My New Year's resolutions aren't terribly creative. For as long as I can remember, the ball would drop and I'd think to myself (because I never openly admit to being a resolution-maker), "Alright, it's January 1st again. I should probably do something about this (at which point I'd clutch my fat rolls)." Honestly, making a New Year's resolution is basically the adult version of making a wish; the kind that I'd always indulge in as a kid but never took seriously. They usually involved blowing out birthday candles, wrestling over a wishbone (which is super gross to me now as a vegetarian), spotting a shooting star, and (to my humiliation) rubbing the rhinestone belly button of a troll doll.
Because I've been fat since the age of 9, I have all of these vivid memories of wishing for the same thing: to be thin and pretty (because I viewed them as being one and the same). Nowadays, my New Year's resolutions are more like practice runs for the season of Lent in that they involve me "giving up" something unhealthy that I like to eat (i.e. potatoes). My resolutions start out great until around January 2nd, when I realize that my birthday is a month away. And then I play the ever delightful, classic Big Girl/Guy game of "I'm really going to start eating better right after__(Insert holiday/event)____". (This never works out for me for the very simple fact that I celebrate both Jewish and Christian holidays. That basically wipes out like 8 months right there, and I flat out refuse to make latkes out of beets). So I hold out on eating well until after my birthday, which, according to my friend Rachael, warrants a week of no holds barred kind of eating. And this "week" is clearly in Narnia time because by the time Ash Wednesday rolls around, I've put on about 20 lbs of birthday weight (10 lbs for Jesus', 10 lbs for mine).
After 14 months of working towards this big goal of mine, I've decided to end my tradition of resolving to give up _____ and/or to lose weight. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to keep busting my butt at the gym and watching my food intake. But I think John Lennon put it best when he said, "I don't believe in the Beatles, I just believe in me". The truth is I've never really believed in the Resolutions, but I made a huge mistake in not believing in myself and my ability to change. I don't think that when I started all of this, back in September 2011, that I saw the person that I am now (even with 60 more lbs to go). When you make the decision to tackle weight loss, really and truly tackle it, you never see all the little victories because all you have ever known are the failures. Fourteen months ago, I can assure you that I did not ever see me running four miles in the freezing cold wind and stomping up and down my high school bleachers ten times. I didn't see it because I didn't believe myself capable of doing something like that.
So to my fellow Resolution makers who will say to themselves today "I should probably do something about this". To my kindred people, my Big Girls and Big Guys, who will probably join a gym (http://jerseyfitnesscenter.net/JerseyFitness/index-3.html), start a diet (www.loseit.com), and make a wish for a healthier version of themselves: 1. I think that's amazing and you have my full support and encouragement. 2. Now that you've made this decision, take the necessary actions to fulfill it. After years of blowing out birthday candles and counting down with Dick Clark, I never actually made any changes. I did absolutely nothing and just assumed that change would just happen to me. And in a way it sort of did; I had a panic attack in the bathroom over a blind date (Please refer to "Paul Tales" for this account). But that incident alone didn't warrant the change, it inspired it. For you, your inspiration may come in the shape of your family, the death of a loved one, a super scary physical exam (Like the notes the school nurse used to send home to my parents that said "Your child is obese." That's it.). But change doesn't happen on good intentions alone, but through action.
So please, take the good parking spaces at my gym. Grab a vacant treadmill (especially if it belongs to a regular) or one of the fourteen bikes in the Spin room. Fill up the entire back section of all the gym classes. Dance awkwardly in Zumba class. Do all of these things with my blessing and my support. But don't tell me about your can'ts. I don't say this to sound condescending or unsympathetic. What I am saying, what every single one of these blog posts has been saying, is that you will shock yourself with the things that you are capable of, even when you're 120 lbs overweight, if you give yourself a fighting chance. You will also find that when it comes weight loss, your biggest battles will not be with the scale, but with the limitations you place on yourself from within your own mind. Now, if you're a Big Girl or a Big Guy and you're happy with yourself the way you are, and you don't want to change then don't. I've long since stopped thinking that being fat is synonymous with being ugly. But don't confuse a "can't" with a "don't want to" (For example: Angela doesn't ever want to dance the riverdance/country ho down song in Zumba class vs. Angela can't do the Tootsie Roll because her knees throb in pain every time she tries to turn them out).
