Battle of the Bulge.

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I have been fighting weight issues for the better part of my life. As I heard someone once say that with all the diets they had attempted over the years they had lost at least1800 lbs. The trouble was that they had gained back 1900. I wish that wasn’t so true, but it is.

But for the most part the last two years have been on the plus side for me, which means a big minus on the weight. In my diet the big component was exercise. By the bye, the secret to any weight lost program is “calories in/calories out.’ Slice it any way you want, do any kind of diet you want, the bottom line is “calories in/calories out.”

The exercise that I used for the “calories out” part was walking, a lot of walking. For about eight months out of each of the last two years I walked to work. It takes about forty-five minutes door to door, which means a good hour and a half of walking each day. That was a terrific way to keep things in check. As an aside, it is sweet walking home at the end of the day. With each step I get further away from the office and the day’s work just drifts off into the mystic. By the time I get home the pressure of the day has been left on a path somewhere in the park.

Ah, the park! I’ve missed the park. I mentioned the four months a year that I don’t walk? That is the winter. As an old SoCal boy, I don’t do well with cold. You add rain and you have a real unhappy guy. So, winter months means no walking to work and no walking in the park.

This year I got sneaky and joined a gym. I know that people who have only known me for the last few years will find that hard to believe. People who have known me longer will believe that just about the way they believe me when I say that I did my first oboe recital at Carnegie Hall when I was ten. In other words…hallucination.

But, no ‘tis true…’tis true. I’m in the gym six days a week, and by in the gym I don’t mean that I’m standing there drinking high protean drink at the fruit bar. No I’m working out and breaking into a sweat. Frankly, I find it hard to believe myself. I wouldn’t fall for that line but I happen to be there at the time, and I saw it.

Gyms make for such interesting stories, most of which involve me as an observer. But, I’ll save that for another time.

I just returned from England, looked at the scales, screamed, and then made the resolution to dump the damage that two weeks of fish and chips had done to the scale. I decided that for the rest of the summer, even though I have no plans to stop going to the gym, I resolved to go back to my walk to work. Tell me the truth, can any of you believe that this is really me talking, or do you think you should be looking for the alien that must inhabit my body. Sort of makes you feel sorry for the alien, doesn’t it?