Challenge...

Considering I didn't make it to the gym over the weekend and neglected to do the same on Monday night (though I did do some exercise at home, including a 1.75 mile walk) I really feel the need to make up for lost work out time. Plus it's been a million and a half years since I swam (that's not even a slight exaggeration) and with all the hot weather lately, I've had a hankering to get in the pool. Side note: what the heck kind of word is 'hankering'?

I head over about forty five minutes before my scheduled training session, knowing that time will be sucked up by changing into and out of my swimsuit and what not. Apparently there's a water aerobics class that is about to start because there are old people as far as the eye can see. That and the number of available lanes have been cut down to three and I have to wait because all three are filled. I don't know if I left enough time in my schedule to wait for a lane to become available. It's made even worse by the face that one of the lanes is taken up by a man who has no business swimming because he is awful at it.

So I sit and I sulk. I've become very good at sulking, lately. I like to think it makes me look intimidating and I will maybe scare someone out of one of the lanes if I look angry enough. The problem is I can never maintain my sulkiness because a wonderful pleasant woman (after making three laps in the pool) asks if I'm waiting for a lane. I am, I reply, my scowl instantly morphing into a giant smile. She offers me her lane because all she has left to do is stretch on the stairs in the pool and her lane melds with the stairs. Thank you so much! That's so kind of you.Truthfully, I am a giant softy at heart. There's no way I can actually continue to be mean.

I should probably even take back that nasty thing I said about the gentleman who can't swim, because I didn't exactly look like an expert my first time back in the pool in several months. Eventually I find my rhythm and can at least survive. I even lap the other two that are in the pool, making me feel like an exceptionally good swimmer.

Let me tell you why swimming is annoying and why I have so much respect for swimmers. Swimming is, near as I can tell, the only form of exercise where you are actively holding your breath while you are exerting energy. In all of my now vast experience with exercise, breathing is a huge part of it. There is a rhythm to breathing in swimming, but it's not as simple as breath in during eccentric movements and exhale during concentric movements (yes, I had to look that up, so what?). 

After the pool, I head to the cardio room to do my session and wait for Justin to retrieve me. We do more bench presses, and step ups (a first for my sessions) and I have to do all my hovering from the floor. During the rotation, I find myself getting into an argument with Justin about him being kind of sneaky. It all starts because he has swapped our Tuesday time to 7:00 instead of 6:30. Not a big deal, but I made an offhand comment about it and he got a little defensive. Then, when I'm doing the bench pressing he is several numbers ahead of me in reps. I only counted seven and he thinks I'm on eight. That, to me, sounds like a ploy to make me think I'm doing better than I actually am. Is this a thing? Do trainer's do this? Does he also pretend I've been planking for a minute when it's only been thirty seconds and that's why I have such a hard time planking for a full minute when I'm at home?! It's a conspiracy, similar to what happens whenever I take art classes. I always think I'm doing an amazing job when I'm in the art room, but if I take it home, it's like my talent was not aware that it was supposed to come with me.

Somehow, after our debate about this issue and me insisting that I get a full half hour I end up on Justin's "Drop-kick list" which actually exists. Go ahead and try to lift me up and drop kick me. I would be quite impressed. We end with curl presses and side hovers (which are more awful than regular hovers) and Justin challenging me to give him one full month where I go to the gym five days a week between sessions and classes. He seems to think it will be my best month ever. We'll see how that actually turns out. By the way, Thursday is a measurement day.

Natural...

For some unknown reason, I have committed to attend a 5:45am workout class taught by Taylor. The class in question? Body Pump. During this class, you apparently do as much as 800 reps during a single hour-long class. And that's what I have foolishly decided to try at 5:45 in the morning. Apparently I felt like I needed to be punished for some unknown mistake that I made during the preceding week.

I did have to clear my decision with Justin the night before, as I would have training that night, as well. I didn't know if I was even going to be allowed to do such a thing. But he said that was fine and so here I am, at 5:30 in the morning, on my way to the gym, wondering aloud, 'What on earth is wrong with me?' I don't come up with an answer before I walk in to the studio, which is insanely crowded.

Thank goodness Taylor is here for my first time at Body Pump. I have no idea what I need or what weights to use, but thankfully she grabs it all and puts the weights on and tells me to have fun. Fun. Yeah, right. The hour long workout is full of bicep curls, dead lifts, overhead presses, tricep dips, push ups, and crunches. And it hurts. The push ups and the tricep dips are the most difficult for me. By the end of the workout, however, I do actually think I enjoyed myself. At least enough to go back and try it again.

I have to say, I feel pretty good for the rest of the day. Just the right amount of sore to make me feel like I really did something that is effective. It carries me all the way through to my personal training session with Justin. And then talk about feeling fit. I do more push ups, jumping jacks, squats, crunches, planking, and kettle bell swings. Though it takes me a little bit of practice to actually be able to do the kettle bell swings correctly. I have this awful tendency to use my lower back instead of my butt.

I've complained about it before and I'll complain about it again. Our bodies should naturally do things that right way. I shouldn't be able to lift with my back instead of my legs. I should naturally do kettle bell swings using my butt! My core should naturally automatically be engaged! These are now the things that I must make my habits.

Also, I gave Joe the opportunity to redeem himself for the watery smoothie he made me on Tuesday. Success. It was the perfect consistency. So great job, Joe! And check out the Photo Progress section of the blog. You should be just as pleased as I am with what you find.

Expectations...

Memorial Day happened. And I made some awful decisions that led to a less than successful Tuesday night workout. Basically I spent most of the day on Monday eating. And I was eating things that I should not have been eating. I ate Dominos. Like a lot of Dominos. Because despite paying monthly for a gym membership, I still don't care enough to eat healthily. Not to mention I didn't even work out on Monday. I sabotaged myself. I caved in to the promise of greasy delicious pizza and let that trump my desire to be what I've never been: skinny.

Despite walking/jogging later in the evening with Liz (Best Friend Rachel's roommate) all I could think about was how I had failed and succumbed to weakness. I don't know if it's as hard for everyone else to resist as it is for me, but it seems incredibly difficult. And ridiculous. For example, if I get it in my head that I want Dominos, I find myself being incredibly sad until I actually order it. Once I place my order and know it's coming, I'm ecstatic. That is until I consume the entire pizza and a sandwich. Then I feel disgusting and awful because I'm a horrible person.

I'm a slave to food. I never learned to eat in a healthy way and I find the self discipline to learn now impossible. Did I make awful decisions on Tuesday? You bet. I had twinkies as a snack. I knew I shouldn't have, but I wanted them and why should I deny myself a temporary joy that will only lead to self loathing?

Justin adjusted the time of our training session to later than usual so I do some yoga when I get home, and then head to the gym to do my cardio workout before the training session. I downloaded a 'Couch to 5K' app because for some reason I have been enjoying jogging. It's hard and I sweat a lot. I also make a huge mistake and pick a treadmill in front of a mirror.

I do not recommend this. It's upsetting to see what my body does when I'm trying to better myself through exercise. Every time I run for a minute all I see is my bouncing mass and I get mad, frustrated, depressed, embarrassed. I did this to myself. I did it for my entire life up until this point, and even now, I'm not doing all I can. How can I simultaneously want something so much and not care enough to do it? It doesn't seem fair.