As I mentioned earlier, I ran four miles. Yesterday morning when I woke up after 4 hours of sleep, completely dehydrated, and surprised by my menstrual cycle, I was going to play my "Girl" card and do some light lifting (translation: no boob punching). But I somehow found myself running with my fellow Pump & Run-ers, John and Lisa, and I ran to my high school stadium. I charged up and down the bleachers ten times. I ran back to the gym and lifted weights. And I did all of this because I have finally gotten to the point where I want my Big Goal weight more than I want to make excuses. So I've decided that I'm not going to welcome in 2013 by making a New Year's resolution to be thin and pretty. Instead, I'm going to keep busting my butt at the gym with a calm assurance that some day, maybe some time this year, I am going to step on the scale and see my number.
So to 2012, the year that brought me so many firsts and gave me back so much hope, I want to say thank you. Thank you for my milestones, my walls, my community of friends and family, for my instructors that tell us in every single one of our classes that we can do it, and for each new day that brings me closer to my Goal. And to all of you Resolutioners, I leave you with the lines of the song that played when I finished up my fourth mile:
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
Run fast for your mother,
Run fast for your father
Run for your children
For your sisters and brothers
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Pimp & Run
The title of today's post is a shout-out to my sister Chrissy who misread one of my facebook statuses and thought I joined an event called "Pimp & Run". I briefly conjured up mental images of my fellow Pump & Run buddies dressed up like pimps and, well, hookers running through the streets of Pennsville. The problem is that thigh-high leather boots just don't allow the feet to breathe; we wouldn't be half a mile out before the blisters set in. Anyway, I found her blunder to be precious and subject line-worthy.
So the blog is now nineteen posts in and you've probably already deduced that I really love my gym. I can assure you that my inner Big Girl cringes every time I say this out loud, though. She has very specific opinions about people who make obnoxious statements like, "I'm addicted to working out" and "I just had a killer run today" out in the open. And yet here I am, 14 months into my gym membership (not just a donation) and every time I walk into Jersey Fitness it's like I can hear the theme from "Cheers" playing in the background. I usually walk in, chat (flirt) with the guys up front, wind my way through the main room while conversing with the same five or six regulars on their preferred machines, and then rush to get dressed in the freezing cold locker room before class. **Side Rant: It's amazing how bonded the regular members become to specific machines. I definitely have a treadmill and a Spin bike that I gravitate towards, but I'm not yet at the point where I start saying things like my bike or my treadmill. I have been on the other end of that, unfortunately. I have been told that I couldn't use a specific bench press because another member used it at that specific time on that specific day every week for the past 12 years. I kind of expected this attitude from the weight room, though (as you'll read about later). What I did not expect was a stare down from a grandmother while I was running on the treadmill instead of attending a class. At first I thought my feet were clopping too loudly on the belt and disturbing her workout. But then the second I hopped off and wiped down the machine, the grandmother threw her magazine down and climbed on, impatiently. I understand that people have their preferences and their routines, especially if they've been members for a number of years. The thing is, I remember how insecure and intimidated I was when I first started going to the gym. I thought everyone was looking at me and silently judging my form and physique. So when I see that "my" Spin bike by the right side of the room, second from the back, is occupied by a doe-eyed new girl who has no idea that Chrissy's 30 minute "Express Ride" is going to be the longest, most intense, crotch numbing half hour of her life, I don't get upset over it; that was all of us at one time. End Rant**
Once I'm in the classroom, I have the same conversation with my classmates: that is, we usually complain about the difficulty of the previous night's class and whichever body part happens to be sore from it as a result. I love the ritual of these pre-class conversations. I enjoy the familiarity of standing in a cluster of ladies and collectively assessing the instructor's mood and/or the likelihood of being asked to do burpees/lunges/squats. Despite the fact that we all participate in the classes as individuals with very different levels of fitness, there is an understood camaraderie amongst all of us. It's pretty much the exact opposite of my gym experience in high school (man, do I miss the days of being picked last and having teenage girls jacked up on hormones and aggression yell at me for hitting a volleyball into the net...). In short, Jersey Fitness is kind of a comfortable haven of familiarity for me.
