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Tuesday

New Year's Resolutions


I posed for this ridiculous photograph right after going down the water slide pictured behind me at Atlantis in the Bahamas. I was doing my best Bruce Leroy impression after the adrenaline rush from the slide. It was the fall of 2005, my then girlfriend, not yet fiance-not yet wife, was pregnant with our daughter. I weighed 173 pounds after spending months in a fitness bootcamp with a ruthless and crazed trainer. And by the time this picture was taken, I was nearly as crazy as him. I ate tons of fruits and vegetables and drank water like I lived in it. I ravaged chicken and fish and only touched red meat every once in a while. Everywhere I went, I was either running or walking so fast it felt like I was running. Back then, had you asked me to do something crazy, such as jump from one rooftop to another, I wouldn't have considered the obvious, I would've wondered if I had enough room to get up enough speed to make the jump. My body was my temple and my empire and I ruled over it justly.

Fast forward to 2 days before 2009.

I look a mess, except for the fact that now my teeth are straight. I've proportionately packed on roughly 20 pounds over the last 2 years. My wife says I look fine, but I disagree. Since 2005, the birth of my daughter, the beginning of my married life and my return to working in Manhattan, I've kept myself up just enough to keep wearing the same clothes I did back then. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes struggle to close a button here and there. And in all of the recently holiday photos taken of me, my face was probably only fatter when I was a baby. Spiritually, I also believe the extra weight and its associated lethargy has me weighed down a bit.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, only because the list is usually comprised of stuff you ought to be doing anyway. But I do believe in new beginnings. So when the new year begins, so will I, eating properly, curbing my sweet tooth, becoming more active and treating my temple as a temple. Garbage out, God willing. I enjoy roughhousing with the kids and I want to be able to do it for many more years to come. I enjoy my life. I owe it and the people who love me the best of me if it's within my power, which for now, my physical fitness is.

What are you resolved to do in 2009?

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