Confession time: I’m a wannabe Gym Rat. My 80 year old sister is a bona fide Gym Rat but I only pretend to like working out. Considering I had done nothing for the first fifty years of my life, the progress I’ve made is substantial. I’ve evolved from “Isn’t there some kind of dental procedure I can undergo instead of this machine?” to “I don’t hate this” to finally ending up at “I kinda like this”. Impressed? Don’t be. Even though I’ve lost over 40 pounds and am in the best shape of my life, my inner troglodyte still wonders why I would want to go out before dawn and exercise. And truthfully? I’m with her.
There are a few distinct moments that perfectly capture my journey to fitness. The first is how I got started twelve years ago. My sister led the way, naturally. She was wintering in Puerto Vallarta and, being someone who just had to work out daily, found a Curves women’s exercise studio. Naturally, it wasn’t tough enough for her but she said to me “Even you could do this – it’s really easy”. Fortunately, that was Mexico and I was in Maryland. I could remain blissful in my slothfulness forever. Slothful, that is, until the day a Curves franchise opened near my office. Not ready to be endlessly nagged by my sister, I went ahead and joined. I called it “the Gym” and was excellent at showing up three times a week for thirty minutes of circuit training, even though I wasn’t so good at actually exercising.
Fast-forward three years. It’s a cold, dark, winter night. I pull into the Curves parking lot but really don’t want to be there. I grab my gym bag from the trunk but really don’t feel like working out. I reluctantly start walking through the parking lot with my inner troglodyte chattering away.
Me: I really don’t feel like going tonight. I hate exercise. What am I doing here? I don’t want to be here. I hate this.
Trog Girl: Wait! You don’t have to do this. You’re a grown-up. You can turn around and go home. There’s no law that says you have to exercise when you don’t want to.
Me: Yeah, I’m just going to go back to my car and drive right back home. Just going to turn around and …”
Looking up I see that I’m about 50 feet from Curves front door. My feet try to start walking back to the car but my head shouts “Dummy! You’re only steps away from going in. Why would you walk even further to get back to your car and leave? Just keep walking these last few feet, open the door, and get it over with. This doesn’t have to be a stellar best workout of your life. You don’t have to hit a home run. All you have to do is go in, do thirty minutes, do your three times round, and then go home.” And that’s exactly what I did.
Fast-forward ten years. It’s 5:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Three of us are standing in the cold, dark, morning air waiting for Fitness First (now called Gold’s Gym) to open. That’s right, Gold’s Gym. Earlier that year, I had graduated from Curves by transferring my daughter’s Gold’s membership (which I was already paying for) from she – who never used it, to me – who easily continued the three times a week regimen. But at this point I’m thinking, “Boy, those are some crazy hard core people. Who goes to the gym at the crack of dawn on Christmas?” And it suddenly occurs to me. I must be one of those crazy hard core people since I’m standing here with the rest of them.
There it is – from slug to sleek. What’s the lesson here? How does a middle-aged woman go from being a total exercise avoider to being a total gym user? Following are some observations on my experience:
- You can’t do it alone. I was blessed when the good looking, young, gym manager at Fitness First personally stepped in and taught me how to work out using the various weight machines. Being treated like a person and not a number made a huge difference in my staying with the program. Get someone to believe in you.
- Push through. The night that I kept going at Curves became a life lesson. Had I abandoned my plan to exercise and gone home, it would have been the first step on the road back to Slothville. Even now, when I’m facing something I don’t want to do, but the way back is harder than the way forward, I think “Dummy, just get it done! You did it that night at Curves, you can do it now.”
- Only do what makes you feel good or feel better. No pain – no gain? Not if I can help it. If my muscles ache or I can barely walk after a workout, there’s no way I’m going to let myself hurt on purpose again. At that point it’s ‘bye-bye spin class’. After all, I’m always looking for a reason to stop and that’s a good one. Keep in mind, a slow moving constant stream of water can cut as deeply into the side of a mountain as a water drill. It takes longer, but a thousand years from now who will care about the difference. Similarly, whether your six-pack (or two-pack in my case) takes three months or three years, as long as you feel healthy and your clothes look good on you, no one will know, or even care about, the difference.
Where do you fall on the fitness scale? Have you made any changes in your life to get/stay fit?
Lauri Rodich is the President of The BiBo Group, a specialty consulting practice that she founded in 2013. The BiBo Group provides companies and individuals with customized solutions for improved personal and professional success. By leveraging their own emotional intelligence, clients discover that feeling better internally, leads to better outcomes externally. The resulting positive changes impact their attitudes at work and home in ways that are often surprisingly beneficial.