...with the exception of one spot: the weight room. Up until a few weeks ago, I never stepped foot into the free weight room at the gym. I grudgingly walked by the weight room in order to get to my classes or the locker room, but I usually turned my head and avoided direct eye contact with its inhabitants. I have to be honest here when I say that the guys in that room scare the crap out of me. Perhaps it's because I'm physically attracted to skinny, nerdy men of Asian and/or Jewish extract and I'm genetically wired, as a robust woman of Sicilian descent, to want to nurture (fatten) them. And there's just no nurturing a guy whose neck veins pop whenever he benches. Perhaps it's because every guy in that room looks like the kind of guy that could kill me and make it look like an accident. Perhaps it's because whenever they look me over as I walk in, I feel like I'm being mentally sorted into a weight class. I know that these thoughts are unfair and I'm sure all the weight room guys are teddy bears....with bulging neck veins...and weird, territorial claims on bench presses...
The first time I went inside the weight room, I was with my friend Jenn and I distinctly hesitated for a full minute outside of its entrance. Jenn who, for lack of a better description, has the ballsiest attitude I've ever encountered in another short girl, strode into the room, threw her stuff next to a bench press, and starting loading weights onto the bar. I, on the other hand, took note of the number of guys in the room, calculated the distance to the nearest exit, and scoped out any potential weapons within an arm's reach. Jenn had a pretty straightforward attitude about lifting and waved off my concerns about the guys in the room. The weight room is pretty no nonsense with its monochromatic color scheme (black, white, and grey). It looks like any other weight room you'd see in any other gym (or prison) and I can see why it's so guy-friendly (as opposed to the gym classroom, which has a predominantly female population). The classroom space also has weights, balls, mats, and kettlebells but they come in a variety of different colors. The weight room is open to the main floor and crammed with equipment while the classroom is a closed off, almost completely open space, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors everywhere. I mean, the two rooms pretty much scream "Dudes here" and "Chicks there". And I admit it, I like my hot pink 6-lb weights, my aqua blue foam mat, and the mother-of-pearl Pilates ball. I sometimes can't not look away from my reflection in the mirrors whenever my arm fat is rippling steadily during kickboxing class. The free weight room at Jersey Fitness was totally foreign territory to me*, as was the entire process of "pumping".
*I say me because I'd like to point out that there are some guys that work out in the classroom and some girls that lift in the weight room. I'm just emphasizing my being a pansy about it still.
This is where I'm incredibly grateful for the people in my gym community like Jenn. They will simply point me towards a bench press and talk me through it. Which brings us to the subject of bench pressing. Remember when I said that the gym has separate definitions for real words, like with "spinning"? This is also true for "bench pressing". This is actually gym-speak for "boob punching". The bench has it easy, as far as I'm concerned. I had no. freaking. clue how weak I was until I started the boob punching portion of "Pump & Run". For those of you who are unfamiliar with "bench pressing" it's where you lie on your back, on a bench, and you repeatedly lift a heavy, weighted bar just above your chest. During my first bench press my arms were quivering when I lifted the 45 lb bar, right before Jenn asked (very gently), "Should we add 5 more lbs to each end?" She could tell what I really wanted to say. She's been there.