Unfortunately for Justin, my mood follows me into the personal training session. We're in the functional training room for the session and either because I'm very transparent or Justin is very good at reading people he asks me what's wrong? 'Nothing. I just want to do this.' Only a partial lie. I really do want to do this. As proved by my Saturday workout, anger can be a great motivator for me. So to start I do a minute of wall sits, thirty seconds of jumping jacks, and a minute hover. I cycle through that three or four times. I can't really remember.

Justin is his usual cheerful encouraging self, even singing about how many seconds I have left along with Flo Rida. And it does help, especially during the hovers. We move on to some presses from the floor and some step back lunges. While I'm doing the lunges Justin says 'Come on, stay with me.' For some reason this ticks me off. And apparently I make a face because Justin asks what it's for. 'I don't want to leave, just so you know.' He asks what I mean. 'I'm doing it, how the hell am I not with you?' Conversation stops at that point. I finish up the rest of the session with side hovers added to the lunges and presses.

Ultimately the thing that frustrates me is that my best isn't good enough. I thought I was doing well and for some reason, a comment that is often said during the session rubs me the wrong way. I wasn't even close to giving up but apparently looked like it. I'm pushing myself and decided that Justin's comment meant that he didn't think I was doing a good enough job. That's not what he said. He was attempting to keep me focused on the exercise and to ignore any sort of muscle exhaustion. Perfectly reasonable.

What is really going through my head is that my best isn't good enough for me. I hate that I didn't do this a long time ago. I should be better at this stuff and I'm not. My best is constantly not good enough for me and maybe that's because I secretly know it's not my best. If I had been trying my best since I started I would be significantly farther than being down only thirty five pounds. I should be down sixty or one hundred pounds. I should have to self control to say no to Dominos. I should have to drive to get out of bed each morning and exercise to change what I hate about myself. I should want to be pushing myself daily. Instead I use what I do accomplish as an excuse to make bad decisions.

My hope is that forcing myself to do that which I detest at times, will lead to me embracing the sweat. It will lead to me looking at a body that I hate and thinking about where I'm going instead of how I got to where I am. It will motivate me to not go backwards and fall into old habits. It will lead to a better life that I enjoy.

Shenanigans...

Given the amount of traffic on my last post, I've decided to constantly hit you with my vulnerability. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm using my vulnerability as a weapon. Which makes me sound awful but all I really mean to say is that if my most popular posts are ones that I am convinced will be embarrassing and they are the ones that people appreciate the most, maybe I need to suck it up and take a few risks. We'll see how that manifests itself in the coming days.

Thursday night was a generally successful training session. At least as far as I can remember. That's the downside to waiting to post until the day after (or sometimes six days after) a session: I tend to forget what actually happened. I do remember doing my first ever real bench presses, however. So cross that off of my bucket list. Interesting that it took me eight months to work up to what I consider to be a very standard exercise to do at the gym. Maybe this is reflective of my procrastinating nature, but I can't take all the blame. Justin had sixteen sessions prior to this one to have me do some bench pressing and he chose not too. Maybe I was not mentally prepared for the challenge of bench pressing. Who knows.

I also remember that I went to CX Works again. Only this time I dragged Fit Andrew along. Thank goodness he was willing to go with me because Best Friend Rachel was not. Let me preface the following with this statement: I am proud of all the work that I have done. That statement does not make it easier to sit through a half hour class where I mentally convince myself that I can't physically do some of the things required. I'm choosing to phrase it that way because Justin is constantly telling me that the reason I can't do things like wall sits or hovers is more a result of my brain not thinking I can rather than my body actually being unable to do it. 

And this is why I hate Fit Andrew, on occasion. He can basically do anything. I've come to CX Works a couple of times and while I have seen improvement, a lot of the time I'm simply collapsed in a heap on the floor rather than actually exercising. And he struts in having never taken the class before and mildly breaks a sweat on one exercise. It's not fair for me to hold that against him; he's put in the work in the past. But that doesn't make it any easier to be the person sitting next to him who can only do two leg extensions before having to take a break.

Here's the problem I continually come up against: despite knowing that there is no point in comparing myself to someone who is leaps and bounds ahead of where I am in the great world of physical fitness, I do it anyways. Who is going to feel successful when comparing accomplishments against someone with a very obvious advantage. I can't even run a mile so why on earth would I compare myself to a person who runs marathons. They can do twenty six more miles than I can. No duh. Because they've trained. They didn't start out running twenty six miles. But I still get mad that I can't do that! I'm telling you, it makes no logical sense.

Fortunately or unfortunately logic doesn't really come into play at the gym. By all logic I would not want to try lifting 150 or 200 lbs just for the sake of proving I can. At the gym people do it constantly. Other animals simply get there exercise by going about living. Humans run with no purpose other than to burn calories. That is not logical by the laws of nature. There is no physical destination that we are running towards. Just the promise of a healthier body.

On Saturday, I make every attempt to start my day off as healthily as possible. This three day weekend promises to feature a lot of food and I feel the need to preemptively burn calories. I try to wake up by 7:00 to get to the gym for a class at 7:30. Not only do I wake up a mere fifteen minutes before the class starts, but by the time I get there and see that I have no clue who the teacher is, I psych myself out and can't make myself go into the studio. My trip is almost in vain except that I force myself to do some seated rows and bicep curls. A grand total of fifteen minutes of exercise when it should have been an hour.

I go home and waste some time. I still have plans to go to spin at 10:00 after I get my oil changed. I head to Jiffy Lube with what I think is enough time to get my oil changed and have time to spare, but apparently everyone and there mother (literally, there was a mother/daughter pair) wanted their oil changed. So I make it to the gym several minutes after spin starts. I am not one to enter late to anything, so I decide to just do the treadmill and then leave.

Apparently anger is a great motivator (though I'll also attribute some of it to the wonderful music of Robyn). I start off by jogging for three solid minutes. Three minutes! I take a two minute walk break and then jog for two minutes! A two minute walk break and then one minute of jogging! Then I stick to one minute increments because I'm tired. But with all of that motivation I do a mile in just over twelve minutes. Now that's an accomplishment I can be proud of.

I don't quite make two miles by the end of my walk/run because I walk for the last ten minutes of my thirty minutes. I leave the gym proud of my accomplishment, though still disappointed in the lack of success based on my intended plan for the day. Sometimes you have to roll with the punches and fit in whatever exercise you can. So there are my wise words for the day. Take it or leave it.

Perspective...

I wake up this morning incredibly sore, especially my inner and outer thighs. I know yesterday was my leg day but this isn't usually how I feel when I wake up. I'll take that as an encouragement that I'm doing something right. Oddly enough, soreness is encouragement. Though please don't misunderstand me and think that I'm saying soreness is pleasant. It is far from pleasant. My entire day is spent hobbling from location to location and trying to move as little as possible because my muscles hurt so bad.

By the time 6:00 rolls around and Fit Andrew and I leave for the gym, my muscles have loosened up and it doesn't take too much effort to walk. Though the stairs at the gym still give me a bit of a workout. The thing I'm dreading the most is the warm up. The cross trainer is a terror on your legs, in terms of the burning and working of muscles. And on sore muscles? I can only imagine what that's like and it looks something like the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan (cheesy joke alert post cheesy joke).

