Fear and Loathing in LA Fitness

Picking up a new habit is difficult. Change is slow, failure is regular, and we get constant feedback about how the goal post is moving.

For myself, working out and making exercise a habit was an entirely different beast. With fangs and wings, and covered in fire. I have made several attempts throughout my life to “get in shape” — almost always at the behest of family, simply trying to broaden my horizons and interests. In my mind, I simply wasn’t meant for that tier of fitness; my husky-boy, book-smart, artsy-fartsy aesthetic was antithetical to the athletic lifestyle.

I don’t have a ton of pictures, but this was who I most regularly got compared to, both before and after. The latter just felt like an impossibility.

That was a lie. It’s still a lie.

I lied to myself, because I was afraid and anxious. I was 24, and I had literally never done a pull-up; I had reason to be fearful. I was nervous about the challenge of change. I was mortified at how the other “actually athletic” people would judge my soft appearance. I was terrified of the failure that I would face as I pushed myself against what I genuinely thought to be an impossibility.

At some point, related to my depression, I decided to try again. The cattle prods were there — “Have you tried running? Endorphins!!” But really, I did it for myself this time. I’m not in love with the goal that I had, but it got me to the gym. Here’s what I did:

Every morning, I woke up at 4:30. I did this to catch the first train north because otherwise the CTA is a trash heap in the mornings. I went straight to the gym, along with maybe seven other people.

I ran. At first, all I did was run. I ran on the indoor track, on elliptical machines, on treadmills, and in place. I knew other things to do, but was terrified of them.

I hate running. I think it’s boring. So I watched. I watched people go in and out of the gym, doing their exercises. I watched them use the machines in the gym, throw around dumbbells, and stretch themselves. I watched, and made notes about who they were, what they were doing, and what made sense.

I wasn’t bird-watching for nothing

One day — having watched this modern adonis press iron into his gigantic chest for months — I decided to try a bit of pantomime. I had always been remarkably sensitive about my chest (what with the moobs), so I tried doing a dumbbell press on a bench. To my great surprise I didn’t die, and I didn’t feel the scowling gaze of the adonis across the weight floor. Technically, it was a raving success, even though it was the smallest step among many I would take.

As the weeks went on, I took to trying more from my internal notes and observations. Slowly, over about a year, I cut out running almost entirely, and had replaced it with weight-lifting exercises. During the last six months of that, I lost about 60 pounds in four months, and had to have a hernia surgery (a story for another time).

From there, I began building on a flimsy foundation. I got stronger, I tried more things, and I found stuff that I enjoyed. The gym became a weird escape. The fear and anxiety didn’t really go away. I got better at using them; for me it was a matter of reframing the issues. I was (and still am) afraid of dropping heavy shit on my face. Nowadays, instead of fear I think of focus. As a result, the gym has become a meditative process for me. I have to keep focus on myself, my body, and the weights so I cannot afford distracting thoughts. Similarly, anxiety got replaced by inspiration.

Rather than worry about the gorgeous humans and what they thought about the hideous mass of flesh and bone near them, I began thinking of them as my heroes and inspirations. These “gymspirations” pushed me to strive for new exercises and ways of moving my body; the thought of all their hard work having paid off propelled me toward my own goal of body transformation.

I hated this ad, because it was exactly how I felt after I realized that these athletes were mostly work and time. I hated this ad because it was working on me.

The details here are lost a bit in the story; explicitly:

• Most other people don’t think about you at the gym. They’re thinking about themselves.
• Change is hard and failure is inevitable. Nothing is impossible.
• Fear and anxiety are ideas, and they’re yours. You can reframe them and use them as tools rather than as walls.
• When you start out, observation and mimicry is helpful to stretch your own boundaries and learn.
• Start small, you’ll need little victories to build a foundation and some momentum.
• In my own experience, weight-lifting and resistance training does a lot more for weight loss than running.†

I didn’t talk about my diet here but it was also a crucial component in all of this. I didn’t have much of an appetite — courtesy of depression — so I was eating minimally. There’s a lot of research that shows that diet is perhaps the bigger factor when it comes to weight loss. But that’s yet another story for another time.

Stay tuned.

Sincerely Not Yours,

August

†From my research, weight-lifting and building muscle require a different metabolic load than running. You’ll see avid runners “carbo-load” to get energy for a big run, and then ravage their way through a meal afterward. Building muscle is a much slower burn, that in my experience elevates the metabolism for longer. It also takes advantage of a process of body recomposition, where the fat stored in the body is broken down and used to build new muscle, rather than just burned as energy for running. All that said, when people talk about “oh, exercise — ENDORPHINS,” they’re talking about running. So if you want to chase that high, you’ll be actually chasing it.