These Two Hands

So I recently got fed up with how much weight I’ve gained since college: about 20 pounds. And technically – according to the insurance charts – I was overweight by about 10 pounds back then too. (Never mind that I’ve only weighed 125 once in my entire life, and that was when I developed an eating disorder).

It doesn’t seem fair, when my lifestyle is so active: I bike to work and back every day, my job is mostly manual labor, and my favorite hobby is gardening (which entails a lot of shoveling, hauling, and sweating). But that’s just my body type, unfortunately; it runs in both sides of the family. But so it goes. I get nasty and cynical when obese people claim they can’t lose weight; so why should I be nicer to myself?

So (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit) I joined Curves, and I’m actually quite enjoying it. I haven’t missed a single workout for a month. It’s a wee bit disturbing that everyone there is bigger than me – shouldn’t there be some skinny people there, if the workouts really work? – but I like the way it’s set up. You move from station to station every minute or so, so you never get bored or too tired on a single thing. There are lots of little competitions and motivational things that I know are silly, but that keep me interested in coming back for my next workout. And that’s the important part, right?

And Curves measures, weighs, and body-fat-percentages you once a month. They keep all the records and charts and stuff for you, too.  So since they were doing a summer-membership-is-free promotion, I decided to join for those three months and see if there was any change.

I got measured on Monday, and there was a change… albeit small. I lost an inch off my waist, an inch off my thighs (though this could also be due to different clothing, I can’t remember what I wore the first time I was measured), and lost 0.3% body fat.

So maybe it’s working…. just very, very, slowly.

Josh and I have agreed that if I get down to 21% body fat – the high end of “trim” – we can celebrate by going somewhere where I can wear a bikini on a warm beach. Heck, at this rate I’ll be lucky if I can get down that far by our fifth-year-anniversary – so maybe that reward will double as an anniversary getaway.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under blahblah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.