I have to start out slow, unfortunately. Though, truth be told, that's the whole point of a warm up. You gradually work up to where you need to be for the subsequent workout (boy I sound like a fitness genius right now). It is slower than usual, however; a sign of my fatigue. I get through two songs that puts my warm up right at eight minutes. After a quick wipe down of the machine, WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD DO, I run into Justin on his way to retrieve me.

We start with pull downs, tricep pushes and one minute hovers. The hovers are really killing me, today. My abs are sore and I start to feel like I'm losing control of my muscles. That proves that they work. If you ever doubted, shame on you. You should have to do hovers as a punishment.

Here's my one complaint about weight lifting: The whole business of have to consciously use the muscles you're supposed to use is bogus. The moves should just automatically work the correct muscles. I don't like it when Justin has to tell me to be sure to pull my shoulder blades together as I do the pull downs. Shouldn't that just be what happens? I think it should.

We move on to a machine in the cardio room and try to do another pull down exercise, but I am too tall. I had no idea you could be too tall to do an exercise. But I guess at six foot four, it really is quite possible. So instead I have to do a half squat row. Squats are not nice to do when your quads are in pain to begin with. It is especially not nice when you have to maintain a half squat while doing a row. My back feels tight, my legs hurt, my neck starts to get a little sore, it's a generally awful experience. But I have been doing a great job, if I do say so myself, of not voicing those complaints during the training session. Apart from the intial "you're awful", "I hate you", or, "you're so mean."

We end with single tricep pushes (I guess it's an arm heavy day) and Justin then makes me go to a half hour CX Works class. This class is an intense half hour of strength exercise and core exercise and squatting and lunging and planking and hovering and it's awful and wonderful all at the same time. When you do this class it is very apparent from minute one that you are working your muscles. Basically it extended my personal training session by half an hour and amped up the intensity by about fifty. Simply because it's so fast paced.

It really does feel good to be getting back into the habit of making it to the gym. We'll see if I say the same thing tomorrow, considering I will yet again be to the gym at 6:00am, but I have a feeling that I will. It just feels good to know that I'm doing something that's good for me, regardless of how I feel in the moment. That's why I hope that Justin or Kiki or any other instructor doesn't only take my 'during' reaction as how I really feel. I love it all.

Anxiety...

I thought I knew what stress felt like. I've done live theatre, what could be more stressful than that? Apparently resuming personal training is. I get home from work and begin to put together my gym bag (I bought a real one!) with my workout gear and headphones and my heart rate quickens ever so slightly. I get in the car with Andrew and drive to the gym, but we get stopped by a train. My heart rate goes up a lot and I start to feel panicky. Finally, I'm walking up the stairs to the gym and I feel like I could pass out.

It's not like Justin is super mean. I have no idea why I'm crazy freaking out, today, but the idea of doing personal training is causing me to feel so anxious. Unnaturally anxious. Ke$ha doesn't even make me feel better during my warm up, which is really strange. After seven and a half minutes, I head out to find Justin and I'm having an out of body experience. So, in an effort to be honest, I let him know that I am terrified of the session, today.

His response is amazing and this is why everyone if they're anyone should come to the BAC and hire Justin. He says, "I'm not going to kick your ass on your first day back." It's only slightly encouraging, but it does enough to make me try hard for the next half hour. He has me do standing presses and wall sits (which I fail miserably at) and shoulder presses and hovers, which make me unhealthily angry. I hate you, you are so mean. Yeah, this guy who I was just saying was so incredibly nice quickly made me shift my opinion quite rapidly by having me do hovers. Hovers are awful. Clearly we as human beings are not meant to hover.

We end the session with tricep curls, which I am overly confident in my ability to perform. We start with some pitiful weight of around twelve pounds. Ridiculous. Justin admits that it could be too light. I usually do eighty. False. He one hundred percent doubts me but when I insist he puts the weight at eighty. I do not usually do eighty, I realize. Boom, blow to the ego. We bring it down to a much more manageable twentyish pounds and I do three reps of fifteen. While I do this, we map out my workout plan for the week, which includes a trip to the gym at 6AM tomorrow morning. I hate 6AM, but that's the only time I can do, tomorrow and I'm not making the same mistake as last time by not supplementing my training sessions with my own workouts. 

I end my workout with a twenty minute treadmill time. Best Friend Rachel emerges from her class and I convince her to walk with me. I walk for two minutes at a leisurely pace and kick it up, in both speed and incline for the following minute, all the way to the nineteen minute mark. Then, I jog for the last minute. I jog at 6.1 miles per hour. And I live. I'm truly an inspiration to myself. I'm also truly disgusting to myself. No, really. I smell awful at this point. Thank goodness I get to go home and shower after this.

Miracle...

To be completely honest, I have found it very difficult to get back into the swing of things ever since my personal training sessions ended. Maybe it's because I have no obligatory appointment to make and it now rests solely on my shoulders to make it to the gym, but I just haven't been as thrilled about exercise, lately. And this makes what I am about to tell you that much more amazing.

This morning I randomly began the day with $20 in my pocket. I never carry cash because it's so easy for me to spend. I know the whatever I do with the cash I have on hand won't directly affect my bank account and so I often make foolish decisions with that cash. This morning is no exception. On my way out the door I decide to go to the convenience store that is next door to my house and purchase two $10 scratch cards. What did I tell you? I make foolish decisions with my cash.

I drive to work with these tickets sitting in my front seat, listening to the radio and contemplating the day I have ahead of me. I tend to get very reflective when I'm driving by myself. I pull in to the parking lot and enter the office, tickets in hand. I spend a few minutes busying myself with checking voicemails and emails, sorting through some paperwork, and wishing I was still back in bed asleep before I finally decide to see what I didn't win. And this is what I find:

That's ten $50 wins, baby

I am so stunned, I can hardly believe it. Please note that I am in NO WAY ADVOCATING lottery tickets. They are a huge waste of money and you will rarely win anything. That being said, occasionally luck is on your side and you win $500. Oh what I could do with this money! And then I realize what I must do. I must purchase additional personal training sessions. And that's exactly what I do. After work I go to the gym and use that $500 towards the purchase of sixteen additional personal training sessions with Justin. And then I go to Target and edit my availability so that I always have Tuesdays and Thursdays off to do my personal training for the next eight weeks, because I am not going to do what I did last time and not take full advantage of this opportunity to be trained. I can't have a blog about losing weight and working out if I only work out once a week.

I also do yoga when I get home, because now that I'm re-committing myself to exercise (for what seems like the eighth or ninth time) I'm going to recommit myself in every facet of my life. It's an exciting twenty minute yoga workout because: I do my 'runner's lunge' without my knee on the ground,  I do my planks on my toes instead of my knees, and I am actually able to lower myself to the ground slowly instead of simply dropping face down to the floor like a buttered piece of toast.

I even grocery shop and buy Tupperware so that I can make myself some salads to bring to work instead of eating unhealthy food off of the food truck, and I buy new gym shoes. Guys, life is awesome. I'm so excited about what will happen during the next two months, provided I can keep this motivation up. I hope you'll enjoy reading about it as much as I'll enjoy telling you about it. 

Final...

