Believe it or not, I used to be in shape.

I played sports my entire life. I played football since fifth grade, basketball most of my life and even dabbled with rugby my senior year of high school.

I was the star third-string strong safety of my football team in high school. Trust me, teams did not want to be up by 50 points or else they would have to play me.

Now, since I was always active, my terrible diet really never had an effect on me. My diet usually consisted of Doritos, fast food dollar menus and, of course, six or seven bottles of Coke a day. Fruit and salads were never my bag.

When I got to college, I started to gain weight. Amazing. Apparently, covering sports is not the same as actually participating. I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either, but that is how the berry belly under my shirt came to be.

So earlier this summer, I decided I would try and get back to my old self. For the first time since I can remember, I started to exercise.

My first thought was to start running. Plenty of people do it. It’s easy, free, and any person with the coordination of putting one foot in front of the other at a speed faster than walking can do it.

Bad move.

For someone who has not run in three straight years, it was a hell of a lot harder than I remember.

Maybe it’s the extra pounds on my body, maybe it was the pack of cigarettes I smoke every day or maybe it was because of global warming, but I nearly died after one mile.

I looked like Tim Tebow after the hit he took this weekend, except I had a Kool hanging out of my mouth. I am going to chalk that one up to global warming.

My next thought was to start riding a bike – I had an old one in my garage and, in theory, it was perfect. First of all, you sit down the entire time. And second, you only have to use half your body, the lazy man’s exercise.

But, wait a minute. Lance Armstrong rode a bike and he lost a testicle. On second thought, scratch that idea.

Finally, I thought, ‘Why don’t I start playing a team sport again?’ I had success with that when I was younger, what could go wrong?

So, I joined my friends in a couple of pick-up basketball games over the summer. Once again, bad idea.

For the first time in my life, I was consistently the last pick. I had the court presence of Fat Elvis and my court IQ was consistent with a golf ball. When you are scrimmaging against freshman in high school and they are taking the ball with ease, it is time to retire.

I thought to myself, what else could I do? So, I threw on a bunch of sweatshirts, turned the heat up in my room and let the hot air do its work.

I awoke several hours later in a daze with a giant lump on my head and red paint all over my face and dresser. Damn it, that didn’t work, the fat just transferred to a mound on my forehead.

So, I cut out the exercising idea, ate some food that was a little better for me and switched to diet pop.

Maybe I’ll try again next year.