A Baby-Boomer’s Battle with Insanity and Fitness

On this episode of Our American Stories, Paul, our regular contributor from Minnesota, is here to tell us his weight-loss resolution story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show. Our next story comes to
us from Paul in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Paul moved our listeners
with his story Wilbur and the Empty Nester. We asked
him if he had any more. Here he is with
this story titled a baby Boomer's Battle with Insanity and Fitness.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
A handful of years ago, I had to come to
grips and admit that I was fighting a losing battle,
trying shamelessly to hold onto my youth, and so I
made an executive decision. Here's the deal. I was six
months from hitting the dreaded age of fifty. I was
not only over the hill, but I was also out
of shape. I had gotten lazy, and I had become
a viewer and critic of the sports I loved rather

(00:53):
than a participant. It was the dead of a frozen
Minnesota winter and I was feeling fat. I decided I
needed to check myself to get into reasonable shape. It
would be easy. I would start exercising more and get
back to my college weight before the summer started, and
feel as young as ever at six foot six the
thirty pounds I had gained over the years, came on

(01:13):
easily and slowly year after year as I settled into
my career as a computer programmer. But at age forty nine,
I had to face the facts. It was time to
stop blaming my clothes dryer for my tightly fitting shirts.
Time to fess up that my scale is not broken,
no matter how many times I stepped on it each
morning hoping for a better result. That shameful number displayed
was indeed correct. It was time to admit it. My

(01:36):
waistline was growing as steadily as the stock market, of
which by the way, I wasn't even taking advantage of.
Because I'm a stubborn German Catholic and much too conservative.
I knew if I wanted to correct this belt on
buckling dilemma, I had to take some drastic measures. I
had to pry myself off of my lazy boy chair,
which I more accurately call my fat chair. At first,

(01:57):
I thought, let's go the cheap route. I had a
station bike in my basement. Perhaps I should give it
a try. But when I went down there, I remembered
I was using it quite well as a clothes hanger,
and I didn't feel like finding a new home for
my dirty laundry. Then I thought, how about going the
digital or the old fashioned DVD video route? But insanity
and P ninety X seemed like a stretch. There was

(02:17):
no chance I could force myself to mimic some dude
on a DVD. I had tried jogging in the past,
but I would spend those entire thirty minutes force myself
as best I could to keep from transforming my jog
into a leisurely walk and dreading every minute. So I
went a different route. I decided to do something I
never thought I would do. I pried open my wallet,
took out my credit card, handed it over to the

(02:40):
friendly young lady at the front desk, and for fifty
dollars a month, I joined a gym. Yes, I almost
hate to admit it. I became one of those urban
adults on a mission. The guys and girls you hear
about prancing around the gym trying to look like fashion
models and college kids. Only I was one of the
few who didn't run around with either fresh makeup on

(03:01):
and skin tight spandex workout clothes or under armors sleeveless
shirts peeking in mirrors at finely toned bulging muscles. I
was out there every day in my baby sweats, going
as hard as I could on an elliptical machine. Such
was maximum resistance, puffing and puffing and leaving behind a
pool of sweat on the floor below my machine. All
the while I was getting strange looks from those next

(03:23):
to me, peddling as if they were out for a
Sunday stroll. I tried to figure out how they do it.
They make it look so easy. Either I was in
much worse shape than I thought, or these other gym
members were in incredible shape. But I glanced at their
machine now and then, and I found the secret. They
were not setting any resistance. It was all a fraud,

(03:43):
just for show. They were pretenders then and there, as
stubborn as I am, I decided to do it the
honest way. I don't have much of the pride and
prowess left in me that carried me through my Bloomington
Kennedy High school days. I was no longer a slow
and lumbering center iceman on the Mighty Ego Hock team.
I was an old man now, but a decisive one,

(04:04):
just the way my old coach, Jerry Peterson taught me
to be. I was going to lose the weight. As
a Minnesota native born into a Catholic family of ten
who settled into a middle class neighborhood in Bloomington, I
was a blue collar guy who hated to lose and
I was not going to fail. And, believe it or not,
before I knew it, a mere five months from the

(04:25):
start of this experiment, the way displayed on my driver's
license was once again accurate. Thirty pounds and fifty years.
I celebrated those two milestones together. I hit mid century
with a smile on my face and with some smaller
shirts and pants that fit me just right. Ah, you're
fifty half way to a hundred. What a great feeling. However,

(04:49):
the glory was short lived. Sure, I felt great and
I looked better, but I had to shake my head
after all that blood, sweat and tears. I had to
ask at what price had I achieved my victim Having
met my goal, I wondered if I had lost some
my sanity and accomplishing it, had I gone bonkers? Imagine
yourself getting on elliptical machine every day, sometimes even twice

(05:10):
a day, and at the end of the workout, you
looked at what you had done? The machine said, I
went four point one miles. But every time I got
off of that machine and stepped on the ground, I
could verify it plainly. I had not moved an inch.
And consider the other machine I mastered, the StairMaster. I
loved that word picture the master of stairs. The intimidating StairMaster.

