The burn is fully felt

18May06

There is nothing quite so humiliating as standing in front of a fit and intense young man as he asks you to squat and lift and thrust in small doses you would at any other time consider manageable and reasonable, your muscles shaking uncontrollably from the strain of lifting your own blubbery body weight and then giving out before 15 minutes or so are up. Nothing can quite compare to the bottomless sinking feeling in your heart upon learning that you're 20 pounds heavier than you thought you were, when you already thought you were 30 pounds overweight. Knowing that your body fat percentage is higher than the president's approval ratings is a sick, sick feeling.

It is a peculiar thing, having to get help before your body swallows you whole. You pay lavish amounts of money for someone — always with the same story: "I used to be 230 pounds, now look at me" — to sit down with you and shame you (in the nicest possible way) into getting off your ass and moving it around so it and its surroundings can shrink.

And so you go to this windowless building full of mirrors and industrial lighting, and you bend and flex and sweat and huff and puff and try to make your wedgie-picking as inconspicuous as possible, because everybody really is looking at you. Everybody is looking at everybody and wondering if everyone is looking at them. No one is watching Richard Simmons make monkey faces on Martha Stewart's show.

My post-high school life has been leading up to this point. The very nanosecond I stopped playing softball in high school, I started pudging up. I've always felt fat (thanks, Patriarchy!) but I now know that I haven't always actually been fat. I've always been thick, but I used to be healthy and athletic. I scuttled off to college and kept up a workout routine for about two weeks. Then stopped. Then I started working. Work and school, late-night munchies, Mexican food and IHOP at midnight with my friends. Stress eating. Stress sleeping. Never stress workouts. And then graduation rolled around and I was pale and pasty and sure that once I moved away and started working full-time, I could regain control of my body and my mind. But I didn't. Well, I hadn't.

But this weekend, sifting through my parents' computer stash of recent photos, I saw frame after frame of me looking swollen and uncomfortable, my face round and my arms bulging. The sad part is I was looking at photos taken at a time when I felt pretty comfortable with myself. I sort of had a crush on myself the weekend those photos were taken. I felt beautiful and graceful, even. But in those photos, I looked excessive. There was just too much of me, and I know it has nothing to do with the camera adding 10 pounds. I am fat. And it makes me sick to think that I've done nothing to stop the process of my body breaking down into repulsive, dimply pouches of fat that make me heavy and lethargic and probably have a lot to do with why I'm always so fucking depressed.

So, the gym. I'm there again tomorrow and Friday, working with someone who's going to show me how to work my body and what to eat and how to rest. I don't expect a quick miracle (though I can't help but fantasize about what it might be like to be hot again) but I do expect to eventually feel good again. And feel good about myself again. I've felt little but hatred toward myself and how I look for a long time. I am not who I want to be, and it's time I started considering what my sedantary lifestyle is doing to my body. I don't want my parents' problems. I've got plenty of my own.

So here's to searing muscle pains and embarrassing workouts in front of people far more fit than I. In a year, maybe I'll get to look at the noobs and think, Dude, I was there once.

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