I apologize right now to those who are going to groan, but you just can't write a blog about being strong physically and mentally without talking about self-esteem. I will make it quick. Self esteem- I have an abundance of it and I believe I always have. Sure, I am a pleaser and a peace maker, but I am so damn sure of myself. I mean listen, I am the girl who sophomore year asked 7 guys to the Sadie Hawkins dance. The 7th guy said yes, thank goodness, and then I spent all night avoiding his advances because I didn't want him to be my first kiss. He wasn't! I never once have believed that my worth was based on how I look. That doesn't mean I didn't want to look hot, it just means I didn't think that was how people judged me. For God's sake I grew up with a mom whose favorite book was The Velveteen Rabbit. The message was clear to me even as a young girl. With real love it doesn't matter what you look like.
Where friends would look at pictures of themselves and say, "Gross" I looked at pictures of myself and made comments like, "I am frigging good looking." Arrogance? maybe! But, the fact is I would much rather be the person happy with my looks than the one who worries my looks are never good enough. By whose standards do we judge ourselves? For me, only by my own.
I bring up self esteem because it took a lot for me to see the weight problem. In pictures I kind of noticed it, but it took realizing my belly was resting on my legs to do something about it.
On March 11, 2012 I woke up after a night of debauchery at my brother's house. I felt disgusting. I made the drive home from the Cape and got on the scale. That is the first time I saw 238 and I said, "this has to end here." Now, I had already started trying to "be healthier" but that is like dipping your foot in the pool. During the week I would lose 2 to 3 pounds and on the weekend I would drink alcohol and eat everything in sight and put back 2 to 3 pounds or more often 4 to 5 pounds. I was defeating myself and I knew how. On March 11, 2012 I decided that I would have to stop drinking alcohol to make any kind of difference. As I write this it is June 29th and I have still not had alcohol. I am not an alcoholic and I do not know if or when I will have an alcoholic beverage again. What I do know is that one decision is what has made a tremendous difference between yo yo ing and actually taking weight off for good.
So many people want the easy way out. They will take any pill, try any new fad for losing weight. How many times do we ignore what makes sense? My husband and I joke about writing our weight loss book. It will have one sentence. Eat less and exercise, stupid. Okay, sure the stupid part is mean but we include ourselves in that stupid part, too. Why did it take me so long to figure out the weight wasn't going away without some friggin hard work!
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Beginning
Okay, here is the truth. I think people who blog about weight loss may be boring. Okay, well maybe reading their blogs is boring. Or maybe I just feel like a really fat person reading blogs instead of getting outside and doing something about my weight. I don't know and I don't care. The truth is that when I turned 40 I realized I could stop judging people (so often) and start doing what I really felt passionate about doing. Currently I have another blog that is about (currently) my mom dying and what that was like and how I grew up from that. It is pretty heavy. I get 45 pageviews a day and I have already subtracted the 3 times I hit the page to reread what I have written that day. I am not sure anyone who is faithful to that blog would like this blog, but somebody might. And because somebody might, I am going to write about weight loss. Actually, that is a lie. I might write some about weight loss, but more often I am going to write about being a happy, healthy and strong person. And how weight loss works out of that.
So, lets begin with the fact that I was not fat growing up. Oh, I thought I was fat to be sure, but I wasn't. I was probably most often the perfect weight for my body type, but someone who could have pushed myself harder to work out. In my senior year of high school I ran track. That sounds so noble doesn't it, but the truth is I ran track because I wanted my letter and there were a million girls who ran track and it was a championship team and nobody got cut so I could run my little 100 meter and be done with it. Now, as I said, I was not fat, but that did not stop me and a girlfriend from cutting out of track (how would coach notice with a million girls) and going to the mall to get nachos. (Sorry, Ron!)
Did I like track? Not so much. I enjoyed hill sprints and Indian runs. (which I am positive I shouldn't call Indian runs anymore but I have no idea what I might call them then so forgive me for being an asshole) Indian runs were when the team got in a line and ran at a steady pace and the person in the back had to sprint to the front and became the leader. God, I loved those friggers.
