Michael Boylan's blog

After a week of (incrementally) moving from Jonesboro to Fayetteville, and eating poorly on the run, I was expecting the worst when I stepped on the scale at the start of the second meeting of Weigh Waaaaay Less. I started on 200 pounds (last week's weight) and goggled as the bar sunk. I had to push it back a notch and start from there, meaning, despite eating fast food for much of the weekend and meeting friends at Taco Mac on Friday, I had lost weight. I am down to 197.5.

In the fall, I dropped 10 pounds participating in World Gym’s ‘I Lost It At The Club.’ I audited classes at all three gyms in the county, saw (and felt) the different styles of the different trainers and met some of the individuals participating. This time, it’s going to be different. I’m part of one team and what I do (or don’t do) will count. The accountability I have to my team, Weigh Way Less, and the full participation in the program between me and my teammates should make a great story.

This isn’t a column about people owning guns or using them responsibly. I don’t care. If you want to be well-armed to protect your family from burglars, rapists and murderers or the Redcoats, Russians or Islamic jihadists, that’s your right. Just don’t leave them out where your kids can get them - but that’s another column for another day.

On Sept. 17, I started a daring project. I would attend one “I Lost It at the Club” class at a local World Gym location each week for eight weeks. The program organized people into teams based on which class they attended and the teams would compete against all of the other teams to see which one could lose the most weight percentage wise. They were also looking for the individual who could lose the most weight.

As I near the end of the “I Lost It at the Gym” program at World Gym, I am finding it harder and harder to find a class that accommodates my schedule. This led me to take a class with Janet’s Jewels at the Fayetteville location at 7 a.m. on Halloween.

Now, I have two kids under the age of five at home. I am used to being up before 7 a.m. I am not used to working out at 7 a.m. though and I found this class to be among the toughest I have taken.

The swine flu totally knocked me off my rhythm. I was trucking along, eating right, working out both at the gym and on my own and then - BAM! - sipping sodas to combat nausea, eating what sounded good instead of what was good and barely moving from a prone position for close to a week.

Not good.

I was supposed to attend a class last Friday at the World Gym on Georgia Hwy 74. It didn’t happen because I was bed-ridden at home, contagious with H1N1...the swine flu.

The fourth class in my “I Lost It at the Gym” experience was a mixed experience. The team I met was “Expect to Lose, Expect to Win,” led by Jeremy and the class was fantastic. The results when I weighed in were not so good.

My schedule can get a bit hairy sometimes, especially as high school sports could keep me out every night of the week and I feel I also need to be home most evenings to help out with my kids and bath time/bed time. I decided that my third class would need to be squeezed in to a jam-packed Wednesday last week. I left a breakfast meeting, did some quick work at the library and then suited up to attend and work out with the Wednesday Warriors at the World Gym on Georgia Hwy 74.

My how time flies.

Just when the bottom of my feet started to feel normal again, it was time to pick the second class to audit in my “I Lost It At The Club” journey. I eyed the schedules and strongly considered a class on Friday at 4:15 p.m., but I was urged to attend the Wednesday class with the same trainer. I was told I would get more out of it.

They were not kidding.