55 minutes of hell

The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions and I recently have proven that to be true. But in this case I intend to come back for more. No, this is not a feel bad or talk bad article but the public confession of a fully chastised backslider from healthy living!

My misadventure begun innocently enough when my friends in motoring media Tet Andolong of the Bulletin and my good friend Alvin Uy talked me into joining this year’s challenge for the “Motoring Media — Biggest Loser”. According to the tandem “sales talk” of the two, this year would be special since the “Fitness First” chain of fitness centers will provide the technical assistance and training facilities.

It all seemed to be too good to be true; unlimited use of Fitness First facilities for three months, plus personal supervision by their experts. Not only do participants get to lose weight there will also be a pot money or prizes for the biggest loser and those who manage to lose big.

I quickly signed up and threw in my P1,000 into the pot and declared that if my personal trainer can get me to win, he can keep the prize!

A week later I was at Fitness center at the Fort and there began my slow agonizing and humiliating process of redemption. If you happen to be “overweight” or “obese”, you don’t have to be told or reminded about the fact that you allowed yourself to go down the drain or up the scales to be more accurate.

But that is “who” you will meet first at the gym. This cold, unfeeling, impersonal and insensitive machine just sits there waiting for you to step into your moment of truth. Its name was “TANITA” and her official title was: “Body Composition Analyzer”.

I barely got to know her when she suddenly spit out a sheet of paper exposing my greatest shame. I had slipped back to my pre-Billboard days when I weighed XX.X. Then I met “Beck” who was not even half my age but was now in total control of my program. He acted more like a computer programmer asking about vitals and data.

He must be a part-time scientist because every answer I gave him about my fitness levels and activities, he would then validate by putting me on a machine or making me do certain exercise to find out if I was telling the truth.

Last Monday I was told to join a “Lose it” class in order to evaluate my fitness level or the lack of it. I was convinced that I would survive the test since I survived a game of basketball with kids playing for college varsity teams a week ago.

Being the early bird I proceeded to the “aquarium” but stayed safely outside it’s confines until I absolutely needed to go in. I have always looked at those “aquariums” with disdain. Being an outdoors type, and regularly doing manual labor, I viewed classroom type workouts or group aerobics as “sissy stuff”.

At my age and being the only man in the class aside from the “kid” in-charge, I confess feeling so humiliated and embarrassed. Only the encouragement of the ladies who treated me like a father kept me from leaving.

So I had to face the music, which was loud and gave me flashbacks of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta. It did not take long for me to realize just how out of shape I had become. When we started doing stationary jogs and jumps, I felt like a Marine who had a backpack and a sack in the front. But in my case it was a slab of fat on my back and a pouch the equivalent to that of a Kangaroo, both juggling up and down.

After only a few minutes, I realized how I survived a basketball game with college kids; I walked most of the time. Our trainer, Cris would have none of that he kept walking around the room making us do exercise that would make a grown man cry.

The strange thing about it was he seemed to have a very limited vocabulary: “Don’t Stop” and “You can do it”. There I was drowning in my sweat, almost ready to pass out and he would go “Don’t Stop”. I felt like telling him: Someday, you too will be 55 years old, and then you can tell me how it feels!

While going through that “hell”, I silently confessed that I made up all the excuses to avoid working out. I was responsible for eating unhealthily, I lied to myself by saying I could easily get back into shape any time I wanted to, and now I must endure what it takes to get it all back.

For my penance, I promised never again to look at disdain on group exercise, I will never make fun of the “Aquarium”, never again will I think of those 55 minutes as “sissy exercise” and that I would write about my experience so that people can learn that “the weight you gain will be the weights you lift” when you get out of shape.

Last night, I shared with friends the need to have a surplus of health. As we approach the holiday season, we will encounter a lot of stress, we will be tempted or indulge in eating or drinking above our normal requirements, we may even follow a hectic schedule and a lot of activities.

Getting into shape will give you a surplus of strength and will make you think twice before eating yourself out of shape.  

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