on fitness

Like that title? I'm this generation's Susan Sontag. Moving on...

We are under the four-month mark, people! Holy smokes.

Four months to go isn't my true marker of wedding-fitness-and-diet insanity -- that's reserved for two months -- but with each passing day,  I am reminded of the fact that (spoiler alert) my wedding dress isn't long sleeved and wooly. Meaning you might see my arms. Meaning I might want them to look closer to Williams' than Dunham's. That's Allison and Lena, respectively.

My friends that have known me since college or before might find it rather hilarious that I've become somewhat of a gym rat over the past few years. While I played sports in high school, it was solely for the purpose of getting to wear the kilt and accompanying ribbon in my hair. And I'm not exaggerating, you can ask Sarah.

Our Bally's didn't look this nice.

In college, we all joined the picturesque and charming Bally's in scenic Hartford. Highlights included paying about $10 a month and being surreptitiously groped by the "assistant" group fitness manager. Any positive gains in my fitness was swiftly undone by our nightly 5 PM dinner at the dining hall, wherein I justified my heaping pile of pasta in cream sauce by telling myself Bally's bootcamp burned, like, 2000 calories.

Upon moving to New York after school, I was too broke and far too lazy to consider joining a gym. Though for a short period -- before I spent the next 4.5 years making a Godforsaken reverse commute to New Jersey -- I did manage to walk home from Midtown to the East Village every day. That and the perils of dating in Manhattan actually helped me shed all my Alfredo weight from the past four years.

When Mike and I moved in together, we were lucky enough to be in a building with an actually charming boutique gym. I figured it was never going to be easier to motivate myself, so we both signed up. The first day I made it about a mile on the treadmill before I started hallucinating from the pain. This, however, pales in comparison to a certain friend from college who was forced to do one (that's one, singular) push-up during the aforementioned bootcamp class and hours later found herself in the ER with her roommate because she thought her chest pains were a heart attack.

Anyway, over the past few years and with some motivation from Mike and friends, I've slowly upped my weekly gym sessions to around five per week. I've now become one of those annoying people who wakes up early to work out before the office or sets my alarm for 8:30 so I can make the early spin class on Saturday. If I weren't doing it myself I would roll my eyes at me.

But as much as it's a pain to wake up in the dark, when I finally started noticing improvement, it really did make it all worth it. And now that we're only a few short months away from the big day, it's pretty easy to find the motivation to haul my ass out of my gloriously comfortable bed and get my butt kicked at 30 60 90 every morning. I try and switch it up with a variety of workouts: I generally spin twice a week, try for high impact cardio another two times a week and then generally try one class that's cardio without weights at least once (that could be kickboxing or Deep Extreme).

In two month's time the plan is to up the workouts from five to six times a week and, gasp, cut out dessert and pasta. My hope is that my mood won't sour to the point that Mike and I actually break up before the wedding. On a related note, I'm already planning my last meal before the self-induced hunger strike takes effect. I think Macbar might be the front-runner right now, if anyone cares to join?

Yes. (Photo credit: iatenyc12.blogspot.com)

I thought that might sway your opinion.