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Old 10-19-2018, 09:49 PM   #84
Jeff P
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: JCapper Platinum: Kind of like Deep Blue... but for horses.
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First, I want to say congrats to Jim for what he has accomplished - and for being brave enough to start a thread about this. Thank you man. (Proud of you.)

I also want to say congats to everyone who has posted your own story in this thread. I know life sometimes gets in the way and how hard it can be to stay motivated.



My turn, checking in:

--Some background:

At the age of 35 I bought my first gym membership. I didn't just join a gym. I made a real commitment to a serious workout regimen that had me in the gym at least an hour a day 5 days a week for 22 years.

In the beginning I hired a personal trainer who taught me the basics of exercising with weights - slow controlled movements, feeling each contraction, proper form for each exercise, various exercises for each body part, the importance of adequate recovery time before working the same body part again, measuring and achieving target heart rate, how to recognize and push through plateaus, and literally hundreds of related details.

I also followed his recommendations for diet. He taught me how to think about what we eat and how to adopt a belief system about what "food" is and what it isn't. Once you classify something like a huge iced cream sundae or a plate of french fries as not being "food" why in the world would you eat it?

I began getting results almost immediately. Increased muscle mass. Lower body fat. Increased energy. A strong sense of well being and overall confidence.

Those incremental results created a positive feedback loop - motivating me to work even harder. The more results I saw the harder I wanted to work.

I kept at it. Within two years my body fat had dropped from about 20% to 6%.

I started a softball team at work. I was the player/manager for that team for 10 years.

At first we sucked. But just as I had been able to do with my workouts, by practicing regularly as a team - over time, all of the players on that team made constant incremental improvements to their games.

As a result the team got better - and during the first few years each new season saw the city league director bumping us up to the next tougher division.

Over those 10 years we won several city league championships. We also managed to compete and win games (but never win a tournament championship outright) in the handful of regional tournaments we entered. Many of the tournament teams we faced had ex college baseball players on them. We were just guys with corporate day jobs.

When I first put the team together, as the team's manager I put myself in the lineup as the 7th or 8th man in the batting order. Not because I didn't want to bat earlier in the lineup - but because that's where I belonged at the time.

By the time I turned 40 I was the team's leadoff hitter. Not because I wanted to be the leadoff hitter. But because I had become the fastest guy on the team, could handle a bat, and could almost always take an extra base if I noticed an opposing outfielder with a suspect throwing arm. Batting leadoff was where I belonged.

After 10 years (at the age of 46) I could tell my hand/eye reflexes were not what they once were. I was still batting leadoff and I was also the team's pitcher.

The games in our city league were still ok. But the later rounds of the regional tournaments we entered always had us playing against teams with a few "ringers" (ex college baseball players and in one case an ex major league ball player.) At the time double walled/special alloy bats were all the rage. Imagine you're a guy who had never played competitive baseball in his life, never played competitive softball for that matter until about three years ago - and now you're pitching in a slow pitch softball game to a guy who hit 30 hrs in the big leagues - and he's using a DiMarini double walled bat.

Every now and then one of those ex college baseball players would smash a screaming line drive right at me - and I'd somehow manage to glove it at the last possible instant. I knew it was only a matter of time. I was likely to get seriously hurt because my reaction time was getting gradually slower - enough that I knew I was close to the point where I could not get a glove up in time.

I probably could have played on that or any other team and contributed for a couple more years as an outfielder.

But I knew my reflexes had deteriorated to the point where I would soon no longer be able to compete at a top level as an infielder.

So at the age of 46 I decided my softball days were behind me.

After softball I kept going to the gym and working out. Although by then I had reached a point where the objective had changed. I was no longer trying to increase the intensity of my workouts. My objective had become one of maintaining what I'd already achieved.


--Lost interest, stopped working out:

About three years ago at the age of 57 I stopped working out.

I can't really explain why. My motivation had waned.

Oh, I'd still go on the occasional bike ride or jog a few miles once or twice a week.

But the motivation to do regular workouts with serious intensity just wasn't there anymore.

I also stopped adhering to a strict diet.

You can guess what happened. The shape of my body began to change albeit gradually.



--Back to the gym:

One day about three weeks ago I looked in the mirror. And for the first time in nearly 25 years I didn't like what I saw.

I was not (yet) what you could call overweight. But my body was nowhere close to what it had been for all those years.

Gone was the obvious definition and muscle mass.

It was also pretty obvious where things were headed. I was slowly becoming pear shaped.

I resolved to change that.

I went back to the gym that day and re-upped my membership.

I went through the fridge and pantry - and threw everything out that wasn't "food."

When I first got started 25 years ago, from a mental standpoint, I convinced myself certain things were not "food" (iced cream, white bread, hot dogs, potato chips, french fries, Big Macs, doughnuts, etc.)

I decided that from now on I would only eat "food."

I found that once I adopted this line of thinking as a belief system it actually worked.

I knew I would need to adopt it again - and I did.



--Here I am three weeks later:

For the past three weeks I have eaten only "food." And I have not eaten anything that is not "food."

I have made it to the gym and I have worked out in a serious way 5 days a week for each of the past three weeks.

My first few workouts were with done with relatively light weights - concentrating mostly on proper form, feeling each contraction, instilling muscle memory, and measuring/achieving target heart rate, etc.

But now with each successive workout, I find myself stepping up the intensity.

I've lost three inches off my waist, gained four pounds, and I can absolutely see visible improvement in tone and definition.

I'm back where I was 25 years ago - increasing muscle mass and losing body fat.

I also have way more energy than I did three weeks ago before I decided to go back to the gym.





-jp

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Last edited by Jeff P; 10-19-2018 at 10:03 PM.
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