Working out is (mostly) working out

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice I frequently allude to working out but have never really approached the topic with full force so I think it's finally time to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  Maybe elephant is a bit much.  How about hibernating squirrel, or maybe adolescent panda?  This isn't working.   It's just me in the room ok?  We're talking about me... being chubby.

I've got these great friends, who are themselves thin as rails, who like to pretend I don't have a little extra meat on my bones.  Dear sweet skinny friends, I appreciate your kindness but I own mirrors so really you can stop lying to me, it's ok.  Really, it is, because I am in fact doing something about it. No, let me rephrase that.  I am doing EVERYTHING about it.  So I'd like to share the many, MANY methods to my uber slow, but still steady weight loss.

I am coordinated only if there is no device, ball, disc, net, stick or glove involved.  Translation, any and all traditional sports as a means of exercise are off the table.  I can however shake my groove thang like no no other, so I take every dance/dance cardio/dance conditioning dancey dance class  ever invented.   I love these classes because half the people there have 2 left feet and an AARP card.  I get 60 minutes of staring at a mirror thinking "I'm so young, I've got moves, God I'm good looking!".

If there are no classes I'm interested in at the gym, I hop on an elliptical.  Tina Fey writes in Bosspyants (a novel everyone and their mother should read) about how she dreams up ways of killing people while working out.  This is how I know Tina and I should be best friends.  I don't plot people's deaths though, I plan my fabulous life. I swear I'm not stealing your idea Tina, I've been doing this for years.

The following events all happen in Elliptical Lea's life:

• I have a rocking body, I mean ROCKING.  But not like the over toned greased down 8 pack.  Even elliptical Lea doesn't want that.  I'm just your run of the mill perfect 10. I have pool parties where I wear french bikinis and high heels (high heels around a pool make no sense to me but Elliptical Lea manages to pull them off). 

• I've built my own chain of group fitness/girls night out centers.  We all work out together and I make other chubby women feel good about themselves while groovin to Britney Spears.  Then we hit the showers, do each others hair, and go out on the town.  Somehow people pay me to be a catalyst for making friends and finding hot spots.  Why and how this actually makes money is fuzzy but it does.  On the side I have a non-profit that does the same thing (minus the booze) at after school centers in low income neighborhoods.

• An equally smoking hot boyfriend frequently picks me up in MY luxury car and we go on incredible dates. If the TV I'm watching is on ESPN and there's a NASCAR race, he's a professional race car driver, if it's hockey he's a hockey player, if its a rerun of Real Housewives... I pick between the race car driver and the hockey player.  There is no one on that show I'd want to be within a ten mile radius of.

• I go on Jay Leno to talk about my best selling novel.  I'm somehow enough of a celebrity to warrant an appearance.

One afternoon I spent an exceptionally long time working out.  The rest of the day I had to constantly remind myself none of these things had actually happened.

Back east I used to do quite a bit of walking.  Fun fact, when you remove 20ish blocks of walking a day from your routine, you will gain 5 pounds in 6 months.  Even more fun fact, you'll gain another 5 pretending you didn't gain the first.   After you gain 10 you realize it's time to get your shit together.  So, I recently bought a bike.  Want to laugh?  Watch a grown women with the coordination of jello ride a bike for the first time in ten years.  I've also taken to hiking.  Want to cry? Watch an 80 year old man with walking sticks beat you to the top of the hill.

My ultimate goal is to get down to a healthy weight I can feel good about, and still I know I had some fun getting there.  And if that means I spend the next five years exploring acroyoga or hay bale throwing or unicycle competitions well then by golly sign me up because one way or another I'm getting there. 


 For your amusement, a partial list of additional classes I have actually taken in the name of physical fitness

• Urban rebounding (small trampolines, big fun).
• Step-N-Slide: a device i can only describe as a plastic mat that feels like it's been rubbed down with vegetable oil, affixed with 2 "stoppers" at each end.  The goal of the class is not to die, I think.
• Polynesian (Hula and Tahitian)
• Bikram Yoga: 110 degree room, you literally rain sweat