workin' on my fitness

you go, olivia

fitness and i have never been friends. the summer before my senior year of high school, i saw the inside of a gym for the first time. it was fun for roughly 2 minutes. so, to say that i'm not a natural athlete is an understatement. i can run for about 3 minutes before i'm wheezing like a middle aged emphysema patient and i find myself slowly curling into the fetal position on the sidewalk.  

over the years--and despite my physical ineptitude-- i've dabbled in the pursuit of a more athletic me. a prime example of these failed attempts came during my sophomore year. i'd recently infromed then-boyfriend, now-fiance that i'd like to start going to the gym with him. he, being far more physically active than i, was happy to help me set up a plan to make my workouts effective but bearable. 

shortly thereafter, and having no concept of what women look for in workouts, he enthusiastically exclaimed to my roommate, "amie's gonna get huge!" thinking, more muscles = bigger = what amie wants = compliment = yay! my roommate looked at him as if he were an emotionally abusive sociopath hell-bent on shanking my self-esteem.

 dramatic representation of roommate 

after clearing up the confusion, boyfriend was wonderful and supportive assistant to my gym-bound self. but, in spite of his every effort to make me interested, the gym once again lost its sparkle. 

so, despite my long history of failure in athletic pursuits, i embark on the next chapter of my fitness saga. in preparation for my upcoming nuptials, i once again enter the world of the gym. i hope to improve my health and maybe increase my athleticism along the way. i'm a perfectly healthy weight--i'm not skinny, and i'll always be pear-shaped, but getting smaller isn't on my to-do list. 

despite my healthy outlook on the whole fitness thing, i can't help but feel like i'm being one of "those girls"--starving away their vanity pounds so they can wear the same size they've had since middle school. i have this endless loop of regina george running through my head telling me that i must have body-image issues. 

 

"i really want to lose 3 pounds"

if you're a woman, and you're concerned about your fitness, it's not necessarily because you feel bad about yourself or the way you look. i know that. so, i just have to drive that image away and remind myself that i'm doing this for the right reasons--my health and well-being. 

and so i can finally run longer than an overweight basset hound. but that will take some serious work. we'll see how this goes.