What does it mean to be middle aged? That youth, hope, and promise are gone? Middle age can offer an opportunity for a new beginning-a renewal of the body, mind, and spirit. It's about second chances. In Middle Age Renaissance, author Doug Brooks shows how middle age can be the time to think about pursuing positive change and taking the opportunity to renew yourself for today and all of your tomorrows-for yourself and those who care about you. Drawn from a host of personal experiences, Brooks provides suggestions and advice for getting that second chance. Through stories and anecdotes, Middle Age Renaissance helps you to build your body for health and self-esteem, to build your mind for wisdom and truth, and to build your spirit for love and joy. Useful and inspiring, Middle Age Renaissance helps middle-aged people understand they can't change the past, but they can work toward becoming the person they could and should be.
Middle Age Renaissance
Body, Mind, and SpiritBy Doug BrooksiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Doug Brooks
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-6048-8Contents
Disclaimer..............................................viiIntroduction............................................xi1. How I Got Started....................................12. Choices And Decisions................................193. Getting Started......................................294. Make It Forever......................................455. Our Body's Journey...................................576. Our Mind's Journey...................................657. Back To The Basics...................................798. Our Spirts/Ourselves.................................899. Inner Vision.........................................10110. Expectations........................................123Appendix A. Suggestions For The Gym.....................135Appendix B. Suggested Reading List......................141
Chapter One
How I Got Started
When someone comments positively on my physique, not that it happens that often, I am sincerely flattered, but humble about it. I usually say thank you and something to the effect, "I have the body of a nineteen year old and he wants it back because I'm getting it all wrinkled." It hasn't always been that way. There were more than a few periods in my life when I was anything but happy with the way I looked physically.
I can still remember as an adolescent being overweight, and totally uncomfortable with how it felt. It was precisely at the time in a young man's life when girls start to become an issue. And there I was, overweight and lacking in confidence. I would fantasize about girls telling me they still liked me even if I was a bit chubby. In fact, some of the girls in my fantasies even preferred me "husky."
Husky. What a word. It's a word to describe overweight boys without being too cruel or obvious. My Mother would take me shopping for clothes in the husky department and I hated every minute of it. Sure, I hated the shopping part in general, but I hated having to shop in the husky department even more. I hated the way my fat spilled out over the tops of my pants when I tried them on. I hated how they seemed to restrict everything, even my confidence. My Mother always commented on how well the pants fit even though they were about six inches too long in order to accommodate my waist. I wanted to wear the ratty old pants that were finally broken in, contoured to my body but too crappy looking to be presentable. I had to sneak out of the house if I wanted to wear my comfortable pants. I even hated walking by mirrors in a department store because of the truth the reflection offered. It wasn't fun, and I just wanted to get something to eat and go home.
I don't think I correlated eating with my weight at that age. It didn't seem America was as overweight in the early sixties as it is now. There was little if any information for adolescents to consult for all of the angst we were feeling about all kinds of things. We were raised by parents who had weathered the Depression, so we were constantly required to be grateful for all kinds of things, including the food we ate. We were always told how lucky we were; no matter what we had we were lucky to have it. Our parents never had anything we had: clothes, food, books, TV, toys, a short walk to school, and everything else that was supposed to make our lives so complete and wonderful. I often wondered how our parents survived at all. I could picture my Mother digging in the dirt for grubs in the thirties just for strength. When my Mother gave me a hard time for complaining and told me to count my blessings. I never came up with a very long list.
There were a lot of things I remember that didn't seem particularly like blessings. I hated the teachers at school making me feel stupid and worthless. When I came home and told my Mother that Sister Lady of Bleeding Gums doubled up her chubby little fist and sent me flying down the hall, she told me I probably deserved it. When I showed her my bloody knuckles from the trumpet teacher hitting me with a steel edged ruler when I hit the wrong valve, she commented on how much my playing had improved. I hated having to adjust the vertical and horizontal hold on the television. I hated having to wear a yellow rubber rain coat in the rain, and those dumb black boots with the buckles. I hated having to wear a hat with ear flaps. Sure we didn't have to stand in line for food, or use ration cards for gas and stuff but we did have to carry out ash cans and be nice to old people and consider all adults, even the stupid ones, as superior. It wasn't easy, and my love life was suffering because of my weight.
One of my first loves was Mrs. Mason, my ninth grade English teacher, and boy was I crazy about her. This was in the mid-sixties, and Mrs. Mason was one of the first hippies I encountered. She wore her hair long, always tied back with sort of a rippling quality to it. She always smelled so good. When she stopped at my desk to help me solve a problem- I had a lot of them - I would almost get dizzy taking in all of her wonderful scents. She smiled and walked really good. I especially liked to watch her walk away. I had even convinced myself that if I wasn't husky she would probably have fallen in love with me. I think the only thing that I learned that year was that I was in love with an older woman who would never notice me because I was fat.
