exercise tends to be a a topic that i guess i've never developed any will power to maintain any regular program i uh
oh i guess all the factors that drive one to do that are appearance or general health or some some need for reduction of weight or whatever
right
and i haven't uh been cursed or blessed with either depending on the way you look at it
um i've always been a physique that can stay skinny no matter what i eat or how much i eat or if i
uh exercise or not and they tell me that's going to catch up with me someday uh
yeah
uh well they say your metabolism slows with uh six percent with every ten years of your life or something like that
well maybe that'll allow me to outweigh some of the things i have to pick up on occasion
when uh i got married i was working a summer in college in construction and lost lot of what little weight i had
yeah
i got married at a hundred and thirty pounds and twenty years old and i was just this little toothpick up there had to buy a new suit for it just to fit in there
whoa
yeah
and it took me a good ten years to put on some weight and any exercise even when summer would come and i'd mow the lawn i'd lose five to seven pounds just just as soon as the heat kicked in
yeah
and finally at around age thirty i i managed to keep some weight and not lose so much during the summer and i hover at a hundred fifty and i'm six one so
yeah
wow
it's not too bad it it it's unfortunate though i guess because i probably should uh do a little less of the hardening of the arteries with the salt and a little less of the sugar here and there but
yeah
yeah
well to give it give you some perspective my brother's six two and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds
yeah a lot a lot of people uh my brother in laws are all everybody is bigger than me for the most part
but uh it's kind of nice i've noticed a little bit of love handles here and there and my face has filled out a little bit from the pictures but uh
yeah
yeah
all that is is ever so slowly so
hum
but then my father's uh sixty five years old and he's he doesn't show any signs of having to cut back either so there's hope for me maybe i'll maintain that
yeah
that's great
well i know in in my family um my father has always been an exercise fanatic in fact uh he's from um Austria
uh
and he came to this country and one of his first jobs was to teach gymnastics
and uh he use to make a living for a while doing gymnastics and swimming and in fact in Austria that was what he did for a living too but
uh of course he came over here uh i don't know fifty years ago or something like that
um-hum
he um it it of course it was much more prevalent in Europe exercise was much more taken much more seriously than it was here in fact
it it hasn't it's just now getting to the level where it was in Europe you know now with everybody is going to the health clubs and everything
right
um he he keeps saying that he was too early he came too early
yep
but um
he and but the irony irony is that i've been overweight all my life and he uh he almost discouraged my brother and i from getting involved in athletics
um
because he felt that we needed to concentrate on on other things more important things in life uh but now and and he's still into athletics in fact he's eighty two
and he is in the senior olympics every year and he always brings home silver and gold medals and he competes against people uh as much as thirty years younger than he is
huh
uh and he still wins these silver and gold medals
good
uh
but i'm at the point right now where i have some concern my mother has history of heart problems for herself and her family my father had phlebitis
and um i'm i'm realizing that i need to do something uh or you know i'm going to suffer for it if i don't especially where i'm i'm about thirty pounds overweight
and so i've started an exercise program i'm i'm sometimes i'm a lot more
diligent than others but uh i work a fellow i work with is a weight lifter and he's he's uh
he's competed and he's uh helped me develop a pretty simple program that involves some weights and and and some aerobics
and really with the design not towards being a body builder not towards being you know Mister America but but purely uh uh geared towards being being healthy
right
right
and uh and i'm i'm at the point where i've got three young children i really don't want to have to have
problems with uh you know my heart or anything like that
right
yeah well i've i've managed to
i guess the work i do gives me a little bit of well a lot of walking and a little bit of lifting on occasion
that's good
yeah
it's not all sitting behind a desk so that's kind of nice it uh
i could sure tell the difference though after the first year or so of being there uh prior to
yeah
to uh working a steady eight hour job as it were i had been working for a camp and had relatively real long hours sixteen years old and could handle getting up at five and not getting to bed until ten or eleven and
yeah
yeah
yeah
virtually working or playing myself to death all day
yeah
and uh boy after a few years of sitting down and then going to that camp as a camper this time i couldn't even do what i used to do
and it was really an eye opener for me to see that even sitting down for a little while sure changes the old body's capacity
yeah
oh yeah well i i i've i have a desk job i don't you know i don't have an opportunity to walk around all that much uh unless i take it
uh and it's but it's gotten better i mean uh for many years i lived in the uh i lived in New Hampshire and i'd commute to Boston every day
um
so i'd end up sitting in the car for an hour and a half and then i you know a lot of it in car fumes you know inhaling car fumes
goodness
right
and then i'd sit at a desk for eight hours and then sit in the car for another hour and a half
now that i've moved to Texas and i work ten minutes away um
i have a lot more free time to take walks with the family or go bicycling bicycling or play basketball or baseball with my son and uh
uh it just uh it from that standpoint uh leaving that area was a was was turn turn around was good for my health i guess you could say
uh-huh
yeah my kids and i like to bicycle i tend to be rather sore the next day or two
those uh ten speeds and their unforgiving seat that i sit on
yeah
but they tend to like the parking lot up at the Springcreek Plant the upper limit of it's terraced and its usually unoccupied
oh yeah
yeah
boy you can just you go down hill down hill down hill then turn around and work your way back up and uh
it's fun for them we take the long route go up Alma and across the back way come in the parking lot
right
it takes a couple of hours off the day
yeah
but uh after all that and i usually end up having to by the end of the day they're usually tired enough where one of them or the other needs a little push along the way and i'm sitting here trying to go my bike and push them too and
yeah yeah
and uh it gets to the old leg muscles but
yeah
can't do too much of that or i'll waste away
well i i envy you
i sat down to uh one of the the nurses did the oh they do that um blood deal oh
life track
no it was just one of the what is that pulse no not the pulse
oh blood pressure
blood pressure yeah they sit there in the cafeteria sometimes and take that on your way out
yeah
and after having sat for twenty or thirty minutes and i get up and walk over to that and sat down and they took it it was pretty low like it usually is it it stays real low
yeah
i guess all the arteries are open and doesn't have any trouble pumping it all through but uh
wow
yeah
the lady looked up at me and said oh you must be a jogger and i said oh if you only knew couch potato with remote control
uh so fortunately i don't know what the cholesterol level is but at least it hasn't clogged up yet
yeah
well they had that whole life track thing that i participated in at Spring Creek
yeah
and at the time i was a real mess i mean uh i was eating poorly i you know my cholesterol was everything was borderline my blood pressure was borderline my cholesterol was borderline but since then
uh and it had nothing to do with the life track thing but but just just i think well maybe it did you know it makes you think
you know we've changed our eating habits dramatically i mean when uh when the phone rang we were making granola um
hm
and uh uh we're we're trying to cut down on meat and you know we're doing all the all the stuff that the you know all the mags are talking about these days uh um
but you know i feel a lot better about it i don't it it comes a real worry but these things are like time bombs and all of a sudden they go off and uh
uh-huh
right
and um i guess looking at my parents and seeing all the problems they've had you know my mother's had bypass surgery and uh and she's she's got
