Soft in the middle

I am avoiding exercises that strenghten what fitness dorks call the "core."

I can't explain it well, except that I really don't enjoy the way sit-ups feel. Like going to the dentist or picking up my dog's poop.

Consequently, there's this odd wave thing happening on my upper body. The fatty evidence of my poor diet is sloughing south, slowly but surely rolling toward my waist.

And there it sits, impervious to my workouts.

As I continue to go to the gym fairly regularly, doing chest and arm execises on the resistance machines, my muscles in these areas are becoming a little more defined. And as I continue to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes every other day, a couple upper ribs are even starting to show.

Which makes for an almost comical contrast to the gelatinous gut hanging out right below.

Since the gym isn't working fast enough to get me comfortably within two waist sizes of the 32 I wore before quitting smoking, I recently decided it was time to try a few other things.

I have moved from my usual assortment of fine Czech and other European beers to Coors Light - hoping that light beer will be, as the commercials say, less filling. (My fridge must be malfunctioning because the mountains on the Coors can never seem to get that "Cold Certified" blue.)

I am also trying to cut down on how many light-coloured, pasty things I eat. Hummus, peanut butter, goat cheese on crackers. I mindlessly stuff my mouth with these wonderful foods all evening, and that isn't helping my ponderous middle.

For the first time in years I bought khaki pants from The Gap. Because I can only seem to find jeans that are either too tight, making me look like a past-his-prime regular at the CNE's water pistol or whack-a-mole booths; or too loose, making me look like a 53-year-old named Tom or Bill who likes to tuck in his golf T-shirts. Sometimes you just fall in between blue jean sizes.

My new place in the transportation food chain

I was stopped at a red light - right foot on the curb, back straight, dorky helmet that looks like a plum pit on my head.

From my perch on the old-timey bike, I looked around and could see right into the driver's seat area of the two cars stopped beside me, without the driver seeing me looking.

Both drivers had a mug of coffee within reach, assorted receipts about the console and a gut hanging forlornly over the seatbelt.

Automakers ought to invent a wider "vanity" belt that girdles instead of pinching the fat into something resembling a homemade airbag.

As I do every fair-weather morning, I turned off the road and onto the Lakeshore bike path and headed west toward the office.

Before I started biking to work, I was the driver that hated bicyclists, their undeserved sense of road entitlement, the hypocrisy with which they run a red light at one intersection then at the next hector a driver for turning into their path. I thought they should be relegated to the sidewalk, where they could menace strolling geriatrics instead of fouling up motorists' march to work.

Now that I bike to work, you'd think I would be claiming to see how the other half lives, swearing allegiance to hard-done-by cyclists and ready for war on bully drivers.

Instead, I have merely refocused my road rage down the transportation food chain: Rollerbladers.

I was behind a blader, watching his silly long stride out and back, like he's doing a speed skating warm-up lap at the Olympics. Taking up the whole bike lane. And looking ridiculous.

Before I attempted using the oncoming lane to overtake the blader, I had to look over my shoulder for the speed-bikers - those militant twits with the tight shorts, shoes that clip on the pedal and no mercy for beginners on old-timey bikes. You swerve into the path of one of those and prepare for a sanctimonious earful.

Past the blader, I moved to a part of the bike path that veers away from the road and into a weed-filled neverland near GO train tracks.

Cue the loud timpani drums and ominous chords of the next Law & Order episode. This is exactly the kind of place to happen on a corpse. Right downtown but out of sight. Cars whipping by on the highway overhead.

I half expected to see a detective in trenchcoat leaning over something in the unkempt grass. But on this morning, before it was too late, I got a mouthful of death stench and a few bugs.

Off to the left, a dead skunk, bloated on its back and mouth teeming with flies.

Finally, I got to work.

Something I'll never understand, though: How I can spend 20 minutes pedaling but not especially exerting myself, heading into a lakefront wind that chills to the bone, and still end up soaked with sweat by the time I get to my cubicle.

Sorry folks ...

It has been too long since my last post.

I have been on the road a lot lately hustling for my day job. I am a staff reporter at the Star. The blog is extracurricular.

