In Which I Start Personal Training
I am out of shape. Or rather, I am a shape; it’s just a round one these days.
I ran a marathon in 2015, came back home and sat down, and for ten years have not done much other than a few desultory walks with the dogs around the neighborhood. My eating habits are toddler-like: chicken fingers, spaghetti and the occasional grape. It is An Event opening a jar of pickles. I tripped over the dog the other day and fell, and it took me more than a little effort to get off the floor. At work, there are four flights of stairs from the lobby to my desk, and of course I take the elevator every day. And I spend five days a week hunched over a laptop, buttocks welded to my chair. For Pete’s sake, I have tennis elbow, and I don’t play tennis!
Back in January, I joined a cheap gym intending to put myself through the paces of getting back into shape and losing weight, but I quickly found out that I am not comfortable in a giant box franchise, staring at the weights while fit people pump iron like they want the dumbbells to call them Daddy. I went once, slunk back home in tears and ate a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
After spending the rest of Q1 thinking hard, this past week I decided to put some skin in the game, scoured my budget, cut back in some areas (like tennis subscriptions – sob!) and joined a training studio whose wheelhouse is pudgy Women of a Certain Age..
It is time. It is not getting any better from here on out. I un-assed my bed early this morning with determination.
Laura the Gulag Warden perched me on a fitness ball and, after I wallowed on that a while, handed me a 5-pound weight that felt like Thor’s hammer. She marched me through that first workout and had me staggering out the door 40 minutes later, limbs quivering from effort. I drove home, operating the clutch with a left leg that shook like a jackhammer on concrete.
“You really need to eat around 150 grams of protein a day,” she had told me.
“I don’t even know where to find 150 grams of protein a day,” I had said, thinking of a pile of mashed potatoes, which I love, and which probably has -40 grams of protein.
So, after slurping down a nice protein shake and eating a sandwich, off to the market I went with a list that included a bunch of meat that I now have to cook (and choke down), a vat of cottage cheese and a carton of Greek yogurt. (Of course, I had to pick up some carbs, so I snatched up a package of sugar-free Jello pudding. I might as well have bought Diet Lard.) One hour later, I returned home, starving. Is this what it’s going to be like, having to eat all the time like I’ve got a tapeworm with its own gym membership?
I don’t have a good track record of sticking with exercise (marathon training aside), but bringing in the heavy bags of groceries, straining my already taxed muscles, only solidified my resolve to make some kind of change. I have reasonable goals, not the least of which is to roll out of bed every morning without injury.
“That is a sensible goal, “ Laura assured me. “And you don’t have to look like a model.” Which oddly enough, made me feel better about myself. This cougar doesn’t need a catwalk to slay the day. Reowr.
