One is not supposed to ask a lady her age or her weight. There’s nothing against the rules if it’s the lady herself who does the telling. Last week I turned forty-four and today after my workout I weighed myself and I finally reached a goal that I had set five and a half years ago: I reached (exceeded, really) a weight of 170 pounds. The digital scale read 173.2, but I always subtract 1.8 pounds for the shoes–yes, I’ve weighed them on their own. I had been hovering in the high 160’s for weeks, months really. I believed that I had hit a plateau and the 170 glass ceiling was beyond my grasp.

Ectomorphic body types like mine find it the hardest to make weight gains of any kind, be it fat or muscle. It is always a letdown when I return to the gym after a month in Europe because I know that I will have lost weight. After four such trips, I had lost between five and eight pounds each time. It was easy to put all the weight back on, as once the body is used to having that extra mass it is easy to regain it. Yet it is very hard for ectomorphs to amass “new” weight. Thus while I could regain five pounds of muscle in as little as two weeks, there is no way I am going to gain five new pounds in as little time.

I mark my weight on a calendar every time I weigh myself and I noticed the figures after the decimal increasing, and I looked at the scale today in disbelief as it read > 172. Keep in mind I weigh myself with my shoes on so I always subtract 1.8 from whatever the readout displays. No matter what one’s body type is, it would be relatively easy to gain weight if all one ate and drank was chips and beer. I don’t plan to maintain my weight by growing a gut, yet I probably will find it harder to maintain my goal weight than ever before since I am not an eating machine.