By our third or fourth session, I was lifting (wobbling) 75 lbs and everything was absolutely fine for the first 15ish hours that followed. I was sore, but it wasn't unbearable. I went to kickboxing and punched and jabbed without a problem. But then came the jacks. Jumping jacks, that is. I have a theory that jumping jacks were invented by a flat chested fitness instructor who somehow wanted to make her well-endowed female students suffer for distracting her line of vision with all their excessive bouncing. At the time of this particular kickboxing class I made the colossal mistake of choosing the "crap-I-need-to-do-laundry-and-this-is-my-in-case-of-an-emergency-go-to" sports bra that doesn't support me all that well. Every time I got jacked I'd close my eyes and open them up, expecting to be dangling from the ceiling and surrounded by little Mexican children swinging bats at my fun bags. By Tuesday's HIIT class I had to actually cross my arms over my chest during the jumpy, stepping segments to limit their movement (much to Chrissy's amusement; she crossed her arms and started Riverdancing).
I'm trying to look at lifting as an investment. Cardio is more like a budget with very clear parameters that I work with. After an hour of _____, I've burned ____ number of calories to be used or saved. With lifting, it's like I have to learn to accept that even though I'm constantly sore, and even though "muscle weighs more than fat and that's why you gained 4 lbs", I have to keep telling myself that I'm investing in my future healthy, toned, and less ripply-armed self. Mostly I still resent lifting, but I'm going to keep at it. My body still resembles a half melted ice cream cone, but I'm starting to get little hints of hope, here and there; the shapes of my quads, the way my knuckles and wrist bones are more pronounced, and these firmer lines just inside my waist. The signs are there, so I'll continue to pump and run, or pimp and run. But I am putting my foot down against the jacks...
So the blog is now nineteen posts in and you've probably already deduced that I really love my gym. I can assure you that my inner Big Girl cringes every time I say this out loud, though. She has very specific opinions about people who make obnoxious statements like, "I'm addicted to working out" and "I just had a killer run today" out in the open. And yet here I am, 14 months into my gym membership (not just a donation) and every time I walk into Jersey Fitness it's like I can hear the theme from "Cheers" playing in the background. I usually walk in, chat (flirt) with the guys up front, wind my way through the main room while conversing with the same five or six regulars on their preferred machines, and then rush to get dressed in the freezing cold locker room before class. **Side Rant: It's amazing how bonded the regular members become to specific machines. I definitely have a treadmill and a Spin bike that I gravitate towards, but I'm not yet at the point where I start saying things like my bike or my treadmill. I have been on the other end of that, unfortunately. I have been told that I couldn't use a specific bench press because another member used it at that specific time on that specific day every week for the past 12 years. I kind of expected this attitude from the weight room, though (as you'll read about later). What I did not expect was a stare down from a grandmother while I was running on the treadmill instead of attending a class. At first I thought my feet were clopping too loudly on the belt and disturbing her workout. But then the second I hopped off and wiped down the machine, the grandmother threw her magazine down and climbed on, impatiently. I understand that people have their preferences and their routines, especially if they've been members for a number of years. The thing is, I remember how insecure and intimidated I was when I first started going to the gym. I thought everyone was looking at me and silently judging my form and physique. So when I see that "my" Spin bike by the right side of the room, second from the back, is occupied by a doe-eyed new girl who has no idea that Chrissy's 30 minute "Express Ride" is going to be the longest, most intense, crotch numbing half hour of her life, I don't get upset over it; that was all of us at one time. End Rant**
Once I'm in the classroom, I have the same conversation with my classmates: that is, we usually complain about the difficulty of the previous night's class and whichever body part happens to be sore from it as a result. I love the ritual of these pre-class conversations. I enjoy the familiarity of standing in a cluster of ladies and collectively assessing the instructor's mood and/or the likelihood of being asked to do burpees/lunges/squats. Despite the fact that we all participate in the classes as individuals with very different levels of fitness, there is an understood camaraderie amongst all of us. It's pretty much the exact opposite of my gym experience in high school (man, do I miss the days of being picked last and having teenage girls jacked up on hormones and aggression yell at me for hitting a volleyball into the net...). In short, Jersey Fitness is kind of a comfortable haven of familiarity for me.
