Since Frank, the owner of the Iron Shack gym and an old friend of
Chuck’s, had begun helping him six weeks ago to get stronger and to
lose weight, Chuck felt like he had a new lease on life. Gone was the
feeling of waking up early in the morning with his joints aching, his
face and body puffy because of copious amounts of food and alcohol
consumed the day before. Gone was the midday slump that he went
through, daily assuaged with sugar and caffeine. Gone was the guilty
feeling each morning because he had eaten poorly and not exercised
the day before.
This went on for years,
with Chuck swearing that he would start getting back into shape –
starting tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But then his kids all grew up and
left, and he turned 50, and his wife divorced him. He thought that
was a wake-up call, so he headed back to the gym.
His training had been
going well. He was weak at first; after all, it had been over 40
years since he lifted weights, and it had been over 40 years since he
had done any type of exercise at all. His form in the bench, squat,
and deadlift returned quickly, and the skill of the movements, not
done since high school, returned to him. He kept reminding himself
that he had once been an athlete, that he could do this. The feelings
of working hard again in the weight room reminded him of when he used
to have two-a-day practices in high school football and the sweet
feeling of exhaustion that he would experience when practice was
done.
All his old athletic
and weight training memories came back to him, and he told himself
that if he could do it then, he could do it now. He was so sore after
his first squat session that he had trouble sitting on the toilet for
days. His quads were sore to the touch, as were his adductors. The
first week was tough; he felt weak and tired. But after a week or so,
he wasn’t getting tremendously sore anymore, and his energy
increased. His muscles just had a tight, pumped feeling to them, and
after a few weeks, he could tell he was gaining muscle and getting
stronger.
He was walking by a hallway mirror in his house one morning after a
training session, and he noticed that he could see a hint of triceps
showing. He stopped and flexed, and he could see that his triceps and
biceps were becoming more delineated from each other. He smiled to
himself, encouraged by his progress. He was on a roll now and felt
better than he had in a long time. He had even hit some good numbers
on the big lifts in his program. He pressed 135×1, squatted 235 for a
set of 5, deadlifted 245 for a set of 5, and benched 215 for 5. He
was surprised by how much stronger he had gotten since his first day
with Frank in the gym.
The diet was not too
hard to stick with, but he had some cravings. He did his best to
ignore them and, per Frank’s advice, snacked on sugar-free
popsicles. He liked eating the protein at every meal. He hadn’t
realized that his old diet had almost no protein in it, just plenty
of carbs and sugar, wasted calories. The protein and fat seemed to
give him more energy than carbs ever had.
Did he struggle in
those six weeks of training and changing his diet? Yes. He had been
very gung-ho, crushing his training and the diet, eating the right
foods. A few nights, he even skipped his customary two beers. He was
going great guns, but after about 3 weeks, he began to lose a little
motivation. He began to have cravings for cake and ice cream. His
friends called one Friday and asked him to go to the Country Music
Festival that night, because they had an extra ticket. He knew that
would throw off his training the following morning. He also knew that
there would be much alcohol consumed and fried food eaten.
He went to the concert,
but he didn’t blow his diet like he thought he would. He indulged,
but with a lot more restraint than usual. The problem came when the
alarm went off the next morning, signaling it was time to go train.
He had only slept a few hours, and he did not want to get up and
train. He told himself that he would push the snooze, but promised
himself that he would get up this time. He didn’t, and slept
through the alarm. He missed his training session that morning and
was in such a rush to get out the door for a doctor’s appointment
that he missed his first meal of the day. He walked into the Iron
Shack that afternoon to see Frank and tell him what happened. He
expected Frank to cuss him out, but he didn’t.
Frank explained that
motivation wanes after a while, but that is when discipline must take
over. “It’s like Mike Tyson says, ‘Discipline is doing what you
hate to do and acting like you love it.’ I’d probably train twice a
month if I only trained when I felt like training. Your body wants to
lie around watching Netflix and eating Cheetos. You just have to get
up and get moving, and there has never been a time when I regretted
training, no matter how much I didn’t want to do it.”
He explained that
things happen and that the damage done from the concert night was
minimal, if any. He could still get his workout in for the day and
still get his meals in, so it wasn’t the end of the world. “Don’t
be too hard on yourself. When I told you what to eat on the diet, I
meant it, but I am not so naive as to think that you are going to
give up ice cream for the rest of your life. It happens. Move on from
it; nobody died, and everything can be made up. The reason why you
are upset is that you let yourself down. Sucks to feel that way, but
you must learn from it, remember that feeling, and try not to let it
happen again. But it’s life, and it’s a bunch of lessons that you
either learn from and continue, or you don’t learn from, and you go
on with your old ways.”
He told Chuck that he
was doing well, losing 25 pounds in six weeks and getting much
stronger in his lifts.
“So, how are you
feeling? The other night notwithstanding.”
“I can’t believe
how good I feel,” Chuck said. “When I wake up in the morning, my
body doesn’t feel like I got run over by a truck. I have energy
right away, also. Used to be, I’d have to have coffee and energy
drinks to get me going. I feel like a new man. Eating like I do gives
me energy all through the day. The weights are what I enjoy the most.
It’s immediate feedback with them – you either get stronger or
you don’t, you either get the reps or you don’t.”
“That’s what it’s
all about,” Frank said, “I call it the Iron Bug, and it becomes
an addiction. You can transform yourself with lifting weights and not
make a glutton of yourself.”
Chuck nodded, “It’s
so true. I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t do it.”
“Most folks want the
easy way out, but training hard and eating right will never be easy.
It sets you apart from the masses, those who don’t have the drive
or discipline to do what you’ve been doing. Now, keep going and
continue to persevere.”
“I feel so good that
I can’t imagine myself ever stopping,” Chuck replied. “I love
this new way of living.”
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