I go to the gym to experience regular doses of misery...and that's OK

I'm not sure "misery" is even the right word, but there's no doubt my most productive gym workouts involve bursts of discomfort.

Like, for example, leg days often include walking lunges. I carry a dumbbell in each hand and take elongated steps from one end of the gym to the other, then I turn around and lunge my way back to where I started.

If done correctly, this exercise makes my hamstrings, quadriceps and calves burn. And my legs invariably feel like jelly for some time after I finish.

But then I do another set. And another. And usually another.

The same holds true for any exercise. When it comes to strength training, if you can comfortably perform a particular movement, you either need to add more resistance or more repetitions to make it more challenging.

Or both.

While I am in no way a workout veteran (I'm still adapting from being a runner/walker to being primarily a lifter), I have learned to "embrace the suck," as someone put it.

In other words, there not only have to be times when you say to yourself, "Man, this is no fun at all," you also have to figure out how to enjoy that feeling.

I'm getting better and better at it.

I go to the gym five times a week. Two of those sessions are done under the supervision of my trainer Kirk, while the other three are entirely on my own.

It never fully escapes my notice during those solo sessions that, should I choose to put down the weights and walk out of the gym at any point mid-workout, no one would stop me. Nor would/should anyone even notice or care.

I am 100% responsible for my own motivation and for pushing myself to muscle failure, which is the point where you really benefit physically from weightlifting.

While I've never actually quit in the middle of a workout, early on I found myself backing off effort-wise when things got tough. I might do fewer repetitions than prescribed, or I might ignore proper form in favor of just getting the weight into the air.

But as I've built physical strength these past 5+ months, I've also built mental strength. I continue to need Kirk to set my workouts and ensure I'm performing exercises correctly, but I don't need him there in person for my one-man workouts to be beneficial.

I am slowly learning to embrace the suck, a point I never thought I would reach.

The application to life outside of the gym is readily apparent. Whatever you do, the only way to get better is to apply yourself in a way that's not always going to be enjoyable. "No pain, no gain" has some truth to it, though it doesn't necessarily have to hurt.

It just needs to be uncomfortable for you. Sometimes very uncomfortable.

I find myself these days with more muscle on my frame than I ever had (or thought I had) when I played football as a high schooler, but the real benefit for me to this point has been mental.

I just wish it hadn't taken me more than a half-century to learn.

♪ ♫ Everything hurts! Everything hurts! ♫ ♪

My wife is both an active person and someone in her mid-50s. Sometimes these two realities clash, particularly when she engages in high-intensity yardwork or certain home projects.

The result is soreness felt across her entire body. She even made up a song to describe this feeling, the complete lyrics to which are contained in the headline of today's post.

"Everything hurts! Everything hurts!"

It's just those two words sung over and over to an incongruently happy little tune. I used to laugh when she sang it, in a way that only someone not suffering from full-body discomfort can laugh.

That is, until I started strength training. Suddenly, I understood the deep meaning of the "Everything Hurts!" song in ways I didn't fully anticipate.

As I mentioned last week, I have (finally) begun to lift weights, something I should have started doing years ago. I do it under the tutelage of my trainer, Kirk. Well, sometimes I do it under Kirk's guidance, and sometimes I do it on my own.

Either way, I'm currently in the stage where I go the gym and work out, and anywhere from 12-24 hours later, my muscles hurt.

Part of this comes from being an older Gen Xer like my wife, and part of it is apparently the unavoidable consequence of activating muscle fibers that have lain dormant for many years.

My daughter Melanie, an avid gym-goer and someone in excellent shape, warned me this would happen.

"For about two months, it's going to be bad," she told me at the outset of my strength training journey. "Then you'll get to the point where it's way more enjoyable and sometimes you can't wait to get to the gym and lift."

I'm going to take her word for it on that last bit.

Actually, I already like the workouts themselves just fine. I love breaking a sweat, and I appreciate the work Kirk and I do on achieving proper form for each exercise.

It's the aftermath that gets me.

Hours after my first leg day last month, for example, Jack and I drove to Toronto for a weekend getaway. What started as intense leg weakness following the workout that morning soon developed into considerable leg soreness.

I walked around Downtown Toronto the next day kind of bowlegged. Every time Jack and I would get into the car, I had to turn around and essentially fall into the driver's seat, rather than bend down and slip easily into the vehicle as I normally might.

It's June 12th as I type this, so I'm not necessarily yet enjoying any of the fun results of strength training. That's coming, and there may even be signs of it by the time you read this.

But in the meantime?

Come on, sing it with me...

"Everything hurts! Everything hurts!"

I have once again been bullied into better habits

I like to tell the story of why I began drinking black coffee after years of pouring cream into it.

The date was September 15, 2022. My family and I were at Pine Ridge Country Club in Wickliffe, Ohio, for the Wickliffe Schools Athletic Achievement Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Someone had scammed the organizers into inducting me. I still can't explain it.)

After the meal, I poured myself a hot cup of coffee to cap off what had been a very enjoyable evening. As I reached for the small pitcher of half and half, my daughter Elissa looked at me and said (in a tone of undisguised condescension), "When are you going to grow up and start drinking black coffee?"

I replied to her, "Right now, I guess." And I did. I drank that cup free of additives, and I have not drunk anything but black coffee ever since that moment.

