I Have a Problem with Body Image

And with that shocking statement I begin my first blog post in a long time! Hello blogospheria, I'm back.

Now, before you panic and start trying to tell me how fat I'm not allow me to explain. When I say I have a problem with body image I don't mean what you think. Problems with body image usually means thinking that you're ugly, or fat, or some other depressing thing, which even if true is not a nice thing to have stuck in your head. In my case it is, quite horribly, the opposite.

Recently I was introduced to the gym here at Houghton by my friend Chad. So far we've worked out together a grand total of once, but we have an awesome work out plan that I'm sure we'll follow through on...if we're not too tired or busy or lazy. But anyway, on Saturday I went up to the gym by myself to work out (Chad had gone that morning without me because, even though we had planned to go up together, I slept through my alarm. Curse you alarm, curse you!) and I saw something awesome. Somebody was running on a treadmill while reading a book! Two birds with one stone! So I decided that I would try it sometime. While, tonight was that time. I grabbed my sneakers and shorts, shoved them into a bag with my book, and walked up to the gym.

Now let me tell you about my body image problem, which is basically the problem of what I was picturing when I went up to the gym and what I have in my head when I think about working out with Chad. In my head I see myself going up to the gym and within days having gigantic muscles. As I use those muscles to lift 5 gazillion pounds I will gleam with sweat that is not sweat but is actually the tears of the Greek gods who have come to realize that thier chizeled features will never able to match mine. Then girls will come flocking from around the world begging me to take off my shirt and show off my muscles. At first I will refuse, but then I will simply flex and the shirt will tear into tiny shreds and I will rip it off and use it to wipe the gods' tears from my sexy brow. The girls will squel in delight and I will have to tell them that I am not availabe and they should all go away and maybe go hit on Greek gods or something. Then I picture myself picking up the entire library and reading it as I run 70 miles an hour on a treadmill made out of fire and unicorns. By the time I'm done people will say, "hey Chris, how was your workout?" and I will reply "not bad, I read 20,000 books and ran 50,000 miles. Definitely a few million short of my record, but not bad for an afternoon." Because my enormous muscles will now be achy and the Greek tears coating my body will be begining to get nasty I will jump through the second floor window of the gym into the pool and swim 10,000 laps before saving a child from a shark by exploding the shark with my fists.

See? Problem. Now I will tell you what actually happened today. As I said I went up to the gym, sneakers, shorts and book in hand. I felt pretty pumped and jogged up the stairs, ready to jump onto the flaming unicorns and run for hours. Before going into the gym I looked in and saw that all three treadmills were taken by extremely muscular girls, whose sweat did in fact look like it may have been cried by Aphrodite as she realized she was not as buff as these girls. As I looked around the rest of the gym I saw more people of the buff variety working out and looking like they could crush me just by sneezing within a mile of me. Rather than walk my scrawny and out of shape self into the gym to wait I decided to hightail it out of there.

This kind of reminds me of the time on Saturday when I picked up some 20 pound free weights and was grunting to use them and I felt all awesome and like I was super buff weight lifter man. After I did 10 reps I returned the weights to the rack just as a girl about half my size came up and effortlessly picked up the 30 pound weights.

So anyway, I just thought someone out there might like to here about some of my latest humbling misadventures. Going to the gym is a lot of fun, and I like feeling healthier and more fit, but it is definitely humbling. I hope you all enjoyed the story. I enjoyed writing it. It's nice to write just for myself. I did kind of pick on Greek gods a lot, but I doubt they care.

Anyway, I must be off. I still have that reading to do and I think I'm going to commune with my fat a little to make me feel better about not be able to go run. Goodbye world!