Friday, February 27, 2009

The Craziest Loser

Every week I watch the Biggest Loser on TV. I love watching this show because it's inspiring to see these people lose the weight and feel great about themselves. I especially love the finale show where you really see what a change they've made. It's great! The irony of course is that I would watch it while snacking on some Doritos or cookies and milk. Ha ha. This year is different though. Since I am no longer planning on having more children, the time has come to lose the extra weight that I've been jostling around. As little as 7 years ago, I was at a pretty good weight, but then came marriage and school and kids and the weight went up and up and up.

Since the peak of this last pregnancy I have managed to drop 40 pounds. I would still like to lose 20 more and be around where I was seven years ago. I think the breastfeeding has helped tremendously with these first 40, so I kind of want to keep going since I have this running head start if you will. I'm setting a goal to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. I shall call it mini-me my 20/20 plan. Let's see how well this goes. I guess I'll be doing my own Biggest Loser except without the screaming trainers and the nationally televised weigh ins (thank God for that).

In the spirit of my new weight loss goals, yesterday I went to the gym, but I forgot my towel. If you don't have a towel, you can't go into the main room where all the machines are so I had to find an alternate way to work out (I could have paid a dollar for a towel rental, but I don't like using other towels....plus I'm really cheap like that). I thought about doing one of the classes, but realized that I had just missed the last class. I then remembered that there were some machines on the 4th floor. Perfect, I'll do that! I climbed the 1,001 stairs it took to get to the fourth floor and noticed that only one machine was empty. Ah I'm in luck I thought. Until I got on the machine that is.

The impending trap of death was precariously perched on the edge of a flimsy little railing four floors up (I am not comfortable with heights). And of course it had to be a stairmaster machine. A machine that would make me feel like I'm climbing even higher and higher just about to step off the rail. I worked out with much trepidation and held on to the machine for dear life. I realized this was going to be a long 30 minutes because I couldn't figure out where to focus my eyes. If I looked down, my knees got wobbly. If I looked straight ahead and saw no floor my knees got wobbly. If I closed my eyes, I was afraid of falling off the machine and over the railing. I finally decided to just stare at the controls on the machine. I was only on the machine 1 minute and had already broken into a sweat, not from working out, but from freaking out.

At this point, my mind started making up scenarios. What if this platform collapses and I fall over the railing? What if the machine goes bonkers and it catapults me over the railing? Could I hold on to the railing for dear life? If so, for how long? How could I hoist myself back up? Then the sane side of my brain tried to talk me off the ledge. Claudia, the building is well constructed, the platform will not collapse. Besides if it does, it doesn't matter what machine you're on, you're still fucked. The machine is a quality machine and will not break. If it does, it will not catapult you over the ledge, it will simply stop functioning. Then the freaky side would start again. What if I'm trapped on the ledge and I have to jump all the way over there, could I make it? What if someone pushed me over?

Like I said, it was a long 30 minutes.

After my freakout workout, I headed down the stairs and noticed that part of the stairs jutted out past the fourth floor platform I was on. So I realized that if I indeed did fall over the railing, if I could just manage to hold on to the railing and scoot over to the left for a couple of feet, I would be able to let go and land on the stairs. Well now, that changes everything. In that case, I think I CAN workout on the fourth floor. You know, since I have a back-up plan and all now.


Insane people should not be allowed to go to the gym.

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3 Comments:

Blogger AmandaDufau said...

LOL You're a freak!
And I say that with all the love in my heart.

10:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm impressed you did 30 minutes with all that crazy inner voice. I would have given up!

8:54 AM  
Blogger elizasmom said...

Hahahaha! I LOVE that you had a contingency plan for where to fall if the machine catapulted you off.

1:20 PM  

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