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The Gym? What Is That?
April 19th, 2010 | 
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When I first heard the topic “in the gym,” my first reaction was – can this be about how unfamiliar I am with the inside of the gym as of late? Seriously… it’s been awhile… But what’s scary? I’m beginning to miss it. Who is this person and how did she get hold of my computer?
Maybe I should step back a minute first. Whenever I think about gym membership I first think about high school gym class (stick with me a minute, I swear I’m going someplace). I can remember the beginning of freshman year, my high school gym teacher saying – everyone complains about gym class, but you wait. You’ll finish college and then you’ll pay someone a lot of money for a gym membership. … I didn’t believe her. And, for the record, if any of the gyms I ever joined (because, oh yes, that darn woman was right!) had been anything like my high school gym – I’d be asking for a refund!
So we fast forward to college and the rec center. I went on occasion… Some friends of mine and I used to head down to lower campus to swim a few times a week in the winter (well that lasted a few weeks anyway…). It was our excuse to eat at the new dining hall there rather than the horrible (exactly what you think cafeteria food will be) dining hall near us. So you see what a health nut I am (and always was) – my gym attendance was based on the dining hall with the really good subs – steak and cheese anyone? But wasn’t I getting enough exercise just walking around all the hills on campus?
Post college, I tried running on occasion – the Chase corporate challenge and all that (3 miles in about 30 minutes – and that was at 22 and 10 lbs lighter). The problem with running always seemed to be that I swear I was allergic to it! I’d run and the next day I’d be all stuffed up and congested. OK, so I wasn’t allergic to running. I was allergic to everything else surrounding me when I ran! (A friend of mine has suggested that quite possibly I am superman, but that all living things on earth are my kryptonite. If we could just get rid of those, I’d be superhuman! You can see why she’s a good friend, right?) I mentioned this to my Dad, who had bad allergies and he suggested I just needed to wait till after the worst of pollen season (like mid July). Yeah… Sure. Cause I want to run in July. What sane person wants to START a running program when it’s 90+ out?
So, I looked into other options. The first couple of buildings I lived in had exercise rooms. Maybe I could convince myself to go there? They even had cable in the first (a luxury I wasn’t allowing myself at the time)! But I soon discovered I got bored really easily (turns out, there’s nothing on tv anyway!) and I really needed an exercise class. So when a number of my coworkers joined our corporate gym, I decided, why not? It was on the other campus, but if my friends were going, wouldn’t I make it too?
I tried some lunch time classes – starting with kickboxing. And here’s where it gets interesting… The kickboxing instructor was the same guy who did my fitness test to sign me up. Now, he was an odd dude from the start, but who cares? I didn’t… until he pulled my email address off my registration forms to ask me out! Holy awkward (not just that he asked me out, but the whole message about how he didn’t have any friends)! It wasn’t just that I wasn’t into him – it was also that he’d done my fitness assessment. So for the full picture, this was the creepy dude who knew the exact fat count on all areas of my body. And what could be a more perfect excuse to stop going? Oh, well probably when my friend’s wife called him out on how creepy it was and he emailed me again! So I quit the gym and wallowed in my unhealthiness. But, the thing was, I was still in my early 20’s and genetics was still controlling my good metabolism. So I felt fairly guilt free in my lack of exercise.
Then life got way more stressful. Given how long a post this is, I won’t go into detail – let’s just say it was hitting from all angles – family, work, boyfriend, friends, etc. And I started losing my appetite and really losing weight. As I’m a girl and therefore seem to be incapable of having a fully healthy sense of body image, I realized that my unexpected weight loss was unhealthy, but was still sort of psyched by the ever declining numbers on the scale – even as my clothes stopped fitting and I was too much of a coat hanger for anything new to look good on me. I tried going to the doctor but got nowhere there. It seemed that I really just needed to get my stress under control and find better outlets. As I did, my appetite returned and the weight came back. The problem was – I’d ruined that wonderful metabolism in the process and the weight kept coming back! And oh crap, it’s back to the gym…
First I tried our county rec center. I’d get up before God to do cycle spin (I called it psycho spin) at 6 am to then drive back home to shower (the showers there were horrifying), let the dog out and run to work exhausted. How I felt about it depended a lot on which teacher I got. One I really liked. The other I was convinced was possessed by Satan when he’d bellow “Take off!” for the sprints. I stopped going after a few months and didn’t renew my membership when it expired after a year.
