I'm pretty sure that aliens abducted my brother and left a substitute in his place. I keep asking "Who *are* you? And what have you done with my brother?!?!?!" but I usually don't get an adequate response.
It all started shortly (as in a couple of months?) before his 40th birthday when he took some on-line health quiz. His score translated to something like "If you were actually 40 you could look forward to dropping dead tomorrow, but since you're not there yet you have a few months to live and change your ways. Thanks for taking our test."
Well, since his GP had been telling him to "get off your ass and go for a walk" (yes, that's a direct quote, but you need to hear it with a German accent), he decided to take it to heart ...and lungs and arteries and... So, he started walking around his neighborhood every few days and, as he started becoming less exhausted, walked more and more frequently. He put things on his Wish List like "walking gear" which translated to things like sweats, t-shirts, walking shorts, and a wristband heart monitor. We all encouraged this walking behavior by getting him sweats, t-shirts, walking shorts, Thorlo socks, and a wristband heart monitor. Well, with the monitor giving him hard data feedback, he started walking more, harder, faster, longer ...till he could no longer get his heart rate into the target zone for a sufficiently long time. Then he started climbing on Mission Peak once a week. He eventually was climbing all the way to the top two or three times a week when there wasn't a work crunch on.
Then he got retired.
He went through quite a time of being *really* angry, depressed (spent a week in bed with the covers over his head), angry, depressed, ... I told him to go climb the peak to sweat out the ugly bits ...which he did. It took him nearly four hours to do it after a month of no-job paralysis, but he felt better psychologically. So he started adding days each week, eventually getting up to six.
When he was working, he was also working out at the gym in his building and met a personal trainer. She helped him out a few times there, so he called her to set up something away from work now that he was retired. She kicks his ass for an hour once a week, but she also makes him keep a food diary. He's been eating green food! He's been eating fruit-desserts instead of pastries. He's got three (3) different brands of soy burgers in his freezer ...and he *eats* them! (We were talking about the organization of grocery stores one day and he commented that the MorningStar products were in one location and the Boca products were in another. That's when it clicked that he knew this cuz he was *buying* them. Who are you and what have you done with my brother!?!?!?)
So, physical activity, the outdoors, and a healthful lifestyle have never been his way ...till now.
Other giveaways:
I had a small dinner party here and served grilled salmon filets. The skin was *very* crisp. When I looked up, I noticed he had eaten it. When I said "You ate the skin?!?!?" he looked up at me, down at his plate, at my plate, at Richard's plate, at his plate ...all the while with that look on his face that said that this was perfectly natural in *his* culture but that he was busted for not knowing that it wasn't in *this* culture. You know, a mixture of confusion and panic.
He's been noticing birdies and other critters on his hikes. He's been *asking* what kind of birdies these are. He has learned what sorts of markings to note so I can make the ID for him. He's not yet up to getting and carrying a bird book, but he's been showing an interest.
The latest giveaway:
We were chatting (I don't remember about what cuz I was so stunned by the following revelation) and he said something like "Yeah, I was reading an article about that in the Hunting & Fishing pages in the Chronicle." Huh?!? Since when do *you* read the Hunting & Fishing pages? I didn't even know there *were* Hunting & Fishing pages!
But he still hasn't agreed to go camping with me.