I come from a long line of men with man boobs. My grandfather on my Dad’s side had them. My Dad has them. And I have them.
From a fitness standpoint I would categorize myself as skinny fat. The fat starts accumulating in the gut first, then moves up into the titties. I don’t think I really understood fitness. In college I went to the gym on campus and was intimidated by all the equipment and all the football players who were three times the size of me. Heck even the cross-country runners were jacked and they are basically like Calista Flockhart on meth.
When I go to the gym I search out the fittest guy there. Now let’s talk about what fit looks like to me and what is healthy before I go into this disturbing thought. Growing up in the 80s I watched and played with He-Man. You know, the cartoon where a small blonde boy turns into a large rippling muscled blonde man (Yeah, that’s healthy for the psyche of a nine-year-old). Not to mention WWE wrestlers like Ultimate Warrior, any movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the NFL, and basically all toys for boys promoted an esthetic that I can only qualify as pumped Greek God. The Ultimate Warrior always looked like he was going to pop. Hey man, just loosen those ribbons around your arms it doesn’t look healthy.
When you are a skinny kid, you soon realize that looking like Conan the Barbarian is out of reach or at least very difficult to achieve. That’s when I got a reality check and decided that my ideal esthetic would be that of a runner, a soccer player or a climber. I don’t do these sports but I wanted to look like the athletes that do them – trim, fit and muscular (but not too big). The type of body that can still move and be agile like a gymnast, a dancer or a versatile actor – everything I just said there is so not the American standard. Isn’t it sad when you can tell that a guy can’t drop his arms to his side because he’s too muscular? I grew up in Wisconsin where a size Medium T-shirt fits like a Large anywhere else. Clothes never fit me. Thankfully, it was the 90s and baggy was in. I remember wearing a Medium or even a Small size shirt that actually fit me for the first time and it took some mental adjusting to not feel bad and ashamed about my own body.
I just went off on a tangent there! Back to what I was talking about: When I go to the gym I search out the fittest guy there. Again, not the dude in acid wash jeans with cut off sleeves grunting as loud as he can as the veins pop from his biceps. The other guy. The cover model of Runner’s Magazine. Then I try to absorb his essence just by looking at him. Through some kind of witch-craft voodoo shit, I just try to succubus his energy until I feel better about myself. I breathe in his soul, Mummy-style, until he is a withered skeleton collapsed under a yoga ball. I will try to release a workout video to show how to do this.
But seriously, I don’t really know how to workout. I was not blessed with hot genes so I have to do some kind of exercise. My grandfather stepped on a tennis ball in his 40s and fell down, injuring himself. He rolled his ankle and broke a bone. He never exercised again. Ever! I can’t imagine why. Was he still embarrassed about falling down on the tennis court? He gained the inner tube around the waist and the man boobs were very prominent, old Marlon Brando style. Looking back, I realized something that I didn’t as a kid, he could have changed that. Each generation improves on the last and my Dad is in his 70s, approaching his 80s, and he is in terrific shape. That said, my Dad was never toned. Even in his 40s he had the Stein man boobs. My Dad has never been the size my Grandpa was and he is proud of that. We are a long line of skinny fat guys. Post college, I gained lots of lbs and the man boobs appeared with a relatively rectangular body shape. It took a breakup to get me back in the gym and more of a swimmer V shape. That started a trend of exercising more after a breakup. Break up. Gym. Break up. Gym. Break up. Gym. Several breakups later, I was a broke, out of work actor and I didn’t have money for a $900 gym membership. I found some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts online and did all my exercises from home. I had no excuses to not go to the gym because it was in my own studio apartment. All I had to invest in were some barbells, a pull-up bar and a tension band. At the end of a 12 week program I had abs for the first time. I was skinny, but I had abs! I was surprised that the sagging in my chest went away too. It wasn’t a predisposed condition etched in stone by my DNA. Cut to me now being in my 40s and the fight is real. My metabolism gives me the middle finger. I know I eat better than my Dad did in his 40s because I don’t have casseroles covered in Wisconsin cheese every night for dinner. One slip up with sugar can cancel out a week of exercise. My brain now knows that I can shape my body to be anything, just look at Christian Bale. But it always takes lots of work, dedication and consistency. The pay off is sleeping better, having more energy, feeling happier and more motivated to do other things. I want to be the Christian Bale from American Psycho but without the murdering.
In 2018 I moved to Colorado after another break up. And guess what? I wanted to get into shape again. Colorado’s active lifestyle was perfect for getting fit and enjoying nature at the same time. On a hike I rolled my ankle and broke my foot. I wore a boot for about three months and as I rested and slowly gained weight I thought of my Grandpa. He stopped exercising after he stepped on a tennis ball and broke his ankle. I didn’t want that to be me. I had some low days, laying in bed getting deep into the dark web and reading about conspiracy theories (That shit will f with your head). The day came for the boot to come off and I was heart broken. My foot was still in so much pain and I couldn’t just go back to walking on it so I had to use crutches. A week after the boot was off I had planned a trip to the mountains with friends. I was crushed that I couldn’t hike with them but I went anyways. A friend we met in the mountains told me about a man that does a type of therapy in Denver called Structural Integration. It’s also, unfortunately, known as Rolfing.
When I got back to Denver, I called up David Davis, the specialist in Advanced Structural Integration to learn more. I found out that he worked with the connecting tissue; the fascia that connected muscle and bone. He required a minimum of three visits and my insurance did not cover it. I was skeptical to say the least. Everything online said it was new agey and not proven to work. But I knew that my bones had to be healed by now and that my foot tendons and muscles were recovering from the plastic boot that was Velcroed around my leg for 3 months.
I was ready to HIIT it. I was ready to run again. The man boobs were blossoming like a girl going through early puberty. So, I scheduled an appointment. One of the first things he noticed was how I was carrying myself just based on my posture. My body was out of alignment compensating for the limpy foot. After my first full body session, I felt taller. I’ve always felt like a compressed turtle in winter hibernation. But the shell was off and I could walk better already. It took some time for my body to recover from that initial session. The tissues were like “Hey that’s not where we are supposed to be typically, I think you might be in danger. Everyone tighten up!” The second session he worked on the foot itself. And by the third session he was adjusting for any changes that happened since the last visit. My results were astonishing to say the least. My foot was pain free!
I went for my first hike in February of 2019 up Horsetooth Mountain. It was a day after a man had been attacked by a mountain lion and survived it by killing the beast with his bare hands. I made it all the way to the top and was not mauled by a mountain lion (Let’s not make that the new exercise trend okay?).
In summary, bigger is not better. Fit is better than not. Healthy is how you feel not necessarily how you look or think you look. Do not suck the life force out of someone at the gym like a horror movie. If you fall down, get back up and try again. Accepting your body for what it is and knowing you can change it are huge mental lessons that can change your life. Buy a jump rope.