OP/ED: On taking on sw-oobs and the junk in the trunk
By Christine Esovoloff
It was exactly a year ago that I embarked on my quest for fitness. My goal: to be in the best shape that I had ever been in for my 30th year. I wanted to have endurance, I wanted to have strength, and most of all I wanted to feel good about my body. Before those of you who know me get your feathers all ruffled, let me just say this: thin does not mean fit. I have gotten some serious flack when sharing my work-out plans. I get the whole eye-roll followed by “Pfffft, like you need to exercise. Look at you, you’re tiny!”
Again, I say being slender does not mean that you are in good shape. I would like to introduce you to a word … ‘skinny-fat’. Now, don’t get all eye-rolly on me again, it’s a real thing. I was skinny-fat. I was as firm as the Pillsbury dough boy, everything on my body drooped from lack of muscle tone, and I even had muffin-top hanging over the waist of my size small pants. Not cool.
Anyway, back to my fitness journey. So, over the year I learned a few valuable lessons … first, you actually have to work, you cannot exercise for one day and expect a nice tight ass to fall out of the sky and find its way into your pants.
Sorry.
Second, 90 minutes of power yoga WILL make you cry and sweat like you have never cried or sweat before. And third, if you actually stick with it, through the pulled muscles and all, you will start to feel damn good! Not just physically either, I realized that I am an all-around powerhouse!
Well, sort of …
So, I was never particularly inactive but I have always had an aversion to instructed exercise and weightlifting, because … you know … its work. I’m kind of lazy. I have also always disliked the idea of going to the gym (God forbid someone see me!), and there was no way I was paying for a trainer, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about attaining my goal.
However, if I was going to get fit, I was going to have to suck it up, so in the end I bought some weights and got a bunch of workout videos. The weights were a compromise, but I just couldn’t get over my gym-phobia, so that’s where the videos came in.
The videos were … interesting.
I found tons of crazy videos; dance videos, strip tease videos, pilates videos, and greased-up-buff-men-yelling-at-you videos. With all of these in my arsenal, I felt ready!
So off I went, ready to rock the fitness world. In the beginning, there were up and downs. Quite a few downs.
I attempted to ease in slowly by starting with the ‘fun’ videos.
Yeah right, fun.
I hurt my neck doing the ‘sexy hair swing’ in the strip tease video, I pulled a few really interesting muscles that I didn’t know existed, and I felt like a moron when I was doing the Latin dance videos.
“Rrrrun your hands up and down your sexy body!” the fellow shouts while instructing the samba step. “Shake your booty!”
Really!? I already feel like a huge dork dancing here in my living room and now you want me to “rub my sexy body”?! There is nothing sexy about doing the samba (ie: stumbling around) in my husband’s jogging pants while trying to mop up a major case of sw-oobs (Google it).
But I didn’t give up. I lunged, squatted, and lifted weights until I was beet red and shaking. I danced, stripped, and did the downward dog until I was in tears.
And low and behold, it started. I started to notice a change in my body. I discovered these cute little things at the back of my arms called triceps, I noticed indents where there are supposed to be indents, and I found that I could chase after my kids without wheezing.
It hasn’t been all perfect, I fall off the wagon sometimes and end up eating cheesecake and doing nothing for a month or two, but I always seem to find my way back. It turns out, I like the feeling. I do not enjoy the feeling of doing 90 minutes of power yoga. Seriously, who enjoys that?! But I do like the stiff and sore muscles the next day, I like the burn and the exhaustion, I like feeling proud of myself, and I like feeling healthy
So now when I throw my neck out doing the ‘sexy hair swing’, I just schedule an appointment with the chiropractor and keep on swinging.
When the greased-up-buff-guy yells at me, I yell back.
And when the Latin dude tells me to rub my hands up and down my sexy body – I rub. Sw-oobs and all!
