Like I said yesterday, I hate clothes. Not all clothes, just my clothes. For years now I have been relegated to shopping for 'plus size' clothing. And I'm sick of it. I'm tired of trying to hide my fat. Oversized t-shirts and jeans that NEVER fit correctly. I was folding a basket of clean clothes the other day and picked up a pair of my khakis. I held them up and looked at the back of the pants. I thought to myself, your ass must look like the state of Texas in these: vast, big and wide.
And now it is the second day of my journey to fitness and I'm still happy that I've taken on this 365 day exercise marathon. I rolled on down to the Y around noon, rode the recumbent bike for 10 minutes, did the arm spinning thing for another 10 minutes and then walked briskly on the treadmill for 15 minutes.
Some of the weight machines looked familiar to me, as I had used a few of them while in physical theerapy for my knee. My new friend, Abdullah, wasn't around so I went to the office and asked a very nice young man named Johnny to help me with the weight machines.
I explained that I had knee surgery five months ago and told him I wanted to use equipment that would strengthen the muscles of my legs, particularly my knees. I also told him that I would like to strengthen my arm muscles, but I didn't want to come out of my 365 days of exercise looking like a female body builder (not that there's anything wrong with female body builders; it's just not a good look for me).
Johnny showed me around the various machines, giving me a quick lesson on each of them and informed me which muscle groups would be helped by this machine or that machine. It sounded great but I didn't retain a word of it. I was able to remember what he said about the two machines for my knees, but there were so many different arm machines, I couldn't even remember which one I was supposed to use first, second, then third. He saw my confusion from the other side of the gym and came over to help me figure it out one more time.
On that note, I can't say enough nice things about all of the staff that I've met at our YMCA. I can't believe I have lived here for the past 20 years and I'm just now finding out what a gem we have right in our midst.
I am beginning to think that I should remove the word 'exercise' from my profanity list; but diet is still right up there with the worst of them. And that's a topic for another day.
Betsy
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