I Married My Trainer

The exact opposite of the La Z Boy recliner

​If someone had told me I was going to marry a jock, I wouldn’t even have bothered to roll my eyes. The only thing less plausible would be if they told me I was going to start walking around wearing a bikini with high heels. The fact that the latter doesn’t sound all that far-fetched anymore has a lot to do with the truth of the former. I fell in love with an athlete, and then he turned me into one. Sort of like being made into a zombie, except that you gradually get better posture and start moving faster.

I gained a lot of weight in my first marriage. Most people do. Marriage is usually an unspoken agreement that “I take thee and all thy flaws as long as you promise to ignore mine.” Let’s eat nachos and chill. My first marriage was so bad that always doing the exact opposite in my second marriage seemed like it might be a solid plan. What if, instead of just steadily gaining weight together, we made a pact to try to be a little more fit every year? Like, one percent?

I always hated anything even remotely resembling P.E. If there are roughly thirty kids in every grade school classroom, and one of them is the proverbial last kid picked for every team, then there are quite a few of us out there. I’ve been smacked in the head by nearly every type of ball, and once served a volleyball directly at our gym teacher’s butt, where it bounced off and flew across the room. That was my shining moment on the sports reel. If there was an all-American Olympic team for reading while snaffling sleeves of Oreos, I’d medal.

The first it ever occurred to me to maybe lose a couple of pounds, money was involved. My husband, a mere work acquaintance at the time, had set up an annual weight loss competition that the company wound up sponsoring. When I found out that I could win cash through any means whatsoever, I was game. All I needed to know was whether I could safely lose weight, and if so, how much. I had no understanding that I was clinically obese at the time. I didn’t care, either. All I wanted was that sweet, sweet munnah. The contest lasted for three months, and I listened carefully as my new work buddy taught me everything he knew about weight loss. I wound up winning over $200 in two years. Using cash prizes as a weight loss incentive was sheer genius, and it helped me trust this guy who formerly weighed 305 pounds.

We started working out together at the gym across the street. I’m not always very gracious about patiently listening while other people teach me things, but my new friend showed me how to set up all the weight equipment at the gym without mansplaining. We became workout buddies, which was great, because we were also lunch buddies and we tended to put away a lot of chimichangas.

At some point along the way, we realized that maybe there could be something more between us. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that we’d both lost thirty pounds since we’d met.

We both gained back some of the weight while we were planning our wedding. On our honeymoon, we were sprawled out on the hotel bed after a decadent meal (with appetizers, drinks, and dessert, of course) when we saw Biggest Loser for the first time. That was our moment. Our honeymoon was the last eating-based vacation we took. Since then, we’ve planned our trips around backpacking and physical exploits.

I was the one who got us into running. I chose it as a sacrifice, the literal worst thing I could think of, because I knew if I asked for help then my honey would deny me nothing. I’d trick him into running with me! I had three angles: one, I knew nothing about running; two, I was terrible with maps; and three, I didn’t feel safe running alone at night. He came out with me for my first quarter-mile and he was still there when I got to six. It wasn’t until I started doing eight miles at a stretch that he dropped back. I had to do my marathon alone. This was the point at which I understood that I was no longer the student.

Marriage has been good to us. We’re both better people together than we used to be. From my husband, I learned everything I know about physical culture, about comfortably merging the identities of jock and nerd, about feeling at home in a gym. These things gave me a confidence and strength I never could have imagined. I returned the favor, introducing him to new cuisines, teaching him about health food and how to cook mystery vegetables. Our meals and our workouts are just backdrops to the endless conversation that is our marriage. I think sometimes we actually get through a workout while barely realizing we’ve done it, like running an errand, while chattering away about something.

The willingness to venture forth and meet someone in their world is so important to a relationship. My liking for this guy in spite of his off-putting interest in sports led me to become curious. What would it be like to feel like an athlete? What would it be like to actually enjoy this stuff? As he recognized my curiosity and openness to the unfamiliar, he stepped up and became more willing to explore my world, too. We were each other’s trainers. May we always be.

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