Since Frank, the owner of the Iron Shack gym and an old friend of Chuck’s, had begun helping him six weeks ago to get stronger and to lose weight, Chuck felt like he had a new lease on life. Gone was the feeling of waking up early in the morning with his joints aching, his face and body puffy because of copious amounts of food and alcohol consumed the day before. Gone was the midday slump that he went through, daily assuaged with sugar and caffeine. Gone was the guilty feeling each morning because he had eaten poorly and not exercised the day before.

This went on for years, with Chuck swearing that he would start getting back into shape – starting tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But then his kids all grew up and left, and he turned 50, and his wife divorced him. He thought that was a wake-up call, so he headed back to the gym.

His training had been going well. He was weak at first; after all, it had been over 40 years since he lifted weights, and it had been over 40 years since he had done any type of exercise at all. His form in the bench, squat, and deadlift returned quickly, and the skill of the movements, not done since high school, returned to him. He kept reminding himself that he had once been an athlete, that he could do this. The feelings of working hard again in the weight room reminded him of when he used to have two-a-day practices in high school football and the sweet feeling of exhaustion that he would experience when practice was done.

All his old athletic and weight training memories came back to him, and he told himself that if he could do it then, he could do it now. He was so sore after his first squat session that he had trouble sitting on the toilet for days. His quads were sore to the touch, as were his adductors. The first week was tough; he felt weak and tired. But after a week or so, he wasn’t getting tremendously sore anymore, and his energy increased. His muscles just had a tight, pumped feeling to them, and after a few weeks, he could tell he was gaining muscle and getting stronger.  

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He was walking by a hallway mirror in his house one morning after a training session, and he noticed that he could see a hint of triceps showing. He stopped and flexed, and he could see that his triceps and biceps were becoming more delineated from each other. He smiled to himself, encouraged by his progress. He was on a roll now and felt better than he had in a long time. He had even hit some good numbers on the big lifts in his program. He pressed 135x1, squatted 235 for a set of 5, deadlifted 245 for a set of 5, and benched 215 for 5. He was surprised by how much stronger he had gotten since his first day with Frank in the gym.

The diet was not too hard to stick with, but he had some cravings. He did his best to ignore them and, per Frank’s advice, snacked on sugar-free popsicles. He liked eating the protein at every meal. He hadn’t realized that his old diet had almost no protein in it, just plenty of carbs and sugar, wasted calories. The protein and fat seemed to give him more energy than carbs ever had.

Did he struggle in those six weeks of training and changing his diet? Yes. He had been very gung-ho, crushing his training and the diet, eating the right foods. A few nights, he even skipped his customary two beers. He was going great guns, but after about 3 weeks, he began to lose a little motivation. He began to have cravings for cake and ice cream. His friends called one Friday and asked him to go to the Country Music Festival that night, because they had an extra ticket. He knew that would throw off his training the following morning. He also knew that there would be much alcohol consumed and fried food eaten.

He went to the concert, but he didn’t blow his diet like he thought he would. He indulged, but with a lot more restraint than usual. The problem came when the alarm went off the next morning, signaling it was time to go train. He had only slept a few hours, and he did not want to get up and train. He told himself that he would push the snooze, but promised himself that he would get up this time. He didn’t, and slept through the alarm. He missed his training session that morning and was in such a rush to get out the door for a doctor’s appointment that he missed his first meal of the day. He walked into the Iron Shack that afternoon to see Frank and tell him what happened. He expected Frank to cuss him out, but he didn’t.

Frank explained that motivation wanes after a while, but that is when discipline must take over. “It’s like Mike Tyson says, 'Discipline is doing what you hate to do and acting like you love it.' I’d probably train twice a month if I only trained when I felt like training. Your body wants to lie around watching Netflix and eating Cheetos. You just have to get up and get moving, and there has never been a time when I regretted training, no matter how much I didn’t want to do it.”

He explained that things happen and that the damage done from the concert night was minimal, if any. He could still get his workout in for the day and still get his meals in, so it wasn’t the end of the world. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. When I told you what to eat on the diet, I meant it, but I am not so naive as to think that you are going to give up ice cream for the rest of your life. It happens. Move on from it; nobody died, and everything can be made up. The reason why you are upset is that you let yourself down. Sucks to feel that way, but you must learn from it, remember that feeling, and try not to let it happen again. But it’s life, and it’s a bunch of lessons that you either learn from and continue, or you don’t learn from, and you go on with your old ways.”

He told Chuck that he was doing well, losing 25 pounds in six weeks and getting much stronger in his lifts.

“So, how are you feeling? The other night notwithstanding.”

“I can’t believe how good I feel,” Chuck said. “When I wake up in the morning, my body doesn’t feel like I got run over by a truck. I have energy right away, also. Used to be, I’d have to have coffee and energy drinks to get me going. I feel like a new man. Eating like I do gives me energy all through the day. The weights are what I enjoy the most. It’s immediate feedback with them – you either get stronger or you don’t, you either get the reps or you don’t.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” Frank said, “I call it the Iron Bug, and it becomes an addiction. You can transform yourself with lifting weights and not make a glutton of yourself.”

Chuck nodded, “It’s so true. I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t do it.”

“Most folks want the easy way out, but training hard and eating right will never be easy. It sets you apart from the masses, those who don’t have the drive or discipline to do what you’ve been doing. Now, keep going and continue to persevere.”

“I feel so good that I can’t imagine myself ever stopping,” Chuck replied. “I love this new way of living.”

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