It is 3pm in the afternoon. I’ve spent most of the day in bed, feeling myself melt onto the mattress in a pool of my own sweat. The elder one had brought the bug home, and like it usually happens with illnesses, the rest of us fell like dominoes soon after. As if my own agony is not enough, the little one is running a fever too. I am worried she isn’t eating enough, and I’m wondering if I’d have to keep her away from school for another day.
Amidst all this is the one thought that has taken room in my mind and refused to leave me – I can’t believe I couldn’t go to the gym today; would I be better enough to go tomorrow? The very next thought that accompanies it is – how on earth did I become a gym junkie?!
How indeed.
I think I should start from the beginning – makes sense to do so. Because it is at the beginning that you would find me resisting the gym with every fibre of my being. The gym was a place where already fit people went to get fitter. It was where you would find macho Neanderthals who had relegated to using grunts and groans to communicate as they compared the size of their clubs – I’m sorry – the weight they could lift. It was also where you would find girls with minuscule waists and flat bellies who looked like they survived on air, water, sheer willpower and nothing else. As I was neither, the gym wasn’t the place for me. No, sir. Thank you very much.
And then my elder sister, my waif of a sister who’d spent most of her childhood evading physical activity of any form, choosing to stay with her nose buried in a book instead, went ahead and started strength training sometime around 2019. She didn’t just go to the gym and train, she made it a part of her very existence and identity. Which is why it made sense that in just over a year’s time, she went from being a gym rat to a gym owner. Yep, she became a business owner and fitness trainer and badass bitch all rolled into one and I witnessed it all. I scrolled through her perfectly shot photos on Instagram as she posed and flexed her muscles. I watched videos of the various aspects of her training, whether it was her running 10kms or executing a perfect barbell squat. Instagram, of course, took it as a sign to fill my feed with tons of “before-after”s, of fitness transformations and fit people who told others that they could also be fit if only they followed so and so routines and ate so and so food and avoided a whole long list of others.
And I thought to myself “That could NEVER be me.”
Being pregnant twice and giving birth twice had taken its toll on my body, and I was giving it all the compassion it needed. I had found a space where I could exist in my body without constantly fighting it. Through body neutrality, through workouts that aimed at feeling better more than looking better, through a balance between restricting and indulging, I had found a sort of equilibrium – albeit a fragile one. In fact, so delicate was this balance that it was always only one insensitive remark, one failed shopping trip, one unflattering photo away from teetering unsteadily and dragging me down me in its wake. Maintaining the equilibrium itself left me exhausted.
To her credit, my sister never pushed me to join a gym (her gym was too far away from where we lived and not a practical option for me) She urged me to start strength training at some point, citing the multitude of benefits it offers, obviously, but also let me take my time. It was almost as if she knew I would be ready someday. I continued watching her, not failing to notice that somewhere between the posed photos and the eloquent captions, her focus had shifted from aesthetics to longevity, from shape and size to strength and endurance, from washboard abs to a core that supports you through your old age.
At the beginning of this year, when the husband was asked by his doctor to lose weight to manage his backache, all I could think of was my sister – who genuinely loved working with clients with mobility restrictions, simply because it allowed her to be creative with their training programs. I told my husband to ask my sister if she could train him, and then, as if it was the most natural thing to do, I told him I would join him too.
Also to her credit, my sister didn’t gloat when I finally told her I was ready. Neither did she make a huge deal out of it.
And so, on a seemingly ordinary Saturday, with no idea that my life was about to get a complete overhaul, my husband and I surrendered ourselves to the capable hands of my sister. We had a proper sit down first, where she talked nutrition and I took down notes. It was only when she felt that we had gotten the basics right that she finally took us to the gym. And there, for the first time in my life, I held a pair of dumbbells, and raised them above my head for a shoulder press. Even as I giggled (my husband will verify that I actually did) at the massive shift I felt within myself, my sister said “You can lift heavier because you are strong.” In that moment, I knew, I simply knew that lifting weights was something I would not only enjoy, but actually crave. I carried that feeling and her words like a talisman with me. I rolled those words in my mouth to taste them, tentatively saying them out loud, “I’m strong, am I not?” until eventually they were imbibed in me. “I am strong. I AM strong. I AM STRONG!”
