no boys allowed

This morning I went to the Y to work out before work. I really hate the whole locker room atmosphere...not because of what people talk about, but just because there are a bunch of older, naked women walking around. And it's not even like they try to hide their nakedness, but they just walk around as it were normal. And I guess it should be normal...we are, in fact, in a locker room where there are showers and people changing. The scary thing, though, is that these women have less than perfect bodies. Sure, who really has the perfect body? But these women are mostly in theirs 60s with very loose skin (and a lot of it too), sagging breasts, large wrinkly legs with veins and bumps all over them like a road map. It's not like I'm deliberately looking. You walk in and when you're looking around for a vacant locker, you can't help but see the bodies around you.

Today, I listened to some women greet one another in the "Where have you been? I haven't seen you in such a long time" fashion. Turns out they all do water aerobics together and one woman had been AWOL for awhile. Her answer? She had gained a lot of weight and didn't want to come back until she lost some weight. Didn't make sense to stay away from the gym to lose weight, but somehow she had done it and now she was back.

"My swimming suit got too tight," she confessed.
"You should have just gotten a bigger size," one woman suggested.
"I did, and that didn't work either," the first woman replied.

The woman at the locker next to me was standing there naked and struck up a conversation with me. "It was to hard for me to get here this morning," she admitted. She was a larger woman, probably in her late 50s. I mentioned how it was hard for me to get up early to workout, too, but once you're there, you feel better. "Yeah, but I still could have easily turned around and gone home," she said.

Here I am, not visibly overweight. Sure, I'm a little heavier than most people my height, but I really don't care. What I do care about is when I feel my belly hanging over the edge of my pants or when I feel gross after not working out for awhile. The women there would probably kick me out of the Y if they heard me talking about "getting big" or needing to eat better. But I'm the one being shy about showing my skin.

Another thing, I thought maybe this obsession with weight management and being in shape ended once you got older, once you were married and stable. But obviously it doesn't. Even when it hurts to move, you are still self-conscious of a swimming suit being too tight or you are still battling with the need to go to the gym early in the morning. Q and I often talk about how we'll be when we get old...will we still have that drive to work out so much? Will we even physically be able to even after years of putting so much pressure on our joints and muscles? I sure hope so..but maybe one day I'll be one of those old saggy ladies in the locker room that the younger girls look away from. But hey, if I'm feeling confident and feeling healthy enough to even get to the Y and workout, that should be reason enough to thank God for life and health. I may be saggy and wrinkled, but my heart is still young and dancing.