Saturday, June 28, 2008

And So It Begins.

About a month and a half ago my husband and I joined a gym.

I'm a big chick, and I have never been bothered by my weight. Overall, I'm fairly healthy, though inactive. I rarely get sick, and even when I do, my immune system works in overdrive- I have healing powers like wolverine! Yearly physicals revesl great colestrol, normal blood pressure and overal goodness. My first husband pushed me alot to lose weight, which did nothing except piss me off and make me stubborn. My current has never pushed me- because he is happy if I'm happy.

But he was not happy. Depressed and without energy for anything, he needed an outlet. And I knew it. He was a big child, and then in the early 2000's, he suddenly decided he'd had enough and dropped alot of weight. Over the past few years hes slowly gained, and it bothers him.He still sees himself as a fat child when the reality is he is an average man, not fat. Just inactive.

And so we joined a gym. I hoped that with both of us joining, we could motivate each other and therby not be able to flake on the couch each night with the excuse of wanting to spend time together. The gym has a pool, and I've always enjoyed swimming, so I envisioned myself swimming while Sean weight trained.

I have to stress, exersice was not something I defined as fun. I am shocked, therefore at what has transpired. For the first three weeks, I begged off some days, finding trivial excuses to stay home. So I went to the gym 3 or 4 days a week. But rationed that it was better then nothing. I was bored with the pool. I had tried the nightly aquasize class, and found most teachers sucked. Mondays morning class teacher was great, so I'd find myself going to her classes no matter how was feeling.

Ay week 4, I was well and truly bored and undermotivated. I popped in on saturday for a swim to find the pool closed for an event. So I went to the gym instead, rode the bike and cooled down on a treadmill.

Click.

Ten minutes in, hot and sticky, with my thigh muscles burning, I was feeling fantastic. Three weeks on from this discovery and my attendance has gone up to 5-6 days a week, and I'm the one whining at Sean and draging him physically out of the house to go to the gym. I am absolutely addicted. The crappiest sort of day at work, no desire to do anything but crawl into bed, and I know if I get myself into the bike, in 15 minutes I'll be feeling like sunshine is coming out of my ass.

Three weeks later, and my energy levels have shot through the roof. I'm ready to take on anything, and feel super accomplished. I cannot gush enough. My ten minute bike ride and ten minute cool down of the first day has morphed into a 7 km bike ride (8 kms twice a week), followed by half a km of rowing, and 1.5 km treadmill cooldown. Another week of this and I'll have boosted the rower to one km and then will add the evil looking cross trainer machine into the mix. I think that the wee after that, I will also throw in a weights based routine once or twice a week as well.

We've done nothing different in the diet field- we eat a varied healthy range already, with our problem being portion size rather then wrong food choices. But even this is righting itself- for reasons unfathomable to me, I find myself eating smaller portions as I feel full faster. This does not make and sense to me whatsoever- if anything, I expected to be hungrier.

Last week, I noticed my pants are lose and I have to leep hauling them up. Yesterday I bought a new pair of track pants and two tank tops. All items had to be bought in one size smaller then I've been wearing.

And so it begins.

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