Social Workout

My Body

Michael Showalter, star of "Michael and Michael Have Issues," On Tennis, Cigarettes and Faith

showalter! (via www.finefilter.files.wordpress.com.)

I started playing tennis this summer. I try to play at least every other day. Sometimes I play every day. I play with my friends, and I take a lot of lessons. I play on the roof of my gym in Cobble Hill, or there are a couple tennis courts on the East River, between Houston and Delancey.  I like the feeling of hitting a ball, basically. I’m a fan of the sport as a spectator, and there’s something cathartic about hitting a ball. It’s a good workout. Now that I’ve started playing tennis, I feel like I can't live without it. It feels good to have a physical workout. It lifts your spirits. It’s a great way to blow off steam.

I think I eat better than I used to. There are certain food items that I don’t eat at all: Pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs. Junk food. I eat wheat, not white bread, and I don’t drink soda. I still have bad habits. I smoke at least a pack a day. But I don’t drink alcohol, that’s one bad habit I’ve kicked.

Health means feeling good. I equate not feeling healthy with feeling crappy. It means taking care of my body and my mind in such a way that I don’t feel like I’m ignoring it. I’m not the healthiest guy on the planet, that should be said. But I try to make an effort to take care of myself—to sleep and eat well, and to get exercise and be active, spiritually and physically. I try to adhere to a certain sense of doing what I believe is right by having faith. And by trying to be a generous person. But I smoke, that’s the elephant in the room.

My parents are professors so there wasn’t a lot of athletics going on in my house when I was growing up. They were health-conscious with food but not sporty.

Acting is not a really a healthy lifestyle because the hours are weird and especially when you’re shooting you’re constantly around food. Whenever I’m shooting something, I gain weight. You’re working long hours and you find yourself eating M&Ms for snacks. And you drink a lot of coffee; you don’t get a lot of sleep.

Right now I’m mostly just writing, and I’m having time to play tennis every day. I think if you have the time to do nothing but just write you have time to take a walk in the morning. I like to work three hours at a time. Three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon. And that leaves a lot of time to do other things.

High school was the healthiest time of my life. I wasn’t smoking and I played soccer and tennis and I was on the track team. And I was a teenager and I hadn’t dumped a lot of garbage of my body. I spent a good portion of my twenties dumping garbage in my body. My mid to late twenties was the unhealthiest time of my life. Lots of reckless substance abuse. And very little tennis.