Gym Fees

I had a conversation at church yesterday with my newly acquired friend, Emily. Rather than discuss all sorts of theological questions, the meaning of life, or whether Jesus currently has a beard or is clean cut, we discussed work out habits.

Emily sort of likes work out videos because she can do them when no one is watching. I told her that's exactly my problem. I have an over priced gym membership because I am not so much paying for the equipment as I am paying for the peer pressure of not quitting. See, if I did a work out DVD at home, I could push pause at any moment. I could go eat Reese's peanut butter cups in between cardio and stretching. After ten push ups, I might decide I'd rather be checking my e-mail. It is impossible for me to work out at home. What I need is the peer pressure of ten pairs of eyes watching me.

I realize that people probably aren't really watching me at the gym, because I rarely watch other people (unless they look like a version of Michael Vartan from Alias, which this one guy does. I'm pretty sure he was/is in the military, and his name is Jared or Jerald or something like that. The reason I don't talk to him is because like Agent Vaughn, he's probably about ten years older than me). Anyway, people don't really watch other people at the gym, because they are so self-conscious about themselves. I always believe someone is watching me, so I do my best not to quit after five push ups, and I won't stop on the treadmill after fifteen minutes because that makes me look really lame.

In fact, sometimes when I am on the elliptical, I will go for much longer than I had intended, just because the person who came to use the machine to my left got on ten minutes ago, and I don't want them to think I've only been doing this for fifteen minutes. So I'll stay on for like an extra twenty minutes, or until my water bottle is bone dry and I'm so delusional with thirst that I stumble off the machine and fall to the ground like a weakened soldier in the Afghan desert.

I also do group exercise classes at the gym, and these are a great source of peer pressure. I do a weight lifting class, and granted I don't lift half as much as most people, but I still do everything and don't quit. I don't want people thinking I am a wimp, even if I do have noodle arms and can only do overhead presses with a maximum of 18 pounds. My most favorite class is the kickboxing one, which is an hour of intense cardio.

When I started going to the gym after the first 22 years of a sedentary lifestyle, I would never have thought of doing cardio for 60 whole minutes. I certainly wouldn't do that in my living room with a work out video. Heck no, I probably would have lasted twenty minutes. But because there are fifteen other people in the room with me, I can't quit. Sometimes peer pressure is a very good thing.

Another reason I go to the gym regularly is because I spend an exorbitant amount of money on it. I hate wasting money, so if I am paying for a membership, I am darn well going to use that membership, even if I hate going. I want to get my money's worth. I'm glad to say I don't really hate going to the gym anymore. Instead I have anticipation, because who knows who you'll meet at the gym? I mean, what if I saw Richard Simmons there one day, giving a special class presentation? Or Billy Banks came to kick boxing? Or Jillian Michaels was on the bicycle next to me, and she started yelling at me to move it?

 Yes, paying too much for a gym membership and believing that people are watching my every move is what keeps me in shape. What do you do to keep in shape? Do at-home-videos work for you?

What a load of crap

The summer after my junior year of college, I got a job shoveling poop for a living. It's really surprising the things you'll agree to when you are a poor college student. It was like this: I was planning on staying in my university's town during the summer because I was taking 15 credits of classes during July. I needed money to pay my summer rent, and jobs were scarce.

The stable job that I applied to had been advertised as a horse feeder, stall cleaner, and possible horse exerciser. Shoveling crap is not normally my cup of tea, but I had previous horse experience. I mean, I shoveled horse manure every week for nine years. I had ridden horses and trained horses and chased escaped horses and fed horses for all of my 4-H years. I had done it wearing rubber boots, overalls, and plaid flannel shirts. I could totally feed a stable full of horses and lunge them in the arena. I could haul some poop in a wheel barrow.

I started the gig the week after moving into my new place. On a quick visit "home" to my parents, I picked up my old leather gloves and rubber boots, because stall mucking is dirty business. My mother was shocked to learn that I had volunteered myself to shovel manure. I had complained about it all the time as a child. "But I'm getting paid for it now," I told her. Money makes all the difference.

I went to the stable every afternoon and got rid of that poo faster than an expert babysitter changing a dirty diaper. I had to haul in saw dust to lay down on the stall floors. Let me tell you, get a little bit of wind going on, and this is not a fun chore. I filled water buckets, carted hay, and got covered in dirt. By the third or fourth day my blisters turned to calluses, my back hurt worse than a mother who is nine months pregnant with twins, and the amount of sweat that dripped down my body made me yearn for the very moment I could take a cold shower at home. It was hard work. I told myself I was going to get ripped. Surely all of this upper body work was going to make me have the best biceps of my life.

The hardest part of the job was climbing the Mountains of DooDoo Doom. I wish I had a picture, but that would be pretty nasty. Imagine this: an area the size of a small parking lot. Like your dentist's parking lot. It's designated just for horse manure. It's already covered. There's no where else to dump it. The boundary lines are overflowing. So what has been done? A second layer has been dumped. There are two by four boards of wood lain on top of the dried poo, which act as a sort of bridge for the wheelbarrow. But in some areas there is a third layer of crap. You have to push the wheelbarrow up the Doo Doo Mountains in order to dump it. After flipping the wheelbarrow over, the wheel gets stuck and you have to yank it out with a great amount of force. The sun is blazing overhead, your feet are already soaked with sweat in your boots, and the freaking wheelbarrow won't cooperate.

