As men get into their 40s, popular culture has made me believe that this is the time where men start to break down mentally and make wild changes to their lives. I’ve still got a few years before I hit 40, and I’m starting to realize that if it happens to me, it won’t be in the cool ways of getting a new car, fancy clothes, or a new girlfriend half my age. If we do get a new car, it will be something designed to make my wife and son’s life easier, fancy clothes won’t happen as the best gym shorts are at Ross Dress For Less and most of my shirts are free, and the new girlfriend isn’t going to happen because of the aforementioned wife (also, I can’t imagine trying to have a prolonged conversation with someone half my age—I’m at that level of old). Instead, I’m going to become some sort of weird health dude.
Working out has been my way of treating myself. It’s a solitary activity where I don’t have to think; I just do. So this is where I am going to treat myself in an effort to regain some sort of lost youth. It’s already started.
I’ve started looking into cold therapy. It’s something called the Wim Hof Method, and it could definitely be total bullshit, but I’m dipping my toes in the (cold) water. Apparently, exposure to cold enlivens the body and keeps you healthy and your muscles in good shape. I literally just read about it in passing in another book, and the claims were impressive about people being able to scale Mount Everest at a much higher rate when using the Wim Hof method. Did I do any follow-up research to verify any of this? Of course not. I just figured I’d dabble and figure out how deep I want to go from there.
I live in Florida, so it’s not like I can go full iceman, but I did start embracing some cold by ending my showers with cold water, and now I’ve transitioned to cold showers more often than not. I have to admit that it’s not too bad. It speeds up my process, and I embrace getting out of my shower instead of falling into this trap.
But then I took a cold shower in Ohio and realized it was like ten degrees colder up there than when taking cold showers in the Florida heat. Will I be brave enough to continue cold showers when the winter comes? Almost definitely not, but I will keep dabbling to see if maybe some moderate cold can help me slow the aging process.
This is more my style of health and fitness. I like to stay healthy but I also like to take shortcuts. If you tell me that you need to work out for more than an hour a day, I’m going to disregard anything that you have to say about fitness, because that’s just poor time management.
Should I do a marathon? No, I despise races, so I might run 26 miles some day, but I’m not going to participate with others. It’s not like I’m some badass who’s like, “Give me the pain, leave the glory for others.” I will definitely brag about running that distance to people. Right now, I’d like to brag that I ran 22 miles once. It SUCKED towards the end, but that’s partially that I was being attacked by birds through a two-mile stretch of the run which really drained the old gas tank. Give me an open road and 13.1 miles, and I might just run there and back, but give me a crowded race, and I will likely run out of energy within three miles as I desperately try to get away from everyone.
There is also the fact that I’m probably going to get into supplements with questionable legality. It seems like testosterone boosters are totally legal without a prescription, and they seem to be useful for dudes 5-10 years older than I am. I haven’t reached the level of needing extra energy (outside of the fact that I could always use extra energy), but I’ve already started my research into what seems to be the safe option.
But a weird health dude isn’t satisfied with the safe answer. Let’s get dangerous. Instead of testosterone boosters, I have to at least do my research on Testosterone Replacement Therapy. TRT is the good shit, and that along with HGH, seems to be what rich people do. And that’s the thing with a midlife crisis; it involves recklessly spending money to feel young again, and that is explicitly what these drugs would do. Maybe I’ll end up taking steroids and turning into a little ball of of muscle to finally become the meathead I’ve always wanted to be.
I haven’t gone full-weirdo mid-life crisis dude yet, but when it does happen, you will likely find me on the deepest, darkest parts of the web. That’s right; I’ll be on the bodybuilding.com message board.