There was a very short period in my life, probably no more than a few months, that I could touch my toes.
It was right at the end of my senior year of high school. By that time, I had long since dropped away from any sort of organized sports, and the only semi-consistent form of exercise I got was going on walks with my mom. Around this time, for reasons I could not hope to reconstruct today, I started working out a little bit before bed. Nothing fancy - some push-ups, some sit-ups, and some stretching - but it was something, and unlike so many other little initiatives, I stuck with it. I kept it up nightly or nearly so for several months, and was quite surprised when one evening, while performing the venerable sit-and-reach stretch, I was able to snag my fingers on my toes.
This was unprecedented for me. When we did the sit-and-reach tests in elementary school P.E., I couldn't even reach the end of the board. To be sure, I have some natural disadvantages at play - long, long legs and not a lot of torso to go with it - but I also just flat-out wasn't flexible. And yet now I could touch my toes. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun, but I could do it. And over the ensuing weeks, it got easier and easier.
It couldn't last, of course. Shortly after that, I shipped off to college for the first time. I was far too self-conscious to perform my nightly routine in front of my roommates, or out in the lounge where anyone might walk past (although I did once pass another girl doing some stretches, which I remember only because of my vague sense of 'oh, I guess it isn't that weird after all' that failed to translate into any actions). Our dorm was far from the campus athletic facilities, and I think I would have avoided them anyway out of a misplaced disdain for athletics and the meatheads that practice them. So I just stopped.
I mention this because this stands out in my memory as my peak of physical fitness. I doubt it actually was, since I had very little since of dietary self-control and was not likely getting such an enormous payoff from those walks, but it was the one time I can remember setting out to accomplish something relating to my physical fitness and then seeing actual results. I feel proud of that little nightly routine and the small but measurable gains that I accomplished thereby. After that, aside from occasional walks with my ladyfriend and, during the summers, playing racquetball and reading on the exercise bikes at the YMCA, I allowed my physical fitness to languish.
At several points during my not-very-pleasant year teaching in Iowa (more to come on that), my mom suggested that I find a local gym or the YMCA, and even offered to pay for my membership. At one point, a mental health professional I was consulting recommended the same. I didn't, largely because I felt too much guilt about all the other things I was supposed to be doing to add something else to feel guilty about not doing to the list. Perhaps if I had, some things would have turned out differently. Perhaps it just would have added to my stress. Who knows. It wasn't until mid-August, when I finally squared away my last responsibilities for my former employer, and made the decision that I would not be moving away from home again until I had some form of employment lined up, that the pressure of things I was supposed to be doing finally relaxed and I experienced a spurt of the highest productivity I'd had in years, sorting and catching up on paperwork, tying up loose ends, plotting out my finances - and signing up for a Y membership. (And giving thought to blogging once again, as it so happens.)
I'm still struggling a bit with what exactly my fitness goals are. Do I want to lose weight? Well, probably; I'm well within the healthy range for my bmi, but I definitely have some mass on the front of my torso that doesn't need to be there. Oh, so it's about looking better? Well, probably; I certainly wouldn't object to being a little bit more alpha-masculine. At the same time, though, I have a deep and abiding contempt for the sort of institutionalized vanity that characterizes America, and am much more interested in health for the sake of health than for looking healthy. Oh, so it's about overall fitness? Strength? Endurance? Flexibility? Well, probably ...
This has led to a rather scattershot routine; when I go to the Y, which is averaging 2-3 times per week, I start with some stretching (in which I fall at least 5 inches short of my toes), followed by some time on the various weight machines (chest press, seated row, leg press, bicep curl, and some weird thing that involves twisting your lower body with the sides of your abs, mostly ), followed by 20-30 minutes on one of the bikes, where I set it to cardio (not fat-burning) and generally run it at ~120 RPM. (When I first started in August, I was lucky to break 90; this is another case where I think I can see measurable results from a self-motivated fitness effort.) I'm still experimenting with different things, figuring out what looks useful and what doesn't. I worry that without a particular goal(s) to work toward, I'll lose interest and fade out over time, but so far it seems to be working, and eventually I'll probably find something to work toward.
There are other ways to exercise than at a YMCA, and exercise is only a part of fitness, of course. I don't think I eat a terrible diet (although they really should have built that Culver's further away from my home, dammit), but neither do I eat a particularly healthy one - lots of pasta and other carbohydrates and relatively lean meats, but not a huge amount of fruits or veggies. Something to work on, I suppose.
I have been blessed by nature and happenstance with an ectomorphic physique that does not go out of its way to entrap calories, a marked lack of defects or early predispositions to non-communicable diseases, and a household that has never normalized the consumption of overprocessed snack food as a substitute for actual meals (although it's getting a little extreme; if Mom actually follows through on her plan to make chocolate chip zucchini cake, I may be forced to drastic measures). And these factors have prevented years of benign neglect from causing dire or permanent consequences, like diabetes. I also don't necessarily think I have a physique particularly disposed towards athleticism - not a body builder, not a soccer or football standout, not even particularly a runner - and I don't feel a competitive urge to become more so.
But I know that come 40 or 45, some of those natural factors will stop working for me and start working against me. And more than that (because 'do this so it will help you when you're 40' is a pretty crappy motivational speech to a 24-yr-old), I miss being able to touch my fully extended toes. I miss the feeling of accomplishment that comes from making a change to one's own body and seeing it take shape. What those changes will or should be, I have not yet determined, but after a year characterized mostly by feeling a distinct lack of control over my own life, it's nice to start to see some concrete evidence that there are still things within my control, and that it benefits me more to invest in the things I can change than to fret about the things I can't. So that's cool.
