End of Phase 1

1983 was a long year for me. In February of that year, I turned twelve years-old. I was so close to becoming a teenager, I could almost taste it. Looking back, I really don't know why it was so important to me to have the title of "teenager". There is really no difference between being twelve and being thirteen or even fourteen. The advantages of being a teenager really do not kick in until you are fifteen and are able to get your learner's permit.

That begins the next long year of a person's life. Knowing that a driver's license is that close, makes each day seem longer than the last.

At seventeen years-old, we want to be eighteen, thinking that we'll be out of school, grown and living the life we've been dreaming about our whole life. At eighteen, I was supposed to be married to Heather Locklear and she and I would live happily ever after on the fortune that we would make owning our own video arcade.

It's difficult to be a nineteen-year old. We feel too old to be called a teenager, but we still are. At some point, as a nineteen-year old, many kids have uttered the phrase; "I can join the army and go to war and be killed serving my country, but I can't buy beer!"

Twenty is a long year, because at that point, you're less than a year away from being able to buy that beer.

After the age of twenty-one, time seems to stand still for a while. And why shouldn't it? We're young and we can stay up all night and go to work the next day on little or no sleep. We can fall down and we bounce back up and we may not even bother to dust ourselves off. We're not scared of anything!

During my twenties, my best friend Tim and I would keep ourselves busy with assorted activities of debauchery. To this day, I cannot see a duck without slight chuckle and thoughts of a weekend in Memphis, TN.

Turning thirty is not a big deal. Yesterday, I was twenty-nine. I'm just a day older. I'm basically still in my twenties. I'm not really in my thirties. I am thirty. There is a big difference. During this decade of ages, some wise-ass thought it was necessary to sub-divide age, going forward. You're not thirty-two years old. You're in your early thirties. You're not thirty-four, thirty-five or thirty-six, you're in your mid-thirties. Your not thirty-seven, thirty-eight or thirty-nine. You're in your late thirties. At this point, we fight it and claim the we roll "old school" by saying that I am still in my thirties...and we'll say that right up until the day of our fortieth birthday. Some of us will continue this for a while longer.

Today is the last day of phase 1 of My P90X. I have stayed with the diet program. I have had to make some adjustments to the workout program just because I did not have the time to do this like it is supposed to be done, every day. I am wondering if I should move on to phase 2 or stay with phase 1 a little longer to make up for the missed time working out. The next phase does give me a bit more food. I can get two more protein servings, two more veggie servings and two more dairy servings.

In the beginning, the diet portion was the toughest part of this. As I got into it, the diet portion got much easier. It was about that time that I would shorten or skip workouts. Slowly, the hunger would start reoccurring at the end of the day, like it had. I wonder if the alterations to the workout schedule has anything to do with this or if my body is just needing the extra food, because of the transformations that have happened. Again, not jumping into any body building contests, but it has been pretty drastic, to me.

However, this is what I can say, at the end of phase 1...even if it is the end of an altered phase 1.
* I need to buy a new black belt. The one that I have had for the last several years has 5 holes in it. Most of that time, I have been able to use the middle one, #3. The #2 hole does show signs of some wear. I call this my holiday hole, as it was most likely utilized between Thanksgiving and New Year, along with the bar-b-que holidays of the Spring and Summer months. Today, I am using the #5 hole and I really need a #6 hole to pull it back farther. with much of the belt wrapped around my waste, it flaps against itself and if I were to run, it would sound like the baseball cards I would put in the spokes of my bicycle as a teenager.

*Yesterday, when I stepped on the bathroom scale, it said 178 lbs. (I have not seen that since I was eighteen or nineteen.) Friends and family have told me that they really don't think I need to loose any more weight, because I was never that big to begin with. What they do not realize is that I have not exhaled since 1993.

*Once I can get up and get going, I just feel like I have more energy and more stamina and if I were to fall down, I really think I would bounce back up like I was in my twenties. Though I would dust myself off. Don't want to be a slob, you know.

*I'm thinking about calling up my ol' buddy Tim and asking if he is up for a weekend trip to Memphis.