My Best Body Ever....

That's what one of the many fitness books I've bought over the years is called. I read it, tossed it aside, nothing really changed. I have to say, I feel like I've been working out forever. I was active in sports as a kid. Got really into swimming there for a while. Started jogging a bit in high school and college. Lost a massive amount of weight after my sophomore year (after my father, god bless him, asked So how much do you weigh now?), and got a-little-too-thin my junior year when I focused on just smoking cigarettes and eating the occasional container of nonfat yogurt - but remained OBSESSED by food and eating. OMG, I was so hungry all the time, but I *did* get down to 105 pounds, which on a 5'7" frame is not exactly as attractive as you'd hope. But people would say, Wow! You look great! No one ever says that when you gain weight. No one ever says it when you're just your normal weight. They say it when you're going through a divorce and chain-smoking and never eating and you lose 15 pounds the hard way. You look great!

This is what my divorcing friends tell me anyway.

So, I continued to work erratically at fitness through my 20's. Sometime after the 105 pounds years, I boomeranged in the other direction. Gave up being a vegetarian, and began scarfing down cheeseburgers and onion rings and tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milk. Anyone see a healthy relationship with food in there? Me neither. I was also still smoking - which, despite my claims to the contrary at the time, really made engaging in regular fitness - and actually getting better at whatever I was doing - very very very difficult. Yes, i could smoke and still go jogging. But jogging was painful and unpleasant and a chore - never this cruising, flowing, meditative-inducing activity that it is (sometimes) now. My lungs strained with every breath, my legs never really got stronger, and I certainly couldn't get that endorphin rush everyone gushed about.

So, I continued through my 20's, living at the beach in San Diego, which is LOT less healthy than it sounds. There I was, chain-smoking, chain-drinking, smoking pot, popping pills, developed a nice little cocaine habit, popped a lot of ecstasy, gulped down phen-fen, rode my bike a lot, roller bladed a lot, drank and smoked more, and pretty much generally lived in this extremely unhealthy fashion. But, as my clients today usually point out, this is how ALL my friends were living too - so it was normal as far as we were concerned.

To be continued......