Much Overdue About Nothing

A belated and overly long wrap up.

There’s a certain irony, given the overwhelming themes in this blog, that I had enough motivation to finish the 12 week gym program but not enough to finish writing the blog.

But finish the gym I did. And so finish the blog I shall.

When I posted last , I had four weeks of gym to go, and had just had something of an epiphany which came in the form of a phone call from Andrea. I think there may have been more to that conversation, that day and that blog post than I first suspected. It became clear to me that I just wasn’t on the same level as Andrea. We weren’t talking the same language. I pondered this for a bit.

Also, at some point during this whole process I had discussed the blog with my wife. She told me that she didn’t read it, because it was too negative. She felt that I wasn’t trying to find any positivity from my experience, and that the blog was only helping me to wallow in the negativity. This is not something I could deny. I began to wonder about whether I could somehow twist things around and think more positively about the whole thing. At around this time I cleaned my car out and found the booklet we had been given on the first day (which had, as I predicted, stayed in the car the whole time). I idly flicked through it and found it had a section on positive thinking. “This is surely a sign” I thought. So I started reading. It was full of the usual bollocks about the power of positive thinking. Nothing new, but nothing terrible. And then I came to the recommended reading section. This booklet, written (or at least studiously copied from various bits of the internet) by the person responsible for my health at this time, recommended that I read “The Secret”.

Something inside me broke. “The Secret” is, to me, akin to the power balance bracelet. (I would go so far as to suggest it is that way for everyone. There will be those who believe in both and those who believe in neither, but you’re unlikely to come across someone who would say “Oh The Secret is clearly a load of pseudo-mystical/psychological hogwash, but I haven’t fallen over anywhere near as much as I used to since I got this bracelet!”.) Between reading this (the booklet, not “The Secret”) and the phone call I knew that not only were we not speaking the same language, but that Andrea and I would never be able to speak the same language. And more importantly, I knew that I didn’t care anymore. No longer was I unsure if I was looking at this the wrong way. No longer was I concerned that I was somehow “wrong” in the way that I thought. I understood that I am me, and they are them, and it’s perfectly OK for me to think differently to them. And no longer was I going to over analyse things.

Hence the death of the blog. Basically, I had decided I would turn up, do my thing, and go home. It didn’t feel wrong, and it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel “a bit prostitutey” (as one of my commenters suggested) nor did it feel like it was doing me any good (lets face it, it never felt like it was doing me good). It simply was.

Which is not to say there weren’t some highlights worth a quick mention.

• Phil came back with his resistance bands, and was as paradoxical as ever. We did pretty much the same thing we had done the first time, and to be honest I noticed some improvement in my performance with him second time round.
• Breakfasts remained excellent. One week, somewhere towards the end, we were given pancakes, with golden syrup and bananas. Andrea came down and was visibly unimpressed. I thought it was quite funny (and excellently yummy) but when she sincerely apologised to us, and ensured us it wouldn’t happen again, I almost laughed out loud.
• I also missed one week, thanks to a doctor’s appointment. I say this because it meant that I had to attend the very last session. I kept saying at the time that, even if I hadn’t used up all my “free passes” then I would still have attended the last session. I’m not sure I really believe that, but we’ll never know if it’s true now.
• We had the follow up to the bullshit science test. This showed that, over the 12 weeks, I had gained a small amount of weight, not changed my body/fat ratio at all, had not altered my physical age at all and had not hydrated my cells in the least. Or it showed that attaching electrodes to ones hands and feet does not in any way tell you anything in the least about your physical age, body.fat ratio or cell hydration. Who knows?

So, what DID I learn out of all of this?

Sadly, not much that I didn’t already know. But having said that, I have now proven things I only previously suspected.