I guess everything ends at some point. Whether it's good or bad, nothing lasts forever, unless it's a Nokia phone. And I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at dealing with change. Sure I cried like a baby when I "graduated" from middle school, but that sadness lasted for only 15 minutes post ceremony. For some reason, the knowledge that I'm headed to my last personal training session feels equal parts terrifying and sad. Will I be able to push myself now that I won't have Justin encouraging me throughout the entire workout? Will I even feel the need to go to the gym without a scheduled appointment making me go?

I guess these are questions that only time can answer. Right now, I have to change and warm up. It's kind of busy tonight, and I'm forced to warm up next to a young woman who is really booking it on that cross trainer. My only hope is that I look half as intense as she does. While I'm confident that I have graduated beyond being somebody that people are amused to watch on any exercise machine, I'm a far cry from being someone that people look at with admiration. Seven and a half minutes, one Rihanna song and one Imagine Dragons song later, I am warmed up and ready for whatever Justin has to throw at me.

Or so I think. Instead of heading to any of our usual zones to workout, we go right back to the cardio machines and hop on a treadmill. Tabata has returned. For those of you who are unaware, Tabata is apparently one of the most effective ways to burn fat. It's a method of training that is comprised of longer high-intensity intervals with short periods of rest in between. For example, we start on the treadmill with the incline at max (15) and the speed at 3.5 mph. Twenty seconds on, ten seconds standing still. I repeat this eight times. In case you were wondering, yes, my life is awful.

After the treadmill (keep in mind, I've just been walking and I am already really sweaty) we move on to squat thrusts. The thrusting part is surprisingly challenging, even with only ten or fifteen pound weights. Truthfully I have no idea how heavy they are. All I can think about is how I would like to punch Justin in the face. My arms are the worst and all the while I'm on the verge of tears, all Justin says is, 'Don't stop, no resting. Get ready. Don't quit. You can't quit." There's a difference between quitting and feeling like my arms will fall off if I do one more thrust.

But maybe his goal was to make me mad because my rage fuels my muscles and I go through the whole way. It may be slow, but I make it through all eight sets. Then we move on to rowing. Twenty seconds on, ten off. My shirt keeps getting caught on the back of the row machine while I row, and it's really obnoxious. My lower back starts to feel it on the second set, and I have six more sets that I have to do. Awesome.

I make it through (truth be told, I kind of enjoy rowing) and we move on to the bike. The stupid exercise bike. I notice that I am sporting a sweat bra in the mirror. I have sweated through in apparently all the right places to perfectly outline my breasts. Yippee. 

See it? Terrible.

I have to decide not to care because I have this biking thing to do. I am on the bike simulator that has an actual course that mandates that I steer while I ride. I've heard the expression about muscles screaming but this is the first time I have actually experienced it. My thighs hurt so badly. Each pedal motion feels like it could be my last. I don't want to die on an exercise bike with a sweat bra. What an unglamorous way to go. Once again, I want gifts at my feet. Thankfully, I finish the mile long course in seven sets instead of eight and don't have to do another one.

For the final exercise of the evening, we head to the training room to do the ropes. I've never done eight sets on the ropes before and every time I've done the ropes it hasn't been after twenty five minutes of intense working out. This could be bad. Every set is comprised of slamming both arms at the same time. I feel it in my back, I feel it in my arms, I feel it in my legs, I feel it everywhere. I'm not personally bothered by cursing, but the amount of expletives going through my head seem excessive, even to me. Thanks Justin. Way to make my last session completely awful.

Sixteen sessions have been completed. I now have experience with personal training. Would I do it again? Absolutely. However awful I feel during a workout pales in comparison to the way I feel afterwards. The sense of accomplishment and the feeling of sore muscles are totally worth whatever pain or frustration I feel in the moment. I'm going to do more sessions and if you feel like you're lacking motivation, I highly recommend it. I have to resume finding and maintaining my motivation outside of these mandatory training sessions if I want to succeed (which, to be clear, I do).

Stereotypes...

The expiration of my training sessions is drawing closer and closer. It's been quite an experience, let me tell you. Full of ups and downs and experiences and knowledge. Much like life. Earth shattering comparison, I know. For my second to last training session, I'm as pumped as ever. Justin is running a little bit behind schedule, but I have no where super important to be, so I'm not bothered. And let me take this opportunity to say that Justin is amazingly punctual. This is the first time I have had to wait in my entire 16 sessions. I really appreciate a person who is respectful enough to be on time.

It ends up working for my benefit as I was a little detained doing what every body has to do at some point. At least I know I'm eating enough fiber. I take my extra time and get a full warm up in before we begin the workout. First up is a weighted squat. I've never done these before. A part of me is terrified that I'm going to collapse and be crushed by this bar that I have over my shoulders. I complete fifteen reps without much to complain about, except that my shoulders somewhat hurt from the hyperextension. I alternate with push ups.

But here's where things get a bit exciting. There is no bar involved in these push ups. No sir (or ma'am). These are on the floor girly push ups with my knees on the ground. Before we go further, yes, I understand that what I have just said is sexist. I fully believe that women can do push ups just as well as men. In fact, I complain to Justin about that fact the I'm so excited to be able to do girly push ups and he tells me that most of his male clients do them from the knees and most of his female clients do them from their toes. Slap that stereotype right in the face. It's simply a tool to describe the form that I use with my push ups. Get over it. But I do twelve of them, and it's an accomplishment that I am determined to celebrate.

Before I can finish my weighted squats, I go through two modifications so that I am as comfortable as I can be (we settle on holding a kettlebell at my sternum) while I'm doing squats. Each set of push ups is difficult, but I get it done, because I can not be stopped. After I do three sets for each, we head in to the gym for the next exercise. I'm entering the very room where I almost died the week before. And you know what I have to do? The same thing. Well, an edited version. Instead of going back and forth twice, I only have to go once. And I have 90 seconds for each time. Whatever is leftover I get to use as a break. I push that thing four times and each time I get it done in right around 15 seconds. That's 75 seconds of rest, which feels incredibly necessary.

It's very satisfying to redeem myself by succeeding at something that seemed impossible the week before. Incredibly thrilling, even. And that high remains as I do my core exercises and end with twenty solid minutes on the cross trainer. I feel successful at the end and that is a feeling that makes me want to keep going. I conquered something that was hard. I struggled but I finished. The outlook is very grim when you struggle and fail, but to finish is to keep clinging to the motivation that I have. Tomorrow I have a follow up doctor's appointment and I am excited to share my progress with my doctor. It gives me a chance to brag, which I clearly love to do.

One...

It's measurement day. Measurement day is always an intimidating day. So there was this one time I bought a bathroom scale because I thought it would encourage me to be more healthy because I'd constantly want to weigh myself. I would like to ask if there is a single person existing in the world who wants to weigh themselves, because if there is, they are probably a body builder or a wrestler. No one enjoys forcing themselves to step on a scale; this little thing that can literally shatter someone's self confident in a matter of seconds. Curse you, scale. Curse you.

Walking in to the gym, I see Matt and stop to say hi and show off my new piercing that makes me feel super bad-ass. I literally am arriving to the gym fresh from the piercing place. Because that's how I roll. I get a needle shoved into my ear and then I go workout because pain doesn't faze me. I'm one tough dude. I also may be kind of a loser. To avoid the wrath of Justin, I keep my small talk to a minimum and change quickly, dash back upstairs and prepare myself for utter humiliation.

Tragus piercing. Like a boss.