I was on Vancouver Island for a week, and otherwise driving all over Ontario. I have been chasing leads for a story, living on Tim Hortons and the McDonald's value menu, and staying in crappy motels. One motel, misleadingly called The Grand, doubled as a sort of halfway house for men that have just been released into the probation phase of their sentence and, apparently, enjoy very loud sex. The room cost $225 for the week - which sort of says it all.

I still should have posted.

I guess I didn't think anyone was still reading.

And there wasn't anything new to report.

But then a reader called and told me to check the blog comments. I see y'all have been posting, at first asking where I was, then showing frustration with my complete lack of contact, then assuming I had stopped going to the gym and was too ashamed to say so.

I am still going to the gym. But, as before, it's been the same old yo-yo. 

Small advances followed by annoying setbacks.

I'd go the gym three times a week then hit the road the next week and watch my eyes get puffy with fast food, then return to Toronto to eat Vietnamese and hit the gym every other day, then hit the road again.

When I was in Toronto during the last month, I know I could have, should have posted. But the 8-10 pm time slot I usually use to blog is now taken up by the red hot Blue Jays. I love baseball, and for the first time since 1993 this team is fun to watch again.

I guess there is one thing to report:

I bought a bike - an old-timey roadster. The kind you might associate with Montreal hipsters or a 1950s New Englander with baggy trousers pedaling to the cheese shop.

The effect of which is totally destroyed by the legally required helmet. Some silly, futuristic puff of plastic that looks like the pit of a plum.

Today was my first day biking to work. The bike has only three gears. It wasn't easy. I haven't bicycled since high school, and my crotch paid the price. I limped around the newsroom all day. But now I can say I've added another exercise to my quest for physical respectability.

Five pounds and not an ounce of a clue

I weighed myself a few days ago, and to my surprise:

 

Despite my recent rants about a growing gut and disappearing jawline, I am five pounds lighter than I was two months ago.

 

Not bad. Though I'm not sure from where the five pounds were shed. I can't tell by looking in the mirror.

 

And I am not even sure I can credit the gym. I have been on the road in small towns most of April, staying in motels along two-lane highways, where the restaurants' best menu items aren't exactly high in beta carotene or probiotics.

 

Maybe this is a delayed reaction from my regular gym schedule up until the end of March.

 

Or maybe I have a tapeworm gobbling all those bacon cheeseburgers I have been stuffing in my mouth with greasy fingers the last two weeks.

 

Whatever the cause, I had better get back in the gym before April's excesses catch up with a weighty wallop.

 

And I am also thinking about going more often. Two to three times a week isn't enough, I don't think.

 

I am not sure I have the dedication to do the full routine of treadmill/weights/treadmill every other day. But it could be that going more regularly is what counts, even if on some days I only do cardio.

 

I'll let you know how it goes ...

Profile pic

I recently updated my mugshot, the picture the Toronto Star uses on my blog and occasionally in the paper.

A few generous readers complimented me on the photo.

I'll say this for it ... it's a more accurate image. Until the change, my mug was as photographed in 2004.

A lot has happened since then.

The most consequential to my face, and the fat on it, was quitting smoking, and the compulsive McDonald's eating and beer drinking that occupied most of my nights.

I was not interested in seeing my jawline softening. And I was pretty sure I was growing a little pouch under my chin. Happy not to measure that kind of development daily in the mirror, I kept a beard for most of the year since I quit.

It's a coarse, red-in-patches beard that at one point a few weeks ago was so long I could not avoid chewing on moustache hairs when biting into a sandwich. It was so long that when I was in Morocco last month for a friend's wedding, the local Berbers called me Ali Baba.

But my wife could only tolerate the ratty pelt for so long.

I shaved it off a few weeks ago, and what I saw in the mirror was as feared. 

So when I was told to do a new mugshot for the Star, I beamed a higher-than-normal-wattage smile in an effort to pull my slack face skin as tight as possible. And I pushed my chin out and down to hide the pouch.

I may have to start smoking again so I can tone up.

Main Street

I just finished a disgusting meal from one of those "Italian" pizza/pasta chain restaurants.

I am 400 km northeast of Toronto and the eatery options in this small town are limited. Such is usually the case when my work takes me on the road.

The service was prompt and polite, but that was no cause for me to order the poutine as a starter. I should have had a salad. Still, last time I checked, poutine was not typically the consistency of soup. And I should have known better than to think there is a chef north of York Region capable of making a "7 cheese ravioli." But I ordered it as my main course anyway.

