I have a friend named Steve. We’ve known each other since high school and since I’ve known him, Steve is always almost getting into fights. Now that we’re older these near-miss altercations are few and far between, but in school I could guarantee Monday morning would bring news of some affront to Steve’s character that almost resulted in a fight. I almost got into a fight this weekend, Jules. Lather, rinse, repeat 52 more times. After a while, I was ready to resort to fisticuffs and my first words to him when he sat next to me in Mr. Mead’s biology class were usually, “So, who’s ass did you almost kick this time?” Well, Steve, this one’s for you. This morning I almost got into a fight with a woman at Curves.
I didn’t want to go, but I knew today was the end of my first month and they would be measuring me for progress. And they did. What did 5 days a week for a month get me?
- I gained 3 pounds
- I gained .1% body fat
- I lost 1/4 of an inch off my hips and thighs.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and the poor woman responsible for measuring me was not the woman with whom I almost fought. She was just the messenger, and I pretty much stood there blinking my stinging eyes. I really wanted to turn on my heel and leave, but I decided to stay and work out even harder than I had the prior 4 weeks.
The woman who’s ass I almost kicked is quite fugly. Frankly, she looks like an orangutan. She has tan, leathery skin and dyes her naturally dark hair apricot–the closest she will ever get to the blonde she really wants. She is an enormous stove pipe on two, small feet. I wager she’s 5 feet, 250 pounds. To compliment her compact, troll-like body is an enormous attitude. She spends most of her workout looking down at people from behind an unfortunate pig snout equipped with dime-sized, cavernous nostrils. In my mind, her name is Cornelia.
I was talking to a woman working out next to me about my results. She could tell I was disappointed and was trying to cheer me up. A woman working out next to Cornelia jumped in when I mentioned to my neighbor that I was doing Curves 5 times per week.
“That’s why! They say you should only work out 3 times per week.” She is obviously someone who had great success with Curves and was looking for a reason why I wasn’t as fortunate.
“I read you should do some form of cardio 5 times a week.”
“You should do more, then!”
“I started walking with my neighbor at night last week, so maybe…” I was going to finish by saying maybe I’ll see more results next month when Cornelia looked at my stomach, rolled her eyes and turned to the woman and said, “She’s still eating.” Eating. As if she shrinks to the size of a pen at the end of her workouts, hides inside my back pocket, and watches me eat all day long. The other woman turned and looked at me and said, “Ooooooh,” while she shook her head. Cornelia had disclosed to her the obvious, and now she felt stupid for not realizing I spent my days with my head buried in the refrigerator.
It took all my willpower to keep from hooking my fingers in those enormous nostrils and throwing her into traffic like a discus. I opened my mouth to ask her how she was privy to my eating habits, and that, perhaps, she could direct comments about me to me. Instead, I kept my mouth shut. Someone so rude and nasty would only get a rise from me responding. I didn’t want to ruin it for the rest of the members, so I spent the rest of the workout imagining how many times a day people mistook her for an apricot ape.
An hour later I was telling my mom about my lackluster results. She listened to me complain about how hard I was working out and patiently waited until I ended my tirade on the unfairness of life. Then she quietly asked, “Well, have you changed your diet much?”
My diet may not be pristine, but I did cut out Diary Queen. That, for me, is huge. Each small blizzard can be up to 500 calories, so at the very least I expected to maintain my weight instead of gain. I told her all this.
She continued speaking, choosing her words carefully. “I think to lose a significant amount of weight you need to monitor what you eat very carefully. Cutting out the ice cream is good, but you might need to do more. Maybe you can try being as strict with your diet as you have been with exercising.”
I knew my mom was right. I also knew I wanted to record her uplifting speech and play it in the Curves parking lot from a giant boom box held high above my head while Cornelia lumbered inside. That’s how you motivate people and dispense advice! You could learn a thing or two from my mom, you furry little primate.
But it’s all good. I’m now even more motivated, and now I have a goal. I want to lose 36 pounds by my 36th birthday on November 30th. I might start another blog to keep track of my progress so I don’t bore everyone or, I might be totally selfish and post here and keep a weight loss ticker front and center. I haven’t decided. All I know is come November Cornelia will be choking on her bananas.
You can do it Jules! My mom always tells me that I am so determined in every other aspect in my life, that setting my mind on living a more healthy lifestyle shouldnt be that difficult. I know the same is true for you!
Law degree or losing 36lbs?
If you start a weight loss blog, please share. I’d love to follow along with you.
Go Jules!! That is a totally attainable goal and may even inspire me to set one as well. I have NO motivation (aside from the fact that I am killing myself slowly being so overweight) to lose weight. Maybe we can do this together. What are you going to do about diet? Just eat healthier? Follow some plan? Just curious, I know what I need to do, what works for me I just haven’t been doing it :(
Here is a link for bodyfat monitors
– bazaar.posmena.co.uk
Troll! Egads, why are people so negative?
It must be in the air… I ALMOST throttled a woman at the post office. Not the workers, I love all my postal workers, but this horrible woman in line who thought my children’s joyful laughter over in the corner was much to loud. She was in her 60’s and proclaimed she was a teacher. There were too many jokes to throw at her to really be fair. I will just tell my guys to sing louder next time to drown out the grumps.
Perhaps you could sing at the apricot ape : )
FUCK Cornelia. Sorry, but I hate hate hate people who hate THEMSELVES so much that the only way they can feel better about themselves is to make someone else feel bad. NEXT TIME you hear her saying something (and you will…), maybe you could smile sweetly and say “I find that giving good advice means to be encouraging, not demeaning, and I’ve also found that it helps the advice-giver to actually take her own advice.”
