Expedition to THE GYM…Well, my new gym clothes arrived which means it’s time for me to take the plunge and go to the gym for the first time ever. It also means goal number 4 is a success:
4. Join a gym and acquire the necessary clothing to actually go - no excuses!Despite nearly talking myself out of it, I eventually went online to book a place at tonight’s zumba class. I’ll be perfectly honest with you…I’m petrified.
There are a whole host of reasons for me to be scared. Firstly, new social situations with large groups of strangers scare me. Logically I know there’s nothing to worry about…but I’m not logical. I’m sure they’ll all be perfectly lovely and I’ll be just fine once I get there and calm down a bit. It’s just talking myself into being brave enough to go in the first place that’s the hard part.
Also, having never done or even seen zumba before, not knowing what to expect was making me a bit nervous. I thought it would be a seriously smart idea to head on over to YouTube to watch some clips of zumba to get an idea of what was involved. No. It wasn’t. It looked really hard and not at all what I had imagined when people had described it to me! So now I’m a little worried that I’m nowhere near fit enough to cope and that it’s going to be an epic disaster. Epic!
Finally, another concern is an injury that has caused me a great deal of pain over the past 10-15 years. Although it has improved greatly, there’s always the worry that it could get worse again. Having spent about half of my life in agony and experiencing many episodes of temporary paralysis during that time, I’m always paranoid that I could trigger another episode if I’m not careful enough.
Basically, I’m a big scaredy cat. However, I’m determined not to chicken out of this class tonight. I’m going to go, I’m going to give it my best, and if it turns out that I’m not up to such high intensity exercise just yet I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I still have my gym induction in which the trainer can hopefully help me come up with an exercise plan that will suit my circumstances and goals, plus I’m definitely going to get back to the swimming because I love it so much and I feel totally ready physically and mentally to return to the pool. May have to go on Monday evening…
Other awesome plans for tonight include following up on goal numero dos:
2. Take the time to cook something “proper” once a week
Originally I had planned to make some yummy Japanese dishes, but after that scrumptious lentil moussaka I had for lunch during the week I decided I would rather try to make my own moussaka this time. All the ingredients are sitting in my kitchen just waiting for me and I’ve come up with a stupidly easy recipe that even I should be able to execute successfully. Totally desperate to give it a go, although I don’t think I’ll have time to cook and eat it between getting home from work and my Zumba class. I'll just have to wait! I’ll try to get the veg prep done before I head out, then when I get home from class I only need to do the bechamel sauce before just whacking it in the oven. Yay!
Edit: completed moussaka below!
<a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/Sheona/Food%20and%20FS/2011-04-08213529.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/Sheona/Food%20and%20FS/2011-04-08213529.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" width=500></a>
It’s Friday and life is good.