fatty

In December I will have my seventh anniversary with my current company. To be successful in my current position I mostly rely on mental faculties. The tools that I commonly employ are, relationship building skills, technical knowledge, and the ability cover a lot of ground. Notice that these don’t include anything that even closely resembles physical activity, which is quite different from most all of the work I have ever done previous to beginning work in my chosen field. At first I did not think much about the change in work environment, but after a few years I began to notice horrifying changes; I began to get fat.

Getting fat is an interesting experience. It stalks you very slowly and patiently until one day you realize that your stomach feels disgusting underneath your shirt. Your belt buckle that once laid flat now looks downward toward your feet, almost like it’s embarrassed to around your waist. Maybe the most eye popping part of the experience is looking at a picture of yourself proudly displaying a round belly and cheeks that could be mistaken for a chipmunk’s. What’s more, nobody really has the gumption to tell you “Hey, by the way, you could stand to lose some weight.” You have to figure it out on your own.  

I have to say, though, that once you come to this realization the road back is every bit as intriguing. For the better part of my life when people spoke about exercise I would proudly say that my feelings on the subject were “no pain means no pain.” This made that first trip to the gym very awkward, but after about a year learning human nutrition and exercise physiology I am forced to admit that I was in error. In fact, learning the skill set required to accomplish losing my salesman’s body has been one of my more rewarding undertakings.  I expect too, that it’s much like anything else I have ever tried to do well; the more I learn, it seems the less I know. This seems to be the learning curve with anything that’s worth doing well. The major difference is this time I have foresight to understand this is how things work. This understanding has allowed me grow in this experience without arrogance or preconceptions that typically sets me back. Is that arrogant to say???

Anyway, I might have started rambling a little and if so; my apologies. My point here is to simply express the satisfaction I have found, in finding myself in a gym. For those of you that have known me well, I’m willing to bet you are as surprised as I am.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.