Is it time to lose your vir-gym-nity?
Is it time to lose your vir-gym-nity?
Working my butt off
By JO CIAVAGLIA
Bucks County Courier Times
I did it for the first time at age 39. I lost my virgymnity.
This monumental moment happened on an ordinary Monday last June when I walked into a local health club and committed myself.
A few hours later, I returned to work out. The next day I was back ... and the next and the next.
All the time swearing that I would never stay more than a half-hour.
Swearing is something I did a lot of at first.
Like after a first attempt at cardio-jam aerobics, which lasted 20 minutes, when in the mirror-filled room I realized I had as much dance grace as a drunken elephant. I left the class in tears feeling like a fat foolish failure. A few weeks later, an attempt at cardio-kickboxing yielded the same ending.
At first, I sat at weight machines and searched for the instructions, which resembled hieroglyphic-like Ikea directions. Then, if I still couldn’t figure out how the machine worked, I’d nonchalantly slip away before anyone noticed I’d done no reps.
The first time on the stair-climber -- essentially an escalator to nowhere -- I lasted two minutes before my heart felt like it was about to explode.
So I stuck with the machines I knew -- the elliptical and the treadmill. Soon, I found myself working out longer. I studied how others used the equipment that I couldn’t figure out how to use. I got help from a personal trainer, who showed me what I was doing wrong. Strangers started offering me tips on how to work the weight machines. I stopped caring if I looked so clumsy.
Within a few months, I had the elliptical resistance level set on seven, not one. With the treadmill speed at 3.3 mph (not my old 2 mph), my legs didn’t feel like they’d collapse. I climbed the stair-escalator for 20 minutes on level 4 and my heart remained inside my ribcage. I moved the weight machines to heavier settings.
This aerobics dropout tried spin classes -- where you ride a spare stationary bike like a maniac on imitation hill and mountain terrain. The first time, I couldn’t get my butt out of the seat, and I couldn’t figure out most of the strange commands the instructor barked. But I finished the 45 minutes.
After a few weeks of practice, spinning came easily -- well, as easy as spinning gets, which is really hard. Within two months, I took classes three to four days a week. By Thanksgiving, I worked up to two hours of spin on most Saturday mornings. Half-hour workouts stretched to an hour or longer, only it didn’t feel like an hour or longer.
In five months, I completed the year’s worth of gym visits required by my health plan for a $150 reimbursement.
As my body changed, eating habits followed. Vegetables aren’t the enemy. Fast food isn’t a major food group. Reading food labels isn’t difficult. Books and articles about nutrition are fascinating. Splenda-spiked green tea tastes better than diet soda.
This out of the mouth of someone who marveled at people who said they exercise in hour-long stretches several days a week. No way that I’d ever do that. I am a person who promised I’d start exercising and eating healthier as I nodded off to sleep at night.
My slow creep up in pant sizes was easy to ignore, especially since I grew fatter along with the rest of America, which accommodated my burgeoning butt with bigger seats, hipper clothing choices, and successful role models like Oprah and Queen Latifah,
While some skinny girls look in mirrors and see faux-fat reflections, I had the opposite problem. Any photo or video evidence to the contrary was dismissed as the 20 -- or is it 50 pounds -- the camera adds.
Even when faced with the seemingly irrefutable proof of plump, I could play dumb. Like the day I slipped into a booth at a restaurant I hadn’t eaten at in a couple years and realized it was a skintight fit.
When did that happen, I wondered?
As I reached the uppermost echelon of the women’s plus-size clothing scale, I found myself regularly sizing up other perceived super fat women, a game a friend dubbed, “Am I that fat?”
Once I turned 39, my youth flashed before my eyes. It required a wide screen.
Women contestants on the popular weight loss TV show “Biggest Loser” weighed less than me. Now there was a big shot of reality.
Here was another: I’m pre-diabetic, and the nasty disease runs on both sides of my family. And another: Once you hit 40, creeping health problems start gaining momentum.
Fat and young, there was plenty of time to change my life. Fat and middle-age, there was plenty of time to realize how much time I wasted already. No more excuses. It’s now or never.
Last January, I started reshaping my life, eating better and working out at home starting with 30 minutes, 3 days a week. I did that for six months until I started finding reasons to skip a day or do 15 minutes, not 30. Giving up wasn’t an option, so I finally joined the gym, and the rest is history, sort of.
A year later, I’m still a work in progress -- emphasis on progress.
Seven months later I’m still technically obese by government BMI standards. But I’m not as super-sized. My body is shrinking in ways I find almost science-fiction-like. I’ve dropped five pants sizes. I weigh about what I did 10 years ago. In the last two months, more people are noticing less of me, including strangers at the gym who approach me and say how great I look.
“You’re melting away,” one tells me.
Equally important, I feel better than I ever thought I would. The better I feel, the more I want to find out if I can feel even better.
It took me a long time to get my body this out of shape. It’s going to take a long time to fix it.
Good thing I am a patient woman.
Health reporter Jo Ciavaglia encourages people to say hi to her at the gym, and send her their weight loss, nutrition and fitness stories, tips, advice, recipes, encouragement and ideas as she believes the more help the better for everyone pursuing a healthy lifestyle quest.
Additional information :
Is it time to lose your vir-gym-nity?: from www.phillyburbs.com