Move Those Feet!

As I've said before I struggle with my weight. No, I'm not the size of the Biggest Loser candidates, but I lost about 35 lbs. over a year ago and I want to keep it off. The snag is that I can't seem to do that. Each day another pound creeps up on my fat butt no matter how closely I watch my calorie intake--unless I exert some kind of energy in exercise.

I hate exercise! I hate moving that much unless I'm working in the yard or hiking with my family or accomplishing something fun in the process. Just working out for the sake of burning calories just pisses me off. It makes me mad that I can't use up those calories unless I intentionally make my body suffer.

I know this might seem irrational (as much of my thinking is), but that's how I've always felt. I think it stems back to bad experiences in junior high p.e.class . Miss Callise.was our instructor. (I think she's gone on to the big gym in the sky, so she won't be hurt or angry by hearing about this. No one wants to get Miss Callise angry. At one time she was an Army officer, I swear to God, and she never let us forget it. She worked us like we were training to be green berets or something.) She had short, slicked back hair, wide shoulders, and a fierce whistle that she blew with a vengence if we strayed even slightly from her routine.

Anyway...I think my aversion to movement all started when I couldn't climb the darn rope, or run the darn sprints, or do the darn callisthenics. We didn't have fun games and such in those days that I remember any way. Just torture basically for forty minutes and then we had to shower.

Oh, dear, I'd buried the memory of the group shower. Every eighth-grade girl was required to remove her clothes and run through that institutionally swampy shower. We never used soap, barely ran through the spray, and tried our best to keep from being seen. Especially if you were one of the "chubby-wubby" ones as I was. I ran fast and wrapped that towel around me almost before I'd exited the shower. Then we had to step in this foot powder that was supposed to prevent athlete's foot. Could they have thought up any worse degredation? It was hideous. I still can smell that shower and the foot powder in the back of my nose and throat 48 years later.

We had to bring our own towels. Each day we wadded them back up in our locker basket and we were supposed to take them home every Friday to wash. But you know how junior high is. We never did. So the locker room, towels and all of us smelled rather musky, dank and sweaty. Right Guard was the deodorant of choice in those days (even for girls, yes) and we'd  cover ourselves in it's spicey mist to cover up the sweat-riddled towel smell.

Of course, there was the underwear reveal involved in this process. When we rushed to cover our pubescent bodies with clothes, there was that moment when we had to drag out our underwear. It seemed that every other girl had cute, nylon, colorful underwear and lacy bras. Not me...oh no. I had white cotton undies and cotton bras that my mother used to iron. I had to have white because she bleached everything, She also ironed my bras with creases down the cup. I swear! Why didn't she just shoot me?

And all during this shower ordeal, Miss Callise watched us. Oh, yes! She clasped a clipboard in her mannish grasp and she'd check off our names as we ran from the shower. If we tried to escape the sheep-dippish foot powder, she'd make us go back. Some times she would have the girls go back through the shower if she felt they ran too fast through the spray. (As I think back about it now, she'd probably be sued for something today, but in those days sexual harassment wasn't spoken about.)

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, exercise! So I need to exercise. That's the only way I can keep this weight off. Lola and I walked over a mile yesterday. Our tongues were hanging when we returned. I know that's not very far, but it's far enough if you're a fat sixty-one-year-old woman or a shi tzu.

So evidently, I'm scarred worse than I thought. I didn't realize until I wrote this post how badly I was damaged by junior high gym class. But to be fair to all the physical education teachers in the world, I think I was already a little warped before that. I mean, we do have my mom to blame for those granny panties and the whole ironed bra thing. I accept no responsibility in any of my neuroses.