One Man’s Midlife Showdown with Fitness and Common Sense
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Paul decided it was time to get serious about weight loss, he went all in on the kind of fitness plan that looks sensible on paper and slightly unhinged in practice. He wrestled with machines that never moved, counted laps he could never quite remember, and kept trying to turn discipline into something he enjoyed. His journey through healthy eating habits and gym-floor humility becomes a funny, familiar look at what happens when a clean eating dream meets real life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.5 | Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. What's up, y'all? It's Kadeen. And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Ever After podcast. This holiday season, tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family, love and marriage. |
| 0:23.8 | And everything else in between. |
| 0:25.8 | Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. |
| 0:29.9 | Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. |
| 0:49.3 | This is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. |
| 0:53.6 | Our next story comes to us from Paul in Minneapolis, Minnesota. |
| 0:55.4 | Paul moved our listeners with his story, Wilbur and the empty nestor. We asked him if he had any more. Here he is with the |
| 1:01.2 | story titled A Baby Boomer's Battle with Insanity and Fitness. |
| 1:06.2 | A handful of years ago, I had to come to grips and admit that I was fighting and losing |
| 1:11.1 | battle, trying shamelessly to hold on to my youth. |
| 1:14.1 | And so I made an executive decision. |
| 1:16.3 | Here's the deal. |
| 1:17.4 | I was six months from hitting the dreaded age of 50. |
| 1:20.3 | I was not only over the hill, but I was also out of shape. |
| 1:23.4 | I had gotten lazy, and I had become a viewer and critic of the sports I loved rather than a participant. |
| 1:28.9 | It was the debt of a frozen Minnesota winter, and I was feeling fat. |
| 1:32.8 | I decided I needed to challenge myself to get into reasonable shape. |
| 1:36.5 | It would be easy. |
| 1:37.7 | I would start exercising more and get back to my college weight before the summer started and feel as young as ever. |
| 1:44.1 | At 6'6, the 30 pounds I had gained |
... |
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