You can fill up a notebook with all the tiny side benefits that getting into shape will grant you. Unexpected little things that you never even consider but if you stop and think about it become obvious.
Like?
Well, aches and twinges and spasms that I used to get all the time and I used to take for granted as just a part of life. Where they came from I don’t know. What they were all about I know even less. All I do know is that nowadays they are totally absent from my life.
Clothes fit better. It’s pretty much an open secret that clothes were never designed for those of us that are big and tall. They just aren’t. Designers can work on the lines, and a good tailor can alter the hell out of them but ultimately it’s not the clothes it’s the body that lets us down. One of the first things I noticed when I began losing weight was how suddenly this or that article of clothes started looking….well, better.
But along with the benefits come one or two penalties. I was at a small gathering of writers a few weeks back with some drinks and a couple of rounds in it hits me. They were just beers but they walloped me like hard liquor. I got this dizzy spinning sensation and I didn’t trust myself to stand up let alone drive so I had to wait out the effect.
It wasn’t always this way. Some people don’t handle drinking very well. I don’t mean the dizziness. I mean that they change personalities after drinking and not in a good way. They get mean, they get sullen, they become downright angry.
I wasn’t. I would go through a couple of stages. Firstly I would become (as has been reported to me) very fun. I would be much more outgoing, more flirty, just much better company to be around. After several drinks I would become introspective. I would just sit inside my mind and stare out into nothing but inside my mind is going a mile a minute contemplating whatever it was that caught my fancy that night.
But one thing I never was, was hung over or stumbling drunk. This is a new and I have to say unwelcome phenomena. I put it down to two possible causes or a combination of the two.
Firstly, there is just less of me to handle the same alcohol. Nearly a hundred pounds less. That has to make a difference in the way you handle liquor. Secondly, I’m just older. My body can’t process out the toxins as quickly as it used to.
Luckily I don’t drink anywhere near as much as I once did. On average I will have a drink once every six weeks. This little “binge” I indulged in was in fact my first drinking session this year. I don’t think I will repeat it very soon.
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