World's Fittest You Four Weeks to Total Fitness

INTRODUCTION FROM FAT TO FITTEST: BECOMING THE WORLD?S FITTEST MAN I looked over at the bright red lights glaring from the digital clock next to my bed: 6:00 A.M. I had hardly gotten any sleep last night. Truthfully, I had just fallen asleep after three days of nonstop partying. I dragged myself out of bed and stared at myself in the mirror. I couldn't believe what I looked like. And I felt like hell. My eyes were puffed up, swollen and red, almost popping out of my sunken, ashen, white face. The rest of my body was in no better shape. My head was throbbing from the huge meal and cocktails I had whipped up the night before. I was a wreck. I really couldn't believe that reflection was me. How had I gotten here and how was I going to escape?Looking in the mirror I disliked the image I saw. On top of that I felt aimless and without purpose in life. I was living in a dingy room in the heart of New Orleans with no career or direction to keep me going. I was depressed and felt my life had amounted to nothing. I had hit rock bottom. I did the only thing I could think of doing. I picked up the phone and called my parents for help. That's one thing about my parents. They were always there for me. From my lowest point, there, in New Orleans, on the verge of self-destruction, to my highest achievement, which I'll tell you about later, becoming the World's Fittest Man, I never lost touch with my family and my farm-town roots. You'll see?I may be the World's Fittest Man now, but I started out as nothing more than a chubby farm boy. I grew up in central Illinois, in a small town called Cuba. Cuba has a population of about fourteen hundred, if you count the cats and dogs too. Most people either farmed or worked at a factory. It was a great place to grow up but definitely not a very fitness- or health-conscious area. Life in Cuba was simple'just one bar, one gas station, and a general store. My parents, Daniel and Diane, and my three younger brothers all were raised in an old farmhouse. It was very primitive living. In the winter things got so bad that the pipes would sometimes freeze and my brothers and I would play with Weeble Wobbles on the frozen bathtub or toilet. It was during these cold winter months that we would have to use an outhouse. A wood-burning stove was our only source of heat, so all of us would sleep in the same room for warmth. We would hang blankets over the doorways and throw the mattresses on the floor. I actually liked the closeness of it all. We all worked hard around the house and on the farm to survive. All of it wasn't so bad, except when the temperature dipped to twenty below. Then, milking the cows and chopping the wood at five in the morning wasn't so much fun. It was a downright pain in the ass. My dad worked hard at the local Caterpillar factory and farmed most of his life, and my mom was a custodian at the local grade school. They are the hardest-working people I have ever met and I think that's where I got most of my drive and determination. We always enjoyed big family suppers and breakfasts together, the kind you'd probably see on The Waltons. Unfortunately, most of those big meals were filled with fat and lard. My mom was a great cook, but she didn't think too much about fat content or calories. Our typical meals were nice big juicy steaks, fried chicken, and my favorite, biscuits and gravy. Lots of bacon grease, which was kept on the stove in a can, and Crisco fried foods. As you can imagine, all that kind of food made me a chubby boy. It never seemed fair to me that I was the chubby one and my brothers were thin and lean. They seemed never to gain weight. Why were they so thin and I so chubby? That question drove me crazy, but it made me more determined to work harder at getting myself in shape. The school bus was the worst. Since my brothers were younger, they could do little to stop the oldDecker, Joe is the author of 'World's Fittest You Four Weeks to Total Fitness', published 2004 under ISBN 9780525947592 and ISBN 0525947590.