Today, we welcome Mark Remmington to Fitness-Daily.com.

Mark is an author, coach, motivational speaker and award-winning chef who is making a (hopefully triumphant!) return to high level fitness and competition in his mid-forties after a long absence.

He lives in north Idaho with his beautiful wife Lisa, and their dog and three cats.

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I’ve always been an athlete. Approaching my early (okay, okay, MID) forties, I was STILL an athlete, though, in hindsight, I was doing a better job staying in tip-top shape in my mind than on the roads or in the gym. I still got out for three or four miles of jogging (edging toward three) and did fifty pushups a couple of times a week, and boy, let me tell ya, there’s nothing like a good double cheeseburger to help you recover after a workout like that!

As a guy of the male variety, especially a former in-shape, competitive guy, I think that most fitness minded men have a—however slight—tendency to create mental pictures of themselves that are slightly more, for lack of a better word, “flattering” than reality would suggest.

Actually, in all honesty, from my extensive research (I asked two male friends, both of whom were actively exercising with chilled mugs of their favorite workout recovery beverage down at Rocky’s), I would have to say that this is as close to a Universal Male Truth as I can find: Man stands in front of the mirror fresh out of the shower, water cascading down their manly, muscular chest, admiring the slim, lean, ‘V” shape before them.

Okay, so MAYBE the “love handles” are showing a little more love, but all in all, still a pretty fine figure of a man. Except for a couple (say, thirty) of those easy-to-lose-if-I-really-wanted-to pounds, we’re not much different than the guys in the NFL, the male gymnasts in Beijing, the boys on the Navy SEAL poster in our son’s room, or the guy who wore those size 30 waist Levi 501’s with the high black boots back in high school! I mean, c’mon! Do we step on the scale? Nah, there’s no need… it’s all about the “quality,” and everyone knows muscle weighs more than fat anyway!

This next bit is one of the few areas where, believe it or not, men and woman differ: You see, a man’s “critical” observation of his physique stops there, and we get dressed. Total time from “in-the-shower-to-out-the-door:” nine minutes.

Besides hair, makeup and actually caring how they look, the real reason a woman needs forty-five minutes is that a woman will turn and look from the side, then turn and use a hand held mirror to look from the rear. They will actually have extra mirrors installed in the bathroom at strategic angles to make sure they don’t miss anything. Now, even if they’re like my wife and watch what they eat, work out six times a week, and truly can fit in the clothes they wore in high school (leg warmers and all), they will pronounce that they are “fat.” (As an aside, men also watch what they eat, and there’s nothing like watching a plate of chili cheese fries disappear to make a guy feel proud!)

There isn’t a “real” man since 1954 who has turned sideways and looked in the mirror, except by accident, and that guy is still in therapy. We all know, through genetic imprinting, that a man’s best “profile” is head on. No question. If we were actually duct taped to a moving dolly and FORCED to turn sideways and confront our “lateral” view, the shock to our egos and our communal male reality would likely do us in as a species. The fact is, that despite that “sexy” frontal “V,” from the side, the result is more “pyramidal,” shall we say, despite our best efforts to “suck it in.” If we were absolutely forced to acknowledge the truth, in the cold, harsh light of the bathroom, we would have to admit that from the side, we’re starting to resemble “Free Willy” more than Michael Phelps.

The other very scary piece of evil technology is photographs. Now, people have said that pictures don’t lie, but I argue that on two points:

1) If you think pictures don’t lie, you don’t have an expensive enough computer, and…
2) There’s no darn way I looked like THAT!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but after looking at pictures from our Hawaii trip last summer, I would say that a picture is worth about a thousand ounces! And, my friends, here is where modern technology and thousands of years of genetic programming come into conflict.

Personally, I’m pretty sure that the folks at the photo developing shop are secretly in league with Jenny Craig, and are manipulating the so-called “evidence” to increase sales. It was pointed out to me by my wife—who had a suspiciously sardonic twinkle in her eye—that we were using a digital camera. Couple this with the fact that the nearest Jenny Craig office was nowhere near our beach in Maui, and I was forced to face one of man’s harshest realities: our camera was obviously broken.

Okay; looking at it in from a purely scientific point of view (as all men are born naturally technologically inclined, with perfect ingrained senses of direction), it had to be the camera, because there was, scientifically speaking, no way that the slightly sunburned Michelin Man on the beach was me!

Seriously!

The much easier to swallow and obviously more believable solution is that there’s some sort of male-centric conspiracy going on between the electronics industry (Traitors! Who buys all yer’ big screen TVs anyway?) and the evil tofu-diet-bean sprout lobby!

