The Super Fantastic MJ Excellent Weight Loss Challenge Bonanza!

I joined a gym.

As the calender continues to flip and I get older by the minute, I'm starting to notice funny changes in my body.  You tend to notice these changes when you find yourself heavily wheezing on the bus because you had to run 40 yards at a full sprint to catch the damn thing.  Also, I've found myself saying things like, "Huh.  You didn't have that 3rd chin yesterday". 

So, I joined a gym.  Many moons ago, when I was gainfully employed at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, I was relatively healthy.  There was a YMCA down the street from the 'Wolf that was everything I looked for in a gym:  it had two basketball courts.  About 3 or 4 times a week, I would drive the half mile to the Y--in retrospect, this might have been part of the problem--and I would lace up my hoops shoes and run around for an hour.  Since they had two courts, I would let all the kids from Cabrini Green dunk on one and I would shoot hoops with the older white guys on the other.  Occasionally, they kids would need a 10th for their game I would run over and try to keep my guy in front of me.  Usually by fouling as hard as I could.  Sure, I never scored much but they respected me because they liked my hustle!  They must have; they only pants-ed me once.

Sadly, they tore the place down and I think there is a retirement home on the land now.  On that day, back in 2006, I stopped exercising.

Since then, there have been an awful lot of Kraft dinners, whiskey, pizza and couch.  And since then, I've gained an awful lot of weight.

So, in a continuing effort to please my wife sexually, I decided it was time to shed those unsightly pounds.  I found a gym a half-block from my house and, really, if it was any farther, I would just give up and climb the escalator of weight gain to 300 pounds or so.  But since it is directly across the street from where my bus lets me off each night, there really is no excuse.  I have a choice each night:  White Castle or B&W Gym.  I appreciate my intestines too much to be a patron of White Castle. 

The Gym itself is hilarious.  It is a gym for "serious" weightlifters and has dozens of pictures up of dudes with vein-busting muscles.  The first night I walked in, I was immediately taken back to high school:  the gym, in a basement beneath a discount furniture store, smells exactly like the weight room in the basement beneath the old gym at Benet Academy.  I've never been there when there were more than 5 or 6 people walking around, lifting weights, flexing into the mirrors, etc.

What did I do?  I rode the exercise bike.  Manly, I know, but remember, I haven't exercised in 5 years.  At all.  Seriously, the most exercise I've gotten was walking around the French Quarter for 3 days while I drank heavily.  Feel the burn!

Last night, in my first trip to B&W Gym to actually sweat a bit, I rode the exer-cycle for two miles, got winded and quit.

This might take a while.