Before and After: Gun Show Edition

Do you remember when I quit the gym in March?

I can’t believe you don’t remember.  It was a pretty big day here.

Anyway.

I quit the gym for one very good reason: I wasn’t going to the gym anymore.  After four years of regular yoga and weightlifting classes three times a week, I sort of just stopped going.  I blamed the brutally cold temperatures of winter, the many snow-covered days that kept me inside, even my own busyness.

It was a sham.  I just got bored and lazy.

So I quit.

Do you know happens when a person quits the gym and does not much other exercise?  I mean, I do exercise.  I walk every day.  But still.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS?

You know what happens.  Flab and Sag come to visit indefinitely.  They are not good houseguests.

So when I read on the internet* (yay, internet!) about little things you could do each day to keep in shape, like do push-ups every day for 100 days, I thought, now, I can do THAT.

So I did.

I did push-ups every day.  I started doing them on my knees like I was taught in gym class (Why are girls taught this?  WHY?), and then when I felt like I could spend a good portion of the day doing knee push-ups, I graduated to doing push-ups on my toes.  It felt really good, even though I could only do a few half push-ups that way.

But I kept it up.

For like three weeks.

Then I got bored and lazy, so I quit.

Well, I didn’t really quit.  But I definitely didn’t do it every day.  A hundred days, people.  It’s a lot of days in a row, and I was just getting started.  I did push-ups every other day, then twice a week, then, well, when I think about it I’ll drop and give you twenty er… ten or so.  I did push-ups a few times this week.  It takes like less than thirty seconds.  I question the usefulness of this type of exercise.

But at least I remembered to take a picture of my arms the first day I started this nonsense, so I could see the difference a hundred days makes, even if my hundred days turned out to be 20 days and the odd day here and there.  So I took a picture today, to compare:

Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Not great, but not bad.  Maybe I'll keep it up.  Or not.

*Thanks to Alexandra from Good Day, Regular People, who inspired me to try this 100 days of push-ups challenge.  Even though I'm a total quitter.  Evidently this 100 days thing is a total thing.  Here's the video that got me going.  Try it!

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This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #3: Show us a before and after.