Postcards from the gym
January is over and the crowd at the gym is starting to thin out now that the Resolution People are dropping off. The Big Gym Corporation makes money from the people who sign up for memberships but don’t go. They’re raking it in as you relax in the comfort of your own home. It’s a genius business model, or as my brother Rick would say, “That’s how they getcha.”
Because the gym is taking my money, I keep showing up. Basically, I’m going to the gym out of spite. It’s probably the number one reason I do anything.
P.S.: You can’t really quit the gym. You need the Lincoln Lawyer to get out of the membership contract.
After going for some time, I’m finally getting into it. Last week, I showed up dressed in a full tracksuit, like a Royal Tenenbaum. I looked like Clint Barton and/or Kate Bishop was ready to kick my butt (my Disney+ peeps will get that joke, everyone else will have to shrug and move on).
Lately, I’ve been moving the same three pounds on and off. My fondest hope is that I’m moving those three pounds to a better spot on my body than the spot where they started.
When I complained to a Gym Dude, he said, “You’ve hit the plateau, bro.”
Reminder: Ask Paul Simon if that is one of the 50 ways to leave your lover.
Plateau is a French word for, “You’re stuck.” It also means “a level surface.”
I’m plain stuck.
It’s like I’m running in place and not really getting anywhere. Considering I’m on the treadmill, mostly, it makes sense.
The treadmill at my gym has a TV mounted on top, because they know you’d rather be watching TV than working out. The gym TV has a limited selection of channels. They don’t want you salivating over treacle pudding during an episode of “The Great British Bake-Off.” The TV on the treadmill has two sports channels, five news channels and Magnolia TV, which is an offshoot of HGTV.
I watch “Fixer Upper,” which is about a happy-go-lucky guy named Chip and his no-nonsense, interior designer wife, Joanna.
It occurs to me as I am jogging in place, that I’m a fixer upper, too. I need to make a few minor repairs to the outside, but I have to gut the insides. If only I could get Chip to chip away at my interior the way he breaks apart kitchen cabinets and Formica countertops from the late ’70s.
Side note: It seems to me that there are a lot of people in Waco, Texas, who have an extra $100,000 lying around to pay for renovations to their new home.
But I digress, like I do.
In the sauna, two of Gym Dudes were talking about “getting shredded.” I began craving heaps of mozzarella cheese, smothering a chunky tomato sauce on a thick, crusty slice of Sicilian.
I may have stumbled on the No. 1 reason I’m not losing weight.