...with the exception of one spot: the weight room. Up until a few weeks ago, I never stepped foot into the free weight room at the gym. I grudgingly walked by the weight room in order to get to my classes or the locker room, but I usually turned my head and avoided direct eye contact with its inhabitants. I have to be honest here when I say that the guys in that room scare the crap out of me. Perhaps it's because I'm physically attracted to skinny, nerdy men of Asian and/or Jewish extract and I'm genetically wired, as a robust woman of Sicilian descent, to want to nurture (fatten) them. And there's just no nurturing a guy whose neck veins pop whenever he benches. Perhaps it's because every guy in that room looks like the kind of guy that could kill me and make it look like an accident. Perhaps it's because whenever they look me over as I walk in, I feel like I'm being mentally sorted into a weight class. I know that these thoughts are unfair and I'm sure all the weight room guys are teddy bears....with bulging neck veins...and weird, territorial claims on bench presses...
The first time I went inside the weight room, I was with my friend Jenn and I distinctly hesitated for a full minute outside of its entrance. Jenn who, for lack of a better description, has the ballsiest attitude I've ever encountered in another short girl, strode into the room, threw her stuff next to a bench press, and starting loading weights onto the bar. I, on the other hand, took note of the number of guys in the room, calculated the distance to the nearest exit, and scoped out any potential weapons within an arm's reach. Jenn had a pretty straightforward attitude about lifting and waved off my concerns about the guys in the room. The weight room is pretty no nonsense with its monochromatic color scheme (black, white, and grey). It looks like any other weight room you'd see in any other gym (or prison) and I can see why it's so guy-friendly (as opposed to the gym classroom, which has a predominantly female population). The classroom space also has weights, balls, mats, and kettlebells but they come in a variety of different colors. The weight room is open to the main floor and crammed with equipment while the classroom is a closed off, almost completely open space, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors everywhere. I mean, the two rooms pretty much scream "Dudes here" and "Chicks there". And I admit it, I like my hot pink 6-lb weights, my aqua blue foam mat, and the mother-of-pearl Pilates ball. I sometimes can't not look away from my reflection in the mirrors whenever my arm fat is rippling steadily during kickboxing class. The free weight room at Jersey Fitness was totally foreign territory to me*, as was the entire process of "pumping".
*I say me because I'd like to point out that there are some guys that work out in the classroom and some girls that lift in the weight room. I'm just emphasizing my being a pansy about it still.
This is where I'm incredibly grateful for the people in my gym community like Jenn. They will simply point me towards a bench press and talk me through it. Which brings us to the subject of bench pressing. Remember when I said that the gym has separate definitions for real words, like with "spinning"? This is also true for "bench pressing". This is actually gym-speak for "boob punching". The bench has it easy, as far as I'm concerned. I had no. freaking. clue how weak I was until I started the boob punching portion of "Pump & Run". For those of you who are unfamiliar with "bench pressing" it's where you lie on your back, on a bench, and you repeatedly lift a heavy, weighted bar just above your chest. During my first bench press my arms were quivering when I lifted the 45 lb bar, right before Jenn asked (very gently), "Should we add 5 more lbs to each end?" She could tell what I really wanted to say. She's been there.
By our third or fourth session, I was lifting (wobbling) 75 lbs and everything was absolutely fine for the first 15ish hours that followed. I was sore, but it wasn't unbearable. I went to kickboxing and punched and jabbed without a problem. But then came the jacks. Jumping jacks, that is. I have a theory that jumping jacks were invented by a flat chested fitness instructor who somehow wanted to make her well-endowed female students suffer for distracting her line of vision with all their excessive bouncing. At the time of this particular kickboxing class I made the colossal mistake of choosing the "crap-I-need-to-do-laundry-and-this-is-my-in-case-of-an-emergency-go-to" sports bra that doesn't support me all that well. Every time I got jacked I'd close my eyes and open them up, expecting to be dangling from the ceiling and surrounded by little Mexican children swinging bats at my fun bags. By Tuesday's HIIT class I had to actually cross my arms over my chest during the jumpy, stepping segments to limit their movement (much to Chrissy's amusement; she crossed her arms and started Riverdancing).
