D-Day: The Gym Gets a Princess (Part 2)

7 January 2015

The Dreaded Assessment: Initial Baseline Body Statistics

As 'A' and myself were winding down our conversation covering the basics of my gym membership and what the gym had to offer (causing my heart-rate to rise because I could begin to feel the cold, icy grip of the assessment wrapping its cold, unforgiving fingers around my very soul), she pulled out a basic questionnaire. At first, 'A' didn't do anything with it, and instead asked me to tell her in more detail, instead of rambling generalities, what sparked my decision to finally take the plunge in terms of joining a gym (see my reasons in my second blog post The Decision Cemented). Once I had gone through all of my reasons, all of which 'A' said were good reasons to join, I was suddenly asked the following dreaded question:

How much do you weigh and what is your goal weight?

A machine of mockery and torment

I don't know about you, but there are two types of people that you should never ask about weight: women and gay men. The last time I was weighed was several months ago at my last doctor's appointment which almost caused an incident--what I mean by incident was the incredulous look of horror on my face when the nurse said my weight aloud, the desire to hit her for even uttering such a number, and a Hollywood-grade emotional meltdown which would involve dramatic fainting, tears, and calling out for my mommy while in a fetal position. In my defense, my weight gain was the direct result of eating as a coping mechanism as I dealt with the untimely passing of my father, and ever increasing work stress.

Honestly, I couldn't tell you what the look on my face happened to be as the question ricocheted through my mind, but I am sure it may have momentarily appeared as if I had lost all color (which is quite a feat because I'm really pale--thanks genetics) and had a stroke on both sides of my brain. It was the well-known epic battle whereby one decides whether to desperately round numbers down by at least 10 or more pounds or tell the truth. I answered the question truthfully with a slightly pained edge to my voice: 1xx pounds (just in case you suck at math like I do, x is the placeholder for a number in an equation, and this is as much as I am going to reveal for right now). Thinking that the painful question time was over, I got hit with this one:

Do you know your percentage of body fat?

Fitness failure detector (not my numbers)

What little color was inching its way back to my face immediately drained again. My response was 'Ummm, no' to which 'A' said that was no problem as that number was easily checked. Just before I was about to black out from losing all blood flow to my head, 'A' typed something into a device resembling an X-Box game controller and once done, handed it to me and told me to hold it out straight in front of me with both hands and legs slightly spread. After a few moments, the device beeped and I looked at the number for a moment and didn't see three numbers, I saw three letters: W T F. When my brain was able to process visual information again, I noticed that 'A' was looking at a chart and said that my number was in the green, which meant I was still good, but it was a number that would definitely improve over time. As she was talking about my body fat percentage, all I could think was, 'well, at xx.x%, I'd taste really good with fava beans and a nice chianti'. To add insult to injury, 'A' said that because I wasn't entirely sure about my weight that we were going to go to the medical-grade scale to weigh me, which was in the back of the gym near the locker room. Feeling as though I was doing the walk of shame, I went and got weighed and had, unfortunately, been pretty close to my actual weight. Thankfully, 'A' let me mentally take off about two pounds to take into account my stylish gym outfit--thank god for mercy. With all the information she needed, 'A' told me to follow her to the other side of the gym, the part of the gym where group exercise groups met. It was at that moment that the real fun, and by real fun, I mean hellscape of personal horror, really began. Cue PTSD memories of high school gym class and you get a basic sense of my mental state at the moment we reached our destination.

This speaks for itself...enough said