Well, I probably wouldn’t go that far as to call myself that, but I will say that I’ve actually enjoyed my first week going to the gym.

Yesterday (Thursday) was my first day on my own and I did the entire full-body workout that the trainer gave me and a full 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer after that. I feel like I got a solid workout as far as burning calories (and I was down a full pound on the scale this morning, leaving only 1.4 pesky pounds remaining from last weekends gluttony-fest), but I honestly didn’t feel like I got as much out of the strength training as I could have.

I’m sure I’ll get there, but I only ran through a few reps on each machine with the trainer on Wednesday, so once I was on my own, I had a hard time remembering exactly where to put my arms on each machine, what to do with my elbows, etc. When I was done I felt a bit sore in my shoulders, which means I must not have been doing them exactly right (he said that the shoulders are the first place to carry stress, so we raise them unnecessarily when we workout upper body before we learn good form). The weight I was using also felt radically off (some too little, some too much), but that’s trial and error in the beginning anyway, so that will come with time.

What’s interesting is that today my biceps and triceps are the most sore, which is GOOD! Apparently I did better than I thought.

Today I went and just did cardio and I managed a full 45 minutes on the elliptical!! I couldn’t believe that I made it that far! Whew!! I was just dripping in sweat when I was done!!

Last night I really spent some time in prayer asking God for the strength and desire to do this and to stick with it. It’s easy to be motivated in the beginning, so I’m going to have to really pray and pray and pray regularly.

This morning I got some fun confirmation of God’s place alongside me in this journey. When I set this blog up here on WordPress last week, I used 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 as my verse regarding living intentionally on the Weight Loss tab, and this morning that exact verse was delivered to my Inbox as my verse of the day. A little answer to last night’s prayer!

For those who aren’t familiar with the verse and haven’t visited my Weight Loss tab on the blog, here it is again:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (ESV): “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”