PixVox

After graduating magna butt laude and becoming a career Sendentarian, I find myself faced with the aforementioned choice, get off the couch or head back to the buffet. In a moment of weakness, I chose the former. I’m not honestly sure why. It could be vanity, a mid life thing or a desire to see my grandchildren graduate from high school, but I am serious about getting into shape. To a great extent it’s the final frontier for a Sedentarian. A life of activity, where inactivity once ruled. No birthday cake, beer at the ballgame or extra servings of pasta. Sounds like a blast. But a deals a deal and I’m publicly committing to getting off the couch and getting sweaty.

Breaking through is a two step process, lose weight and get in shape. That can happen simultaneously or one following the other. I’m starting at 225lbs, not morbidly obese, but according to the National Institute of Health, and who can argue with them, my body mass index (BMI) is 32. Not bad if I was playing the front nine at Augusta, but obese per their scale:

• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

The NIH says I have to drop down to 175 to be normal. Sorry, but I think I’ll have to pass on normal and split the difference at 190lbs and be a pleasantly overweight BMI of 27. No sense in looking like I did a tour at Guantanamo just to keep the folks at NIH happy.

Now we arrive at an interesting question. Is it better to drag all 225lbs off the couch and get sweaty, or perhaps diet for a while and lose a few first? After all, no one at the gym totes a backpack loaded with fat just for fun. So it makes sense to diet first, from the safety of the couch of course.

After dropping 15lbs in six weeks, I’m ready to move to phase two and hit the gym. A client recommends a personal trainer who runs a boot camp style program. It sounds good. Maybe I can work out in khakis. But fashion sense aside, the first visit reveals the depth of my Sendentarianism.

With visions of a herculean performance and starring in my own Nike commercial, I head to the gym. Not necessarily confident, but optimistic. After completing the two page form that guarantees the trainer I won’t call to complain if I seize up and die in the first week, I start a series of simple exercises. I’m pretty sure it was a test to see if I was a ringer from a fitness magazine doing market research. Seems easy enough. I start with 500 meters on the flywheel rowing machine at pace with resistance. Not too tough. Then we move to some weird pull ups on rings at the ends of two straps from a 45 degree angle. I’m supposed to do 20, but after about a dozen I am pretty well tapped. We then move to push ups (20), sit ups (30) and squats (30). Sounds simple enough right? The entire routine took 9 minutes and 30 seconds. Nothing to it.

Here’s where things go south. Within minutes after the squats, I am on the floor flat on my back, breathless, cramping and fighting waves of nausea. And try as I might, I can’t sit up. Awesome, this is just dandy. And right on cue, some guy at least 10 years older than me looks down and says, “hang in there buddy, it gets easier.”

It gets easier? Hey pal, I am pretty sure I see a tunnel of bright light in front of me. Is that what you mean by getting easier? Then I swear I hear someone say something about an EMT. Great, I’m going out of the gym on a stretcher after a nine and a half minute workout.

I think I stayed in the prone position for about 20 minutes before I could crawl to my feet and grab a chair. After another 10 minutes in the chair, I head for the door. All I can say as I pass the trainer is, “Thursday.” It’s the date when I return for my next suicide attempt.

After winding my way through the parking lot like a drunk sailor, I get in my car and head for home. Once home, I spend 20 minutes laying on the floor of my bedroom, shower briefly and lay on the bed for half an hour.

It’s at this point I wonder just what the heck I was thinking. Life on the couch was decent enough. No one got hurt. And I wasn’t really expected to be fit as a fiddle at 55. I could return to my life as a Sedentarian. But a deals a deal. I’ll stick with it. At least until I break the 10 minute barrier.