Well two weeks ago I finally acted on the impulse to purchase a gym membership with the logic that if I pay for it I’ll use it. That theory is still in the experimental phase but I’ll let you in on my first few visits.

With my new membership came an orientation session with a trainer. I like to call this the “brutal truth session” because they not only weigh and measure you, but they also squeeze your fat with that handy dandy pincher thing and calculate how much of your body is made of Crisco. My mind always pictures Oprah pulling out her wagon of fat when I hear the words body fat calculation.

So there I go in my workout clothes with my bottle of water to hear what is every woman’s dream – your weight, the size of your hips, and the percentage of your body that allows you to remain boyant in water. After the joys of a obviously fit guy a few years younger than me pulling the tape measure around the parts of my body I like to refer to as curvy, he pulled out his trusty calculator to figure out my body fat percentage. Let’s just say that if I was ever tossed overboard at sea I could float until the coast guard came and found me, or a shark decided to make me lunch.

So with those great numbers now figured out I signed up for three sessions with the trainer in hopes that I would develop a great workout routine that lowers those numbers across the board.

On my first session, Andrew (my trainer who is a really nice guy and laughs at me when I laugh at myself so I think we’ll get along) sits me down and walks me through an online fitness program. It requires me to enter some basic bio info one of them being my newly discovered body fat percentage. He glances at me and asks if I remember it. YES ,I say emphatically shaking my head up and down, that number is now burned into my brain never to leave.

Then we hit the floor for some stretching and warm up. Good thing: I’m pretty flexible, bad thing: I’m miserably out of shape. Next was a run through the circuit trainer machine loop, where we tested my strength (weak) and my endurance (weak). This is where he laughed at me laughing at myself because I’d get halfway through the set and my face would begin to grimace as I fought through the last few reps. Finally he dropped my homework on me. I had to have two sessions of two trips through the circuit with twenty reps on each machine plus three cardio sessions before our next session. Oh boy!

So the first circuit session was . . . . . . . miserable. The first 10 reps are easy but the next 10 quickly become a nightmare. Oh and then I get to do it all over again. YAY! That was two days ago and my triceps, pecs, and shoulders are still burning. Thankfully I can lift my arms high enough to wash my hair (that was in doubt after that first day).

Tomorrow will mark session two of the circuit training. Hopefully I’ll survive. I’ll let you know.