I
have to admit I was carrying around a little extra junk in the trunk,
as well as an over-inflated spare tire around the gut. I was told by
my co-workers that this old clunker would be healthier if I took off the few extra
pounds I packed on over the winter, so I decided to try out some
exercises to see what would happen. First I spent a horrifying ten
minutes examining myself naked in the bathroom mirror and discovered
a few truths...the first being that I should never, ever do that, and
perhaps the bathroom mirrors need to be removed from the premises,
and the second being that my legs were fat. I mean, the gut I can
suck in if need be, but how do you suck in your thigh blubber? I was
confused by this situation. Are men seriously supposed to have fat
thighs? I thought that was just a woman's disease. Well, they act
like it's a disease so I figured it must be, but I never expected to
discover it attached to a manly man like me.
After discovering my
non-ignorable trouble areas and ignoring the rest, I set myself to
the task of deciding which exercise would best trim my fat legs. I
finally settled on squats for two reasons: One, they looked easy and
I don't like to sweat if I can help it, and two, they looked easy.
Hey, I'm a guy, remember? But, I was soon to find out that squats are
not that easy...at least not for someone older than five or someone
not actually sitting in a chair. You see, that's what squats
are...sitting down in a chair -- without the chair. You are supposed
to set your feet apart a certain distance, put your arms up over your
head...apparently to help protect your idiotic brain when you fall
down, and then...you squat. Well, sort of. The concept sounded easy
enough inside my exercise-deprived brain.
My first squat looked
like a drunken sumo wrestler had entered the arena. Lift that leg,
stomp. Lift the other leg, stomp. Okay, now I'm in position, hands
over head and bend the knees. That was the command my mind was giving
my body but my body failed after the bend the knees part. Nobody had
ever told my knees that holding up my body without a chair was even
possible in that position and they were not game to give it a shot.
They creaked and cracked and complained. This was followed by uncontrollable shaking, as if
weeping in frustration. Then they gave up and down I went with a
nearly disabling thud on my aforementioned junky-trunk. Oh, and by the way, I was already
sweating, which is something, if you recall, that I dis-like.
Then I discovered by
asking around, that smart people actually learn to do squats by
holding onto something, like a wall, a bookshelf...a refrigerator
with a full stock of ice cold beer. That way they can squat without
killing themselves. So, I grabbed a doorway and did my squat, and afterward, when I picked myself up off the floor, and yanked all the
splinters out of my hands, I re-thought the situation and chose a
tall lamp post that gave my death grip something to grip. I grabbed
that post and started my squat. My hands slid down the post and so
did I. Only problem is, once I was in full squat, with my knees
whining, and my sweaty hands hanging on for dear life, I found I couldn't get back up again. I tried climbing the
lamp post but it fell over and nearly knocked me out.
My next squat went
better and even better the next, and before I knew it I was squatting
like a pro and doing so without the lamp post. I kept checking my
thigh size in the mirror each week, and they were definitely
changing. In fact, they were getting bigger. I wasn't aware that
bigger was an option here, until I realized that what I was doing was
building the fat into muscle. Soon enough even my fat pants were
straining to contain my thighs. I was definitely unaware that in my
efforts to get a few sizes smaller, I would need to buy larger pants.
Now I can't find jeans
that fit without calling in the National Guard, so I had to resort to
buying on websites where clothing designers hide the 'special' sizes,
which is what they call clothing for not-quite-emaciated people. So,
after months of squatting to improve myself, I have managed to make
parts of myself bigger instead of thinner. But oh joy, at least I can
squat on command. Take that, co-workers.
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