If you’re half as tired and sweaty as I am, then that makes me twice as tired and sweaty as you…

Our numbers may be falling faster than the remains of President Bush’s so-called approval rating, but there are still a few of us out there who are still chugging along with that particular New Years resolution to stop being all fat and chunky and disgusting! Don’t get me wrong, many of us have tripped a time or three, waking up in a strange place surrounded by containers of Ben & Jerry’s or enough takeout boxes to seriously make it worth considering opening up a Chinese restaurant, but we’ve still got that end of being moderately attractive in sight, and no amount of super-high-fattening food can take that away from us! *

* Note: Not actually true…

Now I’d bet a family-sized bucket of KFC’s mouth-wateringly delicious popcorn chicken that I’m not alone in the crazy notion that this isn’t the first time I’ve taken on the great weight loss challenge in resolution form. I attribute my own personal faults to being lazy, and … well, yep – that’s pretty much the gist of it! Sure, I’m a big fan of Good Eats ™, and more times often than not even Mediocre Eats ^not-yet-™, but once I get into the swing of things I can usually keep the calories under control more or less. Dragging my lazy butt down to the gym? Now that’s another story altogether…

Mind you, when I do manage to indulge in a bit of said self-inflicted torture, I use the small gym that we have in the subdivision where we live – I just can’t do those big, commercial gyms with personal trainers and spotters and all sorts of people that look absolutely nothing like me. You know, the kind that seem to have muscles just popping out of every pore; that have never had an ounce of fat on their intoxicatingly-lean bodies; that likely actually get paid by the gym just to stand around and flex and intimidate the unitiated like myself. Maybe they could have a “fat people” night when all of the rest of us can come in and work up a sweat just in attempting to fill out the 47-page membership contract, but in the meantime the beautiful people club probably isn’t going to be the best environment to keep me coming back at this point.

So instead I try to make use of our local community gym whenever I can, but even that presents its own different set of challenges, at least for me. You see, I’m sure it comes as a surprise from a guy who spends roughly 87 hours a day online like I do, but I’m not exactly the most social of people and while when properly “lubricated,” I can usually endure the random wedding reception or small office party, there are some things that I just prefer to do on my own and working out is certainly one of those things! And actually, much in the same way that it’s not everybody that I don’t like being around at parties, there are some types of people who I have absolutely no problem sharing a gym with … trouble is, it’s mainly people just like me and over time I’ve come to learn that folks like me aren’t exactly a dime a dozen!

Feel free to entertain that notion however you’d like…

Namely, and I know it makes my normally-bubbling personality sound a bit curmudgeon-like, but I prefer to workout around people who just shut-up and focus on working out during their visits to the horrible torture that is the gym! You know, just come in, put on your headphones, and do your time on the treadmill or the elliptical or whatever … but rarely ever do I get to exercise with those charming individuals. Nope, instead I get stuck with the girls who blare hip-hop on the gym stereo so loud that I can feel my teeth thumping, or the guy who grunts everytime he lifts a weight…or releases a weight…or takes a drink from his 128-ounce jug of gatorade.

There are just so many obnoxious characters, it’s hard to keep them all straight and even harder to rank them! Who’s worse – the guy who applied so much disinfectant to his exercise bike that my own machine isn’t likely to have a bacteria problem well into the next century, or the guy who absolutely ruined Eye of the Tiger for me as the most motivating workout song ever by singing the most feminine, falcetto version of it ever while he ran on the treadmill?! I almost fell off my elliptical in tears, I was laughing so hard, and that certainly ain’t gonna help me burn any calories, that’s for sure!

Don’t tell my doctor I said this, but with company like this, it’s almost worth considering just learning to accept being fat. It may not be the best thing for my health, but if I have to hear another full-grown man “lip sync” to Britney Spears while he’s cardio-blasting, my sanity trumps my health anyday…