“Who wants to go to gym with me?”

My mother tends to embrace new ways to improve her life in waves. She is constantly on a self improvement junkie. So it came to pass on the Christmas of 2007, her newest fad was working out. The GYM.

But I didn’t need the gym — I had healthy (or unhealthy) disdain for anyone who wasted his or her time on treadmill like big hairless hamsters, counting calories and obsessing over how many squats or pull ups one could do. I was openly critical of people who spent time in the gym. Sure, I had gained a few pounds over the years but I hadn’t weighed myself in a decade. I figured I was hovering around 200 lbs, which for a fairly muscular 42 year old man, wasn’t too bad. The gut was something genetic — I mean, every adult male in my family had a belly. Stallone was almost a foot shorter than I was and he weighed in at 217 in Rocky III, so I was just fine, thanks. And pass that sixth slice of pizza, please.

My wife at the time was feeling a little bloaty and decided after the spread Mom had put out for the holidays merited a Day After sort of Trip to the Hamster Wheel. And I thought “What the hell? I’ll swing in, pump some iron, show both of them that while I wasn’t a gym rat I could hold my own amongst the muscle-heads.”

I suited up and met Mom and Jen out in the main room. Mom was going to the Elliptical. Jen decided to join her. I decided to go for one of the stationary bikes. I sat down, adjusted it to a 15 (out of 20) and started to pedal. That was a bit too much, so I kept dialing it down until I landed on a 2 — it was fine. I was only warming up. I felt the burn, baby! I was killing it! But man, it was wearing me out. I pushed myself. I was both showing off for my wife (I was VERY aware of where she was) and demonstrating to myself that I was in shape in spite of my lack of physical exercise. I was sweating like a stuck pig. I was huffing and puffing like a heart attack victim. I pedaled until I couldn’t pedal one more revolution and sort of collapsed on the bike.

I had been on it for five minutes.

“Yeah,” I thought. “But I’m a weights guy anyway. Everyone knows how strong I am. I’ll go down and do some heavy free weights. ROCK ON!”

I didn’t fare much better with the weights. I was NOT in the shape I thought I was. Not even close.

I saw a high tech digital scale. I shrugged. Why not?

263 pounds.

I tried it three times. 263 each time.

I sat down on a nearby bench and was mortified. My self delusion was shattered. This was like what I thought I was plus FOUR BOWLING BALLS.

When Jen and I got back to Chicago, the first thing I did was join the YMCA gym. She joined with me in solidarity.

I figured that I weighed 185 when I graduated high school. And that I had slowly gained two or three pounds a year for twenty-four years. So this was NOT going to be an overnight thing. It took me a quarter of a century to encase myself in this armor of fat, one score and four years of beer and whole pizzas and Big Gulps to cloth myself in a suit of flesh, so it might take me until I was sixty-six to shed it. No fad diets. No insane PX90 horseshit. Burn more calories than I consumed. Not eat after 8PM. Eat less, move more. That was it.

I still ate pizza, cheese, bacon, bread, drank beer (although I got rid of soda for the most part). I just ate LESS of it. I did weight training. I did cardio exercises. Tried running — not for me. I got bored too fast. I love/hate the Stairmaster and when I’m not at a gym, I’ll do 20 minutes of just going up and down stairs for a quick cardio boost. I like lifting weights and dumbbells. I found a comfortable groove. I weighed myself every morning.

My belt size went from 42 inches, to 38 inches, to 33 inches. I had to buy new pants. My shirts started looking like bed sheets with sleeves on my frame. My face re-appeared. Instead of Shrek ears, I had big Obama ears. I lost my second chin.

Two years later, I weighed exactly what I weighed when I graduated high school. I had escaped the prison of myself. I felt better. I looked better. And I was a bona fide gym rat. I still weigh myself every day. I still count my calories. I now have a fairly comprehensive home gym. I generally weigh between 185 and 190 on any given day — maybe a bit more if I eat a lot of bread or drink a lot of beer the night before.

It’s a daily thing, my weight. Maintaining that is harder as I get older. But I’m free and that makes it worth it. For awhile I was motivated to proselytize to my friends who were hefty. I felt it was my duty to fat-shame them into doing what I did. That’s a human response I think. No less than preaching the love of a god, the health benefits of gluten-free diets or the mania for bicycling in a city designed for cars.

I realized how shitty that was as I noticed more and more people looking at me with disdain when I lit up a smoke. Their disgust and preaching about my smoking was absolutely no different than my harping for my heavier comrades to hit the gym and forego that slab of ribs. My experience is that getting in shape is a choice. Just like eating that whole pizza and pitcher of beer is a choice. Just like smoking or not is a choice.

For a long time, losing that weight and keeping it off was about looking good rather than feeling good. All the fucking selfies on my Facebook tells you all you need to know. I’m getting to the point where what I look like is less important to me and how my body feels is more important.

It’s an interesting thing about those of us who live in the richest country on the planet. We like to keep telling ourselves how free we are but we keep finding our own little cages to occupy. For me, I’m looking at those cages and deconstructing them while eradicating the prisons I erect for others.