Get started with good nutrition when you are young
So many things we learn as we get older. It takes a while to get out of shape, but it all starts when you are young. For me it was around when I turned 25 or so. That's when I started putting on fat.
I'd always been skinny -- and I do mean skinny -- when I was a kid. When I went into the military, I weighed 119. 5'10", 119 pounds. Skinny.
At my peak weight, or at least the highest number I ever saw on the scale, I weighed 235. Yes, in 27 years I had doubled my weight.
Wow.
As a military member, I was forced to be somewhat fit. I had a maximum weight. I had to pass fitness tests. Nothing too rigorous, but it was something.
I was a runner for a while. I ran a couple half-marathons -- 13.1 miles -- at an 8-minute pace. Not bad.
I lifted weights for a while, but that didn't really hold my interest. And while I enjoyed distance running, I lost interest in that, too. Then when I tried to get back into it years later, my joints couldn't handle it.
Even without the exercise I was doing, though, I could have pretty much avoided the fat gain if only I had watched what I ate.
Don't get me wrong. I thought I was watching what I ate. Sort of.
I went on diets, tried different ones to try to lose weight. I was a vegetarian for three years. I SomerSized. I did Atkins. I tried the Cabbage Soup thing. Low fat. Calorie restriction. I even tried some stupid rice diet that I am pretty sure messed me up for life. I lost weight on all of those diets, but the pounds always came back.
I couldn't stick with them, or, in the case of vegetarianism, I ate so much fat -- i.e. so many calories -- on that diet that there was no way I'd stay healthy. (Well, the fact is that I only became a vegetarian to keep myself from eating fast food. To this day, I only very rarely visit fast food restaurants. IT WORKED!)
I think I have good eating habits now, but how much easier would my life have been if I had only developed those good habits when I was a kid? I suppose I would have missed out on a wealth of experiences, had I done that. I would not have been through the fitness ordeals that probably made me a better person.
But, still, when I see a young person latching onto the principles that will keep him or her fit throughout life, it makes me wish I'd known then what I know now.