The Revolution

Let's not mince words.

I was feeling like total shit.

My general life for the past couple of years has revolved around doing school stuff. Planning classes. Drinking coffee. Teaching classes. Sitting in my office, doing research. Talking to students. Going home. Grading papers. Then, under the guise of my brain being tired, mindless T.V. watching, or, less mindless but still sedentary, book reading.

In case you were wondering, I've always been tallish (5'9") and, until recent history, pretty slim. My once highly athletic body began to soften up, though, in grad school. Okay, that's fine. I'm just getting older, and that's what happens, I thought. So, go up a pants size or two. Whatever. What's a size, anyway? All those manufacturers are making the sizes smaller nowadays. I hated it, hated the way I looked, but I obviously didn't care because I would try to get moving and it wasn't happening. Like my old speech professor once said, "Trying to stand up looks a lot like sitting down," and sitting on my ass I certainly was. I didn't forsee change.

But then, miraculously, I went to the doctor this fall and got weighed. When I was an undergrad, I weighed a svelte 150 pounds. Last year when I went to the doctor, I weighed 160. This fall, the scale told me 167 pounds.

1.

6.

7.

Listen. It's not like I was scared straight right then and there. But it did scare me. It was a big number, and seven pounds in one year is positively horrifying. So I stewed on that for, oh, about six months, until the middle of March when the revolution occurred.

My mother is, as anyone knows her would attest to, fabulous and strong-willed. She got me to go to Curves with her to check it out.

I walked in and felt a bit shy, a bit superior. I felt shy because working out is horrifying to me. I felt superior because there's no way these machines and a half-hour a day could work for me.

If you don't know what Curves is, it's an all-women circut-training health club. There are different weight machines you use (I believe there are 12 of them) to strength-train various parts of your body, and between those are recovery stations, where you run in place, do jumping jacks, hula hoop, or whatever (my personal favorite: karate kicks. Very stress-relieving). You spend 30 seconds per station and do the circuit twice. Stretch afterwards, and you're done.

Believe me, I came up with every excuse in the book to NOT do this. Too much money! ($31.18 per month. Not a bank-breaker.) It'll get boring! I won't go! No! You can't make me!! My mother finally laid it out for me. She said, "Kelli, it sounds like you've got a lot of excuses." Simple, yes, but it clicked. Don't think, just do. So I did, and do, five days a week. (Just so you know, those machines aren't as easy as they look.)

I weigh myself every week and essentially eat the same things that I always have. It's been a month, which meant that I got measured on Friday. (When you start, they do head-to-toe measurements, a body fat analysis, and, of course, they weigh you.)

Guess what. In one month, I've lost over four pounds. I've lost over eight pounds of body fat, and the inches are coming off. Most thrilling are the FOUR AND A QUARTER inches gone from around my abdomen, my number one trouble spot. I lost inches everywhere else, except my arms, but that's only because I'm getting some pipes.

The best part is that I'm active now. I go for walks, and just yesterday I went canoeing with a good friend for close to 2 1/2 hours. I feel like a badass. I feel happy. And I'm not stopping because it's only going to get better.