The fat lady gyms

Since my holiday (just over a week ago now) in summary: weights look something like this: 179.8, 180.0, 179.2, 178.6, 177.0, 176.4. Training looks something like this: powerplate almost every day, with 10 minutes of 10-minute miles on the treadmill, interspersed with walking or cycling every other day. Food: breakfast special k, lunchtime sandwiches, evening meat and veg, with packs of low-calorie crisps inbetween; not a single chocolate bar or sugary snack (although I do have to declare one scottish sweet). Health: fairly stable, one mild food reaction (100mph brain again) and the odd sniffle, with the powerplate situps doing an excellent job of keeping my bronchi clear (very similar effect to the percussion my parents used to keep my chest clear as a child) inbetween.

And that sorted, on to today's post. Gym etiquette with large ladies. S and I were on the powerplates last night (I think we may be becoming a feature on them...) when a rather large lady was led by a personal trainer onto a neighbouring machine. And while she was fighting some sit-ups, she glanced over and gave me that look. If you've got fit and hung around gyms for long enough, you know that look: a swirl of defiance and uncertainty, a subconscious division of the gym into me over here and you over there. If you've also got unfit and restarted training at gyms enough times, you also know that feeling: you've paid your money, you've bought your kit, you've walked through the doors, but somehow that extra layer of fat removes any sense of belonging in or to said gym, often to the point where it's easier to give up going rather than wait for the toned bodies to finish with the machines that you need. It's a sad fact that most people's mental image of female gym attenders is that they are all fit, thin, toned and that somehow they've always been that way and just need to go to the gym to top off their natural healthiness (I'll skip the other image of musclebound hulks for now). It’s up there with ‘thin people have always been thin’ and its dispiriting caveat ‘so I can’t even hope to join them’. And in that moment, with that stare, I realised that I didn’t know how to start to break down the divide. I thought about walking past and whispering “I was a size 18 two months ago” into her ear, but that seems patronising. I racked my brain for anything positive that I could do to help break the going-to-the-gym barrier down from fighting ones own body and attitude at the same time, to just fighting the fat, but there was nothing I could say or do at the time. So I just smiled and got back on with my own torture. I guess this is partly my own social inadequacy, partly my deepset belief that difficult things can become easier (not easy, note, but easier) if they’re done within a community, partly a comment on the powers of perception over reality, especially in matters social, but that moment did make me think for a while. And writing about it has helped: next time I see someone fighting themself and looking uncomfortable in the gym, I’ll smile and say ‘Hi’ before I get on with addressing my current inability to do a full wide-arm pressup properly. It takes a great deal of courage and determination for a fat person to walk into the gym: the very least that everyone else can do is acknowledge them as one of our own.