♥☮

So today I joined a large corporate gym with my friend who I carpool to work with. I get a FANTASTIC deal on my membership because we both went in at the same time, and the gym just opened this location. Guy who signed me up was super nice (albeit aggressive, but hey, I’ve never had to sell to make my own livelihood, so I can understand), so I had a positive feeling about this. I especially feel good about this decision because I now have a desk job along with an almost hour commute both ways, so I spend a lot of time sitting on my ass. I should feel good about going to the gym, right? 

Well, maybe not.

Maybe I am letting one small thing bother me, but it’s just something I need to get off my chest, and well, this is the Internet. I finished my short but sweet workout, which was enough for me since I slept barely 6 hours the night before, and had worked out hard every other night this week, and am walking back to the locker room, where there is a man at a table measuring body fat (there was another woman sitting at the table before I was working out but she wasn’t there). I decide (against my better judgment) to just go ahead and have him check out my body fat percentage: he weighs me, is asking my stats etc, then I hold the measuring device (which is how they do it, which is better than some that I have had where they pinched your fatty areas w/calipers or something) and it comes up. He has a booklet open with a BMI chart (ugh) along w/a body fat percentage chart divided by age/height. He then points on the chart where I am at (because I guess I look like I can’t comprehend a table) then says “Wow. That’s really bad.”

Are you serious right now? I signed up for a gym today and wasn’t already 7% body fat? HOW DARE I?!?! 

I just cannot comprehend where this practice of shaming in regards to weight loss originated, because it is so omnipresent in our culture. Why would someone think that this was an appropriate way to speak to someone who has just finished her workout? And wouldn’t you frame it in a positive way, then try to sell me on your excellent personal training package? 

It just really grinded my gears how he felt that he had the right to speak to me that way. Instances such as this are why I was so hesitant towards joining a gym in the first place: I finally get to the point with myself where I have a healthy relationship with my body, and I try to do something good for myself, not for vanity’s sake, but for how I feel and I am immediately confronted with someone who wants me to have a destructive relationship with my body in order to attain his acceptable level of health?

No thanks dude. I’ll take my approach to health, with self-love, regular exercise, regular wine and sweets, and a realistic expectation that I am a woman with wide hips, a large ass and large breasts instead of your approach of self-loathing and deprivation. Asshole.