Gyms

So...good afternoon blogging community. Let me introduce myself. My name is Kris and I am a plus sized woman living in the USA. I will over the course of this blog be discussing common issues that we plus sized divas deal with on a regular basis. You will be privy to rants, ramblings and breakdowns I am sure!

Let me begin with the fact that after losing my mother overnight to a massive stroke, and shortly thereafter weighing in at 355 I had a rude awakening. I need to lose weight! 8) Soooo I am now on that mission. That painful, fearful, ridiculously hard mission that so many of us face on a daily basis. Which brings me to my topic.

THE GYM. (insert scary music here)

So, after being ridiculed for a greater part of my life, abused throughout my schooling even through college, and in the real world…I am now supposed to haul my fat ass into a place where all of my abusers lie? That just sucks.

I joined said gym in August of last year and have been going sporadically largely due to health problems. I am more recently in there more often. I am a woman who loves to compete, it’s part of my Capricornian nature I am sure and I love nothing more than to do whatever it is that someone tells me I CAN’T! Including lifting heavy weight like guys do! So…I have started lifting.

At first I was sure that my self consciousness was getting the better of me, that truly these people didn’t really hate me and weren’t REALLY making fun of me as I walked by. Well, I was half right…not ALL of them were! I did expect some abuse which I suppose makes it easier but still I cannot understand why people are so mean. I would never in a million years EVER say something negative to a complete stranger who was in the gym at my size. Beyond that…I would never say anything unprovoked to anyone at all!

As I am positioning myself on the bench for a chest press (with 50lbs – 25 in each hand I might add) and I hear a guy to my left say to his friend, “Do you think it’ll hold her?” and laugh. Now I am surely not going to acknowledge the jab whilst in the midst of more of these “fatheads” as I like to call them…but in reality it really hurts. It’s like all of the good energy that I went into the gym with, all of the I can do its just run out of you with one tiny sentence. And I have grown tougher skin over the years, but there are some times when you just want to hit someone or crawl under a rock somewhere.

I proceeded to the punching bag. >8)

A message to all you “fatheads” (my definition being men OR women in some cases who feel it is their mission in life to tell you you’re fat as if you didn’t already notice) is this:

If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say a damn thing. You don’t know who you’re talking to. You don’t know me, don’t know what’s happened in my life to bring me where I am, don’t know what I deal with on a regular basis. For instance, you don’t know that I am an only child who lost my mother at age 25, a year before I was to be married, and that I now take care of her 90 year old mother, (my grandmother) and my 67 year old lonely father with heart disease who had double heart valve replacement surgery. And yes, other people have worse things happening in their lives. I am not saying that I have it that bad. But be human, be compassionate dammit! Here I am in the gym with my fat behind…TRYING to do something. I am not a sit on the couch and wait to get thin kinda girl. Have some respect and some patience with me and maybe you can HELP there be less me’s on the world and more independent, self confident women for you to choose from. Be a part of the solution, NOT a part of the problem.

And as an aside, those spandex bike shorts…are SCARY.

8) K