce.  From my lazy, fast-food-eating, unhealthy 'other' side.  And that divorce is final as of today.

44 years old is not too late to change your life.  In fact, it's just the beginning...

From the Heart...

I haven't planned this blog entry.  I haven't written notes or anything.  I'm just coming from the heart on this one.  Shooting from the hip, as it were.

I am a human being - prone to failures and fallings.  Recently, I've been mired in a bit of self-imposed guilt-ridden laziness that has prevented me from doing the things that are necessary to be effective as a mouthpiece on this website.  Alice and I were talking yesterday about how much easier writing for Wo40.com is when we're in the gym.  Until just a couple weeks ago, we weren't even members of a gym; we let our membership expire about a year ago.  After that membership expired, it was just a matter of attrition that stopped our writing about fitness related activities.

Our diet soon followed our exercise patterns and subsequently went to hell.

Now, that's not to say we've stopped exercising and given up totally on our health.  Not at all.  We still train in karate at least 3 days a week in addition to walking all over - to the store, to the post office, to the bank.  Physically we're not in a bad way.  We're just not training as hard as we could (or should).

Now, before people write this entry off as a "poor poor pitiful me" post, let me clear up the intent of this post: We are normal people living in a normal world with normal issues.  When I read other fitness blogs, I'm sometimes led to believe that everyone else has got it all together - that they never stray from their diet and never miss a day in the gym.  The truth of the matter is likely that they (those other bloggers) are likely no different from us.  There are ups.  There are downs.  There are times when they wonder why in the hell they're going through the pain of exercising.  There are times when they eat like crap.  The difference is that they might not talk about it publicly.

I'm here to tell you that Alice and I are not paragons of healthy virtue.  We eat junk.  We drink soda.  But those activities do not define us as voices in the fitness world.  Eating the way I do, I still come in at under 200 pounds because I work exceptionally hard in the dojo (my karate training hall).  Alice is still a lean mom of 4 that a good many women envy for the size 4 she wears.  She, too, works incredibly hard in the dojo, despite injury setbacks and a conflicting work schedule.

So, we're fairly normal.  Our chief goal is to be better today than we were yesterday.

If that's all you ever ask of yourself, then you're on a pretty good path.

Be well!

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I Am An Addict

Addictions suck.  If you don’t think so, just try getting addicted to something and then try to give it up.  You know – just put it down, walk away, and never go back.

Easy peesy.  Right?

I am an addict, and soda is my drug.  Despite knowing that drinking soda is akin to consuming liquid toxic waste, I still can’t break my dependency on the stuff. 

I had a moment of epiphany the other day.  It was in a period of desperate tiredness and strong thirst that I grabbed an ice-cold bottle of my fizzy friend and popped the top.  I took a swallow and came about this |  | close to being orgasmic.  I felt all quivery and heart-fluttery.  It's possible my loins even tingled a little. 

TMI.  Sorry.

I think I downed half the bottle in the first few swallows and then came to the sudden realization that I was enjoying this experience perhaps a little too much.

I’m not proud of this addiction.  I’m a bit ashamed, actually, that I can come on here and speak about the horrors and inherent dangers of the chemical hodgepodge that makes up soda while I secretly cower in the corner of a dark room getting my bloat on.

Yeah, I’m a hypocrite.  But I’m an honest hypocrite, and that has to account for something.

A few weeks ago, I tried to quit cold turkey.  I was drinking a gallon of water a day and trying to act like I enjoyed it.  But caffeine is a bitch, and she likes to lay the smack down when she doesn’t have her way.  I made it 2 weeks before I popped the top again and fell off the wagon.  The grip on my brain was loosened and the headaches went away.  The fatigue was replaced by sugar highs and caffeine rushes.  I didn’t necessarily feel ‘better’; I just felt a little closer to ‘normal’.

So I’m back to square 1. 

Again. 

Dammit.

There’s a solution to this problem.  I know there is.  It can’t involve will-power or chemical means because I don’t have the former and don’t want the latter. 

Until a complete solution is found, I shall try to keep consumption in moderation.

And I’ll hope that people can forgive me for being a hypocritical junkie.

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Decisions Become Habits

Over the course of any given day, each of us makes hundreds - possibly thousands - of decisions.  Some of them are completely inconsequential - which pair of black socks to wear or which pen to sign our names with for example.  Others have a far more profound effect on our lives - to move or stay, invest in a company or not.  No matter how monumental or insignificant the decision, we are actively deciding our way through every day of our lives.

The thought occurred to me the other day as I was pondering the nature of why we do what we do.  We say things like, "That's such a nasty habit," when we see someone dipping tobacco or biting their nails.  So how does one get from the point of making a decision to having a habit?

What is a habit except a decision that we no longer think about?

Until about 14 years ago my in-laws smoked cigarettes.  After 30+ years of smoking, the activity had become completely habitual on multiple levels.  They habitually bought cigarettes whenever they went to the store.  They habitually lit their cigarettes, smoked them, crushed them out, and repeated the process time and time again each day.  It was automatic, mindless, and performed flawlessly each and every time.