I'm terrified to look at the results of my weigh in and insist that Justin not tell me. March has been a bad month for me. The exercise hasn't been consistent and I have been eating terribly. It sucks because this March was a full month of personal training and I should have been excited by the prospect of making real progress enough to actually monitor what I'm consuming. We move to the computer to do the rest of the measurements and he asks if I really don't want to know because he has to type in the results. I decide to suck it up and deal with it. And ladies and gentlemen, in the entire month of March, I lost one pound.

A whole pound. And I am choosing to be excited by this. That is one pound that I will never again carry. One pound can still be significant because of what it represents. And this one pound represents the direction in which I'm moving, but is also a reminder that I will only achieve what I try to achieve. It's a good motivator to push harder with what I've learned from Justin and proof that just because you exercise doesn't mean you're doing all you need to do. It really is a lifestyle change.

Most of what I do during my half hour workout involves squatting. Squats, squat rows, squat cartwheels (just kidding; as far as I know there is no such thing) and by the end of my workout, I am sufficiently exhausted.

Success...

There comes a time when you have to buck up and face your problems head on and that day is today. After my horrendous performance on Saturday, the last thing I want to do is walk in to the gym and have to suffer through the lecture that I'm expecting and completely deserve. Thank goodness Fit Andrew decides to go at the same time that I do and that I have someone to distract me on the drive over. Believe it or not, the five minute drive is plenty of time to psych myself out with thoughts of the horror of what tonight could bring.

The nice thing about under performing last time (if there could possibly be a silver lining to it) is that I am incredibly motivated to kick-butt. This means I go faster on the cross trainer. I lip-synch in an outrageously animated way to the new Fall Out Boy single. I become unnecessarily outraged over the design decisions being made on HGTV. This is SPARTA!

When I'm finished, Justin and I head in to the weight room and conveniently enter a state of denial, each refusing to reference the awful Saturday. I start by alternating single leg presses and push-ups; 60 presses on each leg, 20 push ups, 50 presses on each leg, 20 pushups, all the way down to 10 leg presses per leg. I only have to do five sets of push ups because I don't know the reason why. Maybe it's generosity, maybe the workout was always designed that way. Maybe my arms would fall off if I did any more. 

I do take the down time while Justin is counting my leg presses as an opportunity to apologize to him for Saturday. He's receptive but claims it's unnecessary. I just want to make sure he knows that I value what he's doing for me and even though I know he's getting paid, he wants to see me succeed. I'm really quite eloquent and Justin get's slightly teary-eyed. Just kidding, I babble like an idiot and no crying happens. Except by my legs because 420 leg presses is a lot of leg presses.

Then we move on to the core exercises, which will need to be somewhat self motivated because my half hour is almost up. Justin shows me the two exercises and watches me do a set of each, all the while telling me to stop stalling and just keep going. Then he's gone and the challenge becomes forcing myself to keep up with the same pacing when the only person I have to answer to is my own inner coach. And my own inner coach seems to think it would be better to stop and rest for a while. But that coach is ignored by my own personal desire to succeed and I consider the remaining sets that I do to be an incredible victory. Am I back to where I was or where I should be? No. But I worked and pushed myself. Only good can come out of this.

It's taken me six, almost seven months to fully grasp the idea that I can push myself and survive. It's supposed to be a struggle. Similar to playing against an opponent who is better than you to really improve your game. People, it's possible to make a change in your life and most of us need to somewhere. For me, it's exercise. For you, it may be eating healthy or not stealing the punchline of someone else's joke.

Apology...

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I have failed you. I had a particularly challenging day at the gym on Saturday and it has forced me to face the reality that I have not fully committed to the process. My intention and focus has slowly wavered. I also can't help but feel that I have been somewhat deceiving and causing you, the reader (however devoted you may be) to believe that I was doing significantly better that I was in reality and for that I apologize. The truth is, it's been hard.

I have been a fat person for practically twenty five years. The process of attempting to lose weight is terrifying because it is exactly that: an attempt. I could fail and based on my motivation as of late it's a more real possibility. That's what I find so terrifying. If I fail after this point, it's because I am a failure. It's easy to cope with being fat when you're not trying to get fit, but when you are trying and it's not working it becomes almost unbearable. 

In truth, I don't know why my motivation is not here. I am being 100% honest when I say I am sick of being fat because I feel like I'm missing out on the more enjoyable parts of life. Why doesn't that make me want to change?

Here's a great plus, though. I not only found my headphones, but I found my old pair of headphones, too. As daunting as it is to get back on the cross trainer after over a week of not working out, the promise of Demi Lovato makes it a little easier. After eight minutes, Justin finds me and we start with some exercises in the gym. He lays out a rope ladder, much like you see football players train with. Side note: if I had played football in high school, I probably could have played in college, maybe been drafted third or fourth string, sat on a bench and made $500,000 a year. This is evidenced by the fact that I actually am really good at the exercises that require the coordination that Justin has me do with this rope ladder. I think it's also helpful that I'm like a really good dancer.

After the rope ladder, we do alternating squats with an exercise ball that I have to throw in the air and pushing basically weighted punching bag down the length of the gym and back twice. I'm fine for the squats, but when I start pushing that bag, I start to feel nauseated. Really bad nauseated. I can make it through another rotation of squats and pushing before I need to stop because I feel like I'm going to puke.

It's really easy to feel awful about yourself when things get difficult and that's exactly what happens. I get mad because I think that I should be able to do this without a problem. I expect to sweat but I don't expect to feel so sick that I have to stop. That's not fun. It's awful when your mind can handle the idea of something but your body simply won't perform. I have to excuse myself not only to get a drink, but because I'm on the verge of tears. After six months at the gym, I expect to be better than this and I'm not and that's depressing.

I think Justin can tell that I'm having a really hard time because when I come back he asks to make sure I'm okay and let's me do things kind of slow. We stop with the punching bag and substitute wall sits instead. He's incredibly nice but he's not going to let me give up, for which I am grateful (don't end a sentence with a preposition yo!). He also becomes incredibly encouraging. This isn't to say he isn't usually encouraging, but instead of the usual "push", "keep going", and "don't stop", it becomes "you got this" and "you're doing great". 

We move into the cardio room for the last exercise, which is a chest and core exercise I've done before, but the nausea comes back and it takes me longer than it should to finish two sets of ten.We make plans for Tuesday and he tells me good job, but it doesn't feel deserved. I did and have done a horrible job. The truth is I could be better and the only thing that has prevented me from making progress is me.

Any person will tell you that when you try to make a lifestyle change, there are ups and downs and I would agree and say the same thing. Based on my experience I have days when I feel like I'm awful and days when I feel like I'm amazing. This was one of the lows, but it's not the end. Who knows how long this is going to take, but I'd like to think I'm in it for the long haul. I always appreciate encouragement, so if you feel so inclined. Either way, I have training tonight so look for another post tomorrow.

Companion...

My entire family is out for a visit and I couldn't be happier. Mom came out at the end of last week and Dad and Miriam finally joined on Wednesday. Good thing, too, because I need someone to drag along to my training session as a companion in suffering. And that lucky individual is Miriam. I swing by Alice's to pick her up when I'm done with work. After the obligatory baby talk to my adorable nearly three month old nephew, we drive back to my apartment so I can get my clothes together.

