I, Amy Bee, joined a gym. Wait, wait, let me say that again (mainly because I'm not totally wrapping my head around this fact either). I joined a gym.
Those of you that know me, well, you know I'm not exactly a gym person. I dislike workout schedules. I dislike sweat. I dislike working out next to sweaty people. I don't really care for locker rooms. They smell. And I don't do well with things that smell bad. But most of all, I dislike exercise. Let me retract that last part a little bit and amend. I dislike scheduled workouts, most exercise machinery, sweating, working out in general, did I mention sweating?, grunters in classes and overly chipper instructors. And working out. And sweating. Have I made myself clear? I am not exactly the "let's go for a run! It'll be fun" type. If I walk on a treadmill, it's usually slowly, and no, contrary to popular belief, I am NOT trying to "race" the person next to me. I don't do spin - too many speed variations and I like to pedal at one pace. Plus there's more sweating there. Yoga and I don't really get along well, I'm the one trying not to giggle as I attempt tree pose. Shall I go on? I believe my point has been made.
So how did I of all people end up at a GYM of all places? Oh, and not just any gym mind you. If Amy Bee is going to go for something, I go all out. I'm talking a 33,000 (let me just spell that out for you because I think it has much better impact: thirty-three-THOUSAND) square foot gym. I was on the phone with my BFF the other day as I pulled up to the building for the first time and got hysterical laughing at the sheer immense-ness of the building. I definetly laughed, and I'm pretty sure I said something to her like "it looks like our high school." She was as shocked as I was that I was about to walk into this place.
But I digress. I need to backtrack a little for the rest of my story to make sense. I wasn't always an inactive, slightly pudgy woman. (Although everything I said before about the sweating, grunting, et. al. - that part has NEVER changed.) I was a lifelong dancer from the age of 2 even taking classes in college. You name it, ballet, tap, modern, lyrical...sometimes 3-4 classes a week. My family to this day takes pride in reminding me of my favorite thing to yell at them, "Dance is my LIFE!!!!!" It's safe to say I was in pretty good shape. THIS was my exercise though. Dance. And I never felt like it was exercise because I was DANCING! Dance to me wasn't something I did to be healthy, it was something I did because it was part of my soul. The rush of feeling the music and expressing myself through dance was just who I was and what I did. I never really considered the health benefits.
When it came time for gym class in school, I made every excuse in the book not to participate. I'm not particularly good at any sport and was the kid that always got picked last. And to be honest, I didn't really care, because I didn't have any desire to do it to start with. Oh and forget about when they would make us do weight training in high school. Ugggggh. Me? Lift weights? While people sweated and grunted around me? Forget it. So I danced (and um, dabbled in cheerleading...) and ate whatever I wanted and was stick-thin.
Of course in college this changed slightly - I mean come on - who *doesn't* gain the "freshman 15" - but I was still a pretty active person. A little rounder, but active. I mean for real, in order to get to my car, I had to literally park over a mile from my dorm. It's safe to say I needed my car a lot, and walked many, many miles a day.
Fast forward to about 11 years ago. I'm a busy, active, young professional, working on a college campus and still walking all over the place. Enter what I refer to as "the accident." I was driving myself, ironically to my doctor's office for an appointment, and was stopped waiting to turn into the office park when someone hit me from behind. Going quite fast. I'll skip all the details, but the end result was permanent disc damage at the top of my back/base of my neck. My very active life as I knew it came to a standstill, and what followed was many years of physical therapy, pain management and weight gain. Add having two kids into the mix and the weight gain increased, while the activity remained at a standstill. In the middle of the last 11 years, I was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, which in my case is genetic (pretty much my entire family has it, from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles...you name it), but the weight gain and minimal activity wasn't helping. I went through a brief span of time (about 6 months before I got pregnant with Sprocket) that my body was feeling good, not exactly pain-free, but good enough to resume some exercise (I bought a recumbent bike and my awesome sis-in-law and bro-in-law gave us their "old" treadmill) and was able to lose some of the poundage and start to get my body back in shape. But to add insult to injury (forgive the pun), about 2+ years ago, someone hit me from behind AGAIN while I was waiting at a traffic light. I know, right?!? Disc injury re-inflamed, back to physical therapy and pain management. Bring on the weight gain. It's safe to say that the last 11 years have been a vicious cycle with my body, gaining, losing, active, inactive, different pain levels all while taking on the challenge of raising a young family, working full-time, and battling a disease I'm never going to get rid of. I've for sure had my ups and downs, but through it all I guess I've always felt like skinny, healthy, dancer Amy has still been inside, screaming to come back out. But I've also reconciled the fact that skinny Amy doesn't need to exist to BEE HAPPY, but HEALTHY Amy does need to exist to BEE HAPPY.
Back in August, my daughter's dance studio posted a sign that they were going to start offering Zumba classes. After a lot of cajoling from other dance moms (yep, I am a dance mom now, don't judge me.) AND the owner, everyone finally convinced me to try it out, after all, zumba was really more like dancing, right? Let me tell you, after my first class (which surprisingly I loved), I thought about Zumba and started to sweat. And I realized that while I wasn't a dancer anymore, here was my connection to something I loved. Maybe because it was taking place in an actual dance studio helped push me along. So for the last 8ish months, I've been attempting to go to this class 1-2 times a week. I can't say I really lost any weight doing it, but dancer Amy is starting to revive herself, even with all the jiggling rolls.
In my quest to find a healthier me, I also started a Shape Up RI team 4 weeks ago, not because I wanted to sweat with other people, but because if I knew I had to be accountable to other people that I would stick to making sure activity happened. (Are you listening Action Heroes? You know who you are!) I guess the timing all fell into place, because as part of Shape Up, I was offered a place in a behavioral weight loss study through Brown Medical School and Miriam Hospital. I figured I didn't have anything to lose, except maybe the pounds, and needed the kickstart.
I am very proud that in 4 weeks I've lost almost 8 pounds (sticking with 1-2 pounds a week) and I can feel a physical difference. Which brings me full circle to how I started this post. I joined a gym. Partly because we got a crazy discount through my husband's office, and partly because I need the support. I need the over-chipper instructors yelling at me to "wooooo!" with them. I need to have more than just a Zumba class to go to if I'm going to force myself to exercise. I need all these people saying to me, "you can do it!" because guess what, I'm starting to bee-lieve it, and maybe, just maybe, dancer Amy will be ready to strut her stuff once again. Even if it's only in the living room :)
No comments:
Post a Comment