I know it sounds crazy – stay with me. So I was working out with my trainer last week. (No, not that one – he was just the training signer-upper guy. A different one.) And he was talking about the mass quantities of holiday chocolate on display every single place he goes.
He was kind of amazed by it, and just kept saying: No, seriously, who makes all of that chocolate? And really, what could anyone possibly do with all of that chocolate?
I kind of nodded my head in agreement. And eventually I confessed that in the past I probably would have been kind of freaked out by all that chocolate. Afraid that I’d want to eat it all. Or something.
His face got really surprised. Really? Did you have control issues or something? I never would imagine that of you. (Haha, no he was not being sarcastic. He was serious. I know.)
And during one of our first sessions, I was all self-conscious and hesitated telling him what I do because I had already kind of judged him. I assumed he followed the “just do it” mentality of eating and exercise. Eat less, move more, blah freaking blah. That he wouldn’t understand what it was like to struggle.
I tried to explain that I work with people who have stuck spots around eating and body image, people who need help with the psychological and behaviorial side of eating and exercise. Which gave him a chance to tell me that he used to be a binge eater.
Wha?! A personal trainer? The ones that scare you away from going to the gym? Yeah. I know. So telling him what I do was an opportunity for me to burn up some of my own personal stereotypes.
And the other trainer? Yeah, that one. When I joined the gym, he whipped out this binder to show me his before pictures. Before he lost a whole bunch of weight, and got healthy and fit.
So now I’m having trouble remembering why I, or anyone else, would ever be intimidated by the Universe of Gym or the muscle-centric world of personal training.
It reminds of that story: You’re on a walk and suddenly terrified of a snake in the grass. Until you realize the snake is a coiled up rope and you laugh. And you can never go back to being scared: you can’t even remember what it felt like to believe the rope was a snake.
And maybe you have no interest in working out with a personal trainer. That’s understandable and totally fine – plenty of my right people would sooner lick sand than set foot in a gym.
Maybe it’s yoga that intimidates you… with those bendy, mindful, lithe women with their bendy, breathey serenity. But I have it on authority that those yogis, the ones who fall in love with yoga enough to subject themselves to intense teacher training?
Chances are they had their own stuff to work through, and that’s how they found yoga. They aren’t there The good ones aren’t there to judge you. They’re there to like you, and to help you like you.
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The gym is very hard when one is large, I had to lose some weight first by cutting back on food and walking before I could even do the classes. Classes are all I do, and even yoga is much easier at my smaller size, as many poses use body weight, and all that flab used to get in the way. The instructor at my favorite strength/endurance class used to weigh 250, and the gym watched her lose, asked her if she wanted to teach some classes. She now weighs 140, doesn’t have crazy eating habits and seems sane and happy. She gives me a goal, she’s a few inches taller with bigger boobs, so I figure if I hit 130, that would be an appropriate weight.