Oh-My-God Becky, Look At Her Butt! A Workout With Richard Simmons

It’s 9pm and quickly encroaching on mid-February: do you know where your New Year’s resolutions are? Somehow, January has already come and gone, and March is hanging in the rafters, waiting to sneak up and goose us. How did this happen?! I swear it was just yesterday when I was jovially toasting champagne on NYE with one of my besties sitting next to me in LA, with two more dialed in via Skype from New York. We had plans for 2013, we had ambitions, but more importantly, I had a dress size that I was at long last going to make a reality.

Next thing I know mah boo Beyoncé is lip syncing at the President’s Inauguration, Punxsutawney Phil is declaring an early spring and I’ve done diddly squat as far as implementing a new fitness regime. Cue Richard Simmons. Yes, that Richard Simmons. The man, the myth, the bedazzled leotard wearing legend, came into my life on a crisp Thursday night. I was supposed to meet up with a girlfriend I hadn’t seen for a while at a bar until she suggested something really wild…what if we went to Simmons “Sweat” class instead? Um, no doi!

As it turns out, Simmons personally teaches three fitness classes a week at his Beverly Hills studio (depending on whether or not he’s doing press or making public appearances), and while I thought I was well versed on the Sweatin’ to the Oldies cultural phenomenal that he has built his empire on, I had no idea how truly phenomenal my education with Richard would be. I was welcomed into a room full of all ages, races and sizes, personally greeted by RS before and after our workout, and introduced to this fabulous world where “skill” is an irrelevant term, “dancing as if nobody is watching” isn’t as far fetched as you think, and I was sent home grinning from ear to ear with the reinforcement that all that truly matters is being happy with who you are.

Forget what calendar day it is. All any of us need to realize is that our dress size does not dictate our worth as a human being, we do that for ourselves. So, I’m not going to beat myself up if I decide to hoover a bowl of mac and cheese from time to time (read: more often than I care to admit), because the pressure of holding myself to someone else’s ideal is a fruitless effort. As silly as it sounds, it took an ’80s aerobicise class with an exercise icon to strip me of my inhibitions and remind me of that.

Maybe I’ll see you in class.