I would even envy my thin friends for the way their clothes fit and how all of the girls seemed to give them more attention than me. I almost felt like a non-person at times. I struggled with my weight for the next three years; high school can be a miserable experience for a lot of reasons. My wardrobe was limited throughout high school; we didn't have a lot of money and I guess my mom thought that I was pretty much on my own when it came to those kind of things after the age of thirteen. I mean, I had a job through high school.
I bought a car and paid my own insurance and took care of my basic needs, which consisted of paying for gas for my car, eating as much fast, crappy food as I could, and trying to figure out how to find somebody who was old enough to buy me and my friends beer for the weekend. So, like a lot of young men my age growing up in the sixties, I was pretty much on my own when it came to trying to figure out who I was and whether or not I had any value. It wasn't long before the government, through the draft, let us know what our value really was. But that is just one of the many things we baby boomers struggled with as far as our identity was concerned. Who I was eventually bolstered in my senior year of high school when a young woman came along who really liked me for who I was, not how much my tummy didn't spill over the top of my jeans. I finally had a true girlfriend - such a neat idea. "I have a girlfriend - oh, my girlfriend and I - it's my girlfriend on the phone." Having someone really care about you does help, but more importantly, having someone to care about is even better. But I was still the husky guy, or as my friends would occasionally say, "fat boy." I didn't like that, although I would laugh along with them when they said it. I was too embarrassed not to. We did or didn't do a lot of things because we were too embarrassed. Hey, I didn't want to come across as wimpy and unmanly. Looking back, I think, why the hell did I give a shit? But I did and I was fat.
I graduated from high school in 1971 and was grateful I did. I spent the summer after high school being basically inert. I drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of fast food, sat around doing nothing constructive and gaining weight. By the end of the summer I had reached my heaviest weight ever and looked it. I still had the same girlfriend and she seemed to care about me no matter what I weighed, but I was still unhappy. Hell, I had the fat gene. There wasn't a bony person in my family. In fact, I think my family's philosophy was, the bigger the better, the fatter the healthier. So I came by my weight, as my Mother would say, honestly. By the time Fall of 1971 came along, I was up to almost 190 pounds at 5 foot nine inches. It might not sound too terribly bad, but it was mainly fat; there wasn't a hell of a lot of muscle there. I looked fat and felt fat. I was pretty much down to one pair of pants that fit. Now when I look at the pictures taken of my girlfriend and me, I wonder where she is. She practically disappears in my presence. What to do?
I did try exercising a bit at this point in my life. My Godfather had given me a set of weights when I was younger and I had never used them in the past. When I think about it now, maybe he was trying to help me then. He might have been; he was a good guy. So, I spent a couple of days lifting these weights this way and that with no results, so I quit. Hell, I figured, how long should it take? If I wasn't beefed up after a week, what was the point? It was about this time that the draft lottery was drawn. Remember that war we had going on, that it was the responsibility of America's teenagers to win? The war in Vietnam wasn't new but it also wasn't over; go figure. I drew a low number. My chances of being drafted were pretty good. My friends and I sat in a friend's living room drinking beer and bourbon drowning our sorrows or toasting our good luck, depending on what your number was, and my life changed. I decided to get a jump on it. So without talking to anyone, I went down to the draft board and "joined the draft." Joining the draft ensured I would only have to do two years. That's really all the government wanted from most of us anyway. It really didn't make any difference; it was just like being drafted. At least this way I had some control over my life; it was my choice. Well, maybe not really; that and putting our lives on the line for their agenda. So now I only had about a week to live out the sedentary life I had fashioned for myself. I only had one more week to eat and drink and be lazy and apathetic. I wish I would have known that the army wouldn't have any patience with me and my fat, out of shape body.
Basic training was anything but easy for me. I took Basic at Fort Dix in New Jersey. I always thought you needed a passport to go to New Jersey, but I found out that I was wrong. I was overweight and out of shape. More than anything else, I remember when the drill sergeants started to make us run everyplace that we went. I was always at the end of the group, behind everyone else, with the other overweight, out of shape recruits. I was only nineteen years old but physically inadequate for the simple task of running more than a few yards. It was tough; it was a struggle. One thing I can say is that the army knows its stuff. After two months I was not only keeping up with the rest of the recruits, but I had also lost almost forty pounds. I lost it even eating three meals a day and snacking and drinking the occasional beer. But I was active; I had to be active; I was forced to be active. But once training ended, I went back to my old ways.
