Buckethead Belly

Everyday I get email about health and weight loss. It's true that I need to lose a few pounds and change some habits that are not healthy. Like most men, the cheap pizza and red table wine gets distributed in my mid section. Thankfully, I am over six feet tall and have an athletic build. That is what I like to think.

Athletic build means that twenty years ago I was in good physical condition and played sports in high school and college. Needless to say, the physical activity greatly diminished after graduating college and going to work. Once you add a couple kids to the mix, the inevitable Body Mass Index starts to rise a bit with every passing year. Every year I have committed to getting back in shape again and regain my once athletic build. Yes, I have failed again and again. It's the same old story that has been told over and over. Well, this time it was going to be different.

Let me tell you what happened and share some of the lessons I learned from this latest experience.

The best advice I can give you is to forget any notion that you are ever going to regain your former stature. That is not going to happen. Let's say it one more time because I know you don't believe it. You are not going to get into those pants again and even if you do, you will not look the same in them as you did when you were twenty years old. Additionally, you probably never really looked like you think you did anyway. You have embellished the image of your self my friend and there is no where to go in this scenario but down.

Listen to what happened to me. I started on my "this time it's different" diet and exercise program. Yes, it was a program. I can even go so far as to say that it was a complete system designed to regain my youth and vigor.

I started out with all the best intentions. I purposely broke all the rules. I believed that breaking all the rules was the strategy that would work. I have tried the "follow all the rules" diet and exercise program so many times already that I know all the rules instinctively. My thinking is that breaking all the rules must work because following all the rules has failed so many times. I love this plan!

I devised a relentless and unforgiving workout routine and diet. This routine was certainly a recipe for failure. But, failure was the plan. The plan was to fail. The brilliance of the program of failure was in the failure itself.

My attempts to be healthy and fit in the past have all failed. But, I have been consistently on a failing regiment. In my mind, this means that I have succeeded. I'm sure that there is a complicated formula that will demonstrate my point. I don't know what it is but basically if you spread out all the failures over time then it will equal a success in the long run. I really love it. Brilliant! So, I thought.

I started off with a stunning failure. I could not have been happier. I was failing at everything. I failed at the diet. I failed at the exercise routine. It was working brilliantly. I failed my way into losing weight.

I was feeling great and the scale needle was dwindling. I didn't realize that there was an unfortunate physiological reality afoot. Humans do not lose fat proportionally. One day I looked in the minor and realized that no fat had come off my abdominal section of my body.

I was half way through my program of failure when the realization occurred.

I had lost weight in all the wrong places on my body. I now had spindly arms, boney legs, narrow shoulders, grandpa's little round pot belly and absolutely no ass. Absolutely no ass! It was the bloody modern day health club locker room faaking mirror picture of Dorian Gray. The longer I stared at the image of myself the worse it appeared. I actually thought that I starting to look like a little old lady. I had little old lady man tits.

I stood there looking in the mirror stunned. I bolted out of the locker room. I realized that if I didn't stop failing that I would end up looking like the hideous old lady with man tits figure I saw in the Dorian Gray locker room mirror.

Action was required!