I decided at the age of 54 that I wanted to make myself over and at least once be able to blow the coin belt off my ex-teacher with my moves and my look. Anyway, diets weren't working for me. I had done Herbalife for awhile and lost 50 pounds on it...and then got stuck. Not one more pound or inch came off for an entire year. I drank 80 ounces of water a day. I had my two herbalife shakes. I was really careful what I ate and I exercised 8 hours a week. I joined e-diets and emailed my diet adviser for advice. She emailed back "Exercise more. Eat less. Drink more water." If she had been in close physical proximity, I would have been on trial for murder.

Anyway, I decided to go for broke (almost literally...since I have a very small budget) and consult with a trainer. I started in late October. I signed up at a gymn, but almost didn't go back because one trainer was going to charge this horrendously high price. Then I found another trainer who is a champion body builder. He's trained a lot of beauty queens as well. Alrighty then. So the holidays come up and everyone and their reindeer is dropping invitations to parties laden with more food than you can imagine ...or bringing trays or more food than you can imagine. (Why are people starving all over the world with all this stuff around?) A lot of this was made from scratch. Needless to say I gained weight. Of course some of that was muscle, but still. I tried to be somewhat careful, but..... I have no intention of living like a nun with an oath of poverty during the holidays. I thought I must have really pigged out when I know I didn't because I gained 30 pounds. The trainer later told me that the weight training probably added 15 pounds.

O.K. so I can lift 500 pounds with my legs. I can lift 100 pounds with my arms. I'm intrigued by that. I'm doing 500 crunches 4 times a week and I still have a pot belly. I figure I should be able to take some of that off after New Years. In all this time the trainer has said very little to me about diet. He's said he would bring me one next week. Next week comes...goes...no diet. He did that several times. I showed up faithfully. I did cardio 4 times a week. I watched what I ate, but didn't starve myself. One day I'm on the treadmill for a 30 minute stretch. The trainer comes up to me and says "Lose the weight, Becky. Lose the weight. You know what you need to do. No more pizza. No more cake." The last time I had cake was New Years. I did have a little pizza a couple of weeks ago, but it was small and I hardly ever eat pizza. I don't eat burgers and I rarely eat any chicken sandwiches from fast food places.

Yesterday, the trainer said that if I didn't lose weight he was going to quit the business...that he was that fragile. I was a bit put off. He'd had me working out in this plastic suit to make me sweat more. I've been working out in that for several weeks....actually longer than that. This is the third such "sweat suit". I tossed the first one when it started to smell like limberger cheese. The second one ripped. He started telling me about the diet that he put the beauty contestants on. Two protein shakes a day. Nothing but soup and salad for lunch and lots of water. He also had them use this colon cleanse stuff twice a day. I think I've heard enough about bowel movements to last a lifetime....certainly not my favorite topic.

He said another thing that really ticked me off. He said "you can't be a dancer and be fat." I know damn well that's not true. We've been sold a bill of goods by Hollywood and other nasty places and we've bought it.

Anyway, for the last two days I have gotten as close to his "beauty contestant diet" as I can and still stay sane.

I think I will try to find as many working strategies as possible and then dump this trainer....Becky