Upon our arrival, Mir has to fill out a waiver because she's not a regular member and so I pop over and say hi to Justin. He gives me a little flack for simply telling him that I was bringing her (all in fun because I did have a disclaimer of 'if it's okay with you'). He then informs me that because it's going to be too time consuming to teach her how to use various machines that what we're going to end up doing is 'Tabouli'. Or something like that. Ciabatta maybe? I can never remember. Regardless, it's the whole twenty seconds of intensity followed by ten seconds of nothing. Sister Miriam better appreciate what I'm about to go through in the name of inclusion.

We change and begin with our warm up on the cross trainer and she tells me all about her upcoming school work and her life and all that. We both do ten minutes and she makes a comment about how the cross trainer is weird because she should be able to go farther than half a mile in ten minutes. Justin appears and we start. First up is squats. Twenty seconds of as many squats as we can, then ten seconds of nothing. Eight times. Kill me now. The last time I did something remotely like this was with a pair of officers at Gordon College Public Safety and I could hardly move for four days.

Sister Miriam and I both hold our own. I think she technically does more squats than I do, but who says we're competing? Next we alternate bicep curls and wall sits. Awful, awful wall sits. At one point Miriam says she loses feeling in her legs. I am not so blessed and I can feel each and every strain of my muscles. Bicep curls are a little easier, but by the end of the four sets (four of each) my arms are exhausted. But we're not done. We have crunches and tricep something or others. I rock the triceps and insist on more weight. Mir kicks my butt at the crunches. But her arms are shorter so I technically have a greater distance to travel. That's my excuse, anyways.

In our second to last set of exercises we do hovers and side lunges. This is where both of us struggle. I hate hovers and constantly stand up too fast and get a little dizzy. Mir feels like she may pass out. But you know what? We finish because we can. It may be at a slower pace than normal, but we finish. Our final exercise is to alternate side-hovers. At the conclusion of everything, both of us feel pretty great. I'll give the victory to Mir because I want to be nice. Also because she probably actually did beat me.    

Stabbing...

My life has been hectic and outrageously busy, lately. That may be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly has felt that way. I have had no spare time and my fitness habits have suffered. Take Sunday, for example. I just bought the new Tomb Raider game and I had to tear myself away from the TV so that I could get my workout in before I had to go to the movies (where I bought a grossly unhealthy amount of candy). I will say, however, that I had great success at the gym.

Fit Andrew and I decide that if we are going to reward ourselves with a movie that we had better punish ourselves for an unknown crime by going to the gym. My gym clothes are dirty and currently in the wash so my only option is to swim. The only horrible possibility is that I am going during family swim and there exists a strong possibility that the pool will be infested with children splashing around and laughing. Keep your joy to yourself you bratty kids. Thankfully I arrive to a near-empty pool and only have to deal with two children who don't seem to be enjoying themselves.

After my swim on Thursday I'm feeling incredibly motivated to perform well and try to shave my time down. After my one warm up lap, I shoot for intervals of 50 seconds instead of the minute I had last time. I have to say I am amazing during this swim. 50 second intervals are fine and I'm able to go consecutively from lap to lap with no periods of rest in between. My time probably fluctuates and I don't pay as close attention as I should, but I'm able to maintain exertion, which is more than I've ever been able to do.

This is what I have found (are you ready to be hit with a profound realization?): If I push past the point where I think I can't continue anymore, I can do significantly more than I would have thought possible. Eventually the laps become easy (I use that loosely. It does still require work). My body gets used to the amount of energy I need to complete each lap and I fall into a rhythm. This is truly fascinating to me. Do other people experience this too? I think of how many times I quit something because I thought I was too tired to go on and realize I probably could have kept going and been better off for it.

In no time, I swim a full half mile and it feels great to be a success. I go the rest of the day feeling skinny (which is super weird) and energetic for the week ahead. But that energy is zapped incredibly quickly because I hate daylight savings time. The next morning I wake up groggy and out of it and I feel hazy all day. The haze lingers through to the following day when I have personal training and I am not happy about it. On top of that, I lose my headphones AGAIN.

I get to the gym and warm up and when Justin finds me, I give him what I consider to be fair warning. 'I'm grumpy and I hate everything.' His response? He laughs because he's a jerk. But my animosity softens because he's actually a really nice and encouraging gentleman. Honestly, hire him as your trainer and he will make you think you're awesome. Today he teaches me deadlifts (sad that I have to be taught something that I think I should already know). I do that and the cursed rope for four sets, during which Justin tells me that I'm doing a great job with a rope that was heavier than when I first did the rope six months ago.

After my sets, we go to the cardio room and he teaches me some exercise with the dumbbells and an inclined weight bench that works my chest. I basically clapped like a dolphin or a seal with twenty-pound weights in my hands. Then he has me do thirty sit ups.

Now, I never really understood the concept of a group of muscles being on fire and I have to say I still don't. Justin makes a comment during my sit ups and if my abs aren't on fire that I'm doing something wrong. They don't feel like they are on fire. I feel like I am being stabbed repeatedly in the midsection. It's painful and not like when I touch a hot pan or something. Like literal stabbing. It's one of the worst feeling I have ever felt.

I forgo the post-strength training cardio workout, instead opting to head home and shower and spend the remainder of my night playing video games because that's how I roll. And may be why I have rolls. I'm just now making that connection. Hm. Curious. 

Skydiving...

Over the past few days I've been watching Julie & Julia for some blog inspiration and I have to say, I now feel like I'm unstoppable. How this inspiration will affect my posts, I'm not entirely sure. I'm not nearly as cute and endearing as Amy Adams, but I give Julia Child a run for her money in terms of personality. Plus I did bake box brownies with her in a dream, once.

Ever since my circus training on Saturday, two parts of my body have been sore. First are my biceps. Sore to the point where full extension of my arm proved to be painful because my muscles were tight and completely opposed to being used in any way. I almost couldn't shower. The second group of muscles are my obliques. If, perchance, you don't know what obliques are, I've included this amazing image which I got from the internet.

By the way, this is totally me. Look at my amazing progress!

Thanks to my sore obliques I took a rather disturbing interest in flexing them because I could actually feel them and know that I was flexing correctly. It was very weird to enjoy the feeling of soreness that comes after serious muscle usage. But the soreness comes from my muscles getting stronger and that's a really cool thought.

When I go to the gym tonight, there is a mixture of joy and absolute terror because it's a measurement day. I've been steadily working out and therefore have no idea why I should be worried, but I am. Justin is there to greet me as soon as I walk in and tells me to go change quickly so that we can get the measuring done and so that I have time to warm up. Apparently twenty minutes early isn't good enough. He is so mean.

I head back upstairs and we walk down the hallway towards the scale. A walk that simultaneously takes forever and that is over way too quickly. Off come the shoes and I step up on to the scale. Why is weighing one's self one of the most terrifying experiences ever? I imagine I would have an easier time hurling myself out of a jet at 25,000 feet than I would stepping on a scale of my own free will. I have a scale at home that I bought at Target that I have stepped on a total of twice in the year that I've owned it. This weigh in doesn't count, as I consider Justin to be the catalyst of this particular scale experience and therefore I am not acting of my own free will. 

Thankfully, I have not put on weight since I was last weighed. Unfortunately, I have not lost any weight, either. '378' stares unforgivingly right back up at me, cackling rudely. Get some manners 378 and leave when you are asked. We still have to measure body fat and diameter of various parts of my body. Goody, more opportunity for disappointment.