I wondered to myself how high the stable owners would let the manure pile get before they got a tractor and spread the poo out across the rest of their fields. Or whatever it is people do when they acquire six tons of poop. My answer: not during my time of employment. Not that summer. Maybe they would do it before the rain came in the fall. Because getting a full wheelbarrow of crap up a four foot high pile of manure so that you could just dump more poo onto a dried out layer of poo has got to be much easier than pushing a load full up a hill of slippery, squishy, rain saturated poo. And there was nothing easy about doing the job when it was dry out.

Geez, if you are still with me by this point, I'm going to change the direction of this story. I think you get it by now. There was tons and tons of poo.

One of my summer courses was an on-line PE class. I know, right? On-line PE. Why didn't they have that when I was a nerd in high school? We were supposed to keep a log of the exercises we did. I fully counted an hour and a half of shoveling and hauling poop as exercise. Only I made my log say "rollerblading" or "jogging," because that sounded more legit than "hauling crap." I mean, it was back breaking work. The amount of sweat that rolled down my body could have filled the kiddie pool that sat in the back of my townhouse.

Let me tell you, the only thing good about these sorts of tortuous jobs is that they build character. If I include all the work I had to do as a child growing up in the country, add in my summer stable job, and then count a few other life experiences, I would venture to say I have built enough character to construct a ten-story building. I mean, how much character must a person build before they can just enjoy the structure? To stand back and let people admire what has been made?

"This is Joelle. Construction began in 1985 and has continued for the past 25 years. A bit of character was built every consecutive year. In 2007 a large expansion of character was added during a remodel. Due to the work, Joelle's spine has compressed 1/4 of an inch and she now stands at barely five feet tall, but her character building is very much evident through her I-will-finish-this work ethic, seen in all the torturous jobs she's ever held."

You know what one of my favorite moments of satisfaction was? When I moved out of that townhouse and threw those nasty, stinky, well-used boots straight in the garbage, never to be worn again. Because I swore I'd never muck stalls again. We'll see if that lasts. With my luck I'll end up marrying a cowboy who has a whole barn full of horses.

Getting Ripped Update

Remember how I lied about two weeks ago describing how I was giving up carbs and sugar in order to get ripped? Okay, so you probably didn't know I was lying. I didn't either. See, after the first week everything has gone to shambles. I do not think it is physically possible for me to give up bread and chocolate simultaneously. In fact, I ate some chocolate while at work and I am eating a very small amount of pasta right now. So suck it Tim Ferriss and your bean/egg white diet.

On the bright side, my mouth totally tolerates the strange consistency and flavor that is cottage cheese. I can fully eat it for breakfast now.

I don't want you to think I've given up, because I haven't. I'm trying really, really hard, actually. But I'll be honest. I slip. I want nothing more than a big fresh loaf of french bread dipped in melted chocolate. But I'm trying not to succumb.

Saturday Binge

Tomorrow I am eating anything I want. Specifically, french toast for breakfast, pizza for lunch, possibly fried rice for dinner, and some Ben and Jerry's fish food ice cream if I can get my hands on some. It's all part of my new diet. No, really.

My roommate Natalie and I are embarking on a journey to "get cut." Haha, the old me would think, because I eat chocolate and bread everyday of the week. As part of our high protein plan, the sugar and white carbs really needed to go. I'll be honest, I basically ate pasta every day for lunch. And not the home made kind, the frozen box kind with high sodium.

I know for sure Natalie is lifting and pressing and squatting more than me at this point, and we are taking a similar but varied approach in eating. Like, she forced me to buy and eat cottage cheese. Okay. So I lie. She totally didn't. She showed me how much protein was in it, and since I had no idea what I was going to be eating for breakfast on this plan of no bagels or cereal, I had to do something. I bought some and made myself eat it. Boy, I tell you, it worked. I ate it every morning for breakfast, and it really curbed my need for a morning snack. I'm not sure if this is because of the high protein, or because I was still feeling nauseous from swallowing the stuff down at such an early hour. I'm trying the same thing again next week, only I'm going to pretend like I like it.

I am semi-mostly following the diet plan of lifestyle design god Tim Ferris, who has a blog which he so cleverly titled The Blog of Tim Ferriss. For the nitty gritty details, you can read his meal plan post. And here is a link to all his body related posts. In short summary, this is what I am forcing myself to eat:

Instead of yogurt and a bagel for breakfast, cottage cheese and a bit of fruit.
Instead of a granola bar for a morning snack (which, btw, had more sugar than a rice crispy treat), some peanut butter.
Instead of yogurt, a fruit cup and a frozen microwaveable dinner compliments of Smart Ones, I am actually packing vegetables in my lunch, eating a lot of black beans and soy products, and mozzarella cheese.
Also, a lot of eggs.

In short, torture, really. No chocolate. No sugar. Blah. No really. Like, it hurts. Like, I stare into my cupboard and think "What the %&#@ am I going to eat?"

But there's this catch. You get to eat whatever you want on one day. It actually is supposed to trick your metabolism or whatever. Who knows if it really works. But I figured I'd try it for a month.

So you know, I'll let you know if I get ripped.