The Genesis

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The funny thing is, when I was trying to select a domain name for this blog I found that all the good names were already taken. Big suprise, I know. I queried "fatchick," "fatgirl," "fatgirlskinnygirl," "dietergirl" along with several others. Curious, I visited these blogs only to find, in most cases, a single declaritive post, dated several years ago, with absolutely no follow up. I can sympathise with these women, truly. Sometimes you wake up in the morning full of vim and vigor, sure that "Today will be The Day!" I have had countless mornings like this. True to form, you take the stairs up to work instead of the elevator, and have a low fat granola bar for breakfast. Then, thinking of heading to subway for lunch, you realize its potluck day, and Mary from accounta payable has brought in her famous beef and cheese enchiladas, and is that fried chicken you can smell? Or maybe you starved yourself all day only to cave in at eleven and call pizza hut, and extra cheese it is. Or maybe you managed to be good and eat right all week, but spoil it on Sunday by eating a whole pint of ben & jerries chubby hubby.

I know, I know. So I don't begrudge fat chick or fat girl.

But this blog will not be the case, ladies and gentlemen.

Four days ago, I weighed myself for the first time in about a year. Then I cried.

202.4 lb.

(And damn that extra decimal place, by the way. As if 202 lb wasn't fat enough. Even the number itself looks fat--the roundness of the twos, sandwiching the most obese number of all, the Big Fat Zero.)

According to a BMI calculator, at 5'3" tall, 202.4 pounds gives me a body mass index of 35.8, classifying me as "obese".

So. After work on Monday, I joined Planet Fitness. I was highly impressed by their ridiculously low rates ($20 per month, $22 start-up fee) and the gym seemed to have a happy mix of men, women, fat, skinny, young and old. The gym itself is very streamlined; half the space is given to cardio machines with 14 screens of television to choose from, and the other half devoted to Planet Fitness's version of nautilus equipment and free weights. The locker rooms were clean and seemed well maintained, with ample locker space and four fairly private showers. No sauna, no steam room, but I can work with that. My only complaint so far is that they do not provide towels, and you have to surrender your car keys in order to borrow headphones. I suppose $20 a month only goes so far.

In this blog, ladies and gentlemen, I shall itemize all the food and drink that I consume in one day, as well as my workouts. And of course, regularly lament the lack of ben & jerries.