Trimming myself up again!

Most of you would be aware of the set back I had in my health a year back and I had given you a detailed account of my encounter with Yama in my thread, ‘An awesome visitor’ which you can find here if you had not read it already:
http://www.indusladies.com/forums/cheeniyas-senile-ramblings/13675-an-awesome-visitor-14.html
Please be assured that the following is not an update of that but you could call it a sequel!

I was a sprightly man of 64 before this episode. I used to love the startled expression on the faces of new friends when I told them I was 60+. No, no, please don’t think that their startled expression was because I looked much older than that. What I meant was that I actually looked much younger. I was quite regular in following my fitness regimen. Then one day, I landed in a hospital bed most unexpectedly. And when I became near normal, the doctor released me from the hospital with a number of dos and don’ts the details of which I’ll not discuss here except one. He warned me to go a bit slow on my fitness regime. He asked me to defer my long walks for a while until he could be certain that I was completely normal.

The three week stint in the confines of a hospital room had already made me extremely lazy and in such a short time, I had developed an extremely laid back approach to life. It was no wonder that the doctor’s advice to avoid stressful physical activity for a while appealed to me lot. This meant that there was to be no more waking up at ungodly hours and no more pacing the footpath of the Elliot’s Beach tiring myself sick. I had no difficulty at all in giving up my years of fitness regimen and settling down to a sedentary life.

One of the greatest ironies of life is the body’s response to physical activity. When you sweat out for over an hour every day punishing your body as if it does not belong to you, the body merely responds to all that torture by just maintaining itself in shape. But you just sit doing nothing, the body becomes extremely active in adding extra weight to itself. Your Roman countenance loses its well chiselled contours and becomes something of a cross between Alfred Hitchcock and Henry Tremblechin. The bronzed muscles of the chest melt into fat and descend to the tummy. Well, all these happened to me too. It did not bother me initially until an old friend of mine who met me after a long gap mistook me to be the father of my own self! That was a bit too much and I decided to give up my hibernation and resume my fitness regimen.

I was a bit cautious in the first two days. You know what I mean. When we enter a pool on a cool wintry morning, we test the waters with our toes first, don’t we? It is something like that. I wanted to give time to my body to readjust itself to the revised schedule. By the end of first week, I could not believe my eyes when I looked at myself in the mirror. Just a week’s walking had such astounding effect on my sagging physique. My tummy became flatter and chest firmer. My double chin decided to call it a day. I had a near euphoric feeling as Narcissus had when he looked at himself in the pond.

When I set off for my morning walk next day, I was in a state of exhilaration. I was moving briskly when I bumped into another friend of mine. The moment he saw me, he let out a yell which I took very graciously as an expression of surprise at my transformation. He then spoke for ten minutes. What he told me in short was this. He expressed great apprehension at my resemblance to a sack of potatoes that was bursting at the seams. He wondered where my neck had disappeared. He eyed my tummy critically and wondered that if it could look so enormous early in the morning, how it would be after a heavy lunch. He went on these lines for a while and left me shattered.

This is another big irony of life. When you look fit and bronzed, no one notices. But the moment, there is a trace of an extra chin and a slight tummy, people rush to you with warnings and jeers! I reached home a beaten man and looked at the mirror again. It assured me that my friend was grossly exaggerating. It admitted that I might have to look into certain pockets of extra fat but by and large, there was nothing for me to appear so crestfallen. That cheered me up considerably and to avoid friends who could be so uncharitable, I resumed my walk in the expanse of my terrace where I had nothing to fear except a deluge of bird droppings!

 

Dear Abha
Even the die hard physical fitness freak finds it difficult to get up from bed but once he pushes himself up from the bed, he becomes possessed. During those seconds of battling with his sleepiness, he usually looks for some excuse like the patter of rain outside to stay in bed. So don't worry. You are not alone in this category.
There is always a tomorrow for sleeping. Do your exercise now!
Sri

 

Dear Padma
I have experienced the Bangalore winter for 4 years in the late '60s and I can't agree with you more on the effect of 'the dark, chilly, sometimes foggy dawn' on early morning walkers. Cubbon Park used to be the favourite place for my walks and being a young man in my late twenties, the biting cold was never a threat. I further used to show off wearing only a cotton jersey in that chilly weather earning admiring glances from matronly women swathed in heavy woollen stuff! In fact, I used to sweat more looking at them than through my jogging.

By pleading for light to avoid walking, you remind me of the Indian cricket players of the past who always resorted to that plea whenever they faced the stark possibility of defeat! Thanks a lot for your good wishes about the 'sweating out my toxins'! I can assure you that no fiddle on earth is going to look as fit as me very soon!
Sri

 

Dear Sri
Exercise is our way of showing to the world about 'believing in oneself'. In the words of the famous writer M.S.Udayamurthy, "Unnal mudiyum thambhi"!

But even after 40+ years of morning walks, I still behave like a LKG student looking for the slightest excuse to 'bunk' school. But after we successfully finish our walking schedule, we return home to a hero's welcome and we wear the same expression that Edmund Hilary might have worn after conquering Mount Everest! And if we find that the old man next door bunked his morning walk because there was a small piece of cloud in the azure sky, we ridicule him for being so chicken-hearted.

Thank you for your good wishes Sri. Rest assured that my trimming schedule is here to stay!
Sri

 

Dear Dr.Mindi
Thanks a lot for your warm concern. I too believe in brisk walking and when I go for walks, I recall Sivaji Ganesan's walking in Uyarndha Manithan singing 'Anda naal nyabagam vandadhe!' I hate people walking at a snail's pace as if they are looking for a coin that they dropped somewhere.

No one notices us when we look very fit but the moment you put on weight, people rush to you to point it out. A double chin, a little paunch, nothing escapes their notice. And if you sweat profusely after an hour's walk or breathe heavily, they tell you all the stories they know about people who dropped down dead while walking!
Sri