I wish there were gyms just for overweight women like me!
Earlier this year, wallowing happily in a friend’s chindeep bathtub while house- sitting, i suddenly discovered i couldn’t actually pull myself out.
i had visions of being found there a week later shrivelled into a prune, but i eventually managed to switch on to my knees and clamber out, dignity entirely shot.
Clearly, i need to get fitter — frankly, at a size 18, i’m too fat and altogether too heavy.
My arms never lift anything more strenuous than a wine glass but getting stuck in a tub has taken the shine off that as one’s only form of exercise.
So, reader, i have paid the ultimate price. With a heavy heart, thighs and hips, i joined a gym (at roughly the cost of a week in the Maldives) for the first time in several decades.
The gym in question, David lloyd, is a swanky franchise full of many, many, many people who could slip through a crack in the pavement were it not for their toned muscles.
and i am so far out of my comfort zone, it’s barely visible on the horizon.
Can you imagine the ignominy of joining a pilates class and being the only person who can’t stand on her tiptoes without falling over?
i lurk at the back with the other oldies, so the yummy mummies can’t pity us quite so openly as we gape at the instructor, always a few seconds behind.
i simply can’t keep up with the pace — the rest of the class are up and down like a stripper’s underwear, while i struggle to get upright.
OnCe down on the mat, i roll around on the floor like a basking seal while the skinny girls in front twist and twirl like they’re made of elastic. The only thing elastic about me is my waistband.
i tried yoga and couldn’t do any of the poses, not because i wasn’t bendy, but because i have so much extra padding around the middle, i couldn’t reach over far enough. i had to pretend i had long Covid and arthritic knees.
as for the idea of spending a session on the machines or in the weights rooms? Forget it. When you know you’ll be scarlet, dripping and panting within five minutes of getting on the treadmill, even on the slow setting, while all around you size six women and ubermuscled men operate at top speed without breaking a sweat, well, let’s just say that nothing is more likely to make you feel like a selfconscious failure.
This fear of judgment from fellow gym-goers — whether real or imagined
— is key to why larger people like me stay away, even though we’re the ones who most need to get fit.
it wasn’t until i discovered aqua aerobics that i finally found my people. nobody under 60 and not a single size under a 16 in the pool. Hallelujah!
No STreSS, no strain, although i do wonder if the water suffers from 20 large ladies of a certain age with questionable pelvic floor muscles doing jumping jacks.
nevertheless, i’m enthusiastic. So much so that one breast popped out of my costume the other day, bouncing around for several seconds before i realised it had made a bid for freedom.
But i know there’s only so much strength and fitness i’ll gain from a bit of bobbing about, and unless i brave the gym, i’ll be stuck in a doomed cycle of disappointment.
it’s left me wondering: why doesn’t some bright spark like WeightWatchers open a gym where people of substantial means, like myself, can go and exercise among their own kind without feeling embarrassed?
at the all-new Fatness First, us larger ladies would no longer need to work out at home on our own like pariahs.
instead, come on down to a nice welcoming place where weighing scales are banned and you get a round of applause for actually getting on the cross trainer.
nobody with a BMi of under 30 would be allowed to join and there would be no fiddling around with the weights on
the machines because some behemoth with biceps like Mr T had been lifting the equivalent of a truck before you.
We could all chat while cycling gently downhill at 3mph in neon lycra without fear of being judged.
Sisters, we could groan doing squats. We could ‘oof’ as we roll over on the mat and, if we went a bit too far and hit the person next to us, we could laugh at ourselves instead of being laughed at.
i fear this is just a pipe dream though. Fat these days is too much of a social stigma.
So i guess i’ll just keep bobbing up and down in the pool at David lloyd with my own kind. and keep my wobbly bits firmly strapped down.