Part 2 of my “Get back to the real me” plan was to loose the 15 pounds I gained while working at my job. All that extra fat felt like dead weight. I knew symbolically it was my protection of armor, but now it had to go. After killing my corporate self, I now had to kill my fat self. Four months prior to quitting, I had joined this gym that catered to people who wanted one-on-one personal training. It was expensive, but a girlfriend of mine had been with this place and she had lost 15 pounds to strengthen and prepare for a marathon. She looked awesome, and I thought of it as an investment. Besides, I was getting older, and I was getting tired of being in crowded gyms where guys would hit on you.
Every time you came in this gym, you got a different trainer. You could request to just have the same trainer, but the good thing about having someone different each time is that your body is worked in all kinds of ways because trainers have different styles. The trainers I worked with: one was a former pro football player, one was a former body builder, one was trained in martial arts, one liked to focus on helping women (this trainer was female), and one was a trained sports physiologist, so the range, I thought, was real good.
I started to make friends with the other members at this place, and soon continued my membership mainly so I could hang out with these people. It’s not that you had to be a member to be friends with these people, on the contrary I liked these people because they were so anti-cliché, it just became real fun to come in and work out together, laugh, and then go out to eat.
Soon, a bunch of my gym buddies decided to train for a marathon, so I joined in for the social aspect. I had been a runner since college, and had pretty good stamina, but I had never raced because I wanted to keep running fun and relaxing. I ran to de-stress and spark creative ideas. I always thought that adding a competitive factor would start to take the fun out of running, and after loosing half my toe nails, loosing a few periods, and blowing out my knee, I was right, so I stopped training. Running wasn’t fun for me while I was competing, but while I did train, I did learn a lot more about my body, and I did have great fun with my running group. I did manage to run the length of a half marathon, 13.1 miles, and I was very proud of myself. After almost 10 months of working with the trainers, and semi-training for a marathon, I only lost 10 pounds, but I went from 30% body fat down to 24%. I had some really nice muscles, and my legs were kick ass. I plateued, so I started to look at other ways to kick-start my metabolism and get to my weight/size goal.