I'm trying to look at lifting as an investment. Cardio is more like a budget with very clear parameters that I work with. After an hour of _____, I've burned ____ number of calories to be used or saved. With lifting, it's like I have to learn to accept that even though I'm constantly sore, and even though "muscle weighs more than fat and that's why you gained 4 lbs", I have to keep telling myself that I'm investing in my future healthy, toned, and less ripply-armed self. Mostly I still resent lifting, but I'm going to keep at it. My body still resembles a half melted ice cream cone, but I'm starting to get little hints of hope, here and there; the shapes of my quads, the way my knuckles and wrist bones are more pronounced, and these firmer lines just inside my waist. The signs are there, so I'll continue to pump and run, or pimp and run. But I am putting my foot down against the jacks...
Friday, December 7, 2012
Pump & Run: The Prequel
It's officially Hanukkah/Christmas season for me (cause I rock both). In just a few weeks' time, my siblings will be flying in from Portland and El Salvador to the home base in Jersey. This is always a chaotic, activity-packed season in the Livesay house. There are late night games of rummy, hundreds of half-empty coffee mugs and water glasses scattered all over the place, and more Hallmark made-for-tv Christmas movies on our DVR than you could possibly fathom. And this is probably the oddest time for a person to take on something called "Pump & Run". But first, let me dial this back a year.
Last January, the 20th to be exact, I upgraded my gym membership to take classes, attended my very first Zumba class, and later wrote the following Facebook status about it:
Last January, the 20th to be exact, I upgraded my gym membership to take classes, attended my very first Zumba class, and later wrote the following Facebook status about it:
"A Note About Zumba:
-Imagine a wedding reception dance floor, on crack, that consists of a lot of girls from my high school graduating class. Who are now married. And like...moms..
-I spent 80% of the first class laughing hysterically in confusion...especially during moves that required shimmying, gyration, and booty pops
-I discovered that while my inner dance spirit was keeping up with the instructor, most parts of my body were like Montessori children moving at their own pace and often NOT in unison with one another
-Do not Zumba behind the girl who confesses to have eaten a Fiber One Brownie just prior to the class
-Do not underestimate the 50 year-old up front. She will drop it like it's hot and you will...well...hold onto it like a lukewarm cup of decaffeinated tea."
-Imagine a wedding reception dance floor, on crack, that consists of a lot of girls from my high school graduating class. Who are now married. And like...moms..
-I spent 80% of the first class laughing hysterically in confusion...especially during moves that required shimmying, gyration, and booty pops
-I discovered that while my inner dance spirit was keeping up with the instructor, most parts of my body were like Montessori children moving at their own pace and often NOT in unison with one another
-Do not Zumba behind the girl who confesses to have eaten a Fiber One Brownie just prior to the class
-Do not underestimate the 50 year-old up front. She will drop it like it's hot and you will...well...hold onto it like a lukewarm cup of decaffeinated tea."
I was strictly a Zumba girl until late April (which was kind of surprising to me to find out that I've been attending classes for only sevenish months). I guess it was some time immediately following my annual Good Friday trip to Philly, or more specifically, to Isgro's Bakery, I decided to up the ante on attending classes (mere coincidence). This meant actually looking at the gym class schedule as opposed to breezing by it on my way to the magazine stack. There were some classes on the schedule that I knew I'd probably never be able to take due to my work schedule; morning classes like Pilates, Circuit Training, and whatever the heck "Instructor's Choice" is (to this day I have no idea what 'Intstructor's Choice' means for someone like Chrissy. I have frightening mental pictures of her laughing maniacally as she makes everyone in the class do lunges and burpees to angry, heavy metal music). I vaguely remember seeing Pump & Run on the gym schedule back in January but, as I said before, if it didn't involve dancing, I didn't bother.