Then I tried the Gold’s that my next job sponsored (free membership). Hmm… maybe I have to pay for these things to actually feel incented to go? I went a few times, but was never a regular. I can justify away that it wasn’t all that convenient (near work, but half an hour away from home), etc., but really – history says I was just lazy.
When I left that job, my membership was gone too, so now what? My husband decided he wanted to join a GOOD gym. A good gym would inspire us to go and make all the difference. Rather than going back to the county facilities, which he insisted we’d never use, he suggested the Lifetime Fitness a few miles in the other direction. It was three times as expensive and had a hefty registration fee. But we took a tour and… well, yeah, it was a heck of a lot nicer. And on our inaugural visit, I somehow got so into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy that I didn’t even notice the hour of exercising go by! Finally – had I found my mecca?
Hmm… well, probably not. My 3 times a week visits dropped to a single spin class a week (ahem, which is a lot more than my husband was going at that point!). I’d suffer through the class, but then… Oh, then! Then came workout dessert! I’d go into their beautiful locker room, get changed and relax in the steam room for as long as I could take the heat! My sinuses would be cleared and my body so relaxed. Oh yes, I’d go to the gym just for that! (I always made myself workout first. Not necessarily for very long… but always first!)
And then I got pregnant – and the steam room and Jacuzzi were off limits to me! Well, why on earth go to the gym? Actually, I do have a slightly better excuse here – my pregnancy was considered somewhat riskier due to past issues and I wasn’t allowed a hard workout like spin classes. I could go and lift light weights or do something less aerobic, but those weren’t my exercises of choice. So I got my doctor to write a note to suspend my membership (seriously – please excuse her from gym class…). And then, when I was feeling like crap at the end of the first trimester because morning sickness does NOT always end at the end of the first trimester (and I will throw the book saying it does at the next website that says it does!), I knew I wasn’t making it back and we quit (no, hubby hadn’t gone in 3 months without me).
So here we are a year and a half later and I’m still carrying an extra 5 lbs of baby weight (plus the other 5 that I’d put on 5 years earlier when my metabolism slowed) and suddenly I miss the gym… And not just the steam room! (well, mostly) Oh my God, I never thought I’d say that! I tried giving up sweets and fried food for Lent thinking this would have to work (really, I was trying to give up my love handles) – but I seemed to be able to make up for it with carbs and cream based things. I mentioned my great sadness that my “diet” had had NO impact to my husband and he looked at me and said – um, did you ever consider working out? I tried to argue that chasing a 13 month old is exercise! (It is!) But even I knew it wasn’t making any dent on the love handles… Why couldn’t I have gotten the good genes my cousin got where breast feeding brought her back to her pre-baby weight in 2 weeks and then she lost another 10 lbs (do you hate her now too?)?
And this is why… ironically… I am here to write “in the gym.” No, we haven’t actually *joined* a gym yet (let’s not get crazy). But we did get a jogging stroller (hand me down from a friend of my husband’s) and … I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but we actually used it. *I* actually went jogging! With my husband! I had to set ground rules first – don’t yell at me or make fun of me when I can’t keep up and if you utter the phrase “dig deep,” this run is over! I think he barely got his heart rate up while I sweated and wheezed away (honey, how far do you think we went (in our half jog / half walk) – 2-3 miles? Um, I think about 1. Oh. For the running part? No.. for the whole thing. Oh.). On the bright side, as he ran high school cross country, he actually did give me some pointers that made the run a lot easier.
Dang, if only he’d made fun of me, I’d have an excuse to stop…
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funny how the gym thing becomes intoxicating later on in life. i crave workouts now because they’re hard to fit in with a baby! once i start doing them, however, i’m not really sure what i was fussing about lol!
A steam room after a work out is amazing! We’ve had customers tell us sitting in one even helps to ease the soreness of the next day. Hope you find a place to relax in the steam once again. It’s ALMOST as good for your body as working out.