Good Lord, that hurts...

...and I wish it would stop.

Today's blog follows my trials and tribulations, successes and failures at that land of mystical machines, pulled muscles, and inferiority complexes: the gym.

The gym and I have a strained relationship.  I will commit to it like it is my best friend for about a month and then suddenly, with no warning, I am gone.  I think to myself, "I have been so good.  Surely, it is no problem to skip today.  Besides I have something else to do."  Or perhaps something less positive, more along the lines of, "I have been working out for a month and nothing is happening.  If anything, I think I feel more chubby today.  I hate you, gym, and I am never speaking to you again!"  Or maybe it is something far less dramatic, like "O, I love this show!"

Though I often quit on the gym, I am occasionally provoked.  The gym is occasionally mean to me, the abuser in an abusive relationship, if you will.  Sometime the gym throws several tiny, beautiful girls with not an ounce of fat on their bodies directly into my path.  Sometimes these tiny girls get on the treadmill next to me and don't even go as fast as I do, but they still remain tiny.  Sometimes I see someone doing a new weight-lifting exercise and I decide, "Hey!  They are in great shape!  If I do that, I will be in great shape!"  And using the ever-popular "the more it hurts, the quicker I will be skinny" mentality, I often end up injuring myself.  Last week I remembered being in good shape when I was in soccer so I decided to do some of the old soccer exercises.  This was a mistake.  My thighs did not respond to my commands for four days.  It was unfortunate.

However, this time, I am trying so hard to be positive.  I really want to make this relationship work, gym.  I want us to be allies.  And, damn it, I want to be in good shape.  I know this is shallow and silly, but swimsuit season is coming and I refuse to believe that I have lost my potential to be hot.  I am irreversibly pale.  A toned form is the only thing I can possibly have going for me in summer.

I have been working so hard.  Ok, not as hard as I should because my workouts are tempered by strange forms of laziness.  I work out in the afternoons after I get off work because I am too lazy to do it before work.  I also usually go every other day which equals out to three or four times a week.  If I don't find a random reason to skip (but we're meeting people later and I won't have time to shower!  my hair takes so long to dry!  the kettleballs laughed at me last time!), I am there every other day. 

I am also not the most dedicated of healthy eaters.  Let's take this week, for example.  I was doing so well.  I ate veggies in creative ways (I made a vegetable curry!), we had lean meats or no meats, I got a veggie sandwich at subway (see?  sacrifices!)...but then the weekend came.  Tyler was out of town Friday night and I decided the only thing that could comfort me was a cheese pizza.  This might have been fine if I had not eaten over half the pizza that night.  Then today I had this soup from safeway that is just so delicious, but has enough fats in it to virtually equal drinking straight cream.  Why do I do this to myself?  I try so hard and then sabotage myself and whine about how I am not getting skinnier.

No more messing around, body.  I have been reading fitness and health magazines.  I have been watching labels on my food (and I'm going to pay attention to them this time too!).  I am going to use a kettleball without inflicting serious damage on myself.

The only other real issue I need to get over is people looking at me when I lift.  Last time I was at the gym, I was using the kettleballs for the first time.  There was a diagram right on the wall of some exercises to do.  I know I was doing it correctly.  But there was a guy standing directly behind me doing nothing but staring at me while I did those squat-things.  It was creepy.  I couldn't tell if I was doing it wrong, if he was checking me out, or if he was considering beating me to death with a kettleball and hiding my body in the sand of the volleyball pit.  I wish he had been aware that I was facing a mirror and could see him the whole time.  Seriously, don't look at me funny when I do these things.  With lifting, I am already half-certain I am doing it wrong.

I am not afraid of you, gym (it sounds like I am talking to a person.  My occasionally-abusive on-again-off-again boyfriend, Jim.  Anyhow).  I am coming to you tonight and I will be sweaty and gross and not as toned as the skinny girls you throw in front of me.  But I will be healthy!  I will be strong!  And, at the very least, I will reach that mystical point where I am not just seldom self-conscious, but never self conscious!

Your move, gym.