The Middle

Thought about it -- but this is all I think about, so here it is. I trimmed the photos to reduce TMI and here's the evidence of the shrinking and much stronger middle. I attend 2 or 3 classes a week at a studio called Barre3. Began in the first week of October 2018 because strenuous exercise helps me beat the winter short-daylight cold-outside people-are-dying blues, and the "senior" classes I took were too easy and held at hours that affected my workday. One-hour barre classes are given from 6 a.m. to 6:15 p.m., and I attend when work and energy and drive time allow. Gosh, the endorphin rush and pink face after the hour is over! Guaranteed unretouched homemade photos. Bother you? Imagine it like a January thaw.

After 2 classes

after 6 classes

After 11 classes

After 16 classes

That last photo was taken in mid-December. I'm even stronger through the core today while eating, holiday-style, twice or thrice the normal allotment of cookies and pastries.

Recovering from my very first session took a week. Now it's only two days. I'm the worst participant and must clutch the barre for dear life or fall over, but am game. This sport is less social than the senior scene; most attendees are young wives or mothers, and an occasional youngun wears a tee saying "Sweating for the Wedding." In all the classes so far I have seen exactly four men, one the instructor's husband. I'm among the few over-60s.

Must . . . Quit . . .Exercising

I find in the past two years I don't recover from workouts as I once did, and believing I was just lazy and "exercise is energizing" I stepped it up to six workouts a week, becoming, cumulatively, so achy and exhausted I lived on Tylenols and coffee, lost any ambition and couldn't think straight. I cut workouts back to two per week, tried to sleep more. Still enough tiredness and pain to fog my brain, with even the gentlest exertions! "Eat more protein," they said, so I did. No change. All relevant tests turn up negative. There is naught to do but quit, at least until I've recovered.

This happened before; I thought it was mental stress only. It took two months of full-time lying on the carpet to recover. Then I returned to exercising. Again, depletion. Last summer was without exercise except for targeted physical therapy. I got slenderer! My energy returned -- I even felt creative! Then I began exercising again: within a few months, crippling depletion.

Is it possible that after 40 years there is an end to exercise -- for me? I've been working out and belonging to gyms since I was 24: weights, hiking, treadmill, ballet, biking (okay, only 50 miles max), raking, pruning, running (time was when the bones could take it), yoga, Pilates, aerobics, tae kwon do, spinning, the works. Didn't hate it at all! Would love to go back to ballet barre and yoga classes! Others 20 years older than myself exercise for six classes per week and feel fine.