It is now day 11 and I still have not had a cigarette. I haven’t even been that miserable (please don’t ask my husband.)
I did have a couple of close calls though.
I was huddled over my desk at work going through my bag of sunflower seeds like a chipmunk getting ready for winter and I decided I needed a distraction from my cravings.
I climbed into my car and pulled out of the parking lot and started reaching for my nicotine inhaler in the dash and my hand closed around the smooth, satiny tubular shape of a cigarette instead.
I held the cigarette close and examined it. The filter was broken off and nowhere to be found. My eyes rested on the nicotine inhaler and I steered the car down a side street with one hand and began to jam the broken cigarette into the opening of the nicotine inhaler with the other. I hate getting those tobacco bits into my mouth, disgusting.
I held up my creation proudly and suddenly in a nano-second of clarity, broke up the offending object beyond repair.
Friday morning I drove to the old boys school gym for my first boot camp training. In order to make it on time I gave my three year old her breakfast in the car, a classic meal on the go…a bowl of oatmeal.
I signed in and joined the queue of ladies briskly walking around the room warming up.
I could do this, this isn’t too bad. Women from every age group and body shape filled the line.
That was comforting in itself. I remember going to the gym in Ontario to a class funnily enough also called boot camp. The instructor was this crazy muscular woman in army fatigues and a whistle. The other women in the class were all hard bodies that were bronzed to perfection and my own slightly dumpy glowing (white) skin stood out in strong contrast, I never did go back.
This boot camp was set up in a circuit training style where groups of two or three will spend anywhere from one to two minutes at each station.
The moves were simple to follow but as each repetition built so did the burn.
I could not wait for the part of the class that focuses on the corpse position where you lay on the floor and pretend you are dead.
At almost every station my body was pushed and pulled into submission and my muscles screamed for me to stop and to go get a bag of chips and watch American Idol but I didn’t.
I didn’t stop because nobody else stopped, and I was watching, waiting for my cue.
There was very little groaning or complaining and instead there was a room full of women wanting to push themselves to their limit.
How cool is that.
One woman I spoke to lost 50 pounds her first year. Now she was hooked.
I won’t even tell you about the muscle pain I felt in every nook and cranny of my body that weekend.
The best part about it though was that the pain from actually moving my muscles was overshadowing the craving for nicotine.
After the next class something strange happened. I had just finished my grocery shopping at the end of the day and I turned to return my cart.
Now any other time, this is the thing I hate to do the most. I am that lazy. Actually, I almost always get parcel pick-up just to avoid this task.
But this time I embraced the undertaking with a new attitude and returned the cart with a skip to my step.
The transformation has begun.