I have said many times that Elissa bullied me into what is undoubtedly a healthier habit when it comes to coffee drinking.

Fast forward to about a month ago, when Elissa and her boyfriend Mark presented me with a card for a personal trainer named Kirk Simmons. As a reward for coming to their house and taking care of their pets while they were on vacation, they had paid for four training sessions for me with Kirk.

"You'll love him," Elissa said. "He specializes in cranky dads."

Well, sign me up!

I hadn't expressed any interest in personal training, but everyone in my family knew of my longstanding intention to start doing more than just cardio-based exercise. I knew I needed to lift, and deep down I knew I probably needed some sort of kick in the butt to start doing it.

Two days after presenting me with the card, Elissa and Mark were at our house. A very persistent Elissa told me, "We can sign you up with Kirk now." I promised I would do it myself within a day or two, and I did.

Once again, my low-level fear of incurring the wrath of Elissa had pushed me into making a better lifestyle choice.

Here's the funny thing, though: I'm typing this post on May 31st. As of today, I haven't had a single workout with Kirk. I did meet him at the gym for my initial assessment yesterday morning at 5am (yes, 5am, which didn't seem to phase Kirk because the man is an ex-Marine and could probably conquer a small island by himself on three hours sleep).

All he did was conduct a body scan to assess my muscle mass and prodigious fat deposits, and some movement tests so he could get an overall idea of my flexibility, stability, problem areas, etc.

My first workout with Kirk is still four days away, but by the time you read this, he will have put me through my paces several times already.

How can I be so confident this is going to work out? Because I know myself. I'm excited to do this, and when I'm excited to do something, I do it no matter how difficult it is or what obstacles life throws at me.

I don't know that I'm ever going to be a true gym rat or anything, but by the time you read this, I will have at least transformed into a "gym guy."

Which is saying something for me, a lifelong runner/walker and formerly avowed non-lifter.

The upshot of today's post? You need to have a loving bully like Elissa in your life. Or maybe just hire out Elissa herself to threaten you into making better choices.

Trust me, she's very good.

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a nice job creating the photo you see at the top of this post. But it also produced this image, which makes me laugh no matter how many times I look at it.

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

Someone just tell me exactly how much I'm supposed to exercise and which pills I'm supposed to take

Once every month or so, I agonize over whether I'm properly taking care of my body.

This takes the form of me checking out a few library books on health and wellness, consulting several websites on those topics, and generally complaining to my wife that I don't have a lot of spare time and I'm not sure whether the physical activity I'm doing is sufficient.

There are at least four things that prompt this behavior:


(1) I think I'm neurotic. I had no idea until just recently.

(2) I'm approaching my mid-40s, which I guess is a time when you start thinking about things like this.

(3) I have very limited time in the mornings to exercise, so I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

(4) I have a family history of heart disease that's hard to miss.


My dad passed away at age 70 from heart failure, as did my oldest sister at age 56. As I always (morbidly) say, at least I have a good idea of how I'm going to go when my time comes. We don't get cancer in my family, but we're all pretty good genetic bets to have ticker trouble.

The two ways in which I fight this hereditary curse are to try and maintain a relatively healthy weight and to exercise regularly.

The weight thing I've told you about recently, ad nauseum. I think I've also mentioned the fact that I run regularly. Not as far as I used to, but generally 15-20 miles a week almost without exception.

And there's where the trouble starts. Depending on which author/doctor/health professional you consult, running is either the greatest exercise known to man or the worst thing you can do to your body.

You can find well-designed scientific studies that support both points of view. The pro-running crowd will tell you that man was, biologically speaking, born to run. Long-distance running is something that only humans really do, and are in fact built for.

The anti-runners point to joint problems and indicators of arterial inflammation among runners as signs that maybe lacing up the Nikes five times a week isn't the best idea.

I have no idea what to believe. I like running. I enjoy the act of getting out on the road and ambling. Because I really do "amble" nowadays, at least compared to a decade ago. I'm still faster than a lot of people I know, but various factors have combined to limit me to somewhere around 9-minutes-per-mile pace on most runs.

But I know I should probably also do some strength training, something I've never enjoyed and never gotten into. My doctor says my running is sufficient exercise and poo poos the idea of hitting the weights. And since that's what I want to hear, I believe her.

Yet a lot of authorities will tell you strength training is better for you than cardio work. And maybe they're right, I don't know.

I also take a variety of nutritional supplements every day. So many that I have one of those old-person pill cases to keep them all straight. My 17 daily pills, all of which are voluntarily ingested and not prescribed by a doctor, consist of a multi-vitamin (cut in half so I count it as two), two baby aspirin, three fish oil capsules, three calcium/magnesium/zinc pills, two Vitamin C pills, and individual Vitamin B6, B12, D, E and folic acid supplements.

I've built this regimen through my various readings and not from one authoritative source, which is probably not good. And quite likely a waste of money. But they make me feel like I'm doing something to beat the grim reaper, so I keep buying them.

The one thing I've always wanted and never found is a single book or a single website that tells me what to do: Do this much of this exact kind of exercise. Take only these particular supplements. Get this many hours of sleep. Do all of that, and you'll live a happy, healthy life to the age of 200.

This won't happen, of course, and I'm destined to drop dead someday of a heart attack, probably no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'll drive Terry to her grave with my constant whining and self-doubt, which is the most ironic part of the whole thing.