Weight for it…
Around a year ago, give or take a month, I decided I really should stop saying I was going to lose weight and actually, you know, do something about it. Otherwise, I was going to have to go out and buy pants in a size I swore I would never wear.
I sat down and acknowledged some truths, like “I hate change,” “Sugar makes me happy,” “I’m lazy,” and “Cutting carbs out of my diet just might make me homicidal.”
This raised some interesting questions, like: if my own inertia is going to make developing a real exercise program difficult, and cutting sugar and carbs from my diet is going to make me even more unhappy and unwilling to stick with a new program, how the hell am I going to lose weight?
The answer was to change one thing at a time, so that I was only vastly unhappy about one particular aspect of my life at any given moment.
And, periodically, I decided I was awesome and threw the whole program into the trash for a week or two and had some milkshakes.
This has worked, it really has.
Total weight lost in one year: 35-40 pounds.
For the past six weeks, I’ve been celebrating my awesomeness. While I haven’t gained, I haven’t lost more—and my overall fitness has decreased.
I decided I would have to do something before I started gaining again. There’s a gym on the way to work. I hate exercising, and I hate mornings, so I might as well exercise in the morning and hate everything all at once.
It’ll build character. The fact that this is the exact opposite of last year’s plan is not lost on me. This would never have worked at this time last year, but I think it will work now; I know that I can and will stick to a routine once I get into it, and that I can and will get through the hellish adjustment period.
So today I stopped at the gym to sign up.
As I chatted with the membership guy, we did the usual goals and such things. I explained about the last year, and he said that was great and asked how I did it.
I had to think for a moment, because the obvious answer is: eat less, exercise more. I thought it might be a trick question. Are there other weight-loss techniques? Has someone invented an eat more, exercise less program? Turns out they haven’t. Bummer.
We got all the details sorted out and I handed over my driver’s license. He looked at it, looked at me, and said “Is that really you? You really did lose a lot of weight!”
Well, no. I got someone fatter than me to take my DMV photo, because if there’s one thing any of us needs, it’s to increase the inherent awfulness of DMV photos.
And I’m somewhat bemused by the implied “I didn’t believe you before” in his statement, but I can’t fault him there. I’m sure a lot of people go on about the weight they (never actually) lost or are (not really) going to lose. It’s probably like horse people listening to the average person on the street saying “I’m a great rider!” and we’re thinking “a pony ride when you were six does not make you an Olympian.”
But I do like being flattered, even when the flattery is probably just part of a pitch to make sure I hang around long enough to sign on dotted line.
I signed. Tomorrow they are doing the orientation session. They promised to kick my ass in a whirlwind tour of all the equipment.
If you hear groaning tomorrow night, it’s probably my ass, wondering what it ever did to deserve the end of this prolonged celebration and the rather cruel resumption of… THAT word.
So far, my body hasn’t quite caught up with my brain and realized that I’m serious about the exercise-in-the-morning thing. When that happens, I’m sure you’ll hear the screams of protest.
I’m warning you, so you can go out and buy wax to stuff in the ears of any small children whose psyches might be permanently damaged by the choice phrases I am likely to resort to. I can’t be held liable for my language under the influence of exercise in the morning.