After measurements are taken, joy finds its way into my heart and I will tell you why. My body fat has gone down by three percent, my bicep has gone down an inch, and my waist has gone down five inches. So yes, my weight hasn't changed, but what comprises my weight has shifted. Not surprising when I've been hitting the weights more frequently than in recent memory.

For my workout today I do mostly non-equipment exercises. push-ups, squats, abs that aren't quite sit-ups but aren't quite laying on the floor doing nothing. I also do presses and side hovers. For my final exercise of the evening I have to do the squat slams from yesteryear. It's honestly been a long time since I've done these and I am instantly reminded about how much I hate them. If you need a refresher, the squat slams are done with a twenty pound ball that I have to raise over my head and slam down with a squat. Because Justin is SO INCREDIBLY MEAN, he makes me do twenty seconds with ten seconds of rest eight times. I honestly think I might pass out, but I don't. Why can't anything exciting happen to me?

To finish my workout for the day, I swim. I have been getting so much better at swimming lately. I do have to ask how I bring up the intensity in order to make it worthwhile. I have a minute per lap and whatever is left over I get to use as rest time. It's advantageous to finish each lap as quickly as possible in order to get rest time. I fairly consistently do a lap in forty-five seconds, which I think is pretty decent. For me anyways. Will I be beating Michael Phelps at the 2016 Olympics? Probably not.

Now, I may be murdered for what I'm about to do next and if I do end up dead, everyone should know that it was Justin who did it. But every time I tell any woman that I'm doing personal training, the first question they ask is 'Is he hot?' Judge for yourselves, everyone. And he does have a girlfriend.

For the record, Justin picked the picture

Circus...

You'd think after going to bed at 8:45 it would be easy to wake up after ten hours of sleep. But when my alarm goes off at 7:00, all I want is more sleep. So I reset it for 7:15 and wake up at 7:45 because awful things happen to me constantly. So I rush to pack my gym bag and walk open the front door of the club right at 8:00. No time to warm up whatsoever. Wow, what an ideal situation!

I guess Justin has some sympathy because we seem to start a little slower, today, first with some stretching and then some squats and side stepping. And then things get interesting. Apparently I'm training to be a trapeze artist because Justin pulls out these handles and anchors them to a bar about eight feet in the air. The handles themselves hang about four feet from the ground and I'm supposed to lean back and do a squat and then pull the handles to my chest. Kind of like a reverse push-up, if you will. This paired with standing on the ball and I almost have a full circus show. I'm supposed to do this for a minute, then do a minute of jumping jacks, and fifteen bicep curls.

I have to do this a total of three times and I am not in a very compliant mood because I hate having to rush things. I didn't feel prepared to come in and work out because I didn't get the time to warm up. I didn't realize how important that ritual has become for me. Plus, I feel incredibly unstable every time I'm on the trapeze (at least that's what I'm calling it) because my hands slip and I feel like at any moment I'll fall backwards and become severely injured.

I voice this concern to Justin who assures me that I will not fall and that I'll keep myself up almost solely with willpower. And you know what? I believe him. And I don't fall. I wouldn't say I particularly excel, but I made myself finish and a little seed of pride is planted. 

I desperately hold on to that seed because if there's one thing I hate more than planking, its jumping jacks. Every time I jump, all I notice is my belly and boobs bouncing. It makes me mad. Even though I have the sense of accomplishment that comes with losing 35 pounds, I still have many to go. It's easy to be mad about how difficult exercises are and blame the fact that I didn't start this earlier. It's easy to think that I'll never get better at it and that this is the best I can do. 

But that would be stupid because it's amazing what I've accomplished all because I was determined to do it. Plus I'm getting remeasured on Tuesday and I want to see results! At the conclusion of my session, I opt for the treadmill and sweat through twenty minutes before I'm ready to go home and collapse. But first I stop and say hi to Skinny Matt because I haven't seen him in a while. It's weird to have friends I only know through the gym. I never thought I'd be one of those people.

Chatter...

Now that Oscar season is officially over, my life can get back to normal and I can start really kicking the personal training in to high gear. Disappointment abounds as I load up my gym bag (still using that trusty Target bag) and head to my car for my session with Justin. I have once again failed to work out at all during the weekend. And no excuse is good enough. I simply didn't do it.

My usual elliptical machine is taken so I have to use a different one. I'm kind of excited because it's the one that is more natural with the arm motions and therefore slightly easier to stay balanced on while I'm using it. Nicki Minaj even puts a little spring in my step as I crush a half mile in eight minutes. Not awesome, but progress.

Justin is finishing up with some lady so I go to put my phone away and meet him back in the cardio room, which we immediately leave to head to the weight room. And we start with leg presses. Justin must have picked up on the fact that it's much easier for me to have the distraction of conversation to get me through things because he prompts me to give him my opinion of the Oscar winners. I'm happy that Jennifer Lawrence won but my ballot was destroyed. I only got fourteen of the twenty four categories correct. That's miserable. 

During push ups we talk about the Best Picture nominees and which one I liked best (my top three were Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Silver Linings Playbook) and therefore which movies Justin should see. Clearly all of them, though Lincoln was PAINFULLY boring. I get a wonderful compliment when Justin says he needs to lower the bar because I'm getting stronger, which is alternately depressing because it reminds me that the difficulty should stay the same, even if you get better. You have to continue to make it harder otherwise you're not getting much out of it.

During squats we talk about proper squat form, which is a thing. And apparently it's a thing that I haven't really been doing right. I tend to have most of my weight forward, which is wrong. Your weight should be over your heals and your butt should be sticking way out. I have to say, it's much easier the way I used to do it, but I'll get stronger, I suppose.

Then I have to do side hovers and planks on some weird half-ball plate thing which makes me feel like I'm wicked clumsy and going to die even though I'm maybe two feet from the ground with my arms extended. It's incredibly unstable which makes me engage my core. I tell Justin all about the comedy shows that I watch on TV (there is the common theme of media in the topics) as I drip sweat everywhere and feel as though I am literally melting.

Trainers have it rough and I'll explain why. I don't know if I could stand to be around a person who is so ridiculously sweaty and therefore smelly. I can hardly stand it myself and I just do it for half an hour. Justin has who knows how many clients and presumably all of them get sweaty and, at times, smell horrible. That is true dedication and he and all trainers should be given special gifts for putting up with the rankness of others. So should group exercise teachers. By that logic so should I, because in group classes I'm subjected to the smells other people give off. So where's my gift?

At the conclusion of the workout, I pick treadmill for my cardio. Justin tells me I did a good job tonight, which feels amazing after I spent the weekend being incredibly lazy and eating snacky foods. Same thing as last time for cardio, only I feel more adventurous so I start off jogging for my 30-second intervals. That adventurousness quickly goes away and I slow it down to a walk for the rest of my time. This is probably because I have to keep the incline up even when I'm on my 'rest' minute, though it's only at 4 instead of 7. Ladies and gentlemen, the treadmill can be a difficult workout if you let it. It just needs your permission.

Bear...