It tasted like a dirty sock, and the garlic bread looked like the sole of a flip-flop.

After, I should have hit the gym adjacent to the hotel, to try and right the pungent, fatty wrong.

But it turns out small-town gyms are like small-town Italian restaurants.

Taped to the front door was a sign telling hotel guests they can use the facility only after signing a waiver. Not a great way to put a potential exerciser at ease ... Yes, you may enter, but if you lose a foot while using the wonky elliptical it's not our fault.

I walked in to find half the gym occupied by a throng of out-of-breath middle-aged women trying to keep up with a spastic aerobics instructor. Their clothes soaked with sweat, the ladies flailed their limbs off the beat of the tinny techno playing from what could only have been a Casio boombox. So close were they to complete coordination failure, I thought the odds were good one of them would tumble into the exercise machines.

Continuing my walkabout, I noticed a troublingly high number of spray bottles for cleaning sweat off equipment.

Now convinced the local drinking water was causing a hyperhidrosis epidemic, I fled to the nearest exit, and saw eight framed pictures on the wall. Every image depicted the same gang of middle-aged aerobics women in action, but in each the women were dressed in a different costume. Hockey jerseys. Lumberjackets. Togas. Mother of God.

I cannot wait to get back to my gym.

Wiped out

I have not been to the gym since last week. I blame longer-than-normal workdays and my wife being home on break from her job in Vermont, which means eating out often and a busier social calendar.

 

I could easily dismiss the feeling of guilt, knowing not every week will be as full, except for the fact that a  crushing wave of fatigue has hit.

 

I am fading by 4 pm, yawn all evening and need sleep by 10.

 

I seem to have the concentration span of a caffeinated squirrel.

 

My breathing feels heavy, as though a firm hand is pushing on my chest.

 

The thought of taking my dog on long walks is depressing. Instead, I let her out in our postage-stamp backyard, where she walks in cirlces to find a spot.

 

Could these be the signs of gym withdrawal?

 

Only now am I realizing how good exercising was making me feel:

 

I am drinking a little less, content to have a couple beers and not a six-pack. Wanting to eat better food - Vietnamese take-out instead of McDonald's. And not as quick to anger at work; my desk neighbours and boss may disagree but I think I am generally sunnier these last few months.

 

I did not expect that only three months into this adventure I would come to depend on the gym.

 

And if I want to stay awake, I had better get back.

 

Different night, different gym

During the work week, I go to the gym Mondays and Wednesdays, between 5 and 6:30.

It started out as the time tainer Joe was available, but after my sessions with him ended I kept up the routine.

And why not? I grew comfortable in that time window and familiar with the regulars. Bobby Shortpants. Guy whose shoulders are so wide and waist so thin he looks as if he has wings. And the rail-thin woman wasting away on the elliptical. I knew who I'd see and what to expect. Used to the rhythms of gym life between 5 and 6:30 on Monday and Wednesday, I knew when it was safe to go in the locker room and when it was populated with exercisers prone to aggressive nudity.

But this past Wednesday I could not make my regularly scheduled trip to the gym. No big deal, right? I went Thursday at 5 pm instead. And found my workout world had been turned upside down.

It was like a different gym. New people. Different smells. The music pumping out of the gym speakers was 80s rock instead of techno.

I began, as usual, with a brisk walk on the treadmill. On a machine beside me was Winnipeg White. It was not his sweat-soaked red T-shirt or saggy shorts that drew my attention, but his bright white legs. Not a blue trace of vein or splotch on the skin. Just featureless white legs - the kind you see in Florida on middle-aged tourists from the Midwest.

From there, I walked toward the weight room and into bottomless stare of Hungry Eyes. About 40 years old and muscular, the man made no effort to hide his interest in me. And this was while he was pumping his legs on a resistance machine. No heavy breathing or signs of exertion, as if the upper part of his body was unaware of what the lower was doing. Just staring at me.

I cycled through my weights quicker than usual to get hell out of that room.

Back to the treadmill for a jog. In front of me was an overweight man labouring on an elliptical with the elan of a partially tranquilized hippopotamus. He was leaning way back, his face curled in anguish. He was closer to a major medical event than any other exerciser I have seen.

