I don’t really recall being fit or skinny past the age of maybe 6 or 7 years old. Though not to say that is a bad thing we all go through our baby fat as we call it, growing up. Though for me I think it just became extra weight as I kept getting older. I remember even going on a diet more than once in fifth grade but never really being that serious about it. I ate my feelings: bad, good, or bored any of them and still do. I’ve in turn always had issues with my weight. I was teased and picked on for it, clothes didn’t fit the way I wanted to or sizes just didn’t come big enough.
I use to have ideas of working out all summer and coming back to school with an amazing kick ass body and being all “Puffed chest” and proud and “Look at me now!” Though I might have only done one or two work outs and continued to live in the dream rather than create it.
I’ve heard from people you’ll have fabulous legs once you lose the extra weight. I’ve also tricked myself in to believing half the time if not just for a long time that I wasn’t getting bigger, the washer and dryer were shrinking my clothes. Never mind if once I went to get new ones I’d blame the store for changing designers or making them differently. While in some cases partly true but I could have also kept an eye on my body more than I did. Measurements and scales help when it comes to denial, and well so do photographs or video tapes.
Also in my life as I denied what I saw things like getting winded walking up and down a set or two of stairs to a morning math class my second semester of college. Or the factor that the auditorium chairs/desk didn’t work properly with me either, I took it to the fact that hey this place just wasn’t meant for bigger girls and that’s rude. But there was no denying what had been happening to my waist line and size when I took a trip back home to see family and I had to suck in my stomach with all my might and pull that seat belt on the plane all the way out and pull and hope it clicked because “hell no!” was I going to ask for a seat belt extender. It hit me than as it did on my way home and when I noticed how my brother ate constantly while visiting those two weeks I was there. How I noticed the tread mill in the corner and thought about using it just to do something, but I hadn’t brought any sneakers.
I’ve always been the person who is in the constant need to being doing something. Since I can remember not even a month into summer vacation as a child I would start to get antsy and want to go back to school or just to “something”. Though I was also the kid who on her first day too sick to go to school cried because I couldn’t go to school, and another time when the snowy roads where just too bad to make it from my dad’s house. My mom even told me recently that she got frustrated when I was an infant because I’d only be happy doing something for two hours at a time and then wanted something more or something new.
When I started to lose this extra weight almost three years ago (come next Friday) I was in it for all the possibilities of how I saw myself and never was. How I would get complements from others and also in how doing this with my friend we’d be there for each other and would rock it out and be bonded for life in that token as well.
The first year started of good for a month or so but losing a job and having a hard time finding one as the economy started to tank I also felt my own will to do this fade because it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I tried my hardest and didn’t do as well as I thought I was able to do because I wasn’t as strong as I use to be. I only lasted till just before New Year’s that first part of it all, I only got back into it really again in May or June a couple months later and was neither here or there. I was still on the healing path from some injuries and learned first-hand that while you can take pills for pulled muscles you only use what they say is recommended because they cause other issues.
Slow results from those issues got me dissuaded as my friend was soaring high and reaching her fifty lb. weight lost point while I was still going back and forth on my first 20-35 lbs. Though I didn’t give up as the months went buy I hit our year point of losing weight at only 28.4 lbs. down. But I was also no longer dealing with muscle issues and started taking a hip hop hustle class at my local gym on Friday nights that soon turned into a Zumba class the following year.
I love that class so much and as I got closer to the teacher she kepts me inspired but also kepts me feeling guilty when I had my slip ups. Like trying to fess up to Jillian Michael's that hey I decided to eat all this junk after you worked me out the other night. Or something like that, any event by the second year mark of all this I was down another 24 lbs. and while I knew it was amazing that I had not only kept that other 28 or so lbs. off my body I had lost more I just couldn’t get over that I was nowhere near where I wanted myself to be. By then my friend had somewhat disappeared with posting in our journals we talked to each other in and I felt semi alone in all this even though my mom had started to work and eat better with me as well (Even if she continues to smoke to this day!).
When I finally hit my own fifty pound marker I pinged my friend to celebrate and she responded with, "Please don’t talk to me about that stuff anymore I feel so bad for letting myself go and gaining it all back and I just don’t want to deal with it right now." I felt deflated, I felt like the one person I wanted to celebrate with said they didn’t give a fuck and that their issue was more than me that I didn’t matter.
I think part of me used the fire I felt from seeing her reach her fifty pound mark to reach my own. But also a little fear inside of me say if she can reach it and fail and gain it all back so can I. I didn’t want that to happen so I powered through, but I’m still stuck within the same twelve pounds or so range since then a little over a year later. I’ve never gone and been stuck back up above that marker because I won’t let myself but I think part me thinks it’s hard enough to lose that much and gain it all back, how much of a blow will it be if I get even further and gain it all back.
I’m not even sure that’s what scares me, I believe what scares me most is that once I get to where I think my goal weight is that it won’t be enough. That this whole thing I’m thinking will benefit me mentally and physically (and of course health wise) won’t match up with the standards I’ve set up or even semi have built around me.
I use to think I’d write a book about it and try to get it published. I use to think nah there are too many books out there too much control and issues with trying to be the next big thing in this world about weight loss and blah, blah, blah. Plus also where do get off saying I get to raise my hand to say hey I have a something worth wild to say in this conversation just because I lost weight too.
Also, lately it seems like somehow I’ve been sucked into this whole weight loss and fitness circle of becoming a trainer or class teacher one day and joining the pack of people who teach Zumba and what have you. While that would be awesome to help people in the way my teacher and such of help me, I also don’t know if I want that to be my life. I wouldn’t mind helping and answering questions when asked but this was never really about being some big weight loss/ fitness or life coach.
I got sucked into the big thing and forgot the little thing, or well the little person. Me; I got over whelmed and in turn took to my last known comfort and semi lost control but only stayed OK in it all because I didn’t give up on my workouts and in the back of my mind I know that’s something that will never go away.
My workouts have become the best stress and antsy/ anxiety buster than I can ever think of. Plus I don’t seem to be able to get as frustrated or down about life once I’ve worked out.
I guess it’s true what they say in Legally Blonde. “Work out gives you endorphins and endorphins make you happy, and happy people don’t kill their husbands.”
I don’t know how my life will shape up and I don’t know who or what I will be in the future but I know that to make the most of it I got to be in the best health and well that’s why I’m doing this weight loss thing for, nothing more and nothing less.
