A couple weeks ago, I started getting up at 5am to go to the gym every day. I also joined Weight Watchers again. It’s been two weeks, and I’m down 4.8 pounds. It’s a start. (And I’m ridiculously motivated by those little stickers they give you for every five pounds. I was so pissed that I missed it by two tenths this weigh in – WHY DID I NOT GET MY EYEBROWS WAXED BEFORE WEIGH-IN?) Anyway, this is all back story.

Earlier this week, Dave bought a gym membership. I’m very proud of him.

Finally, to my point: Yesterday, Dave walked in to the kitchen and said, “I’ve been to the gym four days in a row. I can honestly say, in all the years we’ve been together, this is the most we’ve ever worked out.”

Two things immediately struck me about this statement. The first was a thought that went a little something like this: “Hmm. We’ve been together 15 years and my husband really doesn’t know me at all, that’s kinda weird.” The second was a rapid-fire sprint down memory lane….

I’ve had a gym membership since ninth grade. My friend Jessica was two years older than I so she had her driver’s license, and she used to drive us in after school three days a week. Afterward we would hit TCBY for m&m-infused frozen yogurt.

There was my first personal trainer, the blonde. I used to call her at home to ask if it was okay to put mayo on my turkey sub. I was seventeen.

There was the year I had four valid gym memberships at once: Princeton Club, Supreme Health & Fitness, Bally’s Total Fitness, and that little gym in Stoughton.

My first year at UW, with a different personal trainer. It was the era when fat was bad. She taught me to buy natural peanut butter and keep a paper towel in the jar, so when the oil rose it was soaked up.

The year I trained for Outward Bound, and the two months I spent out there in Colorado. The 17-mile run I did at the end, and the six miles a day I kept up for quite some time once I was home.

Trainer Duke Harvey, the wonderful man who nurtured me gently back from anorexia, helping me to gain 30 pounds and never commenting on my weight, just my muscle, just how strong I was becoming.

Then the babies, the weight gain, the countless diets, the other times I joined Weight Watchers, and the last personal trainer I had, Eric, who came to my home twice a week, courtesy of my father-in-law….

…and now, this new era. One I brought upon myself, where the sole motivation is how good I feel. No trainers, no gimmicks, no pressure outside myself. Rising in the dark, before the Chorus of Craziness in a quiet house, driving alone on deserted streets, the familiar smell and bright lights and cold water and humming of the machines and clinking of the weight stacks and my lungs, filling, expanding, clearing, blood pumping smoother, brain buzzing clearer, breath coming easier, driving home renewed, energized, ready to face the day, a day filled with healthy choices, good, local, fresh food that fuels instead of attacks this beautiful body of mine, healthier and stronger every day, cancer-free, mine, all mine, for as long as it will have me.

I have to say, it’s definitely different this time. Maybe that’s what finally got Dave’s attention.