Crossing a line

I’ve done it.  All jokes aside about cancelling my gym membership, I’ve actually gone and cancelled my gym membership.


I have concluded that the gym is good for neither my bank balance or my health.

 I do not need a gym full of sweaty people to encourage me to lift things, and  whilst I will really miss the infinity pool, with the money I’ll be saving, I might even be able to afford the water rates in my own flat.

When I moved to Edinburgh I went on a ‘tour’ of gyms. One entirely hideous experience saw me visit ‘Curves Gym’ with absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for. For those who are equally unaware, Curves is really more of a weight management club than a gym. And thus, ‘centre manager’ Claire – who appeared to require a fair amount of weight management herself – grunted incoherently at me while taking my measurements, before announcing that Curves could definitely do something about my ‘back fat’ and enquiring if my family and friends were supportive of my weight loss journey.

 Great. I’d walked into the gym thinking I was pretty much ok, and was walking out a broken (back fat sporting) woman.

 I told you gyms were bad for my health.

 Of course I’ve done the only sensible thing in light of my gym cancellation: I’ve ordered a Cross Trainer for the flat. Yes I will use it. No it will not become a clothes rail.

 The Boyfriend has promised that he will assemble it for me. Please don’t think I am not able, it’s just that I once spent an entire weekend assembling Ikea flat-pack furniture and I’m worried that the flash-backs alone might finish me off.

 So my cross trainer will be delivered on Thursday ready for a spot of resistance training. Let’s see what we can do about that back fat, eh.

It's not that special

So here we are, on day six of a brand new year. I’m sure there are plenty of people still playing with their shiny new, resolutions. Fag packets have been crumpled. Slim Fast purchased. Bathroom scales polished.

But I can’t face New Year’s resolutions. They’re too disappointing. If I’ve been rubbish at something for 28 years, I’m pretty confident that this isn’t the year I’m going to miraculously change. Surely we should all be resolving to stop beating ourselves up.

I ask you; who can even contemplate the Special K diet in bleakest darkest January? You all need help.

Last year for example, I resolved to sort out my finances. And oh, just imagine my hollow laugh. I’m not very good at saving money. But of course I already knew that – who was I kidding?

So I’m looking forward to a resolution free 2012; yes, 2012 has got a nice ring to it.

Actually maybe for 2012 it might be nice to have a little in the pot. Yes, maybe I should take a stab at saving again.

In fact, perhaps the first thing I should do is cancel the gym membership. They extort a ridiculous sum of money from my bank each month that could easily be the foundations of a nest-egg.

But without the gym how on earth will I atone for all the Christmas food I’ve eaten and booze I’ve drunk?

Turns out, I'm going to  have to start the Special K diet.

Is someone shooting at us?

My gym is full of naked women.  

Well, not the gym exactly, but certainly the women’s changing rooms.

Large naked women. Who wander around - starkers - for what seems like hours. I can arrive, change, swim, steam in the steam room, and they’re still in the changing room, rubbing moisturiser into their naked form. Leg up on the bench, rub a dub dub.

So this weekend I decided to give the gym a miss a miss miss, and went for a bike ride instead.

I have not been on a bike ride for many years, but turns out there is truth in the saying – you really don’t forget how to do it. I even roped in a willing bike-ride companion.

She had not been on a bike ride for a while either.

“Can we take our handbags with us?” was one of many questions that revealed our amateur biking status. We decreed the answer to be yes. We even packed a pump and a bike lock.

Obviously we hit the bike path: neither of dared brave actual roads and traffic.

And then 10 minutes into the bike ride, disaster struck. I thought we had been shot at. Luckily we had not been shot at, but my fellow rider’s inner tube had exploded. Boom.

In the process of exploding it had lovingly tangled itself around the wheel/spokes/ brakes and taken her back wheel totally out of action.

The boyfriend’s question on my return home was “why didn’t you just take the inner tube out?” Thanks love. We hadn’t thought of that.

So, 2 miles of huffing and puffing later, with us taking turns to drag/push/attempt to carry the bike, we arrived at a bike shop. Our legs were bruised from the bloody pedals crashing into them and our clothes were drenched with sweat, but we had survived.

We had not (as my companion had so wanted to) admitted defeat and called someone with a car to come and get us.

Of course the man at the bike shop repaired the wheel no problem, and did not seem to appreciate the epic struggle of wills that had brought us to that point.

He even had the cheek to comment that we clearly ‘hadn’t been girl guides.’ Well,  matey, I certainly was a girl guide, and no-where in the ‘Brownie Guide Promise’ does it say anything about the ability to repair a ruptured inner tube.

