Burn Your Fat, or I’ll Burn You…Fatty

For the past few months, I have been thinking about working out. After many searches, I decided to join a club exclusively for women. I'm generally not usually into all the girly "Girl Power!" stuff that they do, but it fits my purpose and it's literally up the street, so I have no excuse not to go. This past Monday I went to the branch that is about a 10-minute drive from my house because my branch was closed. I was half-heartedly greeted by an fat employee. Now, I don't have any room to talk because, according to every BMI chart (and my mom), I'm classified as overweight, the category just above "normal" for women. However, if I'm classified as "overweight", then this employee is definitely classified as "morbidly obese." Being half-heartedly greeted by this employee was a little discouraging...and made me a little angry. It's not like all the employees at my home branch are in the greatest shape, but at least you can see that they are making an effort to work out and lose weight and inches. They are all also very motivational, which everyone can use once in a while. Maybe it's because it was Labor Day and she didn't feel like working. Whatever. Deal with it...fatty. On the days that you want to get a really intense workout, you put on a little pink dot which lets the employees know that you want your chops busted on that particular day on all the machines. I usually don't take the dot because I don't do well with people barking at me as I'm trying to concentrate on exercise. I just try harder on the circuit. Well, several people walked in putting the pink dot on their bodies. This same employee acknowledged that they had the dot on, and went back to sipping her diet pepsi behind her little desk. WTF! Wrong on many, many levels! So, there was no one on the circuit even making sure that any of the ladies were even doing the exercise correctly. Thank Buddha no one had a heart attack, because the employee wouldn't have even noticed and I would have had to revive them with my nursing super powers. I'm not asking for all employees of this franchise to be like the lame Xenadrine commercials that are out there. I'm not a fan of the other exercise franchises that cower you into buying a membership and then when you end up working out (on the days that your self-esteem is willing to take several blows), you are surrounded by sweaty people working there muscles hard, neckless men (and some women) making love to his/her own image in the mirror while working the dumbbells, and the employees busting your chops at every single machine that you attempt (when they're not doing that, they're making fun of you with other fellow employees). But I digress. Shouldn't there be some kind of weight restriction on employees of major exercise franchises?

  1. You gotta cough up the name of the franchise. Was it Curves? Curves is kinda lame – you’ll figure that out soon enough. They probably used to have happy, excited thin people working there but the fat old ladies who go there to work out were probably turned off by them so they were replaced by fat old ladies.

    The bigger question is, though – why are so many nurses so overweight and unhealthy? You’d think that after 2-6 years of nursing school and working around obesity-related medical problems, they’d have the upper hand in knowing how to take care of oneself. I’m not pointing my finger at you – I didn’t know you were fat, and you’re obviously clued in to the idea of taking care of yourself.

    Maybe instead of wasting your time at Curves you need to push for an employee gym at your medical institution. Get ALL the nurses on board.

    JessB
    September 8th, 2006 at 10:08 am
  2. Obviously someone complained that all the in shape instructors were making them well bad about themselves and making them work out too hard. People expect to be coddled with everything today and need to constantly feel that everything they do is terrific. The reason why so many people are overweight is because it is considered discrimination to do so. Obesity is actually considered a disease now. Its as if they were born morbidly obese and its not their fault they eat twinkees all day. People need to stop being such babies and actually take a real look at themselves and stop making excuses for how they are.

    D Wallz
    September 8th, 2006 at 10:55 am
  3. “The reason why so many people are overweight is because it is considered discrimination to do so.” – D Wallz

    What?