Since the last Pump & Run, working out has gone from being "something I try to fit into my week" to being as salient to my life as my vegetarianism. I don't say this lightly, either. I know perfectly well that if a stranger met me at Jersey Fitness right now, they'd probably assume that I was part of the "New Year Weight-Loss Resolution" crowd. I still don't look like my gym buddies, yet, but I know where I started and I know where I'm going. Enter: Pump & Run. One thing I love about my gym is that their names for classes are pretty straightforward; HIIT=High Intensity Interval Training; Cardio Sculpt=Cardio+Weight Training; Step=Stepping. Pump & Run is basically pumping iron and running. Except that whenever Chrissy is involved, a class is never "basically" anything, but intense from start to finish.
Our first meeting was informational. I took that literally and went to the gym in my Sunday clothes and ballet flats (it was probably the first and last time I've ever left Jersey Fitness without having my hair matted in sweat). It was kind of surreal, actually. I was in the same classroom, with the same classmates, same instructor...and yet we were all sitting around...not moving at light speed. Then Chrissy gave us the rundown about what to expect for the next eight Sunday mornings.
-Weigh-ins: It's funny, I can totally say "I lost 60 lbs" on Facebook for everyone to read and comment upon, but the thought of hopping onto a scale and having Chrissy view and then record that number is mildly terrifying. As you might have read in prior posts, I'm usually completely alone (and naked) when I'm weighing in at home. When I have to weigh in at the doctor's office, I sometimes spontaneously burst into tears. I'm hoping that my deep respect and admiration for Chrissy will outweigh (no pun intended) my anxieties regarding this portion of the Pump & Run. Frankly I'd rather not have her see me naked or crying. Like, ever.
-Running: For the first hour, we're running. Chrissy gave us different distances (2, 3, 4, 5 miles, etc.) to pick from. I'm super fortunate that my friend Betsy asked to partner up with me for the running portion. However, come Feb 10th we'll all be running five miles together.
-Pumping: I will be building up to lifting 70% of my body weight. Without getting into specifics, let's just say that my 70% weighs more than Chrissy and her abs put together. To be frank, I'm actually more intimidated by the pumping than the running. While running may not be my favorite form of cardio, it's something that I can understand and even occasionally enjoy. Lifting weights is difficult, it hurts, and it doesn't make sense when you look at the numbers on the scale. But my body needs to lift weights. Every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection when I'm punching, kicking, squatting, or popping in those floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the gym, it's like looking back at a human water bed that doesn't. stop. rippling. Translation: Gotta tighten up.
Overall, I'm pretty excited about Pump & Run. Every time I try out a new class, I'm hit with the same butterflies in my stomach, the same waves of fear and insecurity. But then I give it a shot, acquaint myself with it, and months later I find myself getting up at 4AM, or doing a handstand against the wall, or doing a 'mambo mambo' around a step. Now I can honestly say that I truly love all of my classes, even the ones in which I struggle the most. When I finish one and I'm driving home, I literally could not care less if I ever see 120 on a scale; I don't care about pant sizes or arm fat or muffin tops. All I know is that what I'm doing makes me insanely happy, like all the time. So yeah, right at this moment, the thought of running five miles and lifting a Chrissy is a bit unnerving. But I'm going to take this thing one week at a time and enjoy every minor victory and wall for what it is: a step in the right direction. But first, I will have to apologize to my fellow Sharptown UMC-ers in advance. Normally I make real efforts to look decent for church; unfortunately, from now until February I will be arriving to church as one big, sweaty, shlubby mess in hoodies and sneaks. And you're just gonna have to love me anyway because Jesus says so.
:-)
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