Congrats Fitness Edge of Fairfield on the Worst Sales Pitch EVER

"Well technically, you're obese," said the Fitness Edge Fitness Consultant.

"Um okay. Wow. That's news to me," said me.

Thus began my renewed love / hate relationship with The Edge Fitness in Fairfield. My son had been bugging me and bugging me and bugging me and flailing himself against stuff to join a gym. He went to the jiu jitsu place. He went to the cross fit place. He went to the open 24 hours place. Do you know how much these places cost? Like $100 a month per person. For a 16 year-old. So we went back to my old gym that I practically had to sue to leave the first time. God I hate gyms. But I love gyms. Cuz they have so much stuff.

As part of my new life as a freelancer, I decided to take off the 10 pounds I'd gained in my last year as an employee. What with the stress, and the M word -- if you don't know what that is, then you're not 50, or a girl. I'm working on it. I've lost about 5 pounds now and have another 5 to go. I'll get there. 

As part of my new Fitness Edge membership, they offer one hour of free personal training. I thought hey maybe this will help me get there faster. Just FYI, it's total bullshit. It's about 10 minutes of personal training and a 45-minute sales pitch on being obese and getting their "Total Fitness Solution." Really guys? I'm in marketing, so there's pretty much no Total (insert marketing word) Solution I'm buying.

They take your weight and height and then ask you to hold this gizmo that looks like a gaming controller to calculate your BMI (body mass index). After going blank several times, the Fitness Edge gaming device says my BMI is 34. I freaked, so today I went to the BMI calculator offered by the NIH (National Institutes of Health). The NIH says my BMI is 24 which is NORMAL. It's high normal, but still normal.

And did I mention she was rounding up my weight? No one rounds up on weight. Not even guys. 

This gets better. Then they created an avatar of me in my current obese state. Really I think I would rather have had a ________(you fill in the blank). Oh my god. I have no words. 

After shaming me with the "obesity" news, the Fitness Edge Fitness Consultant then took me through multiple scenarios involving working out with a personal trainer and tracking my food online. I get it. I've done that food tracking before with Weight Watchers when I would guess my BMI was 34 after having a 10 pound baby. And it works. I am a huge fan of Weight Watchers and their non-shaming approach to weight loss.  And I get that working out with a trainer is probably a pretty cool thing too.

Finally, the end of the sales pitch. The end of the worst sales pitch EVER. For a mere $499.93 a month, I can get three 30-minute personal training sessions per week plus unlimited "Edge Strong" team training, plus diet tracking. For $369.99 a month, I can train twice a week, etc. For $199.97 per month, I can train once a week, etc.

Thank you Fitness Edge Fitness Consultant for the information, but I can't spend $500 a month on personal training because I don't have it. Maybe instead of spending time creating my fat avatar, you should've checked my bank statement. Or you could've just asked me.

One thing I will say is that after only 10 minutes with my personal trainer, I loved her. She was funny and honest and paid very close attention to what I was doing, correcting my form etc. Liz Heatter. Ask for her. Avoid everyone else. 

Wait I forgot. When I first sat down with Liz she asked me some questions about my goals, any injuries etc. She said, "Someone wrote here that one of your goals is to lose 50 pounds. But I'm looking at you and wondering from where?" That's when I knew I loved Liz the personal trainer. Then she took her pen and scratched it out over and over again. 

NB: You may recognize the iconic Piggly Wiggly logo above which actually looks exactly the same as my Fitness Edge fat avatar.

Inspiration

Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in about a month. I've been dealing with contractors and sending out work samples to prospects. So I let the gym slip.

I was looking for inspiration or motivation, reasons why I should go to the dreaded gym. One of my facebook friends said simply, "Get your butt down there." That's really all it is. Making the time. And overcoming my fear of swine flu stagnating on the treadmill. Also avoiding the various rush hours from the mommy brigade arriving promptly at 9am to the swingers who start showing up around cocktail hour.

Where to find inspiration? Typically when I wake up, at least these days, my brain starts in immediately. A flurry of bad thoughts about I gotta do this and I gotta do that. What, another load of laundry? Please let the dishwasher be empty. When are the sheetrockers coming? I have to get out before they arrive.

Mainly I have to get out of my house by 8:30 to avoid conversations with my general contractor. In an earlier blog post, I referenced a typical conversation I have with my GC.

Fred: "Yeah I was on this job and the homeowner was like all pissed off because these other guys came in and it's all FUBAR'ed and now I gotta fix it. That's what they all say to me, 'Freddy, make it go away.'"

Me: "Uh-huh."

Every time he saves the day. It's amazing.

Except for that time last week when he dropped his table saw in my garage. Then the saw fell into some metal object that then fell on my scooter and cracked the fender. Here's what my scooter looked like before:

Oh there was also that time when he knocked himself out with our garage door. Still not sure how that happened.

My mom says I should be patient with these guys because they have hard lives and they aren't as fortunate as I am. They drink too much. They're divorced or in some kind of murky relationship with their kid's mom. Fred's got a girl. They've been together 7 years. I think he likes his dog more than he likes his girl. His face lights up when he talks about his dog Deak. His girl, not so much.

But I digress. Inspiration, inspiration, looking for inspiration. I went to Dunkin' Donuts to get my morning coffee and I ran into one of the guys in the klatch. There are two guy klatches at this Dunkin'. I don't know why the image persists of women sitting around gossiping over coffee when all I see are man klatches.

This guy is in the older guy klatch. (He sits with the guy who hoards napkins.) Normally we exchange hellos but he was running late and didn't see me waiting for my coffee. As he was chatting with the Dunkin' lady he asked her how to translate "beautiful but cold day" into Spanish. Something about fria. He repeated the phrase twice with a big smile on his face, happy to be learning something new.

As I pulled out of the Dunkin' parking lot, I saw a group of high school girls running down the street-- a local high school cross country team I am assuming. One girl was about 20 feet behind everyone else. All the other girls were running in a pack in front of her. She was a little bigger than the others, but not much. Normal by most standards. But the other girls were thin and tall with perfect pony tails swinging in the wind as they left her in the dust.

What I noticed about the lone girl running behind was that she didn't look downtrodden. She actually had sort of a grimace on her face, a look of determination. This girl was running her own race.

You actually can learn something new everyday. You can be running dead last and that's okay. Inspiration. I found it at Dunkin' Donuts of all places.