Staying in Shape—For Real This Time
This Is the Time of Year When Fitness Goals Go Awry, but Not This Year
By Jason Gay
Nov. 5, 2014 7:00 p.m. ET
Scott Pollack “I had the Cookie Monster chasing me a few times in my dreams.”
—LeBron James to CNN’s Rachel Nichols, September 2014
In my dreams, it’s the frozen waffles. Delicious, wretched, perfect frozen waffles. No, no, no: It’s the pizza monster. The terrible, frightening, wonderful pizza monster, cheesy and crisp, after me like Steve McQueen in a Mustang GT. Then comes the bagel man, the everything-bagel man, and behind him, pancake guy, with his syrup pal, of course. Then there are fries instead of salad, because who is kidding whom about salad instead of fries, right? There’s always the possibility of a meet-up with the ice-cream man, who is roommates with ice-cream sandwich, who used to work with ice-cream cake…
Not this off-season, however. This is the off-season that I will get it right, from November to March. Keep sharp, remain fit, maybe even lose a few from the few I lost this summer. I am going to do as the athletes do. Isn’t this what the athletes do? There’s no off-season slack anymore. A few years ago I was having coffee with a cyclist trying to make it in professional racing. This was November—the racing season was over. Now was the time for waffles and muffins! Nope. “Now’s the time to pay attention to stuff like that,” he said.
OK, so now is the time. I am going to be good, be strict, change my mentality. November was when it always fell apart for me. Maybe you share this problem. Winters have been cruel. I’ve gone from healthy summers of cycling and running and hours of tennis to “House of Cards” and Stoned Wheat Thins marathons on the couch. The runs become jogs and the jogs become slow walks to and from the subway. The bike rides migrate from the outdoors to indoor trainers and then stop altogether. Tennis trickles to a couple of times a month, because it’s indoors and expensive. Next thing you know, you’re buying “winter jeans.”
Not this time. I am going to behave like an athlete. Let me revise: I am going to pretend to behave like an athlete. The foundation of exercise and good diet I built in the summer and fall will not collapse in the bleakness of winter.
(I am at least 50 to 59% sure I can do this.)
If LeBron James can do it, why can’t I? I know he’s the world’s best basketball player, and I’m just a dad with sleep deprivation and a lot of Paul Simon on his iPhone, but how can you not be a little inspired? James arrived in Cleveland Cavaliers camp svelte thanks to a 67-day diet in which he shunned carbohydrates and refined sugar. New York Knick Carmelo Anthony appears willowier, too. Baseball players, once swelled by pharmaceuticals, have gotten reedier in their uniforms. In tennis, gluten denier and world No. 1 Novak Djokovic looks as if he hasn’t glanced at a cupcake in three years.
This is wise, we all know. Reasonable weight means less stress on joints and more ease of movement, better energy, especially as the athlete ages. Even the amateur hack can notice the effects. Over the summer I lost 10 pounds, OK maybe five, and I could not believe how much it helped me on the tennis court. In September I almost took a set off Journal tennis czar Tom Perrotta, and I never take a set off Journal tennis czar Tom Perrotta. I am the Maria Sharapova to Perrotta’s Serena Williams . (Sharapova, the women’s world No. 2, hasn’t beaten world No. 1 Williams in 10 years, which is a great crazytown tennis stat.)
Momentum is here. This time I’m pushing through the winter. Anybody can make a New Year’s resolution—why not make it early? I’m eliminating the junk food and purchasing the gear. There are late autumn gloves and early winter gloves and the deep winter gloves, suitable for delivering the Journal at the Arctic Circle. There are the winter bike booties. Not boots. Booties. There will be no excuses. If I have to ride indoors, I will ride indoors, and if I need something to watch, I hear the new Clive Owen thing is good.
I know I need to be reasonable. I probably cannot submit to a 67-day regimen with the fortitude of LeBron James. I don’t know if I will be as dedicated as the baseball player-turned-analyst Gabe Kapler, who brings his own cabbage on an airplane. Temptations abound. The holidays are creeping up fast, Thanksgiving and then the high-calorie parade of office parties. Last week my son went trick or treating for the first time. He is very little, though, and he has forgotten where his Halloween candy bag is.
I know where his Halloween candy bag is.
No: I’m not going down that road of recklessness. I will eat smartly and run and ride in the cold. I will go to the gym even when I hate going to the gym. I know there’s going to be pizza and bagels and ice cream, gaining in the rearview, but I plan to be an athlete, even if I’m not really one. There will be no winter jeans. I will resist, turn my off-season into an in-season. I also read somewhere it helps if you write it down.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario