I'm Being Assessed

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise. ~A.A. Milne

I have to go to the gym after work and get my annual fitness assessment done. This consists of 90 minutes of being weighed, measured, and told how much body fat you're carting around and how far that percentage is from where you should actually be. Then we go over my nutrition and what I'm doing workout wise. Then they will suggest I invest in personal training sessions, likely 3 times a week at the cost of a kidney in order to reach my fitness goals. That's all well and good. Quite frankly, if I could afford a personal trainer I would throw the money at them and tell them to get to work. But alas, my bank account tells me that lowering said body fat percentage is going to be all up to me.

The worst of it is, I know the assessment I get this evening is going to be worse than the one I had last year at this time. Mostly due to the fact that this time last year I was just ending my previous employment where my office was strategically located in the same building as the gym and my boss didn't care if I spent 1.5 hrs there over lunch. My work was done, he was happy. Sadly our office was shut down and with it my extended lunch hours spent at the gym.

I managed to stay on top of the workouts until May while I was training for the 10K, but once the race was run I took a little time off. When I went to go back my TI bands screeched in protest and alas my running fell by the wayside because, well I don't know if you've ever had a TI band screech at you, but it hurts and I'm not generally partial to courting pain if I can avoid it.

I kept walking and made it to the gym here and there on the weekends but things were going soft. Gelatinous really. I know people said this happens as you get older, but I have to confess I thought I would be exempt. Apparently not.

So off I go, burying my head in shame and already cringing at the knowledge the assessment will not be pretty. On the plus side, it will undoubtedly be a motivating factor. Why, just the idea of going to the assessment made me give my schedule a good hard look and determine where I can fit in my gym-time to make sure I get to a couple of BodyPump classes, at least 1 yoga class and an RPM class per week. If that doesn't help whip my butt back into shape, then I don't know what will - aside from thrice weekly personal trainer sessions that require me to give up a kidney.

By the way, the coffee consumption has been reduced. I suck back a mouthful in the morning to stave off the inevitable caffeine withdrawal headache. Except for the weekends. On the weekend I have a cup from the french press my lovely critique partner, Pam Callow, gave us as a wedding gift. And the chocolate has been reduced to one chocolate covered cereal bar per day.

The writing is an ongoing process. I got stuck on something last week but I'm over that and have moved on. I really want this manuscript out by end of December so I can jump into January writing the follow up to The Outlaw Bride.