Not A Good Life For All
By Shel Desormeaux

For most of my life, I’ve been overweight.  Certainly not what I’d call obese, but maybe at some point, someone else has disagreed.  Whatever.  My weight goes up and down, all the time.  I carry the extra weight pretty well; I always look lighter than what I actually weigh, and no one ever believes me when I tell them what the scale says.  I don’t cry myself to sleep at night because I have a big ass.

But this spring, a few months before I turned 31, I decided that I was, after all, meant for a more Amazonian profile.  I recruited the help of the sister of one of my best friends. She put me on an eating plan, she drew up a weightlifting routine, instructed me on the type and frequency of cardio exercise I should do.  I dove into it, and four months later, I’m at least 30 pounds lighter. I’m delighted, and I’m grateful.

Tami, my trainer, has been doing this for over ten years.  She’s in phenomenal physical condition.  She is dedicated, focused and healthy.  Tami is everything that most people I know are not.  I needed her help.  Besides, she’s a registered fitness trainer so I’m in good hands.  She knows what she’s doing.

Very important was her attitude towards me.  She was (and is) patient, understanding, supportive and honest.  Tami has never once condescended me for any reason.  She is strong and steady, and has become a good friend.  It’s no shock to anyone that knows her that she was recently hired as an Ontario Provincial Police officer.

We frequent a chain of gymnasiums, and I go to ones in the Greater Toronto Area.  A couple of times a week, Tami accompanies me and we go through a free weight routine.  It’s good to have her there with me, giving me constant feedback and instruction.

When you’re not stick thin, and thinness is the ideal, you’re very conscious of how you’re being viewed in a weight room full of completely ripped men.  Usually, when we’re there, there are two or three of the gym’s registered trainers taking someone through a routine.  These people never look like me.  I don’t know if any of the trainers actually train people who look like me. They certainly don’t seem to like having people like me around.

And they don’t like Tami training me.  At one particular gym in Etobicoke, they threatened to cancel her membership if she continued to train me.  No matter how we reassured them that she was a friend, and a registered trainer (which is none of their fucking business anyway), they wanted her to stop.  And they couldn’t give us a valid reason.  They first claimed that should I get hurt, they were liable, which is crap considering I signed a waiver when I joined the gym.  They didn’t actually come out and tell us why they were pissed: they were afraid I was paying her.

Now, whether or not I was or am paying her is not an issue to me. The issue is this:

My appearance doesn’t illicit laughter on the street.  I’ve been told I’m a pretty good lookin’ broad, but I’m aware that I’m still not quite acceptable.  We’ve established that I don’t give a damn, really, but for health reasons, I go to the gym.

Society, when it comes to appearance, is incredibly elitist, in that it’ll shit on you if you don’t cut it, and it’ll shit on you if you try.  With Taco Bell pushing half pound burritos, 45 year olds dropping dead of heart attacks and 70 pound four year olds, you’d think that any day now, a collective light bulb will appear somewhere over the western hemisphere.  Canada’s health care system is unraveling, our doctors and nurses are frustrated, distracted, and spread thin in hospitals that are underfunded and overrun with hypochondriacs with hangnails and cankers and I’m doing it again, I sound like my pop.

Back to the gym. So here it is.

You want me to pay your trainers through the nose to whip me into shape?  Earn it.  Give me one good fucking reason to subject myself to that sort of scrutiny.  Tell me that your trainer will be available at all times for questions and support, and that he or she will always be at my side to tell me – remind me – that I can do it, that this is completely worth it; That they are worth my money and my trust and my time.

A gym’s gotta make money. I understand that.  All businesses have to turn a profit.  But I have to walk into a gym and be able to focus and feel secure in the knowledge that my trainer gives a damn that I even show up.  My money, my time, my ass.

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