My Personal Weight-Loss Journey: Day 14

First of all, I want to thank you guys for your unending support. I never suspected that I’d get such amazing responses to me just trying to improve my life. I think it’s great that I’m helping so many girls while you guys are helping me out, too. I read all of your comments and take them all into consideration. It was after quite a few people bought up exercise – and my fellow CC girl wrote an blog about it – that I decided to finally suck it up, pack my bag, and head to the gym.

By Olua

Gyms utterly terrified me, and I’d never really been in one (at least not for a serious period of time) before this Monday. I tagged along with my mom, who has a lifetime membership to Balley’s. After putting on Foo Fighter’s In Your Honor – coincidentally not only a great therapy song but also awesome for working out – I headed to the first thing that I was comfortable with: the bikes.

While I was on the bikes, I looked around at everyone. A big part of my gym-phobia consisted of me worrying that people were staring at me, wondering what that fat girl was doing taking up the machines during prime gym time. So imagine how much it surprised and comforted me that, just like in the real world, no one really cared about what I was doing. There were even a handful of people who were significantly more out of shape than I was. Everyone else was far too busy trying to be more in shape themselves to worry about me.

I hung around on a bike for about fifteen minutes or so, and then wandered over to a treadmill. I was too apprehensive to check out anything I wasn’t familiar with just yet, so I spent another fifteen minutes on there, too. Well, seventeen if you count cooldown. I had been eying a weird machine in the front most of the time; there were only six of them, and they only stayed empty for a few minutes at most. They looked like the b*st*rd children of a stair-master and an elliptical. I decided to hop on one when I saw it was unoccupied. Big mistake. My body was not ready for the serious work out that this thing was giving my butt and thighs, and after about five minutes of me huffing and panting, I hopped off and went onto an elliptical for about ten minutes.

My body around that time was starting to tell me that it was not pleased with this new active lifestyle. My legs were wobbly, my hips ached, and I was trying to figure out why the floor was staying still for a good few minutes. I decided to spend the last fifteen minutes on the bikes again. They don’t do a whole lot unless you go at something like 130 RPMs on them, but they at least make me feel like I’m doing some form of…something.

After that, all sore and achey, I retired to the showers. I was treated to a HILARIOUS conversation between two girls in stalls across from me, talking about how doing it in the backseat of a car behind a Best Buy isn’t a great place to be for your first time. I had to struggle not to giggle hysterically the entire time.

Watching the calorie count on those machines slowly climb definitely made me rethink my diet, though. I could not believe how long it took just to burn a measly 100 calories! I definitely have a new perspective on what I eat and drink. Augh.

I’m heading back to the gym again today, and probably one last time on Friday before I head back to school (our spring break was this week). My next hurdle will be going to the gym at my school, surrounded by peers and/or athletes. I’m also going to invest in one of those snazzy scales that measures your body fat percentage and calculates your BMI and all that jazz. I’m getting tired of counting the little the little dashes on the bathroom scale, and I can’t figure out how to work the ones at the gym…

Current Weight: 227

Current Size: XXL, or 20/22.