Ah, New Years. That magical time when promises still gleam with the hopeful shimmer of how much better life can be. Potato chip bags deflate on grocery shelves while carrots, peppers and pine nuts pepper fresh green salads. Numbers are deleted from phones as people shed old relationships to make room for that special someone who is undoubtedly waiting just beyond the horizon. Agendas are bought, notes organized and textbooks highlighted as we all swear and double swear that this semester, this year, will mark the beginning of us being On Top Of Things. January is an incredibly hopeful month (as delusional as it is).
My resolution is the same one that everyone makes: this year, I will Get Back In Shape.
Now, this shouldn’t be that difficult. I ran track in high school (not very well, but I didn’t come in last) and used to coach gymnastics, so I know what it takes to be “fit”. I also managed to avoid the dreaded Freshman 15 last year, so I’m not carrying around extra weight. Yet something has happened to me after a year and a half of university. I look like I’m a healthy weight because weight isn’t the issue. The problem is that after a year of endless lectures, writing papers, doing readings and working on assignments without enough exercise to counterbalance the necessarily tremendous amount of sitting that an average university student does, I have shamefully become what is unofficially known as “skinny fat”.
Yes. Skinny fat. It’s totally a thing. To look at me, I’m healthy. But going up the stairs to the third floor of Buchanan makes me wheeze. Running to catch the bus feels like a marathon. And carrying groceries? Fuggetaboudit. Seriously, the amount of stuff I put back because I don’t want to carry it is embarrassing. I only eat pickles if I can steal my roommate’s because a jug of milk and a jar of pickles is too much for me to carry home from the grocery store and you can’t (shouldn’t?) put pickle juice on your cereal (probably).
So, it’s obviously time for a change. A change of fitness! What an original resolution. But the reason it’s so popular is because it seems ridiculously difficult to keep up – hence we continue to remake it every year. But I’m going to do it and it will stick because I am strong, I am resolute. Probably. No, not probably – I am. Yes. So to kick off my new fit self, I decided that rather than fight through the throngs of like-minded people at the BirdCoop, I would start my new fitness via a different tract: group exercise. Which brings us to…
Part One: The Zumba Class
Dying. I’m dying. The janitor will later find my cold, lifeless body shoved into the corner, where I won’t be in the way of the kickboxing class in the studio right after this fatal Zumba class. Between gasps, I weakly kick my legs and pump my arms, trying in vain to peer around the thirty other people ahead of me to see the instructor’s complicated steps. I turn the wrong way and accidentally almost kick the girl next to me.
This turns out to be fine since I stopped being able to lift my leg more than three inches off the ground about twenty minutes ago. If I had any doubts before as to whether or not I was in shape, this is a loud, resounding NOOOOO. Or maybe that just my arms screaming in agony as I continue trying to lift them.
And yet, any time I catch a glimpse of myself in the many, many mirrors, I’m smiling. Maybe it’s just the endorphins, but despite the excruciating throbbing coursing through my body I strangely feel…good. The moves, though way beyond my uncoordinated control, are really fun and the fact that everyone is panting and flailing just like me makes me feel better.
The class stretches on longer than the very fabric of time itself but when it finally finishes, I’m still smiling.
“That was fun,” I say to my roommates, who look just as sweaty and tired as me.
And just like that, I’m looking forward to next week’s class.
Comment below with your own resolutions or what you’re doing to get in shape if you’ve also resolved to start excercising. Be sure to check back next week, when I’ll post about my experience at futsol! (Yeah, that’s seriously a thing. I know.)