A New Road...

"Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though we pass them by today,

Tomorrow we may come this way

And take the hidden paths that run

Towards the Moon or to the Sun." -- J.R.R. Tolkien

Last fall, I turned forty.  It is no great feat to find oneself examining one's life upon such a milestone -- it is well-trod territory, I know.  Still.  The universality of this experience, this rite of passage, does not diminish the significance of my own encounter with forty.
 

I've spent the better part of my adult life struggling with my weight.  Well, I suppose that's not entirely true -- for the last twenty years, I mostly surrendered to the current of weight gain, and allowed it to carry me downstream.  As a child, I was athletic, and very active, but during my teen years, a back injury shifted my entire approach to life, and I gained a lot of weight (over 100 pounds) very quickly.  Pictures of me over the years have shown me at a variety of weights, sometimes as high as three hundred fifty pounds, but never under two hundred pounds.
 

A few years ago, in the process of divorce, I made some changes, and began to lose weight.  I made a few changes to my diet, but mostly focused on increasing my activity level, which helped me to manage my mood as well as my metabolic function.  I lost approximately 100 pounds.  Then my mother died, and I allowed that loss to distract me from what I'd been doing for myself.  A few pounds crept back on, but I was mostly able to maintain my weight.  (It's interesting for me to think about how the loss of my marriage motivated me to get active and eat better, but the loss of my mother stopped me in my tracks and made me crave the comfort of her cooking -- lots and lots of it.)
 

Now I'm forty years old.  It's been a couple of years since Mom passed away.  I've moved on with my life.  At the end of December, a friend of mine expressed some concern that, at my present weight and with a relatively sedentary lifestyle, I was unlikely to live to see fifty.  Whether that is accurate is debatable, but that's really beside the point.  In years past, I might have reacted with defensiveness and hostility, but for some reason, I didn't throw up that familiar old wall.  I listened, and I took those concerns seriously.  I realized then, nobody else could do this for me.  This is something I alone have the power to change.
 

I made a promise that day, to myself and to my friend, to exercise at least 30 minutes every day in 2011.  I have a recumbent stationary bike I ride at home.  In January, it was a challenge for me to get to that 30 minute mark without taking breaks.  Now I can ride for 45 minutes at a time, usually while watching an episode of "Xena: Warrior Princess" or "Doctor Who" (Netflix has a wealth of appropriately inspirational nerd fare for me to watch while I ride).  I'm working on expanding my routine to include a number of other activities, and have been helped in this regard by the discovery of local, nerd-oriented fitness group Geek Physique.  I'm a weekly participant in their YogaQuest activity, an innovative approach to yoga, which combines the physicality of yoga with the storytelling and role-playing mindset of Dungeons and Dragons.  T'ai Chi classes start this Friday, and I am eagerly anticipating "bookending" my work weeks with Geek Physique activities.
 

Each of these new activities is a new road, a secret gate, that leads me to greater discovery of myself and my potential.  Every day in which I incorporate my choice to pursue the enjoyment of physical activity is a day of adventure, a day of heroic quests, dragons slain, riddles solved, and treasures obtained.  Like Samwise Gamgee, I'm discovering that the heroes of the great stories were not people who found themselves in great peril and turned back.  What made them heroes was that they kept going.  My quest may not require me to carry Frodo up Mount Doom (sniff! sob! weep!), but it does require me to leave the comfort of my own Shire, and start trudging the wilderness myself.  It requires that I get up and move -- like I'm being pursued by Ringwraiths, or outrunning my past as a vicious warlord (with my faithful bard sidekick, yiyiyi!), or racing toward the TARDIS before it leaves me behind.  It requires me to hold fast to a commitment to myself, to value my health and well-being, to cherish my growing ability to actually DO things that require stamina and flexibility, to nourish my body so it can carry me along those "hidden paths that run towards the Moon or to the Sun."  
 

So, if you're feeling the call of years, or simply tired of sitting around doing nothing, I'd like to encourage you to grab a walking stick, and some comfortable footwear (or leathery bare feet if you are of the Hobbit-y persuasion), and if your voice is up to the task, join me in my walking songs.  I'm excited to be on this journey, and would love some company on the road.