The biggest (and most obvious) one is: The gym is not for me. “But” I hear you cry “you didn’t give it a chance! You didn’t even try to enjoy it!” This is, I admit, true. Well, 10 out of 12 weeks is giving it more of a chance than I think it deserved, but it’s true that I did not even try to enjoy it or make the most out of it. But the point is that I never would. I dislike it, its atmosphere and its people. I dislike the way I feel when doing it, and I dislike the way I feel after having done it. I think most importantly, I dislike the way I felt about myself while I was doing it. These are all things that I now know, that I only previously suspected. Even if it was a self fulfilling prophesy, that prophesy has been fulfilled, and I am comfortable and confident in my aversion to the gym. I should add, though, that I don’t think the gym, or the program we were on, is entirely bullshit. One guy I work with not only went to the gym almost every day, but he followed the eating plan (lifestyle change) as laid out in the book, and he lost, I believe, around 30kg. He is still going, and is still eating well, and looks absolutely great (it’s OK, in this context, to say another guy looks great, isn’t it? I swear the only other time I would say that about another guy is if it was Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr. Or maybe if I was drunk. Or if the guy in question was wearing some particularly fetching trousers).

 

Anyways, the beginning was every bit as difficult for him as it was for me. In fact, because he was genuinely trying, and starting a diet at the same time, it was no doubt 12 million times harder for him. But he stuck with it, put me to shame, and is in every way better for it.

Another thing I have learnt is that the more I think about something, the more complex it becomes. Again this is nothing new to me, and in my very first post I said “I thought and thought about it a lot, and then one day cleared my mind and just signed up.” I have always over-thought things. So while I hated the exercise from the get go, it wasn’t until I started analysing, and then blogging, that I really started to try and work out what was wrong with me, or what was going on. I think this came to a head in the last post. My over thinking sent me into a spiral of second-guessing absolutely every decision I made, and that made this so much more of an effort than it should have been.

One more thing is how important music is. I love music. All my life I have sung songs to myself, played an instrument, and generally filled my world with music. So there is no surprise that the music in this program played such an important part. I expect you could go back and read every post with the label “Music” and see that how much I enjoyed the session had a direct correlation with how much I enjoyed the music.

Something that did come as a surprise is how much I have enjoyed blogging. This is my first ever personal blog. I enjoy writing, but have never until now written about myself. I have dabbled here and here with comedic articles, and have received fairly warm feedback from them. But the value I have gained out of doing this (despite the over-analysis) and the feedback I have received from the blog has been a source of great joy for me. Having said that, I don’t think it’s something I could do regularly. The gym adventure gave me a focus. It was something to write about, and something that was continually happening to me, that was a source of new material. I think without that focus I would not be able to maintain a diary of any kind, and in fact even with that focus the blog still withered. But I may well be on the lookout for other short-term projects that will allow me to blog again.

One thing I have not worked out, though, is what actually does motivate me. I have thought about this a lot. (Too much, perhaps.)

Being motivated to change something about yourself means crossing the line between feeling good about who you are and feeling a compulsion to improve yourself. To want to change, you need to either have some level of dissatisfaction with the current, or a fear of the future. If you don’t, then you won’t feel the need to change. But if you are too dissatisfied with who you are now, you run the risk of creating a low self esteem that can mean you have even less motivation to do anything. So the line between feeling good and wanting to improve is not a thin one. It is wide enough that you can stay on the line and neither feel good about yourself, or do anything about it. I think I’m currently living on that line. For a bit, perhaps, I need to stop thinking, and stop feeling shitty about who I am, and start to be at the very least happy with myself.

Regardless, though, of the mental space that I inhabit, I will still be faced with what I am now certain is an absolute truth. To lose weight I am faced with the prospect of exercising and eating well every single day.

Hit me with your Gythmystick

Monday 16th August – Gymstick®

I quite like lasagne. But I don’t love it. I think dogs that are always happy regardless of how poorly you treat them are kind of annoying. But I don’t punt them. Teddy bears are great, but I don’t have an unhealthy attraction to one.

One point, however, on which Garfield and I completely agree, is our attitude to Mondays. Mondays are hard enough for many people. They involve getting up after two days of not having to get up, and going to work after two days of not having to go to work. On top of this, though, I add getting up an hour early to prepare for the gym.

On a normal day, getting ready for work is very much a trial and error process for me. I will put some clothes on, assess myself, and work out what needs to be done. Then I will put some more on, and see what remains. For example, something may not feel quite right, and I’ll realise I haven’t put a belt on. Or shoes. I’ll sometimes go out to the car three times before I remember my phone, wallet, keys and puffer. (It will come as no surprise that I have gone to work with my shirt inside out, and “mirror free” days are the norm for me. Getting to work and realising I left my phone, my glasses or even my laptop at home is not that unusual.)