More than anything though, it helped assuage my qualms about fitting strength and hypertrophy training into my body neutral mindset. Body neutrality, by definition, takes focus away from one’s body – more specifically, its appearance, and to me, it felt like hypertrophy, by definition, was all about changing what your body looked like. That first time lifting weights though and feeling something shift within me phenomenally, I realised that I could still make it about feeling better rather than looking better, and thus, I found this beautiful space where both could co-exist.
Armed with my sister’s basic training and a five-days-a-week training program, that also included two cardios per day to ensure fulfilling my step count of 10,000, I tiptoed my way into our condo gym the next Monday – thanking my lucky stars that I was all alone. Cliched as it may sound, I haven’t looked back since. It has been 8 weeks since that day, and barring that one day when I was sick this week, I haven’t missed a single day of my training.
At the 5 week mark, my sister insisted that I “upgrade” to a proper gym with full facilities and not restrict myself to just free weights. Even as I walked to the gym to sign up for membership, I could hear that voice inside my head, reminding me why I hated gyms, telling me it wasn’t a place for someone like me. One step at a time, I told myself, and the first step was simply signing up, of having the choice to train there should I want to. Having done that, the next step was to actually go to the gym and get comfortable with the machines and their settings. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without my sister, who literally held my hand on that first day and walked me through everything. I came out of the gym that day equal parts excited and scared, because I knew – the next time I would have to navigate that intimidating space by myself.
The next Monday, I had to brace myself to step inside the gym. Would I make a fool out of myself? Wouldn’t everyone know that I was a noob? Would they laugh at me because I clearly didn’t know what I was doing? The whole way I kept repeating to myself “I belong there. I belong there. I belong there.” I envisioned walking out of the gym that day after my training, having conquered my greatest inhibition, and I told myself that I was willing to sit with my discomfort because what lay beyond it was far more important for me. That day, if someone had told me that in three weeks’ time, not only would I walk into the gym with a spring to my step but that I would sing along to the playlist between sets and even groove to the songs without sparing a glance at the person next to me, I would have laughed. But I did it. I conquered my trepidation. I walked out that first day grinning ear to ear, knowing that nothing could stop me from returning the next day and the day after and on and on.
In these 8 weeks I have learned and executed squats and deadlifts, presses and flies, split squats and step ups, lunges and push ups. I have educated myself to learn the difference between push and pull movements and how to create a program around those. My phone notes are filled with various options for supersets and circuit training. And while just a week ago I deadlifted 50kg, yesterday I raised that number to 60kg – admittedly with a dull backache to show for it – and you bet I can’t wait till next week to see how further I can push my body. I have started enjoying feeling sore after a hard workout because I know it’s my body doing what it’s supposed to. I specially enjoy how hungry I get after my training, because that’s my body letting me know that it needs food. I feel way more connected with my body, attuned to its needs, knowing when I can push it and when I need to be kind.
My clothes have started fitting differently, but honestly, at this point it doesn’t matter. I haven’t even stepped on the weighing scale since I began. And while people around tell me I look different, no one is privy to the real change that has happened within me – no, that is mine to experience and marvel in. Among those experiences, the topmost has to be this conversation I overheard between my girls.
3 year old: “Look Baba, I can lift this beanbag!”
10 year old: “Wow… you are so strong!”
3 year old: “I know, I am as strong as Babu!”
10 year old: “You most certainly are!”
3 year old: “Am I the strongest in this family?”
10 year old: “Nope, Mamma is.”
3 year old: “I think Babu is stronger.”
10 year old: “Nope, still Mamma.”
Why yes, little ones. Mamma is the strongest. Not among others, but she is definitely the strongest she has ever been. And Mamma plans on only getting stronger.
Of dreaming, dabbling and daring... 