Behold my fitness

I am now a person who goes to the gym. I am a gym-goer. Me.

At first I was forcing myself to go a couple of times a week, and now I'm up to four or five weekly visits. I am sad if I have to miss it. How could this have happened? I used to stand outside the gym, peering in the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching all those people running to nowhere while I ate my donut. I wiped powdered sugar off my cheeks and wondered why people would do that to themselves. Then I went back to the donut place and bought four more. Then I would sit outside the gym because standing was too much work. Finally I would lie down, waving dollar bills at passersby and asking them to bring me more donuts.

Okay--there was no powdered sugar. I prefer a classic glazed. And don't even mention sprinkles. I don't want to HEAR IT about the sprinkles. Do not sully my glaze.

Moving on.

I have this trainer, as I have mentioned, and he's making me do all sorts of weights and push-ups and activities with medicine balls, most of which feels comically old-fangled, like I should be wearing a woolen unitard and sport a handlebar mustache. As silly as I feel, I can't deny that there have been, well, results.

I have progressed, for instance, from being completely incapable of performing a single push-up to sort of doing a modified push-up without crying. Actually I can do three sets of (knee) push-ups (uh, on an incline) without crying or throwing up or anything disgusting at all. If you don’t count sweating. Or swearing. This is serious progress for the likes of me. My trainer keeps saying things like, "When I see how far you've come from before" and "You’re nothing like you were in the beginning..." And then he gets this haunted look in his eyes. He's also stopped comparing me to his clients who have had strokes and related brain injuries! I've really come far!

I can now see how strength training sucks you in. It's like gaining a superpower. When a weight you couldn't lift before suddenly becomes comically easy? It's like you've just traveled to this new planet and a car fell on you but the car is made of TIN FOIL so you can toss it aside but why is everyone so shocked? Why can't they lift it? Because. Because you are the strongest person in their world.

They're also very impressed when you do your girlie push-ups on your slight incline, on this planet. They are residents of the Planet of the Very Weak. But no matter. You are like a god to them.

Comments

[Erica]

It is an accomplishment just getting the mindset to swing towards "must go to gym" and then to actually go AND see improvements? Amen on the glazed donuts.

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