When it comes to exercise fads, I tend to adopt an attitude of wait and see. Unfortunately, this tends to turn into saw and weight gained, so against my usual judgment, in the last week I have gone to "Boot Camp" with NBC-TV's "The Biggest Loser" and shredded with Jillian Michaels.Result: Nearly a pound … gained??
This seemed like fitting payback given some of my history with past fitness trends.
First, let's go back to the days when Jane Fonda and her leg warmers were still all the craze. My girlfriend at the time started badgering me into taking an aerobics class.
"It will be fun!" I distinctly remember her saying. I agreed, though in retrospect I'm also quite certain at the time she was half undressed and handling a bottle of butterscotch syrup. I think the visual imagery must have crossed up my auditory processing, leading to a major misinterpretation of just what the "it" was to which she was referring.
After she found the right color headband and ripped sweatshirt (that is, for me), I followed her puppy dog-like to the gym where we paid a small fee to join a few dozen other people in what was essentially running in place for the next 30 minutes. When the cool-down period came, I took of the parking brake, shifted into fourth and hauled my sweaty self straight out the door.
Many years later, I started chatting with a former corpulent co-worker who since losing weight had become completely obsessed with working out. (How obsessed? When she found out that her and her fiancée were to be honeymooning at the same place in Bermuda that My Love and I had spent our earliest days of wedded bliss, her first question was not about pink beaches, room service or the quality of cotton in the sheets, but "just how well-equipped is the fitness center?") Our talk, as it tended to do, eventually turned to her slavish devotion to the hottest thing in exercise. At the moment, it was spinning.
Her eyes widened and voice rose an octave as she relayed tales about the thrills and chills of bicycling up imaginary hills to the ear-splitting beat of rave music though a fog of sweaty stench in a converted storage closet at her local Y. Yet, somehow, she didn't appreciate my summation of her life-changing event as "paying someone to yell at you while you ride a stationary bike."
(Note: I have never tried spinning but My Love did. She confirms that it’s a great way to exercise your lower body and back while forking over money for someone to yell at you while you ride a stationary bike.)
A mess of workout DVDs featuring Michaels and her "Biggest Loser" cohort Bob Harper arrived at our house this past Christmas. This made sense as My Love and our kids love this TV show though I notice an unsettling tendency for them to watch it while gobbling down huge bowls of kettle corn. As for me, I tend to view the show like I view basketball -- only on my DVR. It's a lot of up and down and back and forth until the last 5 minutes which is dragged out to half an hour by various strategic timeouts.
Nevertheless, after four workouts with these TV fitness gurus, broken up with a day of running and two days of barely being able to move because I was so sore, I'm proud to report that I am refusing to quit. This is despite the weight gain, Bob's indefatigable upbeatness and Jillian's ever-present sneer. If nothing else, when I haven't been in pain from all the flippin' lunges and pushups they make you do, I have felt better about myself -- mentally if not physically. This is a trend I am going to try to stick with until I fully reverse some of the bad ones I have been living.
Stamford native Kevin McKeever, a married father of two, is a freelance writer and editor. He also writes the humor blog, Always Home and Uncool, and is a contributor to DadCentric.com. He spent 10 years as a reporter and editor for local newspapers, another nine creating and running the employee communications program for a Fortune 200 company, and then he wised up.
His humorous view of health and wellness, "Rubbing It In," will be featured regularly in future issues of Aetherial Living.
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