Getting a personal programme

I've never really been one for doing weights. And there's been a few reasons for this that have run through my mind:

• Weights areas are scary - full of pumped up men ogling their throbbing biceps in the mirror and being all sweaty and boy-ee (is that a word? I'm making it a word). I don't want to invade their domain and have them stare at me. No sir - I'll stick with the cardio area and the lines of treadmills with skinny b*tches running on them (so it must work right?)
• I don't want to get muscly. Pictures of muscly women scare me off - I've always wanted to be lean and buff, but not bulging.
• I don't know what to do. Yes, I'll play with the leg opening machine thingy for a few minutes with visions of Onatopp from James Bond and her man cracking thighs. But that's it.
• It doesn't look like it does anything. Most of the time the guys are fiddling with the weights, or just chilling. How is it burning anything? I like cardio. It's hard and I sweat and I feel AWESOME afterwards.

So after doing a lot of research, listening to various podcasts and reading some books, I've discovered I've been more than a little bit wrong... and this is why:

• It is so hard for women to get muscly. The muscly women in the pictures have tailored their diets (protien protein protein), their workouts (heavy weights, low reps) and their supplements (and sometimes 'roid injections) to achieve this look. If you are a woman that puts on muscle easily (and this would be rare), you can go for lower weights and more reps to stop this from happening.
• If you want to get lean and buff you'll probably have to do some resistance/weights work
• Muscle is great for you. It keeps your bones strong in old age, protects you from injury, and keeps your metabolism firing so you continue to burn calories even when you're not working out.
• Weights training can still be tiring if you mix it in with cardio (Jillian Michaels is all over this in her DVDs) or if you go for something mental like crossfit.
• You don't have to go into the 'boys' area to resistance train - you can use your own body weight on the mat. My gym is super and has put a resistance machine in the cardio area too for the ones that don't want to venture downstairs to the weights domain. BUT... the resistance area often has girls in it too, look a bit harder, they're there.
• If you don't know what to do ASK SOMEONE. If you don't like doing this, then most gyms offer free personal programmes where you can get a PT to set up a programme for you and show you how all the machines work. Once you know what you're doing and how to use the equipment, you will just get on with it and won't really care who's around.

Now, I'm not totally naive; I've known this logically for a little while, but it took me attending a Body Conditioning class to really, properly see the light. Most of the women in it have been going for ages and they look amazing. They are lean, sculpted and incredibly strong (some of them lift more than the boys). They don't look like men in wigs, they look like Lara Croft (minus the gravity defying melons). It's very inspiring.

So I swallowed my pride and booked in an hour with a trainer to get a programme. I have homework; 30 mins of various resistance exercises to be taken 3 times a week. I know where the machines are and how to use them and I'm going to go for it (hurrah). Let's see how it goes!