It was around this moment that my fellow rider remembered that whilst she had packed the bike lock, the key was sitting safely back at her house.

Super.

As we asked the bike shop men if we could ‘borrow a lock’ we pretty much wanted the ground to open up.

And then we tried to lock our bikes up on the railings in front of the bikeshop. But they wouldn’t fit. No, really, they wouldn’t. I am not technically illiterate. I can programme an alarm clock, build ikea furniture and own ‘no-more-nails.’ So I am telling you now that the lock would not physically go around 2 bikes and that rail. But there we were, standing outside the shop, a large glass front revealing our struggle to the men inside. Oh god, we're sweating again.

I could cope with the embarrassment no more and insisted we shuffle down the street out of sight of their pitying glances.

Bikes locked up successfully and the sweats subsiding, surely it was time for lunch?

Maybe I could get used to this cycling lark.

Bikram can bugger off

I have just got home from a Body Pump class. As a result my hands have gone into solid claws from gripping the bar and I can barely type.

For anyone who has ever done a Body Pump class, you will understand. Others will no doubt be thinking this is a spot of melodrama for comic effect. Think again.

Body Pump is, to coin a phrase, pretty flipping evil. The correct term is endurance training, where participants, to the background of hard-house music, work all the major muscle groups via a series of weight-bearing exercises including squats, presses, lifts and curls.

I haven’t been to Body Pump in quite some time. Let me think. 3 years. The last time I went I was unable to drive my car home due to leg shake. I remembered this around 3 minutes into the class, but my path to the door was blocked by a knucklehead squatting. Tonight, after reacquainting myself with the ‘pump’, I was gaily walking home and hopped, with a skip of smugness, off the kerb. And my leg gave clean away.

Smooth.                                                                      

I have friends who partake in Bikram Yoga. For the unenlightened, this is yoga performed in a room heated like a sauna. Roasting hot and 40 per cent humidity. Why? God, why? A friend summarised Bikram Yoga to me, saying, ‘Putting aside the mental pious vegetarian stick insects and the fact it’s massively overpriced – it’s amazing, and will change your life forever.’

Well that’s me sold.

I mean do we really loathe ourselves this much? From StairMasters to kettlebells, Rosemary Conley to Natalie Cassidy, we understand and expect that getting in shape is going to require serious effort on our part. But we pump, pose, zumba, shimmy and now even part-cook ourselves under the loose heading of ‘exercise.’ I fell flat on my face in the street this evening thanks to squats. Is it worth it? Is it really?

I mean you can’t blame us. If I hear one more of the most beautiful women in the world, size zero, preened to within an inch of her life, tell me that ‘she’s just like everyone else and hates her tummy too,’ I am going to go to Hollywood and force feed her Ginsters Pies.

I can’t listen to one more starlet complain about her body.  Cheryl Cole says she has big bum days too. Oh spare me, that woman does not need magic pants. Angelina Jolie herself has moaned that she feels her lips ‘take over her face’. 

Do these women think it's endearing to complain about their appearance? If they put themselves in our size 12 jeans, they would understand that it just makes us want to smack them in their perfect little faces.

A survey by American Glamour magazine found that 97 per cent of readers had negative thoughts about their body every day. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d quite like to be in the other 3 per cent. Every day is a lot of time to commit, life is short.

So for now I will be resting my exhausted (and utterly seizing up) size 12 self, slapping my cellulite with enthusiasm and rejoicing that wobbly bits or not, at least my lips aren’t too big for my face.

                                                     

Want my advice?

Oh my goodness, I’m exhausted.

Since 2011 began, not only have I experienced Catholic levels of guilt for every penny I have spent, (food – surely non essential, a train ticket to visit my parents – exorbitantly expensive, I’ll just go next year) but I’ve also been following all of the helpful recommendations of newspapers, adverts and retailers. After all they’ve only got what’s best for me at heart.

I was indeed ‘naughty’ over the festive season, with one too many wines, mince pies and after eights. I am thus feeling the appropriate amount of advertising induced guilt and considering the veritable benefits of overpriced gym membership, stocking up on ‘slimming’ special K and feeling suitably motivated to blend a batch of cabbage soup.

Of course, it’s all wasted on me at the moment. I simply can’t afford to keep up with the Jones’.

I would have once have seen and envied the bodies of Hollywood stars, but I’ve had to cancel the DVD rental.

There was a time when I could have pored over ‘How to make 2011 your best year yet’ or ‘The new diet that caused Cheryl Cole to waste away’, but I’ve cancelled the magazine subscription

2011 is the year that I can’t afford to take any of this bogus advice, and all the more adequate I feel for it.