I posted on my FB page yesterday, a simple shout out to those starting something new in 2014. I’ve seen so many posts slamming new years resolutions and posts of seasoned athletes commenting on the new years crowds in the gym.
Today I feel a need to talk about the day I started my journey, exactly 13 years ago yesterday on 01-01-2001. I was miserably fat, extremely insecure, and totally embarrassed to go into the gym. I went anyway. I was wearing a 3xl t-shirt and a pair of leggings that should have never ever been seen in public, but it was all I had that I could fit into. So began my journey. That first week was literally hell looking back on it. I made myself so sore I got sick, but I kept going. I could feel peoples eyes and the looks of pity, but I kept going.
A month or so later when I had been going consistently for a month (a huge deal at the time), I decided to join a morning aerobics class. I got in the very back of the room. I noticed people looking back at me, some with encouragement, others with what I will describe as a knowing look. A look of “we are about to run her off” knowing. I hung in that class for 20 minutes and the instructor made no effort what-so-ever to modify the movements or even say to me “just keep going”. Three little words was all she had to say, but she never did. She became forever known to me as “the instructor I never want to be”. I walked out of that class at that 20 minute mark and I never set foot in that room again. Did I walk out of the gym?? Not a chance.
Instead, I got to know something called iron. Dumbbells at first and then I added the barbell. They didn’t yell at me. They never at any point implied that I couldn’t do it, they just fought back with resistance. From that point on, I knew I’d found what I loved to do. I lifted and lifted and slowly over the course of the year 2001 I began to change. After 90 days no-one could even tell I’d lost 35# and I cried ALOT because I was not an “after” in that first 90 days. In 90 days losing 35 pounds was impressive (looking back on it) and I could have stopped there but I didn’t. I just kept going. Another 90 days passed and another 35 pounds down, people started to take notice. Over the course of yet another 90 days, folks started noticing BIG changes on a monthly basis. Some where around the 125 pounds lost mark, I felt like I was on the right path and my habits had begun to develop, but it took years to get my emotional head straight. So if you are reading this and just starting, just keep going. It takes longer than you may think to change, but just keep going and you will change.
All of that started with a New Year’s Resolution and a gym membership. So for the next two or three months, walk around your gym and make eye contact with the New Year’s Resolutions, you may find a lonely soul that is one smile away from changing his or her life.
Me? I’ll be the one standing on the sidelines yelling “YOU CAN DO THIS” with tears streaming down my face, because I just kept going.
garagegym107 