truffle-shuffleHere we go again. Another New Year’s and another set of broken promises lie before me. I’ve already listed my set of what not to dos (read here), but the truth is that some changes need to be enacted, post haste. The reason is that my descent into middle age lard-assedness has been given an unfair advantage by my sheer laziness and unwillingness to make decent food and exercise choices. How many of us have sat and watched some mixed martial arts fight, football game, jai-alai tournament and thought, “hell yeah, I could probably do that. I know for sure I coulda ten years ago.” I love the little lies we tell ourselves as we order another round of cheese fries (ranch dressing on the side, garcon). The truth is that left to my own devices, I will comply with the overwhelming demands of the convenient, delicious fat-food cartels and before long TLC will be doing a special about how a crane is required to move my bed to the local obesity clinic. Well, maybe not that bad, but it’ll be damn close.

I’ve been going to cycling classes at the local Y, still play hockey and once in awhile I go to a Pilates class, if for no other reason than to hear myself grunt and pop. And, while I’ve enjoyed limited results, the truth is that the scale is giving the middle finger to these attempts. After torquing my knee attempting to train for a half marathon, I began to appreciate what my body was screaming at me: “YO, fatass, I can’t take this abuse anymore, so I’m compressing your knee to the point of pain. Take that, asshole, and lay off the special #7 at the Peking House, for the love of Christ!”

Motivated by The Wife’s recent purging of our refrigerator of all that is not raw, green and/or disgusting, I decided to jump on her bandwagon. We signed up for a Biggest Loser competition going on here locally (in which I intend to take home the entire pot of prize money, even if I have to adopt a temporary meth habit), and I signed up at the local Cross-Fit gym, where the motivational theme seems to be centered around puking. Several other firemen are working out there and have seen some awesome results, results that will benefit us in our everyday work environment. As was put to us so eloquently in the introductory course… “when in life are you going to be required push a metal bar off of your chest?” However, when you get up off of a toilet, you’re basically doing a squat, and there’s a lot of that sort of thing going down in this gym. I like this concept, because in my twisted mind, I’ll claim a workout every time I get off the can.

So, we’ll see. The goal here is to chuck somwhere between 40 and 50 clunkers off this tired body, and in the meantime derail the heart attack that awaits. Adios, deep fried Chinese food, we might meet again once in awhile, but I doubt it. Bacon….it’s over, I’m seeing someone else, and her name is “chicken”. She’s not near as tasty and naughty as you are, but the ugly truth is, you never cared for me anyways – you just wanted me for my gut. Guinness and coffee, I’m keeping you on the team, but you’re getting a lot less playing time; you have to understand, it’s for the greater good. To the rest of my body, I deeply apologize for what I’m about to put you through…..just know that it’s gonna hurt me a whole lot more than it will you.