Well, I did it. After going to the gym for a month, three to four times a week, I decided I liked it enough (or, rather, could tolerate it enough) to make it a regular part of my life. I signed up for two years in order to get the more reasonable rate of $38/month - the gym charges $48/month for a one-year sign up. Paying month by month? $99/month, which is insane and what I paid for the first month because I didn’t want to lock in for a two year period unless I was 100% sure I could commit to it. They have a $149 sign-up fee, and thankfully they put the $99 I paid for the first month against that fee, so it worked out OK.

I’ve been slowly but surely improving my fitness level over the past month:

• Treadmill: when I started I could last about five minutes at incline 2.0 and speed of 4.0. Now I can do incline 4.0, speed 4.0, and walk a full mile (15 minutes or so) without needing to stop.
• Stairmaster: also known as the “machine from hell”, I started at difficulty 5 and could only last three minutes - and after three minutes, I thought my heart and lungs were going to explode. Now I can last five minutes and only feel like I’m having a mild heart attack. A ways to go on that machine, but it seems to kick everyone’s ass…and it’s just climbing stairs. Go figure.
• Leg Press: I started out at 225 pounds (this is a two-leg press) and last Friday I was able to do two sets of 10 reps at 315 pounds. This isn’t so much from me building muscle in my legs as it is me getting more confident about wanting to push myself.
• Lat Pull-Downs: I started out able to do one set of 20 pull-downs at about 60 pounds, and last Friday I was able to do one set of 10 pull-downs at 120 pounds, and one set of 20 at 90 pounds.

None of that is particularly brag-worthy, but shared as an encouragement to other out-of-shape geeks like myself out there, that even in a month if you’re committed to working out regularly you’ll see positive changes. I haven’t lost any weight yet, but I have noticed a marked improvement in my energy level on the days I work out…except for today. What happened today you might ask? I had my initial consultation with my trainer, Kirk.

I had hoped that one month of basic prep would allow me to survive the assessment, but it was brutal - sometimes the simplest things can be the most difficult, like doing push-ups while using nearly every muscle in your body to stabilize yourself because you’re balancing on a Bosu ball (imagine a ball cut in half with a flat plastic top but round and bouncy on the bottom). It’s amazingly difficult for what seems like a simple motion. Or doing squats while standing on said Bosu ball, trying not to fall over. My arms were so exhausted when I got home this morning I could barely wash my hair in the shower - they felt like rubber and were hard to lift. Even now, six hours later, I’m wiped out. One day at a time…

Yesterday afternoon, I did something I haven’t done in about 15 years: I went to the gym and worked out. Why? It was time (well, if I’m honest with myself, it was past time). I’m 6 foot 2 inches - when I stopped gaining height in high school I was about 160 pounds. When I finished college I was about 185 pounds, and stayed there for a few years. In my mid 20s though I started to gain weight through the typical combination of getting less exercise, eating a bit worse, and the slower metabolism of getting older. In high school and college you get some exercise from carrying heavy books from one class to another. When you’re self-employed and sitting on your butt all day in a home office, the most exercise you tend to get is moving from the office to the fridge and back again. When I hit 200 pounds I thought “Wow, this isn’t good”, but I didn’t do of anything much about it.

Sure, there were attempts at altering my diet, eliminating sugar, eliminating carbs (I did the Atkins diet), etc. I tried dieting alongside Ashley off and on for a couple of years, but nothing really stuck (due to my own lack of self control) and I continued to shift between 200 and 220 pounds (I think at my heaviest I was up to 225). A couple of years ago Ashley starting going to the gym, and I saw something interesting happen. There wasn’t much change at first, but when she started working with a personal trainer, she toned up, lost some weight, and looks a lot like one of those women you see on the cover of Oxygen Magazine (though I keep asking her not to work out so much that she gets arms bigger than mine! ;-)).

But back to me…for the past year or so I’ve been stuck at 215 pounds and that’s at least 30 pounds heavier than I should be. I’ve tried to control my diet, but I love food too much! So when you can’t live on lettuce and rice crackers (calorie input), you need to work on the other end of the equation (calorie output) and burn calories the old fashioned way: working hard. I’m still going to tighten up my eating patterns, mostly by eliminating sugar wherever possible, but it’s gym time.

Yesterday I spent about an hour in the gym, mostly working on my cardio - because without cardio, you’ve got nothing. How bad is my cardio? If I go from our bonus room (2nd floor of our house) down to my basement and back up again, I’ll be panting and it will take a good five minutes for my heart rate to go down to normal. That’s…pathetic. So, not surprisingly, my cardio was pretty bad at the gym. I did 10 minutes on the treadmill, then five minutes on a stationary bike, then another 15 minutes on the treadmill. The treadmill had measurements for my heart rate, which felt like it was going to explode out of my chest at certain moments, but it was kept between 160 and 185 for all of my cardio workout. I then did some work on the weight machines, mostly getting motion in muscles that don’t get worked very often.

Tomorrow morning I head back to the gym - I’m going to go three times a week for the first two weeks, then try to ramp up to going every week day like Ashley does. I’m writing this to act as an encouragement to others who might be in the same boat as me, and also to make a commitment (in public) to getting in shape over the next few months. My short term goal is to make it down to 200 pounds by the time we leave for our vacation to Japan, which is the third week of March. It should be do-able…I just need to do it!