Pumping Iron
Why Katherine Calls Me Dom Deloise
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Here's the thing. My father is very overweight. I'm talking over 300. Nothing against him, he's just a big man. My mother is slim. Genetically, what can I rely on? I was always thin growing up. I've always been mostly fit, except for the asthma.
Until I was 30, I could eat whatever I wanted and not put on weight. I was skinny. Too skinny sometimes (particularly when I was studying during my Honours year at University, and subsisting on ramen and coffee and coke...) but skinny. I never really worked out with weights. Yeah, I swam about 1km a day and rode my bike to and from uni, but that was about it.
Then I hit the 30 year old metabolic wall. I still don't understand what happened, but I started to put on the pounds. Not heaps, mind you, but enough. My wife and I moved to the USA, and I put on 15 pounds.
Let me have a brief aside here. I grew up in New York city, until I was 7 years old. My earliest and some of the fondest memories involved my family and my grandparents and doing various things as a kid. So I get here to the US and I see all the great stuff that I used to eat as a child: Hersheys, candy corn, Oreos, Eggos and all of that good, healthy food.
I'm also a bit to blame: I stopped working out for a while when I got here.
Anyways, to cut a long story short, I started going back to the gym about a year and a half ago, got a personal trainer to whip me into shape, and I'm in decent shape now. I have about 5 or so extra pounds of fat I'd like to shed, but for the most part I'm happy. Maybe 10 pounds. I have good musculature now and I'm stronger than I ever have been in my life.
I was standing in the shower the other day getting ready for the gym and had this depressing thought: I will have to do this for the rest of my life. There's no finishing line (except death), there's no end goal...once I reach my goal it has to be maintained which takes -- you guessed it -- more working out. So for the rest of my life (as long as that may be) I will be working out daily. I will be careful about what I eat and not snack as much. I'll avoid things like chocolate (#1 weakness) and pizza and fast food.
I hope it won't be as obsessive as I am about it now. Currently I go to the gym about 2 hours, 5 days a week. I do about an hour of weights and almost an hour of cardio. Sometimes I'm really tired of it and I want to crawl up in a ball and cry. I know it's worth it and if it was easy to get in shape and have a great body then everyone would have it. Still...I will have to do this the rest of my life.
Sobering. Challenging.
And Katherine calls me Dom DeLoise. Hmmm.
Until I was 30, I could eat whatever I wanted and not put on weight. I was skinny. Too skinny sometimes (particularly when I was studying during my Honours year at University, and subsisting on ramen and coffee and coke...) but skinny. I never really worked out with weights. Yeah, I swam about 1km a day and rode my bike to and from uni, but that was about it.
Then I hit the 30 year old metabolic wall. I still don't understand what happened, but I started to put on the pounds. Not heaps, mind you, but enough. My wife and I moved to the USA, and I put on 15 pounds.
Let me have a brief aside here. I grew up in New York city, until I was 7 years old. My earliest and some of the fondest memories involved my family and my grandparents and doing various things as a kid. So I get here to the US and I see all the great stuff that I used to eat as a child: Hersheys, candy corn, Oreos, Eggos and all of that good, healthy food.
I'm also a bit to blame: I stopped working out for a while when I got here.
Anyways, to cut a long story short, I started going back to the gym about a year and a half ago, got a personal trainer to whip me into shape, and I'm in decent shape now. I have about 5 or so extra pounds of fat I'd like to shed, but for the most part I'm happy. Maybe 10 pounds. I have good musculature now and I'm stronger than I ever have been in my life.
I was standing in the shower the other day getting ready for the gym and had this depressing thought: I will have to do this for the rest of my life. There's no finishing line (except death), there's no end goal...once I reach my goal it has to be maintained which takes -- you guessed it -- more working out. So for the rest of my life (as long as that may be) I will be working out daily. I will be careful about what I eat and not snack as much. I'll avoid things like chocolate (#1 weakness) and pizza and fast food.
I hope it won't be as obsessive as I am about it now. Currently I go to the gym about 2 hours, 5 days a week. I do about an hour of weights and almost an hour of cardio. Sometimes I'm really tired of it and I want to crawl up in a ball and cry. I know it's worth it and if it was easy to get in shape and have a great body then everyone would have it. Still...I will have to do this the rest of my life.
Sobering. Challenging.
And Katherine calls me Dom DeLoise. Hmmm.
