So as promised we got to the summer and I stopped blogging as much as I was when this was shiny and new. No oaths on keeping this going but I will up date when I have something special to rant about into cyber space.
Okay so gyms: they suck. As of late I have been trying to reestablish going to the gym at least three or four times a week. This little sweat fetish of mine usually pops up once every six months or so right around the time I am feeling most bloated and lardy. Gyms, much like this blog, get me going on a entertainment kick for two or three weeks before they start to dwindle in interest and die away. Its like a never ending cycle that starts with promises and resolutions about as strongly based as those made by all your drunk friends around New Years and usually ends with a bowl of ice cream and some excuse about it being too hot/ cold/ windy/ sunny/ rainy or airy outside to possibly go to the gym. So right now I am in the first week of a new cycle. I have gone to the gym three times this week and have been refreshed in exactly why I do not like gyms, and also as to why I will not exercise without going to one.
What the purpose of a gym should be is so that over weight people, much like myself, can go and try to reach the unattainable body shapes they so desperately pine for from magazines. It should be a place where all those grotesquely large men you see in speedos around the pool can go to do society a favor by shedding a few pounds. What a gym should be is a place full of large, smelly, perspiring people coming together while wearing clothing that is entirely too tight for their abounding love handles, cellulite curdled thighs and just plain fatty ankles and trying to be more healthy. This is what a gym should be.
What a gym is: a place for those already perfectly sculpted people to come and socialize with other perfectly sculpted people and seemingly whisper behind the back of one chubby chick who dare be using the elliptical 2 secs passed the allotted 30min time limit. What gyms are is a walking steroid commercial complete with shirtless men flaunting muscles no amount of weigh lifting could ever give them...wait...or is that a woman? What gyms are, are a place full of staff that looks good, and people that look good who all smiling and happy together because they are so hyped up on endorphines that they can barely tell what is happening around them. That is what gyms are.
And please. for the love of all that is good, do not give me this crap about all women gyms. Curves is a wonderful idea, I think it is fabulous to have all women gyms, I totally believe that removing men from the equation does take a certain modicum of pressure off already stressed out women. But if you honestly think that having just women around takes off the stress for a fat person walking into the gym you are wrong wrong wrong. Not only will she then be worried about her particular gym outfit that day, but her hair and her shoes and why all the other women look better than she does, and how it is possible that the 50 year old on the recumbent bike next to her is doing like 60mph when she is only doing 20, and why the high schooler across the room is so perky looking in her tank top and short shorts, and if, indeed, that is the natural very orange, very leathery skin color of the yoga instructor.
To those of you who have already achieved the perfect body type/ a body type more then 75% of the population would envy: get out of my gym. You obviously have the tenacity and the willingness and the drive to come to the gym and stay healthy and fit and sculpted; which means I bet you have the tenacity and the willingness and the drive to exercise in a park on on the street or in your home. I don't care where you do it, just don't do it in a gym! I think gyms should have fats days; days when people who are really big can come in a use the equipment and if you aren't 45lbs or more over weight you can not come in for that day. This way it doesn't take every bit of strength a larger person has in their large body to step through the glass doors into a weight room only to see that they are surrounded by the magazine people they envy. This way bigger people don't have to worry about sweating or looking like a fatso or jiggling in all the wrong places while working out. I applaud every person who comes into the gym who is large like that because it is about 100 times harder for you to work out here than it is for people who are in shape to. Because they don't know what you are going through, because they don't know what it feels like to think that people are staring at you all the time. Because they don't know what it is like to have the idea that maybe you should go home and lose a few pounds before you even show your face in a gym. Have you ever wondered why you don't see horribly obese people at the gym? Part of it could be because they are horribly obese for a reason but the other part is because in our society we have crafted a place that should be welcoming to the largest of body types, encouraging and supportive even, into a place where those types are made to feel self conscious while being surrounded by people that have already achieved the goals they so desperately want.
Much love to those who have been able to work out and stay fit or get fit and be healthy. But it does give you something to think about.
~The Singing Ginger
