I would find it difficult to lose or maintain the weight loss I have without exercise.  Getting started was so hard.  Now it is a habit to run three times per week and see my trainer three times per week for an hour.  I’m not sure what’s harder – running or working out with Trung.  I was so big and in such bad shape when I started with him.  One day he asked me, “It’s hard, isn’t it?”  “Yes,” I responded.  What I really meant was hell yes.  His reply comforted me somehow.  “This is as hard as it gets.  It doesn’t get any harder.”  Now I know it’s always hard, but that is how the improvement happens.  There is a saying, “That which doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you.”  I’ll trade a few hours of discomfort for good health even though it might not seem like a good idea at the moment.

In the aftermath when you can climb a flight of stairs without dying or carry four bags of groceries into the house at one time you begin to think it might be worth it.  As difficult as the social ostracism was for me it has always been about good health.  What finally motivated me wasn’t the sneer of some random stranger.  It was seeing my own failing health and strength.  The specter of  a feeble old age frightened me to the core of my being and I was determined to take action to postpone that as long as possible.  We all want to be strong, independent, and capable.  You can get sick, you will get old if you live long enough.  Exercise is a way to take care of your body and help make it strong.

Sunday: 7 am session with Trung.  He is weighing me every session right now because my weight is up.  Neither one of us is happy with the number.  He gives me a pep talk/lecture about my food and also gives me my runs for the next six weeks.  Then we work out.

It is the same warm up every time.  Sometimes he adds an extra exercise at the end, usually burpees.  Today is one of those days.  I think I’m done and he wants me to do some squat jumps.  After that I get a very short break and then we start.  Today was barbell squat and push-ups.  Then kettlebell swing and plank walk up.  I also did sprawls, burpees kindlier cousin, jumping jacks, and lunges.  He moves back and forth between body parts for maximum time working out.  You’re working your arms while your legs are resting or vice versa.  That is one way he keeps the breaks short.  The breaks are always short.  Sometimes I will try to prolong one, but I can’t stall very long before he is telling me to move.

I have passed many hours in Trung’s small gym.  There have been times when I was afraid to do a move or I thought I couldn’t do it and we argued.  I don’t know why I don’t just realize by now I am capable of doing what he asks as our history shows, but my brain is telling me differently.  Today he asks me to swing my leg  and put it up on his tilted bench without holding on to the wall.  I am scared.  I finally manage to get my left up without holding on to anything.  I am never able to do it with my right.

That has been one of the most powerful things about working out with a trainer.  I am afraid and then I can do it and I’m not afraid any more.  There was a time I couldn’t do lunges.  Now I can.  The first time I stepped on a Bosu ball my legs wouldn’t stop their violent trembling.  A week or so ago a part of my workout was squats on a Bosu ball.  I can handle it now.  I am not afraid.  Unfortunately, fear is something I continue to struggle with in spite of all the changes.  I wish I could overcome my fear of falling and move with the confidence Trung expects but sometimes my brain gets the best of me.  Today was such a day.

Monday: My rest day.  Ahhhh.  I always try to catch up with work.  It sucks when there’s a meeting that day.

Tuesday: My first run of the week.  Four miles today.  Tuesday seems to be the day most likely for me to start off the run thinking to myself about how tired my legs are and why do I run because I can quit any time.  Then I run anyway because somehow I do have to run.  It’s a slow one, just under one hour, but I finished.

Wednesday: Trung today.  Ten clean and press then ten sit-ups.  Nine clean and press then ten more sit-ups.  There is a countdown on the clean and press until I only have to do one.  In between I do ten sit-ups every time.  Next are lunges, dips, and curls.  I begin the lunges awkwardly and Trung expresses his impatience.  We have been doing lunges for a long time so I accept that I should be better at it by now.  I finally realize that I am not bringing my body straight down.  Instead I am overcompensating towards the side where the leg is not going back.  This is giving me that off balance feeling that is messing up my lunges.  I concentrate on bringing my body straight down without leaning and I think it’s better.  There was a time when I wasn’t doing dips, curls, or clean and press with proper technique, but, since Trung doesn’t correct me, I assume those have all improved.  We finish with that damn hamstring stretch.  I can get my left leg up, but I can’t swing my right leg up to the level it needs to be without screwing it up.  I want to do it properly, but I am still afraid of falling.  Sometimes I want to give up because what’s the point, but in my heart I know there is one.

I trained a long time for a marathon.  The day I ran it I didn’t make the cutoff time at the half by a minute or two.  The guy at the finish line told me “You’re done,” and so I stopped before completing the twenty-six miles.  When I told Trung what happened he told me I needed to go out and run the marathon distance on my own.  My first reaction was to get angry.  It was so stupid.  I was too slow.  I tried and I didn’t make the time.  What was the point of running all that way by myself?

How do I explain it?  I was fat my entire life.  I spent over a decade weighing more than three hundred pounds.  Trung told me to run the twenty-six miles.  When I did what Trung said I changed from super obese to a person of normal weight.  I didn’t want to run that distance, but he told me to so I did.  I walked about a mile  of it when my knees bothered me, but one Saturday after that first failed attempt I went out and ran 26.2 miles, a marathon.  No crowds, no post race snacks, just me.  No cheers, no medal, but when I finished I felt good.  I had done what I said I would do and it satisfied something inside me that I didn’t even know was there.

There is magic in changing from I can’t to I can; from I will to I did.  That’s something inside a person’s heart and mind that I lack the words to express.  The struggles and triumphs that have happened for me inside that small gym have made me a very different person than the person I was.  So I will keep trying to kick my leg up in spite of my fear, and, if history repeats itself, one day I will succeed and then I will wonder, why did I think I couldn’t do it for so long when I had the power to do it the whole time.