This staged approach to dressing, however, does not work on Mondays. On Mondays I put my gym clothes on, and then have to pack my work stuff. This means I need to be together enough to know what I need to pack before I am fully awake. I need to be a really together guy. In fact, I need to be a really amazingly together guy. So it’s no co-incidence that I also need to know where my towel is.

I don’t think I have ever turned up exactly on time for a gym session.

Regardless, I got there this morning, and found I hadn’t missed anything. Today’s session was all about the Gymstick®. This is a device that is a stick, with a big elastic band on either end, that you hook over your feet. Now the Gymstick®, as anyone who wants to sell you one will tell you, can be used for any part of your exercise routine. If you are doing a warmup, you can jog around, while holding the Gymstick®. If you are doing a post exercise stretch you can use the Gymstick® to lean on. It’s really that versatile. (Of course you can do those things without the Gymstick®, but at $135 a pop, you really need to justify the purchase.)

But where it comes into its own, of course, is while actually exercising. Now for all my snark and sarcasm, I must admit that it certainly felt like a workout. In my last post I mentioned that with Gym Buddy M’s encouragement we had, on the previous Friday, concentrated our efforts on working our shoulder muscles. Needless to say my shoulders were still quite stiff this morning. Well can you guess what muscles many of the Gymstick® exercises worked? Exactly. Not very long into the routine, as we were stretching our Gymstick®s over our heads, I was shooting daggers at Gym Buddy M. I wanted to say something to him, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have heard over the sound of my shoulder muscles screaming “please, for the love of all things holy, make it stop!”.

You know that thing where something is so terrible that when you do something even only slightly less terrible that it feels like a holiday?

Well eventually we stopped doing shouldery things and started do ab things, and it was a sweet sweet relief.

At one point before the abs, though, we were doing squats, and I noticed that my left knee was quite sore. So when the instructor said “We’re going to do some lunges now. Does anyone have any knee problems?” I, of course, said “Yes.”

Many, I would guess at least half, of the people in the room laughed. Of course, I know why they laughed. It’s all about perceptions. I am “wacky Rob”. The class clown. The guy who always has a zany comment about something. So when I say “yes, actually I am in pain” then that’s obviously funny. Right? Still. It cut me deep. I, quite snappishly, said “thanks for your support, guys”. Oddly enough the lunges didn’t hurt my knee anywhere near as much as the squats did.

I should talk, at least briefly, about the music. Gymstick® is not just about a stick with wobbly bits on it. It also has a CD that the guy plays with really dramatic 80s style music. There was something that sounded like an outtake from Europe’s Final Countdown, we had Technotronic (ftg Felly) with Pump Up The Jam and, surprisingly, we had Cameo’s Word Up. Over the top of this odd assortment of tunes, though, were various beeps, buzzes and sound effects to let us know when to switch routines. The highlight, though, was the dramatic American voiced countdown at the start of each routine. It really felt like the Matterhorn at the show.

At the end of the session the instructor, to my huge surprise, informed us that if we wanted to buy a Gymstick® we could buy one off him, or come to his Gymstick® training session. I think any time someone extols the virtue of something and then offers to sell it to you, it creates an immediate conflict of interest that destroys any trust you may have had in that person as a reliable source of information. Thankfully, this guy immediately came off as someone who was selling something, so it didn’t really disappoint.

Then we went down to breakfast which was, this week, slightly different. We had muesli with our yoghurt and fruit, and instead of scrambled eggs and tomato, we had poached eggs and mushroom. It was quite nice, and breakfast remains a definite highlight of the day.

Such a lonely word

Tuesday’s reflections on honesty

One conceit that I have, and I’m sure I have many, is that I usually think that I am being honest with myself, whereas I am quick to accuse others of kidding themselves. This crops up quite a bit at the gym.

