I Plan to Take My Love Handles With Me (25)

We (the Vienna Boys Choir) didn't talk about New Year's resolutions in our last column. I summoned up all my will power and decided not to try to improve myself this year. I don’t plan, for example, to lose weight; and I won’t be too hard on myself about exercise.  

I’ve lost weight before, but this past year I overdid it. I took off pounds in the wrong places, around my face and neck; I was no longer a fathead, but I had new wrinkles cropping up that made me look older than your average geezer. Not the effect I had in mind.

Of course I couldn't get rid of my "love handles" no matter how much weight I lost. I now weigh 167 pounds, up from 160. A couple of years ago I was weighing in at 183, which meant at 5’8” it was time to take me to market. So the good news is I’ve still lost weight, but I don't look like a bag of bones, which I did when I got down to 160 (“love handles” included).

How did you do it? I can hear you asking, that is, if you are of a certain age (60.7 years).

Tell us so we, too, can regain weight and look, if not young, at least not like the Wrath of God.

The secret: I had to start snacking again. Shocking, isn’t it? Yes, children, I went back to eating in the middle of the night.  I ate ice cream from the box and potato chips from the bag (the only way they taste right).  

I no longer tried to resist snack attacks, which is when boxes of cookies and crackers fall out of the kitchen cabinets, throw themselves at you, and take their clothes off. No, they didn’t actually do that, although I did notice the Ritz crackers flaunting themselves after peeling off their plastic wrappers.    

My wife had been hiding the snacks so I wouldn’t get into them at night. She no longer does that (she thought I was beginning to look like death warmed over).

It was hard work eating every free moment, but I was determined to look not necessarily good, but better. I’m happy to report I no longer resemble Dead Man Walking.

Although I lost too much weight last year, I’ve never gone overboard on exercise.  I have, however, been jumping on and off something called an Air Glider for a couple of years now, which Phyllis (my wife and personal trainer) ordered through QVC.  I didn’t get off to a flying start—at first, I lay down and sobbed after the warm-up exercises—but finally I worked my way up to a 20 minutes session three times a week.  

I started slowing down on my exercise after last year’s checkup when my waterworks specialist (urologist) revealed I had a hernia. I had realized for some time that something wasn't quite right in Australia, or Down Under, but I thought maybe it was just a simple matter of my underwear losing its snap.  At my checkup with my regular doctor a few months later, it appeared I had the beginnings of a second hernia. Thank you so much for that bulletin.

So for several months now I've not been jumping on the Air Glider very often. (Helpful health hint: Jumping on anything is not a good idea for guys with waterworks problems.) Don't remember the last time I was on it, to tell the truth. About the only exercise I get these days is when we walk our little dog, Precious, a nine-pound Pomapoo.

I exercise maybe twenty minutes a week now—that sounds about right, don’t you think? One of the things I love about exercise recommendations is just when I got up to twenty minutes, three times a week, everything I read said you should do at least thirty minutes a day, or even forty-five minutes a day. The only thing I can do for forty-five minutes straight without having an EMT crew standing by is to take a nap.

They (the Winners of Spoilsport News Awards for Learned Reports That Claim Whatever You are Currently Doing is Not Enough) also like to carry on about how important it is for everybody—including senior citizens, or in other words old people like myself—to do strength training. If I can walk from the kitchen to the living room and carry a cup of coffee and a Danish at the same time, that’s strong enough for me. In a normal day the heaviest thing I’ll lift will be a stapler.  I’ll skip the barbells, if you don’t mind.

To sum up, I'm eating more and exercising less. Which means I'll be keeling over any day now. At least I won't resemble a walking corpse. That's something, isn’t it?  

Happy New Year!