I also want to state that along with not actually being fat, God gave me two amazing, best friends who were both short and athletic. They were tiny girls and next to them I felt like an amazon when I thought about my weight, but luckily none of us really obssessed on weight too much and so although I was the amazon of the group, it was not too bad.
It was when I hit age 35 that I started putting on about 10 pounds a year. That appears to be so little in so much time that it happens and you say, "oh I can take that off any old time." But instead of taking it off you add another 5 to 10 pounds the following year. When your mother is sick in the hospital and you live on nothing but junk food (or insert your own drama/trauma here) you creep past 200 pounds and you think, "holy shit that is a lot of weight. I MAY be considered fat now." But you give yourself an out because of your drama/trauma and you move on. Then you get married at age 39 and you are well past 200 but you feel so incredibly happy and so incredibly beautiful that you don't even TRY to lose weight. But then, you settle into married life and one day you jump on the scale and the scale says 238 and you say, "What the frig happened?" And you see pictures and it starts to become something you can no longer ignore. And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happens. You find yourself sitting on the sofa leaning forward like your dad used to and resting your belly on your legs because it is no longer comfortable to sit any other way. And that is when it hits you. You are frigging fat and you can't hide it from yourself any longer.
You hear a lot about addicts who hit their rock bottom and that is what it takes for them to move past their addiction. I have a friend who doesn't believe in rock bottom, but I am telling you, as soon as I realized I had to rest my frigging belly on my frigging legs it was rock bottom for me. There could be no looking back. And so the journey began.
So, lets begin with the fact that I was not fat growing up. Oh, I thought I was fat to be sure, but I wasn't. I was probably most often the perfect weight for my body type, but someone who could have pushed myself harder to work out. In my senior year of high school I ran track. That sounds so noble doesn't it, but the truth is I ran track because I wanted my letter and there were a million girls who ran track and it was a championship team and nobody got cut so I could run my little 100 meter and be done with it. Now, as I said, I was not fat, but that did not stop me and a girlfriend from cutting out of track (how would coach notice with a million girls) and going to the mall to get nachos. (Sorry, Ron!)
Did I like track? Not so much. I enjoyed hill sprints and Indian runs. (which I am positive I shouldn't call Indian runs anymore but I have no idea what I might call them then so forgive me for being an asshole) Indian runs were when the team got in a line and ran at a steady pace and the person in the back had to sprint to the front and became the leader. God, I loved those friggers.
I also want to state that along with not actually being fat, God gave me two amazing, best friends who were both short and athletic. They were tiny girls and next to them I felt like an amazon when I thought about my weight, but luckily none of us really obssessed on weight too much and so although I was the amazon of the group, it was not too bad.
It was when I hit age 35 that I started putting on about 10 pounds a year. That appears to be so little in so much time that it happens and you say, "oh I can take that off any old time." But instead of taking it off you add another 5 to 10 pounds the following year. When your mother is sick in the hospital and you live on nothing but junk food (or insert your own drama/trauma here) you creep past 200 pounds and you think, "holy shit that is a lot of weight. I MAY be considered fat now." But you give yourself an out because of your drama/trauma and you move on. Then you get married at age 39 and you are well past 200 but you feel so incredibly happy and so incredibly beautiful that you don't even TRY to lose weight. But then, you settle into married life and one day you jump on the scale and the scale says 238 and you say, "What the frig happened?" And you see pictures and it starts to become something you can no longer ignore. And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happens. You find yourself sitting on the sofa leaning forward like your dad used to and resting your belly on your legs because it is no longer comfortable to sit any other way. And that is when it hits you. You are frigging fat and you can't hide it from yourself any longer.
You hear a lot about addicts who hit their rock bottom and that is what it takes for them to move past their addiction. I have a friend who doesn't believe in rock bottom, but I am telling you, as soon as I realized I had to rest my frigging belly on my frigging legs it was rock bottom for me. There could be no looking back. And so the journey began.
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