The reason I say this is that my wife looked good in her pictures, but myself, and most of the other men on the beach behind me, looked vaguely—pear shaped, I suppose. Now, purely by accident, we had stumbled on to a “clothing optional” beach, and this just lent an even more macabre feel to this entire developing nightmare.

So, I did what any self-respecting male would do when confronted with such a life-altering disaster: I lay down in the sand, sucked my gut in, had a wine cooler, and then pulled my hat down over my eyes, and pretended I was asleep, topless beach notwithstanding.

But, dear readers, sleep wouldn’t come. Visions of my father coming out of the surf, wearing my swimsuit and my hat kept dancing through my head, along with sugarplums and candy. The only problem was that the sugarplums looked like Chris Farley, and the candy like John Candy. The only blessing is that Speedos were long out of fashion.

That evening, after we returned to our condo, I braced myself by taking several deep breaths. As a health tip to all of you, several deep breaths is one of the healthiest, best ways to calm your nerves and get your emotions under control, especially when combined with two largish glasses of red wine.

Ready for what I was beginning to feel was “the inevitable,” I went into the bathroom, turned the lights on, and looked, actually looked at myself critically for the first time since, oh, I don’t know… high school, maybe. Yes, my cringing brothers, I actually—gulp—turned and looked from the side, and here’s the scariest part: I DIDN’T EVEN SUCK MY GUT IN! Yes, I know, and I apologize for the queasy feeling in your stomachs.

All joking aside, I’ve got to tell you that that vision was instantly burned into my brain, and will stay with me for years. Honestly, I couldn’t take it for more than a second or two. Oh, my eyes, my eyes!

As a kid, I loved my dad, as most of us do, and he was always a special, kind, thoughtful man, but, bless his heart, I always remember him as having a gut. It was the “jiggles like a bowl full of jelly,” type of stomach, rather like Santa, but it was always there. One of my fondest memories was us bugging him gently about it one day, and him sucking his stomach in, and saying that he was “190 pounds of springy blue steel.” Now, all excuses aside, there I was, and truth be told, my unsucked gut was almost as big as I remember his being! Okay, I’m taller, and I do have bigger shoulders and chest, but as far as just pure “gutness” is concerned, I was in the same church, even if I was sitting in a different pew. 214 pounds of springy blue steel, anyone?

Now, to add insult to injury, and likely due to the effects of the vino, I went where no man should go: I went into the living room, and yes, gasp, I ASKED MY WIFE HOW I LOOKED! I’ll pause for a second while you all pick yourselves up off the floor.

Okay, ready? My wife, the beautiful, wonderful, kind, empathetic (and skinny) creature that she is, said what every loving wife would say: “You look fine, honey.”

But I had the bit between my teeth, and wasn’t going to be placated by a simple “fine!” She was going to have to work way harder to restore my fragile and delicate male ego tonight.

Now, you may be asking yourself why I would even push the issue, especially after the “horror show” revelations of moments ago. And remember that besides generations of genetic conditioning, there was the 18 years of rose-colored-glasses-with-blinders-on effect at work, as well.

Could I have been “talked down” by my wife? Yes. Could I have blamed it on “gravitational shift?” Absolutely. Did I want an excuse to continue with my happy existence in my happy world of deluded self-perception? Sure. Could I live, fulfilled, as Cleopatra? You know, “Queen of de nial?” Why not? But, as fate would have it, my wife didn’t get the warning signs, or more precisely, she tried, and I blew it by pressing.

“No, seriously. Am I getting a bit, you know, heavier than I was?”

Now it was serious. She put her book down (coincidentally entitled “Leadership and Self Deception.” No joke.), looked at me full on, and then, my world fell in.

“Well, maybe a little, but there’s just more of you to love! You’re cuddly now.”

I was stunned. My entire frame of existence was shattered. I was suddenly transported into the Twilight Zone, sponsored by Weight Watchers! Cuddly?!? I was instantly dizzy, and sat down, suddenly aware of the sounds of the springs creaking under my weight. The entire spectrum of excuses ran through my head: it’s natural at my age, the job has been stressful, sore ankle, client dinners… but none of them could change the reality: I was getting fat! Me, the eternal athlete, who swore he would never get fat, was sitting in a groaning wicker lounger, having been sliced to slivers—cut to the quick—by my own loving wife

Let’s just say that the Night of Horrors was just beginning, and, my friends, I will share the gory details with you when next we meet. Until then, be healthy!