After One Week

Well, I’ve been working out and eating better for a week now. The hardest part is to get through the cardio. Spinning, or jogging on a treadmill, or even aerobics are just plain boring. And my knees can’t take the abuse, so I’m pretty much limited to the elliptical machine. (Talk about boring! See the picture for the type of machine I'm using.)

Really though, the elliptical machines are the reason that I joined the gym that I currently belong to. I was at a “health club” in a hotel around the block from me and it has several things going for it: a swimming pool, a sauna, a nice staff, membership rates for greens fees at the golf course, and lots of members that I know. (Our neighbors down the street are members, but I only used to see them Saturday mornings because they’re retired and go during the day when I’m at work.) To be honest, I thought that I would use the pool more than I did and I never have played the golf course.

It’s also more expensive than the new place, but the biggest reason that I switched was because I spent a lot of time standing around waiting for people to get through with a machine that I wanted to use. For a gym that had seventy-five or eighty members (out of two hundred) that routinely used the facilities, they only had three elliptical machines. No one intent on a cardio workout would use the elliptical for less that 20 minutes, and an hour or ninety minutes is not out of line. While the machines were in use, I tried to make up the difference with a treadmill or a stair-climber or a stationary bike. This is how I found out how much they caused my knees to hurt. I tried to find out when the gym was used least, but because it was in a hotel and the guests had full use also, it depended on what was happening in town and who was using the hotels convention facilities. When cheerleading competitions were held there, you couldn’t even get into the gym or pool.

So, I now work out at a larger gym with a cardio area that is just about the size of the entire facility at the hotel. I have never had to wait for a elliptical machine. (Although I once saw all of them in use at the same time- this was for about five minutes when I was also using them.)

Getting back to the subject at hand – working out is boring. Knowing the benefits of exercise and weight loss are enough to get me motivated to go to the gym, but maintaining that motivation is sometimes a problem. One of the ways that I compensate is to make sure I get a machine that has a working closed caption feature on the TV. I can keep my music on the MP3 player for rhythm and keep my mind occupied with mindless drivel on CNN or Fox News or ESPN or the Golf channel. I also sometimes put a towel on the bottom of the screen over the section that has the accumulative time and relative distance. That leaves me the clock on the wall (that I try not to look at) or the TV shows or counting the songs on the MP3 player.

In the first week, I’ve lost five pounds – excellent toward the goal, but this rate will be impossible to sustain. My weight is 224 lbs.