On a Thursday evening, the smell of sweat in the gym is as tangy as always yet somehow different. I think if I spent even a minute searching for the right adjective to describe this particular variety of sweat, it would be a new professional low for me.

Back from Morocco

Eight adventurous days in Morocco - including a night in the Sahara, a drive along the switchbacks of the Atlas Mountains and four hours straddling the unforgiving back of a camel - and yet somehow this trip was the laziest, most detrimental to my health, I've ever had.

I went to Morocco for a friend's wedding. Before I left, I expressed concern about interrupting my workout momentum.

Blog readers offered advice.

Adam urged me to avail myself of the hotel gym.

For the first few days and nights I was in Marrakech, staying in what is called a "riad" - in this case a house big enough to accommodate eight thirsty friends of the groom. I knew none of them before the trip, but it happened we all shared a taste for whisky, wine and sleeplessness. There was not one night we stopped drinking before the first call to prayer bellowed across the city. For us, bedtime was usually just after 5 am. I think we were all excited to be on holiday in such an exotic place.

There was no gym in the riad.

Blog reader Mark advised: "Pushups, Situps, Bodyweight squats, Stepups, sprints/HIIT, pullups. You don't need a gym to do any of these."

In the old, central part of the city, known as the "medina," one errant step in the narrow, pebbly, crowded alleys and you get run over by a souped-up moped. A wind-sprint would have been like running with the bulls.

As for situps and pushups, I have no excuse.

Other readers recommended I pack a resistance band. I had never heard of such a thing.

I should have listened. I should have done some kind of exercise. Instead, I degenerated.

After the wedding, the bride, groom and 18 of their friends got into SUVs and headed east into the Atlas Mountains toward the Sahara Desert. I could have marveled at the scenery and struck out on mini hikes during our rest and meal stops. But I gobbled some Ativans, slumped in the back seat, hid my face under a sweatshirt and prayed for it to end. The mountain road - without guardrails, moving endlessly up, one stretch sharply curving into another above - would have caused an involuntary bowel movement without the dose of anti-anxiety medicine.

Finally, the road straightened as we neared the desert. Once at the gateway city of Merzouga, we got on camels and rode into the Sahara to a small grouping of tents set up in the shadow of a huge dune.

Forgive blog reader Adam for expecting my "desert ration" to crimp my taste for things that cause double chins. I mean, who would have expected one of the camels would have been strapped with the 40 bottles of wine not consumed at the wedding?

I even smoked some cigarettes. I don't think it's fair to say I fell off the wagon I boarded a year ago, because it did not feel like I was getting re-addicted (believe me, I know what that feels like). Nonetheless, it was easily one of the dumbest things I have ever done. To risk throwing away all I put in to quitting last February ... just stupid. Stressing about it now doesn't help. Luckily, I do not feel as tough I have to quit all over again. I am not in withdrawal.

Phew. So there is the Morocco recap. Makes you feel bloated and short of breath, doesn't it?

I went to the gym this evening and, as expected, could not lift the same weight I was lifting 10 days ago. And my 25-minute jog felt like a marathon.

But I went.

And I have to admit, I kind of missed it.

Hiatus

I am about to go to northwest Africa for a wedding. What can I say? I am an international man of leisure.

But seriosuly, I am worried about the interruption to my exercise regimen.

I will miss at least three gym sessions. And with little but eating and drinking on the itinerary for the first few days and nights of this trip, I could be faced with starting back at the lightest end of the weight stacks upon my return.

Maybe I can lessen the effects of the debauchery during the second leg of the trip ... when I will be in the freaking DESERT!

I am trying not to second-guess my decision to join a bunch of other wedding goers, also city slickers from North America, on a safari. Sounds fun, I know. Once in a lifetime opportunity, and all that.

But by now you know me. I am a nervous nelly. I need to control. Exacerbating these crippling tendencies is the fact that I don't smoke anymore. What am I going to do in the desert? I will be voluntarily putting myself without reach, alongside a bunch of people who have also never done this kind of thing, where I can't smoke and where, if something happened like I got impaled by an errant tree goat, I could do nothing but accept my fate. Sounds like a recipe for massive, stress-induced weight loss.

I will keep you posted ...