Yahoo Lifestyle Finding fitness at size 18
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I remember my first time well.
My endorphins were blazing, my heart was racing, sweat dripped from places I didn’t know had pores. My head felt clearer than it had in years. When it was over, I called my friend April – exhausted but blissed out. “I’m in love,” I told her, “…with spin!”
That was my first spin class – nearly six years ago – and the moment I officially crossed the border from Land of Exercise Haters to Province of People Who Enjoy Working Out. Up until that point, exercising was something I fantasised about doing 24/7 and actually did 0/7. I’d obsessively plan a workout schedule in my calendar, and then start doing weight-loss maths.
My calculations went something like this: “Seven hours of exercise a week + carrot sticks for dinner = bikini by summer.” The problem was that this plan never went beyond my head. Plagued by my perfectionism, I wouldn’t allow myself to be an oxygen-sucking, out-of-shape newbie, which I’ve come to learn is pretty much a requirement in the early days of any fitness program (regardless of size).
I don’t know why things changed for me that night during spin class. I’d often heard the expression, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” In my case, the teacher came in the form of a neon-clad spin instructor who got in my face and yelled at me to pedal faster: “You’re stronger than you think,” she said to me, as I tried to keep up with the imaginary hills.
Before that day, I’d often been ignored in group exercise classes, a slight I had always used as evidence in the case I’d built for myself: that no one believes in big people. It had become a personal mantra my subconscious chanted on a daily basis. Being seen by someone, anyone, in a gym setting gave me validation – it made me feel like I deserved to be there in my size 18 leggings among all the size 8s, 10s and 12s.
I hadn’t realised that what I needed all those years was for someone to give me the permission to exercise that I’d failed to give myself, which may sound strange coming from an overweight person. But the truth is: the bigger I got, the more I felt like I didn’t belong in a fitness centre. Instead of seeing a red carpet rolled out for me at the gym doors, I saw a velvet rope with an eye-rolling doorman (and a line of perfect women in front of me).
These were the kind of illusions I clung to because they served a purpose: the more I believed them, the more excuses I had to continue punishing myself through my inertia. The truth is, despite what many of us will tell ourselves, faced with the choice to move our bodies or sit on the couch, working out is not a retribution for being overweight, but a gift. The problem was that, in the same way that it’s hard to give a beautiful present to someone you despise, it was difficult for me to treat the figure I loathed to the benefits and confidence that come almost instantly when you’re working out. So instead, I trashed my body with my thoughts all day long; avoiding exercise was a way to physically treat it like garbage, too, or at least deprive myself of feeling good about myself – a feeling I believed was reserved for thin people.
But if insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, repeatedly operating on the idea that I could self-loathe my way into a thinner body was approaching a level of lunacy. It never worked, and it was time to try a new attitude. This was something I’d only begun to understand and internalise when I showed up for spin class that night. Even if I didn’t fully believe it yet, I was willing to act as if my body deserved as much care and respect in its overweight state as it would at the “perfect size”.
This was the beginning of my new relationship with exercise, the kind of relationship that filled me up on a daily basis, even before I lost a single kilo. My body seemed to produce as much self-esteem as it did lactic acid during my pedal strokes. I felt more energy than I’d had in a long time (no comparison to the borrowed energy I’d relied on from my latte habit). Yes – I felt lighter, but mostly because of the shame I started to shed. It was enough to get me back to the gym the next day, and to keep me consistently returning – for more spin classes, laps across the pool, yoga sessions, dance lessons and even hula hooping – in the years since.
Now when I go a few days without exercise – or even weeks, when life gets really hectic – I’ve learnt to not be surprised that I don’t just start to lose muscle tone; I begin to lose perspective. Luckily, I know today that the stories I tell myself about my body when I’m sedentary (life would be easier if I were thinner; I’m not skinny enough to be in a relationship) are lies, and I don’t have to believe them. My truth serum is usually waiting for me at the gym.
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