Wake Up, Dormant Muscles!

If it weren’t for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all.

~ Joey Adams, comedian

Oh yeah, this should be good… 

I often claim that I’m just a pregnant person with a baby inside me that’s 20 years overdue (mommy’s ready for you to come out NOW!).  My extra weight has been with me since grade 3, when my father would pick me up from school during lunch break and we’d eat McDonald’s almost EVERY SINGLE DAY for a good year.  (Yup, I was ahead of Morgan Spurlock and his “Super Size Me” experiment by about 14 years, only I didn’t have a video camera documenting it.)  In fact, I remember one time when my dad took me home for lunch instead of Mickey D’s because my grandma had made some fresh, homemade dumplings.  Man, I threw a fit and a half.  I cried, I screamed, I held my breath, I refused to get out of the car because I wanted my Big Mac, dammit!!!  We ended up eating reheated dumplings for dinner that night instead.  Sorry, grandma, but that “special sauce” in the Big Mac, which I’m still claiming is just Thousand Island salad dressing, is just so good!

So as you can see, I was (and probably still am, but to a lesser degree) a pig, and judging from the story above, a bossy pig.  I try to eat healthier nowadays and to be more conscious of what I’m ingesting.  I’ve also been cutting out a lot of carbs and sugar from my diet and that is hard.  You try cutting out rice when you’re Chinese and all you see on the dinner table are bowls of rice everywhere!  I managed to lose 20 pounds from doing this alone, but I wanted more.  Or, should I say, I wanted less… weight.  So, I took it to the next level: signing up for the gym.

Actually, I’ve been talking about joining a gym for the longest time.  But, from a bad past experience of being sucked into a 2-year contract at a major chain gym (let’s just say they consider themselves an entire “World” of Fitness) and ended up having to pay $500 to get out of it, I was turned off of working out for a while.  Besides, I needed to find a gym where I don’t feel intimidated by the buff gym bunnies and jocks.  I’ve heard horror stories from my friends about joining gyms where both the clients AND trainers would give the evil eye to anyone who is even remotely, heaven forbid, less than toned.  No, thank you.  I just want to slip in and out unnoticed.

I had a friend who also wanted to join the gym and she was telling me about a local gym that she wanted to try out called Denman Fitness.  We got a gym tour on one hot summer’s day last September from one of the trainers there called Marc.  He was very nice and was candid about how one of the great attributes about this gym (and a good reason for me as well) is that it isn’t super busy.  I hate having to wait for equipment and just stand there uncomfortably.  I also liked the fact that it is split level, the manual weight machines were in the bottom level, while the treadmills and bike machines etc were on the upper level.  That way, the novice gym-goers like myself can be in our own little world while all the “Ahh-nolds” and “Situations” can bench press and do ab crunches downstairs.   My friend and I then made it our new year’s resolution to go to the gym.

Fast forward to December 20, 2010.  We are now sitting in the gym lobby waiting for our complimentary consultation with a personal trainer.  I was über-nervous for a few reasons:  1) I don’t like being weighed, judged, etc.  2) I have absolutely no knowledge in fitness and didn’t want to sound like a dumbass in front of the trainer and 3) I really didn’t know what to expect from something like this.  My last experience at a personal trainer “consultation” was at the aforementioned chain gym where the whole time the “trainer” was trying to get me to sign a contract for 2 years and then said, “Here’s the changing room.  Have fun! (Sucker.)”  Hmm…  This time around, I had already paid for the gym membership so I was curious as to what really happens. 

I was pleasantly surprised.  Doug the trainer got me to fill out a health questionnaire, and asked about what my goal was for signing up. He then asked me about my sports participating history, which only consists of competitive swimming when I was a teenager as part of the Killarney Gators.  Did I hear a snicker from you??  Oh, hush.  Yes, I used to swim competitively.  I have team pictures to prove it but I won’t post them here as I was in nothing but swimming trunks.  (Stop howling!  You’re making me blush!)  Okay, back to consultation, Doug then went through all the circuit training equipment one by one and demonstrated how each one worked, and got me to try each one until I felt comfortable and even wrote down my seat position at each machine for my reference.  Ah, so that’s what an actual personal trainer consultation was all about.  And there was no weighing involved!  I’d go for more if they weren’t $68 per session!  Actually, they are well worth the price for the information you receive.  At least go for the initial consultation so you can get any questions you have answered.

Since then, I have been faithfully going to the gym at least twice a week and spending at least 30 minutes on the elliptical and then a couple reps on the circuit machines.  Doug did mention one point that is really true.  Working out only accounts for 20% of losing weight with the 80% being other living habits including eating patterns (I tend to stress eat), sleeping patterns (I tend to lose sleep due to stress) and working situation (the cause of my constantly increasing stress).  Therefore, I haven’t been losing a tremendous amount of weight in the last few months, but I believe that I have been gaining muscle mass.  My body feels more solid and I am more energetic than I’ve been for a long while.  Even though my body would ache like a mothereff-er the morning after a workout,  I’d say it’s quite worth it.  I mean, I need something to counterbalance all the stress eating, right?  Haha.

Speaking of eating, now that I’m done writing, I’m feeling kinda hungry.  What should I eat?  Mmm, a Big Mac sounds good right now.  Wait, I need to eat healthy.  I better just stick to eating some baby carrots dipped in Thousand Island dressing instead.  Pfft… Big Mac “Special Sauce”, my ass.

**Note:  I am not affiliated with Denman Fitness, just a satisfied customer.  Also, I’m no longer a fan of the Big Mac or anything from the McDonald’s menu, except maybe the Creme Egg McFlurry.**