In a little under a month I'll be celebrating my 63rd birthday, which pretty much puts me squarely in the "old" category. Not old enough to retire, but that eventuality is within sight. Over the last few years I've been posting about my aging, physicality, and sexuality, and how each of them impacts the others. It's been a journey, along which I seem to have touched at least a handful of people along the way. According to the blog stats my little essays have received more than 110,000 hits. Whether that means a hundred thousand people have read each and every one of the essays is debatable, as I'm sure there are more than a few who come for the pictures. "I see. And how long have you felt like this?" But for me it's been rewarding because, as I've noted a few times, this has proven to be good therapy for me. And it costs a heckuva lot less than paying an analyst for help. (Though I'll grant you, I probably would've gotten a lot more u...

  It's been a while since I last posted. Just no topics catching my eye or rambling around my noggin. However I just read a rather disheartening blog post from a man lamenting his own body issues but celebrating his own children's unabashed approach to being naked.  The writer, Jeremy, has made his home clothing optional as a way to raise his kids in a body-positive environment. But, as it turns out, Jeremy is the one with body issues not the kids. As a little boy - and by that definition anything up to the onset of puberty at 14 - I was pretty uninhibited. I've recounted nude swims at a friend's house and with the cub scouts at the scoutmaster's home. The time I fell in the pool at a different friend's house and spent the next forty or so minutes playing naked in his bedroom while his mother dried my clothes in the dryer. Swimming in rivers and ponds with the scouts. And I would guess a lot of adults have similar stories, or stories about their own kids being ...

The other day I was talking to a friend I've known since college - with around a twenty year gap, resolved thanks to Facebook - and he made a comment that left me thinking: (Roughly remembered) "The one thing I think surprised me about you in college is that you never became a stripper." What he was referring to, obviously, would be the natural connection between my competitive dancing and my propensity for nudity. And it's an obvious connection, I think. It'd be a great way to make money, and it was a natural extension of the stuff I did in the art department, at bachelorette parties, and dormitory strip poker games. If I could be nude in front of a bunch of people, and could dance pretty well, which I could, why not combine the two and make a little money? I had the body, or at least a good enough one that I could have worked to develop it pretty quickly - I was in great shape, but lacked the "cut" of most popular strippers. There was money to be made....

Since January1st I am down nearly 25 pounds using the ketogenic diet, exercise and intermittent fasting. I've lost a lot of body fat and am at my healthiest - and lowest weight - in the last thirty years. But my regular readers already know that. Let me talk a little about specific physiological changes I've noticed. First, whether it's because the workouts are intensifying, or my physiology is simply working better, I sweat a lot more in my morning workout. It gives me the sense that I'm actually accomplishing something. And as of early April my fat layer has receded considerably, though I have a ways to go until I'm completely satisfied. Around 25 pounds. My arms are pretty lean at this point, and muscular. I've been working out with weights. The veins in my forearms have returned to prominence, as have those on the back of my hands. I've got to do some extra work to get my deltoids a bit more developed. My chest is doing pretty well. Most of the fat seems...

  As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I'm getting into far better shape than I've been in for quite some time. I exercise 30+ minutes every morning, and am following a specific eating plan that seems to be doing a better job than any other plan I've attempted. (I've tried them all: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, weekly injections, FenPhen - before they realized it was a really bad diet plan.) This one is definitely the best and likely even the easiest to maintain. So it's having a terrific effect on my physicality. I've healthier and stronger than I've been in years, and am eagerly anticipating my next physical to see what effect this all has had from a medical standpoint. I'm hoping to cut back on a number of weight-related meds I'm on, as well as finding out how the weight loss and physicality have improved my overall health. And, as predicted, I'm becoming even more comfortable undressed, to the extent I'm considering a day t...

 It probably would not surprise anyone who reads this blog that I have, over the years, dealt with more than a handful of body image issues, some of which were brought on by the very experiences that eventually led me to being pretty indifferent about nudity. I've mentioned before the fact that my body, particularly my left side inguinal area, has been the subject of much attention from the medical community. That dates from childhood, and as a young boy I was pretty self-conscious about one particular scar left over from a kidney operation. It runs from my back to just shy of my stomach, and once puberty set in it grew to be an eventual eight inches of pretty obvious scarring to anyone who sees me with my shirt off. Given that the surgery was conducted in the 1960s - before the advent of many modern surgical techniques - it's a pretty nasty looking affair. Later, a series of abdominal surgeries - three umbilical hernias (the belly button) - also left prominent scars on my nav...