Do these pants make me look fat?

Josh and I have passes to Gold's gym. Josh is good about using his...me not so much. I always make excuses like "I am so busy today, but I am going tomorrow." and "Well, I can't go during the day right now because Grace can't go to the daycare." and my personal favorite "I don't want to go all by myself." Well, Josh keeps telling me, just pick your nights and I take care of the kids. Go workout. This is followed by a conversation of "You think I'm fat, don't you?!" Josh wants to avoid conversations like this at all costs. So he ends it with "It would give you a chance to get out of the house." Good point. I'll take it.

A couple of days ago, my friend Kim called me up and said she had a weird question to ask. She asked where I went to work out. I chuckled a bit and said "I have a pass to Golds...now how often I use it is debatable!" She told me she also had a pass to Golds that she had frozen since her first was born and was looking to unfreeze it and get back in shape. TAADAAAH! A buddy for the gym. We agreed to meet at the gym last night and she had set up time with a personal trainer since we got a free consult with our pass and neither one of us had used it.

So last night, I tucked the kids into bed, left Josh on the couch with Grace, a bottle, and a binkie...said good luck and off I went. I met Kim at the front desk and she pointed out our trainer. I was so relieved to see he wasn't a muscle head. He was in shape but he wasn't wearing the clingy "look at my bulging muscles" shirt like some wear. We walked up to the desk and told him we were his 8:00 appointment. He sent us over to a table where for an hour he went over why we were at the gym, what we wanted to do in the quest for the body of our dreams, and how willing we were to work to get there. But let me back up a bit...he started this all off with "How much do you weigh?" I had a good chuckle because at dinner with the girls the night before we were laughing at not wanting to know how much we weigh. He didn't find this funny. Kim didn't know either so he pointed to the other side of the gym and said "Go get on the scale and come back and tell me the number." Kim and I walked up to the scale, expecting to find a digital scale only to find the old fashioned weight scale where you have to move the little weights around to find your weight. Kim and I looked at each other and said "I don't care if you know." We did what we had to do and went back and told him. (I am definitely not documenting this for all to know!) I don't think he knew how big that was for me to actually say the numbers, I don't even tell Josh. It wasn't as horrible as I had thought but I still want it to be better. I thought that would be the end of the embarassment but it wasn't. Next came body fat percentage. I was actually plesantly surprised by that number. After the talk of how we should be eating 4-6 meals a day and why and all that other great stuff it was time to do the assessment. We started off on the treadmill at a good pace for 10 minutes. That was fun. We walked and talked and the time flew by. Next he took us into the aerobics room, pulled out a mat and a workout ball and we alternated crunches on the ball and holding our legs in the air and crunched with our fingers pointed to our toes. OH MY GOODNESS...I am an embarassment to the workout profession. I knew I would be. But to now have a trainer see that...ugghh! We then did more crunches with him standing at our waists with his hands down and our elbows had to touch wherever his hands were. Sounds easy, right? Not after the already grueling ball/mat workout. When we finished that we got 20 seconds to get a drink and "rest" and it was off to what is in my opinion the most decieving thing in the gym....

Looks easy enough right? That is what I thought...Eric the trainer got on, knees and feet tucked behind the cushions, leaned back until he was flat on his back on the pad and then pulled himself up into a crunch. Looked EASY! He asked which one of us would do it first. I said I would go ahead. I put my knees and feet behind the cushion and leaned back and holy moly...that is far back. It doesn't look it when you look at it but when you are actually there...it is a long way back up to your knees. I asked him how many he was expecting us to do and I was shocked when he said "At least 20." 20, are you kidding me? I will be lucky to do one!! I think he missed the part of the chat the hour before when I said "I haven't been in a gym...forever...and oh, the part when I said "I had a baby 10 weeks ago!" With a little help...I did it though! After that we headed back to the table where he summed up what they would do for us if we signed up for their program and then dropped the bombshell of how much it is a month. WHOAH! I knew personal trainers can be pricey but WOW. We both told him we wouldn't sign up for anything without talking to our husbands and reluctantly he he let us leave with just the plan that we would come back Monday night. So 2 hours later I returned home.

I told Josh all about it and then told him how much it would cost, just to have a trainer once a week with an outline of what to do the other days at the gym and his response was "You can get a subscription to Women's Health- $12.00 for a whole year...done!" At least Women's Health won't silently think "Wow, she is really really bad at this..." as I slowly but surely try to get myself back into shape!