Until one day, they decided to stop smoking.  Now they had to perform an entirely different set of actions.  They had to consciously decide to NOT buy cigarettes.  They had to consciously decide to stop lighting cigarettes and smoking them.  And over time, their new decision making process became a habit - performed flawlessly and mindlessly every day.  Today, 14 years later, they no longer even think about smoking cigarettes.  They have a new habit.

Fitness and diet operate on the exact same level.  Some of us have a current habit of buying food that is not good for us.  It happens automatically - I know it did for me.  I would literally find myself standing in line at some local dive buying food that I knew was bad for me.  Because I had done it so often, I just repeated a habit that was the product of a decision I had made years earlier.  The only thing that ever changed was the venue.

In order to change my body, I had to change my habits.  I had to consciously decide to eat nutritious food that gave me energy and nutrients.  I had to decide to change my shopping practices and eating preferences until the healthy decisions could be performed unconsciously.

Laziness is a profoundly difficult habit to break.  Sometimes people become automatons - wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, have a snack, go to bed, repeat.  One of the saddest testimonies to laziness came from a couple in my circle of influence that knew exactly what channels they were going to watch on any given day of the week from 6:00 in the evening until bedtime.  The routine never varied unless a show came along and bumped a standing program from their self-designed television lineup.

In order to make any change in our lives, whether it be fitness related or otherwise, we have to consciously make decisions that are in alignment with the goal we want to achieve.  Rather than unconsciously ordering the #3 Combo with extra pickles, we have to consciously decide to order the garden salad with vinaigrette.  Instead of mindlessly deciding to plant ourselves in the recliner for hours on end, we have to make a focused decision to go for a walk.  Eventually, the new patterns will take hold and become habit. 

Living your life consciously is the only way to effectively change your future for the better.  We are all subject to the effects of our decisions and habits.  The body does not discriminate between "good" decisions and "bad" ones.  It makes a habit out of whatever you do.

Make your decisions healthy and happy ones, and your life will surely follow suit.

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Sex and the 30- and 40-Something Crowd

My one true fear is losing the ability to be sexually active.  Sex is an important part of my overall well-being, and I'm not shy about it.  Thankfully, my testosterone levels are at their highest and my libido is quite healthy.  Unfortunately that won't always be the case, so I need to take steps to keep my sex drive as healthy as it can be for as long as possible.

According to the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, 67-76% of married men in the 30+ demographic have sex only a few times a month.  20-25% have sex only a few times a year.  These men are about half as sexually active as their late-teen and 20-something counterparts.  Blame falling testosterone levels (among other contributing factors) for reduced sex drive and infrequency of sexual activity.

So, let's talk about increasing your testosterone levels and (hopefully) the frequency of sexual activity.  Now, I'm not here to tell you how to pick up women; you're on your own there.  You might have noticed that I'm a happily married man, so my pick-up skills are marginal at best.  I am, however, going to give you some suggestions that will help you boost your natural testosterone production and hopefully keep you sexually active later in life.

1 - Get Rid of the Beer Belly

Excess body fat reduces natural testosterone production and actually raises estrogen production.  Estrogen is a wonderful hormone if you're a woman or you want to grow moobs (man-boobs).  After all, we ALL know that women are attracted to a nice trio of floppy appendages in the form of moobs and a beer gut.

Or not. :-p

What demographic is more likely to be carrying around a hefty belly and moobs?  You guessed it!  The 30-something crowd and beyond.  Coincidence?  I think not.

2 - Lose Weight Gradually

Cutting calories too sharply triggers a physiological response that stops testosterone production.  After all, what's the need to reproduce during a famine?  Dropping fat at a rate of about 1 to 1.5 pounds per week will prevent the starvation response and keep your testosterone production humming nicely along.  Eating frequently also helps.  A meal consumed every few hours will keep the body in testosterone production mode.

3 - Eat Nuts

Get your mind out of the gutter.  I mean tree nuts and peanuts.  There is research that suggests consumption of monounsaturated fats, which are abundant in such sources as hazelnuts, macadamias, peanuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios and cashews, increases the natural production of testosterone.  Butters and spreads made from those sources (almond butter, peanut butter, etc.) have a similar effect.

I knew there was a reason I like to buy the large bags of peanuts at the state fair.

4 - Exercise.  HARD!

Lift light and your "equipment" will be weak.  If you do 3 sets of 5 reps at 85% of your maximum, you'll trigger natural testosterone production.  The type of exercise you do also makes a difference.  Compound exercises - those that require multiple-joint movements (squats, pullups, bench presses, etc) - do more to increase testosterone production than simple exercises like bicep curls and leg extensions.

5 - Get Some Sleep

There's a reason a lot of healthy young studs wake up with "morning wood".  A good night's sleep increases testosterone production.  If you can use that morning erection for its intended purpose ("Oh, honey!"), you'll do your daily testosterone production a favor.  If you stop waking up with that morning erection, you might want to take some of those other tips to heart.

And Finally...

Don't discount the value of masturbating.  Post-sex testosterone production happens even if that sexual activity happens all by yourself.  Don't be ashamed.  Everyone does it.

Increasing your testosterone levels is the key to a healthy libido.  This is true for both men and women, by the way.  Encouraging your partner to train with you (and eat your nuts [how's that for a double entendre?!]) will benefit BOTH of you in terms of sexual satisfaction.

Have fun!

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