Before going on any diet or starting any exercise program you should consult your physician. Much to my mother’s dismay, I am not a physician. Nor am I a dietician. Nor am I a certified personal trainer.
Who am I exactly?
I am a gay man. I can frequently be found defining myself by how I look and what clothes I fit into. Judge all you want. It’s the truth and I am far from alone. I have kept myself in pretty damn good shape for most of my adult life and in the past few years have gained about ten pounds. I hate each and every one of them. I am about to enter my 40s and if I’m going to go gray and have some over-processed, 125 pound twink call me Daddy then I want to do it with the flat, hard abs of my youth.
As I have gotten older, it has become increasingly clear to me that there just isn’t that much in the world I can control. Gas prices? Nope. Home values? Nope. The teenager in front of me driving while texting? The guy listening to his headphones so loudly that even though I’m fifteen feet away ~ and have my own headphones on ~ I can still dance to his music and clearly make out the words “bitch” and “ho.” That woman behind me who neither thanked me for holding the door open nor returned the favor? My computer dying and taking with it everything I’ve been meaning to back up since the last time it crashed and I swore I’d back it up at least once a week from now on? (Well, that kind of is in my control.) Waking up to the smell of dog shit? My boss? Unsolicited texts? Incompetent colleagues? Facebook layouts? Presidential candidates? Broken water heaters? Taxes? Kids? Spouses? Ex-spouses? Cell signals? Flight delays? Traffic jams? Wikipedia? CNN? Charlie Sheen?
All no.
The list of things that can not be controlled is infinite.
What can we control?
What we eat. How we take care of our bodies. Our weight. How much we move. We may not be able to completely control our health, but we can have a massive impact on it. It’s all perfectly within our power.
So here’s the thing. It’s time to say FuckYou40 and the layer of fat that a dying metabolism brings with it as a doorprize for continuing to live. I don’t want to be 40 and fabulous. Fuck fabulous. And the expression “You look good for your age” ought to be illegal. I don’t want to look good for my age. I want to be fucking hot. I want women to swoon and grown men to weep at the sight of me. Wait. Scratch that. I want men to swoon and grown women to weep at the sight of me. Fuck it. I want all of humanity to swoon and then weep. I want to fit into jeans that haven’t fit me since the last century. I want to be so svelte that if I were wearing a baseball cap in a dimly lit college town liquor store I might still get carded. I want to look fucking amazing in my Abercrombie & Fitch midlife crisis sleeveless tee that I bought while shopping with my step-daughter and praying that they would turn up the lights and turn down the music just long enough for me to concentrate on the blurry yet still clearly ridiculous numbers on the price tag in order that I could complete my transaction and escape the store before passing out from the fumes, hitting my head on the counter and having to be removed from the store by paramedics while friends, acquaintances and contemporaries in Nieman-Marcus and Williams-Sonoma point, text and whisper about the pitfalls of clinging too long to one’s youth as I’m being wheeled through the mall on a stretcher.
Is that too much to ask?
No.
FuckYou40.
FuckYou40 Diet & Exercise Tips are thoughts, suggestions, exercises and hopefully, inspiration ~ from me to you. I want to ring in the dawn of my 5th decade with the rock hard abs that I’d like to pretend I’m beyond caring about anymore. That spiritual awakening hasn’t occurred yet. I’ll let you know when it does. Until then, join me in my quest…