(05:32):
Machine when I was done for the day, said I
had climbed one hundred and twenty floors while wheezing and
running out of breath. In the real world, having mounted
that tower, I could have been looking forward to a
much easier walk down those same floors. Then it hit
me that simple pleasure was denied. I had not moved
even one story. I was standing in the same spot
ground levels when I started, right next to an immobile machine.

(05:56):
Who am I kidding? Anyway? I can't even claim to
be master of my own waistline, loneome, non existent stairs.
And even though we already established jogging is not my thing,
once in a while, I did give it a shot,
and I tackled a small indoor running track on this
infamous gym of mine. Eleven laps were equal to a mile.
My goal was usually three miles, but I was never
quite sure whether I made it or not. Needing all

(06:18):
my focus to keep from stopping, I would lose track
of the lapse. Did I just finish lap twenty one
or was that only lap twenty I found myself struggling
to count to thirty three. Oh, I didn't get this.
There was a sign in the track saying walkers could
use the inside lane and joggers had to use the outside. Well,
when there were no walkers on the track, I just

(06:38):
went ahead and jogged on the inside lane. Yet somehow
that made me feel as though I was cheating. These
manufactured and counters in the gym were insane in my world,
and they took their toll on me. So what did
I do to get my sanity back? I did the
same thing any lazy fifty year old would do. I'd
gladly quit that gym membership and I went right back
to my old habits. I reacquainted myself with my fat

(07:00):
and I eagerly assumed my nightly snack habit. And with
the fifty dollars per month membership savings, I was able
to spend that cash much more wisely. I no longer
had to force myself to take the long way around
the Walgreen store. When going to the pharmacy to pick
up my high blood pressure medicine, I went back to
taking the shortcut through the candy aisle. It's only a
dollar thirty nine for a box of milk duds, and

(07:22):
better yet, if I buy three at once, it's an
even better deal at three for three dollars. That ain't
no fuzzy math. Over the next several months, those thirty
pounds were sure a lot easier to put back on
than they were to take off. Much more enjoyable too.
Reflecting on that rebound, I think that perhaps there's a
correlation between sanity and the size of your waist. Obviously,

(07:43):
sane people have bigger bellies. However, I guess it is
possible that's just me just to find the size of
my girth. But whatever you do, don't ask my daughter
if I got my wits back. If you do, she
most likely will say I never had any real sanity
in the first place, which I would reply, that's insane.

(08:03):
At age fifty I was a somewhat fit, bald, sane
old man. But then at age fifty one, I had
once again become that guy you hid to play pickup
basketball with. You know who I'm talking about, that guy
at whom you would shake your head at during the
pickup game between the Shirts and the Skins, a fifty
one year old with a beer belly and a hairy back,
his tongue dragging on the floor, sweat pouring from his armpits,

(08:25):
surely unable to dribble or dunk, but somehow able to
make a three point shot, but only taking that shot
because he didn't have the energy to run the whole court.
That's me to a t except for the part about
making a three point shot. I didn't make them. I
could only take them. This fitness roller coaster I was
on has led me to this conclusion. There was a

(08:46):
need for balance in there somewhere. Leisure and exercise can
go hand in hand, and I was reminded that exercising
is a lot easier and much more fun when there's
a competition involved. What I miss are the days of
doing real exercise, nothing contrived, no spandex and no make up,
no shan tea on DVD and no neon shoes and

(09:07):
maybe best of all, no monthly gym membership coming out
of my credit card. I exercised for free in my
old days, and I enjoyed it. I miss running up
and down the Eumas Luther Church Gymnasium with my high
school buddies Lyle, Gooker, Levi and the Monster, playing hoops
at full speed late at night and sweating it out
the old fashioned way. I miss playing pick up touch
football games on Sunday afternoons down at Running Park my

(09:29):
friend Soupy on the receiving end of my wobbly passes,
where we played on real grass, water by the rains,
not by an irrigation system. These are the kinds of
way the guys should be exercising. I suspect that my
friends and siblings would tell me that those long lost
efforts in street ball and pick up games did little
to improve my sanity. But still I felt like a
normal guy back then, and that was good enough for me.

(09:53):
I do applaud the efforts of those men women and
me nion wearing daughters working out in spandex doing workouts
to a video called Insanity or P ninety X. As
for me, I've got to go. It's late at night,
my stomach is growling, and sh I think there are
some peanuts left in the pantry. Oh, and stay tuned

(10:13):
for the sequel of this experiment coming out in a
couple years when I turned sixty. But between now and then,
I think I'll make things a bit easier. I'll say
goodbye to my lazy boy chair, and I'll go play
outside with the grandkids. And then I'll go with my
daughter on a nice long walk.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
And you've been listening to Paul tell his story of
his battle with insanity and fitness. And thanks to Greg
Hangler for finding the story, sharing it, and producing it.
Paul's battle with insanity and fitness his story. It's my
story too. Here on our American Stories