Did about half an hour of weights on the home gym last night--just a light overall upperbody workout, just to remind my muscles that they're still there. I haven't lifted a weight since beginning of November, so I don't want to get too crazy. After the weights I did about half an hour on the stationary bike. Today I'm walking at lunch (we'll probably do two miles), and I'll do the rest of my workout after my doctor's appointment this afternoon.

We lucked out on getting a home gym a couple of months ago (got it for a third off because it had gotten wet during the storm), and if not for that I think there'd just be no hope right now. Actually going to a gym requires a much larger investment in time--not to mention the kid either has to be at daycare or with a babysitter. At least with the home gym I can work out after she's gone to bed.

However, there are aspects of actually going to a gym that I like and miss. I can't stand yuppie mega-gyms where the prices are sky high because you're paying for a million cardio classes that the soccer moms dutifully strap on their spandex shorts for, where every machine is gleaming chrome and more people are paid to keep the chrome gleaming than are paid to help the members, where 50% of the people spend most of their time standing around socializing, usually on the piece of equipment that you want to use, and where 90% of the people are working out wrong and no one says anything to them!

The gym where I used to work out (which, unfortunately is no longer in existence due to health problems on the part of the owner, and besides it was on the other side of the parish from where I live now) had a lot of muscle-heads, but it also had the little old ladies and average joes and janes. But for some reason it was just a nice easy comfortable place to workout, where you didn't feel intimidated by a bunch of spandex and silicone. Everyone was really helpful and encouraging, even to the people who had miles and miles to go before they could even see their toes. And if someone was doing an exercise wrong or inefficiently or in a manner that was inviting injury, someone who knew better would gently and nicely correct that person. This gym had no classes or spinning or cardio-pump or anything like that. It had a generous selection of weights and machines, four treadmills, four elliptical machines, and six stationary bikes. There was one cranky tanning bed in a back room and one shower and one toilet in each locker room.

I loved it. Sigh. I was briefly a member of a gym very close to where I work, but the selection of weights and machines wasn't the greatest and I began to feel as if I was wasting my money. There was only one squat rack and one smith machine. There was no lying leg curl machine, and there was no free-weight leg press. Getting the home gym was darn near the equivalent of going to that gym. And, it really is sufficient for about 80% of what I'm wanting to do now, but I think that in about a month I'm going to get frustrated by its limitations. Don't let the fat ass in my picture fool you--I used to be pretty damn serious about the weightlifting, and I do know what I'm doing.

So, I figure I'll go for about a month and see how much progress I make, then I'll probably buckle down and do an intensive search for some sort of gym that will suffice. I'm working 7 to 3 now, so I could conceivably get in a decent workout before having to get the kid from daycare.

Anyway, right now I'm just going to shoot for a loss of about 2 pounds a week. I'll start thinking about those defined abdominals after 20 pounds or so.