AND, by the way, you are totally missing the point that you LOST 1/4of an inch!!!! You’re on your way!
OOPS! In my frenzy to get that last comment out, I forgot to change my account info. That wasn’t my Handsome Husband (although he would TOTALLY concur!), Jules. That was ME!
It’s REALLY REALLY hard to make those changes all at once. I lost 40 lbs last year strictly through diet, I could not bring myself to exercise- I tried but found I hated the stupid elliptical machine we’d bought because I thought my thighs were going to fall off after 5 whole minutes on an easy cycle.
Don’t let the troll get you down- you have to start somewhere and exercise is probably the better place of the two anyway! To me it always seemed a good idea to get one under control before attacking the other, otherwise it gets too overwhelming. And hey- you did lose some off your thighs, you may have been retaining water (especially after a vacation where you might’ve eaten out a lot)…next time tell the troll to subtly stick it with a middle finger that absently scratches near your eye. She might not catch it, but you’ll feel better, LOL!
you deserve sainthood for not bludgeoning that evil primatewoman with a free weight. I never understood people that feel the need to dispense advice to random strangers; they never seem to do it very politely. anyways, congrats on your 1/4 of an inch (much better than nothing!) and think about the fact that you’re gaining all sorts of good muscle through working out so any little diet changes you make this month will have an even bigger impact! good luck!
Wow! Did I ever mention how much I love comments? This made my day. :)
I went to Curves today and made a point to smile at Cornelia (turns out her name is Gloria, so I wasn’t far off). She smiled back, and then later laughed at me when I kept trying (to no avail) to do the hula hoop for more than 3 seconds. Who knew hula-hooping took so much skill? I used to be a champ when I was 6.
Thank you Lili and Mainehappymama for being so encouraging! I have no idea how I’m going to lose the weight. The Mister’s work will pay a portion of Weight Watcher’s dues, and my neighbor (a totaly drill sergeant) says she will go with me. We’ll see.
Becky, and old bird once yelled at Mikey when he was about 1.5 years old. We were in a restaurant and he got all excited when he saw the fruit coming. He started squealing and clapping and she snarled at him “You’re nothing but a little noise maker!” It took all my self control to keep from leaning over and saying, “I’ll let that comment slide because you’ll be dead within 5 years, you old harpy.”
Jen–when I first saw your husband my first thought was to replace all the pictures of me on this site with pictures of Salma Hyak. Whew!
Carey–how did you lose 40 pounds!! Wow! Please, dispense advice!
Hannah–thank you for the encouragement! And you’re right–at least I didn’t gain a 1/4 inch! :)
In a way Cornelia did you a favor by getting you all fired up. Now you can stick it to her with all your weight loss!
I really have to learn to not read your blog at my new job. Again with reading it when I wasn’t supposed to be and the inappropriate laughter. If I get fired, I’m coming to live with you!
You can totally reach your goal. If anyone can do it you can. I too would like to follow along with you while you do it. I’ll be your personal cheerleader! I’ll buy the outfit and everything. It’ll be great!
have you tried sparklepeople.com? It is a great tool for keeping track of your calories and has menus if you want to make sure you’re eating right. We tried one of the vegetarian option ones (since the husband is vegetarian) for a month to just get the feel for what we should be eating. It’s also a good thing to eat several small meals a day as it helps boost your metabolism! Working out 5 days a week is really impressive and I commend you for your dedication! You must have so much more energy and less stress already. Well, don’t let Cornelia get to you, clearly, she’s one of those people who can only feel better by putting down other people. You’re well above that nonsense.
Hey Jules,
The hubby and I signed up for e-diets. I won’t lie- it was hard to get used to in the first couple of weeks, but it made life and dieting so easy- and I learned a lot about portions too (I was seriously surprised at what an actual serving of meat was- it’s NOT a whole chicken breast- more like half!). Feel free to e-mail me if you want to chat more about it :)
First, thank you for making me laugh tonight. I needed that.
Second, I think it is pretty common to gain weight when you first start working out. I did. Then it melted off after about 6 weeks. Just a thought.
Also, drink lots of water and consider ditching wheat, dairy or sugar. Just pick one. You’ll be shocked at the results.
You’re doing great!!! Keep it up!!!
Holy cow! Next time you see her, perhaps you could say (just for kicks of course) “Hi, after your comment about eating, i was wondering if you could share your diet tips with me ….oh, and how’s that working for you?” ;-)
I’ll share this with you: I recently finished a 4 week “boot camp” exercise class that was 90 mins. every morning starting at 5:00 am (!!!). I worked my butt off, watched what I ate, could hardly walk at the end of each week because of the killer squats, etc. I lost …..get this …. ZERO pounds and ZERO body fat. I did however, lose inches overall and I felt better, but I was damn disppointed after that evaluation.
Hang in there girl – you can do it!!
oh, and I forgot to add, the instructor told me the same thing happened to her after the first 4 week session. But after her second 4 weeks, the pounds started dropping.
I’m telling you, this shit happens to me all the time. I was walking along 18th street in DC with two friends Friday night. Heading striaght toward me was a dark mysterious shadow who said “You guys look hard. I am so a-scared”. So I told him he should be. I don’t know what it is about me that makes people want to talk smack but I am telling you, I make people want to almost fight me all the time.
Hi, Steve. ;)
xo,
Jules