July 7

There is an old saying attributed to Ernest Hemingway. He was asked, "How did you go bankrupt?" To which the old man is reported to have said, "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." I feel like the same is true of my fitness level as I approach 50. Even into my early 40s, I was still killing it at the gym. In fact, I think the best shape I was even in was around 2012, when my body fat was under 10 percent and I weighed a touch under 140 pounds. Well into my 40s I was a five-day-a-week gym goer, routinely clocking 240-250 days a year in the gym. To be sure, I noticed small little instances when I could not push quite as hard, but my level remained pretty good. 

It was just in the last six months to a year where all of a sudden, I am down to four days a week, and sometimes three. Whereas I would once do an hour of cardio and an hour of weight training, now it is half the cardio. There are nights I blow off because I am tired or it is raining (or threatening to rain). I have constant aches, some nagging, some more serious, it feels like it is falling apart at one time. 

I spend A LOT of time thinking about aging. Just this morning there was a guy in my boxing class who looked to be seven or eight years older than me who was just sucking wind the whole time. He was really out of shape, sweating profusely, and just had no coordination or pop in his punches. Guys like that motivate me to keep pushing, but it is like there is something in my head fighting against me. The cruel joke is that just to maintain your fitness as you get older you have to push harder even as it is harder to do what you need to do to stay that way. Every food sin you commit is harder to recover from and if you do not do anything about it, the weight just adds up. It is SO fucking frustrating.

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