Girl, I know exactly how you feel. I was far too much of a wuss to cart my butt to the gym when I was still losing, and even now at a healthy weight I get the worst gym anxiety... I always fear that I'll feel out of place, like I've somehow sneaked into a place that I don't belong, and that everyone is going to be staring at me and inwardly (or, worse yet, outwardly) scoffing at how ridiculous I look. I just *know* that one of these days, someone is going to walk up to me and say "What are YOU doing here?"
However, I gotta tell ya, I've found that my own fears about heading to the gym are mostly bulls**t. In my experiences, it is exceedingly rare that anyone will react to your presence in a way that is truly hurtful, ie. overtly mocking you or teasing you or otherwise making you feel unwelcome in the facilities. What is slightly more common is for people to go out of their way to give you a little smile and nod, a la "Aww, look at you making a healthy choice! Good for YOU!" Sure, this kind of behavior ain't exactly ideal--it borders upon horrific condescension, and bugged the
crap out of me (LOL)--but you have to understand that their hearts are in the right place. Meh. However, even these people are definitely a small minority, because I think 99 out of 100 gym-goers are focused on one thing, and one thing only: their own workout. For every tanned hardbody, there's at least 5 normal people just trying to keep their heads down and avoid being mocked... And all of these people are way too busy trying to get some exercise to give a second glance to anyone else. I know it sounds really stupid to say "no one is looking at you, and no one wants to hurt your feelings," but it's at least somewhat true. At least, that's my opinion anyways.
Another thing worth noting: I've been to the gym several times in the past couple of weeks with a good friend of mine who is about as overweight as I was, maybe a little more, and I can tell you that I have not seen a single person so much as snicker as he walked by... They really just don't care, LOL. So I do hope that the gym anxiety goes away if you really do want that to be your workout venue of choice! Pretty soon you will be the one that gym newbies are worrying about judging them.
Hehehe!