It probably goes without saying that while I was in the Army I was in the best physical condition of my life. The Army transformed me from a bird-chested beanpole into something resembling a man. For about a year, I served under a company commander who loved to run. Individual platoons ran together daily, usually sticking to the roads on base. But at least twice a month the company commander would take us out on an exhausting trek through the Korean countryside. And he didn’t run slowly. The northern part of South Korea has some extremely hilly terrain. I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed myself, but I completed the run every time.
I did no exercise at all during my final year in the Army. I spent nine months working in an emergency room, pulling 12-hour shifts in cycles of three-on/three-off. The rest of the hospital staff had to do PT every morning, but we ER folk were exempt. Then I spent my last three months on terminal leave. I had to put on my uniform once a week to check in with the personnel office, where I was temporarily assigned. Other than that, I was a free man. And I surely didn’t exercise by choice.
In the 13 years since, I’ve done very little exercise at all. I made a few quickly aborted attempts at regular exercise after I met my wife. She was a fitness trainer at the time and loved to work out. So, naturally, she tried to get me going. My waistline was bigger than I liked, I weighed a bit more than I wanted to, and I had the beginnings of a beer belly starting to show (though it was still possible to hide it at the time). My wife was trying to make a preemptive strike. She kept telling me how she had refused to ever date a guy with a pot belly and had no idea why she was with me. She wanted to eliminate it before it got out of control. I just couldn’t stay motivated enough to do it.
Today, my wife is a bit on the heavy side herself. She left the fitness industry a couple of years after we married. Until a couple of years ago, I was able to maintain a constant weight and felt comfortable about it. I quit smoking three years ago and a year later I started to notice that I was getting heavier. On a trip home to Atlanta last year, my first trip to the States in nine years, I ate everything I had been missing. Not only did I gain a lot of weight, I also noticed it was difficult to find a pair of Levi’s to match both my waist size and height. Everything in my waist size was too short, and everything my length too tight. I bought a couple of pair of my old size anyway, in the hopes of fitting into them one day (they are too expensive in Korea). Unfortunately, in the year-and-a-half since I’ve been slowly putting on more weight.
I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m sick of it. I don’t want to be the “fat American” Koreans talk about. I’ve never been self-conscious about anything in my life, but I certainly have a complex about my gut now. I hate wearing T-shirts. I can’t hide it anymore. I’m fortunate that I’m not living in America right now because I’ve maintained a much healthier diet than I would there. I eat a fair amount of Western food–burgers, steaks, fried chicken and the like–but I eat quite a bit of Korean food, too. Koreans have their share of fatty foods, but there are a lot of dishes that are really good for you. I’m quite certain that if I were in America I’d be pushing 300 pounds by now. I lead a very sedentary lifestyle, spending most of each day sitting at my computer. The only exercise I get is walking back and forth to bus stops and subway stations a couple of times each day for the classes I teach.
I realized that getting up and exercising is much like giving up cigarettes. I tried several times to quit smoking before I succeeded. When I did quit, it was one of the easiest things I had ever done in my life. The difference was that I really wanted to quit. All the times I had failed, I was trying to quit because others told me I ought to, but deep down I really didn’t want to. Now, I really, truly want to exercise. I never really wanted to before. I paid for a three-month membership at a local gym a few days ago and have been happily working out everyday since.
I’ve settled into a decent routine, I think. I start out on the treadmill, gradually increasing the time I spend on it each day. Right now, I’m up to 40 minutes. I then follow that with either an upper body or a lower body work out, alternating each day. My goals are to lose weight, enough that I can fit into the Levi’s I bought last year, and to get back some of the shape I had 13 years ago. Exercise alone isn’t going to do it, though, so I’m trying to put together a decent diet. There’s a lot of Korean food to choose from, so I can get a good variety of healthful foods. I’m getting lots of veggies, tofu, rice, fish and other goodies, and not going out of my way to do so. I’m still getting some Subway sandwiches, too, but it’s hard to eat just a six-inch sub after years of eating the big ones.
One thing I thought would be difficult is the time sacrifice. In order to make room for the exercise, something had to give. Each day after my morning classes I come home, change clothes, walk five minutes to the gym, work out, come back home and shower. It’s taking close to two hours right now and will be closer to three later on down the road. Clearing up time for it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, though. I actually wasted a good deal of time online each day. I had a routine when I sat down at the computer each morning, hitting several news sites, web forums and other places online to check for current events in different fields. Now, I don’t. I’ve not blogged much in the last week since I started working out, but there’s no reason I couldn’t have. Though, it will be a bit more difficult to find odd news items to blog about without checking all of those sites every day.
I suppose the key to doing anything in life is motivation. When you really want to do something, you can and you will. We hear it often in our professional lives, but we tend to ignore it when it comes to our personal lives. “It’s too difficult to quit smoking,” we say. “I don’t have time for exercise,” we tell ourselves. The reality is, it’s not too difficult to quit smoking and you can make the time to exercise. All you need is the will to do so. But no one can give it to you. You have to find it inside yourself.
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