How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gym

A little over a year ago, I joined the gym down the street from my house.  It looks like this:

What an absurdly mechanical place it is!  Some of you may look at this pic and feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  To me, initially at least, it looked like an alien torture chamber.  For a full year before I joined the gym I would peer into the windows and try to talk myself into opening the door. 

The last time I had stepped into a real gym was thirty years ago when I was nine-and-a-half months pregnant with my daughter.  I had won two free weeks at a national athletic club chain, and I thought that I would start up at the gym a few weeks after the baby was born. When I went in for my initial consultation, the chickee-poo who was showing me around put me on a scale.

Chickee-poo:  "175 pounds!"

Me:  "Yeah, but I'm nine months pregnant.  I've only gained about thirty-five pounds during this pregnancy."

Chickee, wide-eyed:  "Do you always get fat when you have a baby?"

I was clearly out of my element, and apparently so was Chickee.  I walked away and made excuses (good ones, but excuses nonetheless) to never step foot in a gym again. 

Fast forward thirty years, during which time I had gained so much weight that I began to reminisce fondly about the good old days when I was nine-and-a-half months pregnant.  I got Type II Diabetes (thanks, mom and dad).  The doctor said that most of my health problems would be resolved, if I worked out at least a half hour a day.

My aversion to exercise probably dates back to the fourth grade playground, when the love of my life, Pookie Gruber, slammed me hard with a dodgeball.  By junior high P.E. class, I was the last one picked for every team every time.  And in high school, my grandma taught me how to stick my finger down my throat to make myself sick, so I could get out of running laps.  I never did this, by the way, because I'd rather sweat than barf.  I’m just not the athletic type.

I had so many fears.  What if I show up and I’m the only fat grandma in the place?  What if I fall off of the elliptical machine and tear up my ankle?  What if I pay a million dollars for a membership, and then never show up again?  I’m not sure if I had “confearstration” as outlined in yesterday’s post, or if I was just a big, fat chicken.

I made up my mind to do it.  I wish I had some greater epiphany to expound on here.  I simply made up my mind.  I paid my money, and steeled myself for this adventure into the unknown.

 For the next four weeks, I set my workout shoes and clothes beside the bed before retiring.  Every morning I would put them on and say, “I hate me.”  I despised the gym, but I had made up my mind.  I made up my mind.  I made up my mind.  No matter how much I hated it, I had made up my mind.

After about a month, I began to like how working out made me feel.  Then I began to love it.  Now I can hardly bear to stay away.  I still don’t look like a gym person, but for what it’s worth, I’m not the only fat grandma in the place.

I wish I had something more scientific, philosophical, psychological or even sympathetic to call this phenomenon, but good, old-fashioned determination.