Why can’t there be gyms just for overweight women like me! I’m a size 18 and this is what happened when I tried to train with the yummy mummies…

Earlier this year, while happily wallowing in a friend’s deep bathtub while sitting around the house, I suddenly discovered that I couldn’t actually pull myself out.

I had visions of being found there a week later, shriveled into a plum, but eventually I managed to get to my knees and clamber out, dignity completely compromised.

It’s clear I need to get fitter. To be honest, at size 18 I am too fat and overweight.

My arms never lift anything heavier than a wine glass, but being stuck in a bathtub has taken the shine off them as the only form of exercise.

So, reader, I paid the ultimate price. With a heavy heart, thighs and hips, I went to a gym for the first time in decades (for about a week in the Maldives).

The gym in question, David Lloyd, is an upscale franchise filled with a lot of people who could slip through a crack in the sidewalk if not for their toned muscles.

And I’m so far out of my comfort zone that it’s barely visible on the horizon.

Can you imagine the shame of joining a pilates class and being the only person who can’t stand on her toes without falling over?

I lurk at the back with the other oldies, so the hot mummies can’t pity us so openly as we gape at the instructor, always a few seconds behind.

I just can’t keep up the pace; the rest of the class moves up and down like a stripper’s underwear while I struggle to get up.

Once on the mat, I roll across the floor like a seal, while the skinny girls in the front twist and turn as if they were made of elastic. The only elastic thing on me is my waistband.

I tried yoga and couldn’t do any of the poses, not because I wasn’t flexible, but because I have so much extra padding around the middle I couldn’t reach far enough. I had to pretend I had long Covid and arthritic knees.

As for the idea of ​​spending a session on the machines or in the weight rooms? Never mind. If you know that within five minutes of stepping on the treadmill you’ll be blood red, dripping and panting, even on the slow setting, while all around you are size six women and hugely muscular men working at top speed without breaking a sweat, well Let’s just say that nothing makes you feel more like a self-conscious failure.

This fear of the judgment of other gym-goers – whether real or imagined – is key to why bigger people like me stay away, even though we’re the ones who need to get fit the most.

I tried yoga and couldn’t do any of the poses, not because I wasn’t flexible, but because I have so much extra padding around the middle I couldn’t reach far enough, writes Marion McGilvary

It wasn’t until I discovered aqua aerobics that I finally found my people. No one under 60 and no size under 16 in the pool. Hallelujah!

No stress, no tension, although I do wonder if the water is bothered by 20 large ladies of a certain age with questionable pelvic floor muscles who are jumping.

Still, I’m excited. So much so that recently a breast popped out of my costume and bounced around for several seconds before I realized it had made an attempt at freedom.

But I know that there’s only so much strength and fitness I can get from floating around, and unless I brave the gym, I’ll be stuck in a doomed cycle of disappointment.

I wondered: Why doesn’t a bright spot like WeightWatchers open a gym where people with substantial resources, like me, can exercise among their own kind without feeling ashamed?

With Marion’s all-new Fatness First, larger ladies no longer have to train alone at home like pariahs

With the all-new Fatness First, we bigger ladies no longer have to train like pariahs at home on our own.

Instead, come to a fun, welcoming place where scales are banned and you’ll get a round of applause when you actually get on the elliptical.

No one with a BMI of less than 30 would be allowed to participate and there would be no more hassle with the weights on the machines because a bicep behemoth like Mr. T before you had lifted the equivalent of a truck.

We could all chat while cycling gently downhill at 5km/h in neon Lycra without fear of being judged.

Sisters, we might groan during squats. We could ‘oof’ as we turned around on the mat and if we went a little too far and hit the person next to us, we could laugh at ourselves instead of being laughed at.

However, I fear that this is just a utopia. Fat is too much of a social stigma these days.

So I guess I’ll just keep bobbing up and down in David Lloyd’s pool with my own ilk. And keep my wobbly bits tied tight.