Once I was sent overseas I was limited to whatever duties the army determined I was responsible for; my activity declined. And like any good enlisted man, I figured out ways to get out of as much duty as I could. I didn't get back up to my heaviest weight, but I did regain some weight. Of course the army tried to provide us with various activities that should have kept us in shape in addition to our regular duties, which were strenuous enough. We played organized volleyball, softball and even amateur boxing. Unfortunately we were only required to expend as much energy as we wanted. Our duties did keep us moving here, there and everywhere, but it was mostly cardio kind of stuff: we humped through our duties. After my two years, the army and I agreed that we had enough of each other and I was discharged. I went home to the loving warmth of my family, my worthless friends and unemployment. During the war in Vietnam, discharged soldiers were eligible for unemployment benefits, and I took full advantage of what I considered free money. I rented my own apartment, signed for my check once a week and had what I considered was a well deserved good time; I also gained more weight. The sweet life can't last forever, so I decided to enroll in college; hell, I had the GI bill coming to me. Once again, I had the opportunity to get some cash and only have to go to school to collect it. I went to school, partied and gained more weight. During this period of self discovery, I became engaged to the young woman who had waited for me to come home. We planned our wedding and I continued to act like a twenty-one-year-old without direction or responsibility.
During this very confusing period of my life, I drank too much, got into too many bar fights, ate too much bad food, experimented a lot with too many drugs and considered myself immortal. I was losing control of where I was going and losing sight of who I was. I got married, continued going to school, worked in the summers and ate even more bad food, and drank even more than I should have. I guess my wife had a lot of patience and didn't care that I was once again an overweight slob. Years later I discovered that it wasn't patience that she had for me; she just didn't know what to do. Revelation: she was young, too. So, over the course of the first year of our marriage I gained the prescribed amount of weight newlyweds are supposed to gain on top of the fat I was already carrying. But then something happened; something that changed my life, not for the better, just changed it.
I woke up one morning and started to get dressed and realized that my pants didn't fit; I was devastated. I couldn't see my dick when I took a piss, and my thighs spread out like two sides of beef waiting for the butcher. I changed. I started watching what I ate. I ate carrots at night for a snack. I started doing sit-ups and pushups and curling the living room stool in my efforts to try and make a difference. It worked. Within a few short months I had dropped about twenty pounds and finally looked good for the first time since Basic.
I kept this routine up for years after my rebirth. I exercised almost every day after work. I worked out through the births of my children, through job changes, through various college experiences. I did eventually complete three college degrees including a Master's in English. I became obsessive about the weight thing.
I watched my caloric intake like a banker watches the clock. I would ask my wife, my Mother, "is this fattening?" as I put something into my mouth. And, of course, they would always say no. I got to the point over the years where I would only eat one meal a day because I was so worried about gaining weight. I even began to take laxatives so I would never feel like I was full, because feeling full meant getting fat, to my way of thinking. I hated anything tight around my waist; I slit the elastic on my underwear so I wouldn't be aware of the confinement. I kept most of this obsessive behavior to myself; it was something I could control. This went on for almost fifteen years; and it wasn't easy. I looked good, like I was in shape, but I wasn't. My nutrition was terrible and I looked way too thin. The lowest point of this stage of my life came when I contracted a lung infection and my weight dropped down to under 130 pounds. This weight didn't look good on my 5 foot 9 inch frame; I looked like death in the rain. Something had to change.
The change in my life came from an unlikely source. My wife and I separated and I moved out and was truly on my own for the first time in a very long time. I didn't really put on any weight because I never went to the store and ended up eating a lot of whatever was around, like soup and stuff, but I was still out of shape. The unlikely source that helped to turn my life around, at least physically, was my oldest son. It was at this time when he started high school and decided that he wanted to play lacrosse. Someone suggested to him that he start working out at a gym to get in shape for the demands of the sport. So he joined a gym and needed a ride there every day after school.
I was a year away from turning forty and feeling all of those things that go along with that milestone. I felt pretty good about the way I looked, but deep down I knew I was in just as poor shape as I was when I was fat, maybe worse. I had a fairly decent job: college professor teaching English at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. It was a good job, but didn't offer a lot of opportunity for physical activity. I continued to exercise at home, but it was boring and I still watched what I ate a little bit too closely. A change seemed in order.
One day my son got out of school early and went straight to the gym with his friends. I was to pick him up there and give him a ride home. When I pulled into the gym parking lot I noticed these behemoths coming and going. I mean, some of these guys were really huge. You know when you see guys like that out on the street you wonder where they come from; well, now I knew; they come from gyms like this. There had to be a correlation ... smart, right? I went up to the second floor of the gym and stopped at the reception desk because you had to go through a turnstile to get in. Coincidentally a former student of mine was manning the front desk. We got to talking about a variety of things including membership prices. The price sounded reasonable, and he even walked me into the gym to show me the facilities. All I could see were a lot of foreign looking machines and weights and bar bells and dumb bells and the people lifting them. They weren't all beefy guys busting out of their clothes; many were just normal looking people working out and seemingly having a good time. My son noticed me and we left. He was just beginning to get at the age where he wasn't embarrassed to be seen with me, but not quite. The next day I joined the gym. I decided to pay on a monthly basis; I figured why commit myself before I really know what I'm doing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Middle Age Renaissanceby Doug Brooks Copyright © 2012 by Doug Brooks. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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