I see people who are red in the face, sweating like a drug smuggler on the set of border patrol, and looking very close to death, but when asked how they are going, or what they thought of that session will immediately (or as soon as they have caught their breath) say “good, good”. I can’t help but think these people are either lying, or at the very least being dishonest with themselves.

But if, while I am gasping for air and blood bursting through my fat lined veins, you ask me how I’m going, I am likely to be honest,

and simply say “shit” or “shithouse” or “shitty” or maybe even “cocking arse”. So when trainer Phil from yesterday asked, I wasn’t really sure what purpose it was supposed to serve. Presumably it’s some form of encouragement, but I responded pretty grumpily and, in my opinion, honestly. I expect he’s used to surly fat bastards, and I’m not going to lose sleep over it. No more sleep than I’m currently losing, anyway.

Likewise when my boss at breakfast (same breakfast as last week - and just as nice – but this time with serving spoons) again asked “Did you enjoy it this time, Robbie J?” I still said no, because I didn’t. She told me she was going to ask every week. This didn’t, as some of you might expect, annoy me. I’ll actually be intrigued to see how I answer.

A few people have assured me, both today and yesterday, that once I get used to it – once it stops hurting and causing me to be constantly tired – then I will start to enjoy it. Personally I don’t think that is likely. I can easily see myself saying “hey, it’s not as bad as when it was hurting and causing me to be constantly tired, but I’d still rather play Grand Theft Auto”. What I can’t see myself saying is “let’s do that again!”

Time for something positive

Monday 12th July – Breakfast

After the gym session we all headed down, as one sweaty mass, to the cafe which is in the same building as the gym. Thankfully there was an escalator. I have seen this picture before and have, as everyone else has, laughed at the stupid Americans. It’s easy to do.

But having been to the gym, and turned my legs into two quivering blobs, I now understand that there is a safety issue at play here. I can make no case for the up escalator, but I would suggest that people’s lives would depend on that down one.

Anyway, I digress.

I was intrigued by the idea of the gym organising breakfast. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We sat down and Andrea said “OK, so now you’re going to learn how to eat.” I made some joke about “I think I know how to eat, ho ho ho” and then felt like a tool as soon as saying it. She then gave us a book, which I briefly looked at. (Enough to see a well oiled muscly man with a shiny “soul glo” kind of perm. Presumably one day I could look like him, if I eat well, exercise and use a Flux Capacitor to go back to 1985.) Andrea then talked a bit of pseudo-science about lean muscle mass and suchlike that I didn’t really take in.

An important part of any diet program is to pooh-pooh all other diet programs. These days, though, people have cottoned on to that, so now it’s important to assure people that what you are about to embark on is not a diet (because we all know diets don’t work, see?). Some programs will use words like “lifestyle change” and others, like this one, won’t classify it at all. So we need to reduce fat and pasta, and increase protein. But it’s not a diet. Cos in diets you stop eating those fatty foods you like, and those evil carbs, and you eat more meat. See how this is completely different from a diet?

Anyway, first thing to come out was some big bowls of yoghurt, plonked in the middle of the table. Then came a big plate of fresh fruit.

Put fruit and yoghurt in bowl, eat.

Now I don’t mind yoghurt, and I don’t mind fruit. Putting them together is also good. I actually enjoyed this breakfast (400 words in before we get to the positivity promised in the title, sorry about that folks). Of course fruit and yoghurt would never be enough for me, but hey this is a diet after all. Or a lifestyle change. Or whatever. Sacrifices would be made (at least on the days where I was being given free food).

But then, after that (and after seconds of that which, given they didn’t provide serving spoons for either the yoghurt or the fruit, was basically an exercise in discreet double dipping) came out more food. Namely cooked tomatoes (enough for 1 each), toast (buckets of it) and scrambled eggs (even bigger buckets).

It was, I must say, awesome. I really enjoyed eating it. I could easily eat this every day, assuming someone else was taking the time to prepare it. (After all, if we’re talking about a lifestyle change why not include a few wait staff and kitchen hands?). I don’t know how much the breakfast, and the talking that we get while at breakfast, will change my perception of food, or of gymming in general - and I am also not sure if brekky will be this great every time - but I am happy to turn up each week for it to find out.