Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’ve been active in the fitness lifestyle my entire life.
In fact, it could be argued that fitness interfered with my personal and professional life on more than one occasion, and over a period of many, many years.
Thus, to suggest in any way that I’m an outsider where this is concerned is naive.
I’ve been in this world, know the player-profiles, understand the mindset.
So let’s get real.
By the time you’re my age [60], things change. You can no longer pack on dense muscle while bleeding fat. It isn’t going to happen –– not naturally.
This means you’re going to need extra help, like testosterone supplementation coupled with 3 or 4 other pharmaceutical agents designed to “compliment” one another.
One helps build strength, another cuts inflammation…you get the point.
Going down this road is a conscious choice many men make when mortality is beating down the doors and there’s nothing left but an aging body.
The psychological profiles of these men are all similar: They are most often vain, arrogant, entitled and filled with rage.
Why?
Because there is nothing else in their lives to help mitigate the attrition.
They’re left with a disintegrating asset, rather than an expanding mind and soul; and asset on a collision course with destiny no matter how many syringes they jam into their bloated veins.
Do I feel the psychological pressure of mortality?
Absolutely. I feel it every day of my life, which is why I have a life beyond my physical body.
I know this is a shocking revelation to many, that there is anything at all worth exploring beyond the physical.
Surprise surprise.
My creative pursuits alone are a full time job, not to mention my relationship, which also includes two dogs and two cats as big as dogs.
This scenario is what most refer to as a balanced life, which does pull time away from workouts, perfect eating and regular blood work necessary to monitor elevated liver enzyme and PSA levels while on steroids.
In this sense, fitness can become ab addiction like alcoholism or drug addiction or sex addiction or gambling addiction or any of the other addictions that raid the dopamine mines and turn one’s life into a living nightmare of emptiness.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third law of Motion
But I’m not here to beat up on men who take care of themselves. Hardly.
I think men should take exemplary care of themselves, but to understand that we are all human, and to expect results beyong what the body will naturally deliver will require more than a healthy lifestyle.
Go back to the blood test. If it’s normal, the rest is up to you and the genetics you were born with.
But no matter what your genetics have to say about it, age is the Supreme Court of physicality.
You’re not getting out of life unscathed.
We all pay the price, which is why it is so critical for all of us as older men to have lives outside of the gym.
In the end, there is nothing more pathetic than an aging man with nothing to show for himself but low body fat and a dark tan.
Now you know why so many of us are punchlines.