I may or may not have promised Justin that I would work out at 6:30 on Wednesday morning and I may or may not have actually gone to work out. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out which is actually correct by telling you that I was given a harder workout for not showing up at 6:30 like I told him I would. I agreed to it because I wasn't going to have time to go later that day with work, and I really did intend to go but I was really tired and so I slept. And exercise is one of those situations where it's not the thought that counts. If that were the case, we would all be skinny and muscular.

Justin comes over to me just shy of the ten minute mark of my warm up and practically threatens me by telling me he's gonna make me work hard after I skipped out on exercise yesterday. And that makes me scared. Thank goodness we head into the weight room because there is no way he would make me do ropes in the weight room. It's a real possibility that there would be an actual accidental death if anyone were to do the ropes.

Instead we go to the seated leg press machine. Great, we're starting with a machine that intimidates me. I guess I should be happy because I'll learn how to use it and it won't scare the crap out of me. Gotta find the positive in everything or you will go crazy. Life lessons, by Sam. Now this is an inclined or declined leg press, not the standard straight-on leg presses. I'm practically sitting on the floor and my legs are inclined almost forty-five degrees away from me. Justin has me start with forty reps on each leg with no added weight. They get to be quite strenuous by the end.

In between sets of leg presses I do my push ups. I'll say, I'm noticing improvements. I still can't do a full on push up, but I can get through my set of fifteen without having to pause. I ask Justin about any adjustments I can make when I'm doing them at home (because I don't have an adjustable bar at home) and he says that I should just come to the gym and do them. Fair point. It is only three minutes from my house.

For my last of three sets of leg presses, Justin makes me up the reps to fifty per leg instead of forty. By the end my legs are on fire. And my butt, too. One final set of push ups and onward we press to the cardio room, where I apparently am going to do the rowing machine. The rowing machine is another machine that absolutely terrifies me. Today is apparently a day of pushing me outside of my comfort zone. We'll see how I feel about it after my workout is complete.

Now, for those of you who have never used a rowing machine before, it looks fairly easy. After my introductory lesson about how to secure myself into the machine I realize that it isn't really that complicated of a machine. This is not to say that the exercise itself is easy. It's not. I have to keep my speed up and keep track of the number of calories I have burned before I can stop with the rowing. Apparently I start off a little too energetically because I literally bounce the machine due to the force with which I propel myself backwards. That's all I need, to have to replace a rowing machine that I break.

Thankfully it doesn't break. But I remain a little wary for the rest of my time on the machine (which, in case you were wondering is however long it takes to burn 10 calories as fast as I can). That is alternated with fifteen reps of dumbbell presses. And I can't turn either of those experiences into anything witty or fun, so just create a scenario in which there's a bear in the cardio room while I do these things. I'm sure it will be fascinating and full of adventure.

Interestingly enough, there was no bear at the gym, but there was a pair of crocs. Yes, crocs. Someone chose to wear crocs because apparently they are acceptable workout footwear. No. No they are not. So don't every be tempted. The only place crocs are acceptable is at the bottom of a trash barrel.

After my rowing and my pressing, I have twenty minutes of cardio that I have to do. Justin gives me the choice between cross trainer and treadmill and so I pick treadmill, because practically all I do is the elliptical nowadays. Remember how I said it was a day of living outside my comfort zone? True to that declaration, I have to mess with the incline of my treadmill. To increase the incline to stare fear in the face and say "please let me live." Can the thing even incline while I'm on it? I DON"T KNOW! I've never tried it before!

I liken this treadmill experience to playing Russian roulette. My workout consists of a minute of comfortable pace on level ground with thirty seconds of increased speed and incline so that I really have to work. Every time I hit that incline button and that speed up button it's like pulling the trigger of a gun. Will I die or will I live? Only destiny knows the answer. Clearly the answer is I live. I even get so bold that for my last thirty seconds of pushing, I jog.I never thought I would be jogging on a tread mill but here I am doing it with Ke$ha cheering me on all the way. It's exhilarating and I've never felt more alive. 

I've also never felt more like I want to die. My body is sore and tired and all I want to do is curl up and go to bed. But first I must go up those awful stairs, get my protein shake and then go home. Best friend Rachel stops by with cookies because she's apparently determined to ruin any semblance of a healthy diet I had for today. Oh well. Occasionally you have to treat yourself. There's another wise saying for today. And yes, I totally did borrow from Parks and Recreation. Deal with it.

Fire...

Day three of personal training has arrived! After a mild failure of a weekend in which I did hardly any exercising on days other than Saturday, I'm a tad apprehensive about the session tonight. But first thing's first: elliptical time. I've come to enjoy my time on the elliptical for many a reason. One: because it's not very long, and two: because I can actually do it without pre-dialing 9-1-1 just in case. The ellipticals are kind of crowded tonight and I am lucky enough to be next to a very smiley woman who's plugging away on her own machine and she amuses me enough to keep me on track, too.

Workout conclusion: consistency is key?

After the elliptical I quickly drop off my phone and trudge back to the cardio room. With my head hanging low I shamefully admit my lack of exercise to Justin because I was under the impression that I was supposed to work out twice before this session. Allegedly that is not the case. He apparently knew that I wouldn't exercise before now. I can't tell if I should feel relieved or offended. I really want this to work and despite all of my progress I still allow my laziness to get the better of me, on occasion.

Here's the other thing I really appreciate about the whole personal training thing. There's is another person involved who can help keep me accountable. Do you want to know another thing Justin is really good at? Making me feel bad. And I mean that in the best possible way. In a way that makes me realize that the only person I'm screwing over when I'm lazy is myself. That is a tough pill to swallow. And it would be easier with cake but dammit I'm trying to give up sweets.

We start with fifteen standing chest presses as I fill him in on the movies I saw this weekend (which were all great, by the way). Talking proves to be a great distraction from the pain of exercise, in case you were curious. A fact that becomes incredibly apparent when I do my minute wall sits. Holy quads. They burn like the fire of a thousand suns. And I have to do four sets of them in between my chest presses. But I wanted this. In fact I'm paying for it.

Onward we press to the weight room where I do push ups and squats. It's during the push ups that I discover the truth in what Justin continues to tell me about doing them. It's easier if you just keep going. Stopping in between push ups to rest does absolutely no good, believe it or not. We do four sets of each, to mix things up, and this is something I wish I had learned before my last set when I was given the ultimatum of not being allowed to stop during the set. To maintain what little dignity remains at this point, I do feel the need to let Justin know that I really do want this to work and that I'm not stopping just for the heck of it. It honestly sometimes feels like I can't do anymore.

I realize this may sound mildly pathetic to some of you who do this type of stuff as a warm up to a real workout, but keep your stupid opinions to yourselves. If this is where I have to start, so be it. My goals may be lofty but it would be foolish to assume I could achieve them without starting way below them and working upwards. If it worked instantly, so one would be fat and everyone would be rich. Hard work is what pays off. Feel free to print that on a t-shirt if you ever need motivation.

To end the day, I have to do a standing twist of some sort, which is where I really start to feel the piece of cake I had earlier at a 'last day' party for a woman who works in my office. And this is why I shouldn't eat cake anymore. Working out with cake in my belly makes me ill, apparently. All in all it's a positive experience, though I am still mighty embarrassed by the designs my sweat makes on my t-shirts because of where I start to sweat first. But what to me is disgusting may serve as inspiration for a great artist who happens to work out at my gym and who knows, maybe my sweat will be hanging on the wall of an art museum. How's that for optimism?