love hurts, yeah yeah

Okay I have made it to my new workout class 2 nights in a row.  Feeling good about that, though my muscles have a thing or 2 to say about that.  Not gonna gripe about their griping...after all, it is a direct result of my failure to train them in the way they should go, eh?  I shall treat my body with love, and not blame it for the way I have mistreated it.


Going to my class is humbling.  It's the coolest workout class I have ever been to, in the amount of freedom.  The leader keeps time.  So for a set amount of time, she tells us to "get moving."  We all get moving in different ways.  Some step, some jump around, there are jumping jacks in there, and jump rope too.  I march in place, mostly, though tonight I did try to remember some of my old pom-pom girl footwork.  That was more interesting than marching.  She guides us in short intervals of non-cardio stuff.  Push-ups, a torture called "the plank," lifts from the edge of the stage, and a bunch of various ab stuff that I almost can't do at all yet.  We are reminded all along to do what we can...as in everything we can, but also as in not pushing dangerously past our limits.


This is where I feel humbled.  Everyone else in the class is much, much closer to their ideal weight than I am.  Actually, if I looked like any one of them, I would not bother with an exercise class (and now we see the kind of thinking that got me to this weight.)  So during the cardio part, they are so very active.  Bouncy.  High energy. 


And I can't do more than a small fraction of what they can do.  And I'm sucking air like no other, while they don't really seem short of breath at all.  And I couldn't bounce if my life depended on it...my knees have serious things to say, on the issue of bouncing.  


Back on the bike path last summer, situations like this made me hateful.  Svelte, tanned, barely clad, beautiful women would whip by me on their bikes, as if I weren't even moving at all, and I would think nasty, spiteful thoughts.  I mean, sometimes I tried not to.  But...I still did.  I hated on them pretty consistently.


I'm not tempted to hate these girls, though they are just as beautiful as the babes passing me on the bike path.  I know them, and/or they are my housemates.  Still, I DO feel very inadequate, dancing in their shadow, even while they are so very positive and encouraging to me.


So I've been expanding a technique I used on the bike path, to help me hold more realistic expectations of myself and not go all ugly-insecure.  Here's how it goes:


Oh man, I barely get my feet of the ground and she's bouncing.  I'm so hopelessly fat!


Wait...I'm carrying 100 more extra pounds than she is.  Let's think about this.  Remember when I used to carry feed sacks?  A FIFTY pound bag was almost more than I could carry.  The 100 pound bags...I could only get them an inch off the ground.  I couldn't breathe or speak while carrying them.  They made my knees and back hurt, just in picking them up.  I couldn't have climbed a stair with them to save my life.  


Okay, okay, okay...picture the cute bouncy girl picking up that 100 pound bag.  Is she bouncing now?


I don't think so.


Would she be able to work out as hard as I am working out right now, holding that bag?  


I doubt it.  But look..I wear that bag every minute I'm alive...and still....I'M DOING IT.


And with that, the I'm-such-a-loser feeling dissipates for awhile...and I can call the whole visual back again when the feeling tries to return.


Does it seem ridiculous?  I dunno.  It helps me stay on task and not fall into the pit...so for tonight...I am counting it as love.