John Basedow told me I’m bad

This is on my fridge right now. I bought two of the Fitness Made Simple DVDs from the infomercial on TV a few years ago, and this lovely 9 x ll glossy was a free gift with my order. I gave John a voice and he’s been taped to my fridge ever since.

John told me that I’m bad today. He says that I need to start exercising if I want this to go anywhere, preferably with his DVDs. And I agree. I actually have four John Basedow titles: The awesome hour, six pack abs, the fat burning workout and another one that I can’t remember. They’re pretty good. The exercises are real and aren’t gimmicky, and John Basedow seems like a very driven guy. I did notice that he’s a lot nicer to us fatties on the fat burning workout DVD than he is on the awesome hour – which is clearly geared toward men. And they shot the awesome hour it what appears to be John’s house, which is amazingly 80s. I’m talking pink carpeting, seashell details, glass dolphins – the works. And there’s John Basedow, working out on some sort of staircase landing with two ornamental dogs running around. Inspiring.

But the workouts are solid, and I imagine that if you did them religiously, or even frequently, you’d be successful.

The Pilot Episode, or, The Deal

I want to get jacked. I’m 23. I’m 5’2”. I’m going to do it. You should come.

Here’s the back story – it’s the last time that I’m going to say it. I know that this is a fresh blog and that you probably don’t care about my past, but I’m going to put it out there because I want to move forward from here. Honestly, I’ve been a little bit of a chunk my whole life. I’ve weighed in at everything from 130 to 185 during my teens. Most of the time I fell around the heavier end of that spectrum, but there was a period toward the end school of high where I got to be semi-fit by playing lacrosse. Of course, I undid all of this progress in college. I went to a swanky private college on full federal aid, and after 4 years of beer and thrice-daily all-you-can-eat buffets, I graduated 50 pounds heavier and $50,000 poorer.

So there I was. Unemployed in the heavyweight division. I had stopped weighing myself during that time, but I’m going to guess that I was pushing 185 pounds. Definitely not good for a girl of my height.

Outside of the collegiate playpen and forced to fund my own food supply, I lost a little bit of weight just because of the change in food availability. I also moved in with Erin, who is really skinny and into organics & raw soybeans. Her habits started to rub off a little – I stopped drinking soda and tried to start watch my sugar intake – and I lost a little bit more weight.

I was eventually able to land a sedentary office job and the weight loss stopped. I waited for it to come back. And waited. And waited. I began to realize that it wasn’t getting any better by itself so, in a moment of motivation, I joined a gym last summer.

The gym I choose was very close to my apartment and offered a couple of personal training session as part of the startup package. They gave me a discount on the intro fee and I took them up on it. Part of the train sessions included a weigh-in and bodyfat analysis: I weighed in at 173 pounds on July 17th of 2007. They designed a fitness plan for me and it worked while I followed it. I lost 10 pounds the first month, and I got down to 155 by the end of the summer.

The gym had one problem though: I had to actually go. Not only did I have to go, I also had to do cardio. Which I hate, always have. I let the gym activity wean off until I could no longer justify the expense, but I was able to keep my weight hovering around the low to mid 150s for the next several months. After a while I started to miss seeing the scale fall and I went in search of another plan.

I found an online food & exercise tracking program that I’ve been using since. I’ve been on their plan for about 6 weeks and I’ve lost another 10 or so pounds, which takes me down to a much better 138. Still more than I’d like to be, but better. And that’s what brings me here. I want this to become a permanent part of my life. I want to take the good that I feel about going from 185 to 138 and keep it going. I want to become very muscular and very lean, and I don’t ever want to be the person described above again.

This blog will share my journey.