Ok, so here's where I'm at right now... a few days ago I joined the gym. Why I hear you ask. Well, it becomes apparent when one's clothing starts shrinking that there is a problem somewhere... either with the clothes washing process or the body that fits, sorry used to fit in them quite comfortably. Now a quick look in the mirror reflects a person that does look vaguely familiar, although there is a lot more to them than there used to be. A quick glance down in the shower and yes, right down there I do see some pretty pink painted toes sticking out of a mound of belly that I swear has appeared out of nowhere! Yikes! This is bad. Ok, breathe, and again, breathe. Try to keep the panic under control. Come on now, you're a left brained, logical girl. All your male friends adore you for that, so let's not spoil it and have a melt down now! Plan of action - join the gym, follow a healthy diet and tackle this problem in small steps. That boep and various love handles really didn't appear overnight and they're not going to disappear overnight. This is going to take a lot of hard work, discipline and patience. Oh, and honesty.
So off I go to the local gym. I am wearing my ancient trail running shoes, an old pair of running pants which I dug out of the bottom of the cupboard, an XXX large T-shirt (you know to cover that spare tyre muffining out over the top of said running pants) that I purchased 18 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child, and a faded hoodie. After all, this is where I've come to get hot and sweaty. Well, the gym is all modern and everything and filled with barbies in the latest fashion exercise gear, with perfect make up and fake nails. I get a few horrified looks but I let them run off me like water off a ducks back... hey I'm 43 for Pete's sake, I'm not here to parade, I'm hear to start my long journey back to health.
A sweet boy who doesn't look old enough to be legally employed takes me through the start up process. Firstly he introduces me to this big machine thing. It's a very clever machine. It measures your weight, body fat, blood pressure and then after adding a few more personal details, it spits out the bad news. Well, it did give me one piece of good news - my blood pressure is fantastically low. The rest was not so pretty though. I'm 20kgs overweight and I have a body fat of 37%. Oh that is so gross. I mean think about it - take away the skeleton and the water, then the body fat..... ag shame, where are my muscles. Oh crap, maybe I don't have any! I feel the panic creeping up on me again. No, no, no, the boy assures me I must have a little muscle under there somewhere. And he also assures me that I will drop this fat and build beautiful muscle on the program that said machine will next spit out for me. Yay! There is hope!
Firstly, the boy takes me over to the cardio section of the gym where he proceeds to show me the first machine. Ah, yes it's a treadmill. Oh my hat, the treadmill has it's very own TV screen!! You simply bring along your earphones, plug them in, pick a channel and happily watch TV while you're walking your arse off, literally. Wow, things sure have changed since I was in a gym 13 years ago! So I walk a bit, the boy shows me how everything works and then we move onto the next piece of equipment. Slowly but surely we went through the stepper, the ski machine, the rower, the elliptical trainer, the seated cycle, the normal cycle, the spinning cycle, the hand cycler thingy, and the stretching machine. Why anyone in their right mind would want to use that contraption is beyond me! Right, so now that I am familiar with and have performed a bit using each piece of cardio equipment, we go to the other side of the gym - the weights section.
We start off with the leg press, followed by various other muscle developing machines. We then move over to the mat where the boy tells me I'm going to do push up now. I burst out laughing and inform him that I have no muscles and can't do a push up. He looks a little concerned, but then tells me not to worry as he will modify it for me so that I can develop those muscles. Ok, so I end up kneeling at a bench, while there I send a quick prayer up, and then perform these modified push ups. We end off with some floor work for the abs. Ok, so they're designed for people who actually have abs. Again the sweet boy tells me not to worry, if I work hard, I will be gaining muscle in no time. The boytjie should go into politics - he's good! And thus ended my introduction to the gym. Woohooo! I am amped baby!!
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