    JessB
    September 8th, 2006 at 10:57 am
  4. I won’t confirm or deny the name of the major chain, but I will say you’re getting very warm. I’ve been in a lawsuit before for much less, but I’m still a little afraid. I’ve heard all the bad things about this club, but i’ve heard much worse about many others. It was the lesser of two evils for me. Also, my hospital does have an exercise gym, but, being the type of employee that I am, that would mean that I would have to pay for parking on top of paying for the really expensive membership. The hospital is not far from my house, but it’s far enough to not make me want to go. This is probably what’s stopping a lot of my fellow nurses, at least the hospital that I work at, from working out at this location. And who wants to spend more time at work than you absolutely have to? Not I.
    I can’t answer the question as to why everyone is so fat, but I can answer the question as to why nurses are fat. Nurses work anywhere from 8 to 12 hour shifts. They’re always on their feet and get very little time to even sit down and do documentation. You would think this is a recipe for success, right. Wrong. On the other hand of the busy day a nurse has, he/she barely gets a chance to eat. They may get five minutes to stuff their whole lunch inside their mouths or eat little bits of their breakfast/lunch/dinner (enough to get rid of the feeling of low blood sugar) throughout the day. Our bodies are going into starvation mode which makes it a big party for fat cells. It’s not that nurses don’t care about their bodies, it’s that we are not given enough time with all the responsibilities we have at work to even take care of them properly. It doesn’t really help when the well-meaning families bring in donuts and such for the nurses to share. Did you know that several studies have shown that nurses have the highest urinary tract infection rates out of all the job professions? It all goes back to the care aspect.
    I think what Dave was trying to say about the discrimination thing was that it has become an acceptable thing in the U.S. to be overweight, even obese. They even have support groups to encourage people to embrace their “fatness”, or whatever. Where are these support groups when these individuals end up with diabetes and have every anomaly under the sun from retinopathy to having their leg(s) amputated because blood no longer circulates well in their lower extremities, or chronic back pain so horrible that they get addicted to pain pills?
    I’m not ragging on all overweight people. I think if people make a conscious effort to lose weight and inches, along with having a adequate calorie count diet, then they can’t be too bad.
    One of my points that I was trying to make earlier was that employees at this major franchise are paid to motivate people. i’m pretty sure my a part of my monthly membership fgoes towards their paychecks.
    One cannot get anything achieved on intrinsic factors alone. Extrinsic factors play an important role. I don’t consider displaying any type of motivation to people as being coddling. Some people just need more motivation than others.

    Annie Mo
    September 8th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
  5. I think you can find the answers to all of these questions in this documentary:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I53MzzyQO9c

    Jason
    September 8th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
  6. I don’t care why all nurses are fat. Fat people make me happy. Because I’m thin, and they’re not.

    I care more about why all nurses smoke. And they do it right in front of the emergency room exit. One would think that the nursing profession would have about the lowest rate of cancer stick biters on the planet, but every time I go near a hospital – or see blue-scrub-wearing bitches out on the street – they’re either smoking up or buying the damn things.

    (Note: I know not every nurse smokes. Nor are they all bitches. These are exaggerations – hyperbole, if you will. Bitches.)

    Dan
    September 8th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
  7. WTF? You have to pay to join the hospital’s gym, and to park there?

    This country is pretty fucked. Nurses and teachers work their asses off (or not – HA!) and get paid peanuts with little benefit, and idiot frat boys get to run the country and get paid to ride on their own private airplanes.

    If you want me to picket the hospital gym for you, I will. I’ve got a lot of fat to burn.

    JessB
    September 9th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
  8. What are you eating under there?

    That one never gets old. Annie Mo’s post about the appropriate body type for the people who are supposed to be helping you exercise has inspired me to share a few things.
    In the spirit of helping each other help ourselves to weight loss, there&#…

    Unsought Input
    September 10th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
  9. Hey Dan, I’m not saying it’s not nurses you see out there smoking, but, if they’re wearing dark blue scrubs, they’re most likely respiratory therapists…which is even more wrong than nurses smoking on so many levels…

    Annie Mo
    September 11th, 2006 at 12:59 am
  10. Hey you have a great blog here. Keep up the good work ;)

    Joshua

    Joshua
    February 4th, 2007 at 12:10 am

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