~Upstream and Down~

Here it is again. That turning point called the NEW YEAR, the start of which is considered a perfect moment to try, try again to do whatever it was you’d vowed to do at the start of last year, but failed to maintain for 365 days. Why is it so hard to stick to goals? Especially when they are good for you? And even when you really WANT to stick to them? I don’t know. When I was slim and trim (and young), exercise was a reward in itself. I loved the relaxed feeling after working up a sweat in an aerobics class, the feeling of power after weight training, the slim, trim body with defined muscles. I exercised routinely for years and years. Then, when I was forty-six, I had some minor surgery and had to stop working-out for a while. I discovered how nice it was to come straight home from work and sit with a cup of tea and the newspaper. Somehow I never got back into consistent daily exercise. I'd start and stop, start and stop, with longer and longer times before I started again....

Beef, Angus strip roast, is on sale for $8.99 per pound, chicken breasts, boneless, $4.99 a pound. My own flesh is worth far more, I found. (Not in the way you're thinking, Elliot Spitzer and all) I responded to a junk mail ad for a place I'll call as "Shylock Fitness Center." It was a promo, I knew this, but I checked it out just to see. I'm a tough sell and I wasn't worried that I'd get pushed into anything. That never happens, hardly. The place provides one-on-one fitness training-- a private hour and a half, three times a week with a personal trainer, a nutritional program, and body fat analysis. -I'd visited this place once four years ago to do a feature for a newspaper, so I knew how they operated-- and that they were pricy. -But you never know. The economy is in a slump. Maybe they are desperate for clients. The owner, who I'll call Mr. Pecs, showed me around. I wanted only the bottom line: the price. But he was intent on getting me firmly ...