I’m sitting here at the university, in the library my wife volunteers at, helping to find books for her to recatalogue. I don’t have work today and I decided to join her and then go to the gym afterwards. While I do love helping, I am also left thinking that I cannot wait to go to the gym. I get excited at the prospect of working out my body and burning energy to accelerate weight loss and also become more and more fit as time goes on.

I want to go use some weight machines, flex my muscles and count my reps and sets. I want to go and jump on an elliptical and bust out an hour or two of cardio because it feels so damn good to keep moving. I love to be at the gym and prove to other people that I can work out just like anyone else. It’s always been a source of motivation for me.

When I was alone, and exercising alone, I always used to feel like nobody knew that I exercised and everyone probably just assumed that I was a super fat guy who never exercised at all. Admittedly, yes, that used to be me. I didn’t care what people thought because I simply didn’t think about it at all. I just lived my life and didn’t care about anything because I was too busy ignoring my problems.

After I decided to change my life and began losing weight, I wanted people to know. I wanted anyone and everyone to see me exercising, to see that I was making an effort and that I was trying to change my life. I have no idea if anyone actually saw me and thought anything of it, but in my mind, everyone was looking at me, so I figured I better impress the heck out of them.

There’s many things I cannot do at the gym. Either because I’ve never attempted them, or because I just don’t have the strength yet. The things I can do, I want to excel at, and I want people to know that I excel at them. I get a little burst of glee when someone gets on the elliptical next to me, and gets off after 15 minutes or so, completely out of breath, while I keep cruising on.

When I first started going to the gym, I just felt awkward and weird, afraid of looking stupid. Occasionally I still feel like that when I am trying something new, but it’s important to know that as long as I try, that’s all that matters. If I fail completely, or find that it just isn’t for me, I can just go do something that I know I am excellent at, and still have a great workout. If I ever try new things, I will always try to end my workout positively and do the things I am best at near the end. That way, I always feel great about my abilities, and always leave feeling amazing.

If you go to the gym, just do you. Do something that looks interesting to you and go for it. Don’t be intimidated by those around you who know what they are doing. For many months I have been intrigued by the stair climbers for instance, but they are always crowded and the people on them seem to be extremely good at it. Whenever they get off, there’s always a lineup of people ready to jump on right behind them. So I have never been able to try them out until recently. Since it was reading week, there’s not many students at the university gym that we go to and we finally had the opportunity to give it a shot!

It was wonderful and it helped give us a really nice intense cardio session. I felt proud at what I was able to accomplish even though it was my first time on the machine. I know I never could have done this before, and I am proud of myself for getting to this point. I love having the ability to try new things and work out in different ways. The gym is the perfect way to make that happen. Some things work and some things don’t. There’s plenty I fail at as well, but the important thing is to keep trying, and eventually you’ll get better, fitter, and your body will thank you for it!