How I love sweating in the gym. Getting totally hot is sensational. I feel so inspired when I perspire. It gives me hope that I might get into that little black dress, or sexy bikini, in the summer.
However on days after I have blown my diet, I lose hope that I will be able to move down a size from my extra large tracksuits pants and tank top. I frantically try to keep going on the treadmill or bike to burn off as many of the naughty calories as I can.
In my youth, I hated sport. I lived quite a sedentary lifestyle, until I discovered aerobics at university in my early twenties. Then I took a total break from exercise after I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the age of 27. The large amount of medication caused me to reach my heaviest weight ever, and I felt like a large sack of potatoes.
My family had to push me to go to the gym. But once I started to take it seriously, I discovered that I no longer had to wear large sacks. At the very least, I stopped packing on the weight. The gym would keep my wild food indulgences under control. It would give me comfort and security.
The gym can be exciting. I can really feel myself spinning. How I would love to look like a perfect whippet or racehorse. I arrive confidently, thinking and feeling myself slim.
There is more than just a glimmer of a hope and, yes, definitely light at the end of the tunnel. In many ways I feel like I have already won the race and the battle of the bulge just by turning up. But on other days I struggle to wake up on time for my personal trainer and go slowly and sluggishly through all the motions.
As I head to the scales, my personal trainer is my motivator. With all the exercises and machines, I no longer feel so bent. I work to improve my posture and muscle definition. I think of myself with the perfect form and want to stay in this oasis forever. But on other days, I don’t want to go near the gym. It’s a real love hate relationship.
I know deep down that the gym is my only way of losing weight. As I reach exhilaration on the bike or running machine, I feel totally sensational. Perspiration rolls down my body in cool waves. I can now dare to go to the beach and fit into all my thin clothes. The music also keeps me going. Here I keep trying to be a gym junkie rather than a food junkie.
The gym also releases all the wicked demons and pent up energy burning deep inside me. It is almost like a spiritual awakening or catharsis.
I also feel carried by my personal trainer – whom I see, rain, hail or shine – and whom my parents very generously help me to pay for. Having to front up to him, and the scales, keeps me much more in control of what I eat. I feel like I am trying to fine tune a very special car.
Going to the gym, I keep praying for my dream body. I also don’t feel quite so roly poly as I do a sexy pole dance and give my body more than just a fighting chance, with a little bit of boxing.
Even though the road to losing weight often feels full of potholes, the gym generally steers me in the right direction. As I do the special exercises for my pot belly, I feel I am slowly getting rid of all my fat stores.
I also no longer feel my body being so put down – especially when I was at school, even before the medication induced weight gain. Now I feel one everyone else at the gym.
Isabella Fels is a Melbourne poet and writer. She has been published in various publications including Positive Words, Mental Illness Voice, The Big Issue and The Record.
Gym junkie image by Shutterstock.