I'm getting old...

God, I must really be getting old. I played a bunch of bball today, 2 league games at the pro club, then another hour of pickup afterwards. Now my legs feel like they are going to fall apart. My right ankle hurts still from turning it last week, my calves were cramping, my left quad is tight as a steel cable, and let's not even start on my knees. It's sad to know that you've hit the age when your body is slowing down and you're just not able to recover the way you used to. I used to play bball all day long out on the blacktop courts of wilbur, man every day after class freshman year I'd be balling it up for hours until sundown. Never a pain or an ache, except the occasional turned ankle. Sigh, those were the days...

I'm sure everyone deals w/ aging differently, but it's funny to note it happening to myself. It basically started sometime last year, when I started to have knee problems. That was when it really hit me, "oh shit, so this aging thing that people always talk about...it's actually happening!" It's not that I didn't believe I could get old; it was simply that thought never crossed my mind, because there was never any sign of it. I could run all day, stay up all night, work all the time, drink all I want (well, maybe not all I want, but a pretty respectable amount). Until now I guess. Anyways, so now I pop vitamins, b-complex, and fish oil every night, watch what I eat, workout 3-4 times a week, don't binge anymore, etc etc etc. All the stuff that my mom nagged me for years to do to no avail, suddenly I'm doing it all religiously by myself. With no one watching over my shoulders. Ironic, isn't it?

Another thing I find kind of funny is how I tend to overdo things when I start. Like when I first started watching what I eat, I think it must been from reading one too many Men's Health mags that Garry had lying around or something. But suddenly one day I just decided, I'm going to start eating better. So I cut out all this stuff cold turkey. Literally, like I just woke up one morning, and stopped eating all of this -

pizza
fries
potato chips (or pretzels, mixes, any sort of stuff you'd find in that aisle)
fast food (except grilled chicken sandwiches)
soda
ice cream
chocolate (a lot of it, at least)
cookies
and some other things I don't recall right now

And I actually did this for months! What made me eventually cave on pizza and soda was not so much the craving, but the fact that our cafeteria is such crap and the food is so shitty, if you don't eat pizza you'll basically starve to death many days. And if I don't eat something high calorie, I just can't get through an afternoon. But still, there was stuff I completely cut out that I don't miss that much. Like potato chips, fast food, ice cream, cookies. It's weird. It's like after you don't eat it for a while, you don't want it anymore. weird.

I tried quitting ramen, but that was just too damn hard. It's a constant struggle for a continuous eater like me (my boss says I'm like a cow. I don't eat, I just continously graze). I'd have periods where I go "dry", but then I would totally relapse and start binging on ramen. Sigh, bad habit from college. Oh well, I guess you gotta have one or two things to indulge in.