Posted on June 18, 2008 - 2:16 pm :: Filed under Exercise, Healthy
Okay, this is going to make me sound like the biggest dork poser wannabe whiner on the planet, but I don’t care - it needs to be said! I’ve been trying to lose weight for years now. By “trying” I mean, doing a completely half-assed job of dieting, and only exercising by chasing my kids around and cleaning the house. I know in my heart and in my head as well that this isn’t going to cut it anymore. I lost a little weight 3 years ago when I started on Weight Watchers (about 20 pounds or so) and then, that was it. That was pretty much it.
This should have been my cue to start working OUT, for God’s sake, but no. Nooooo, I couldn’t do that. My back hurts, and my knees hurt, and I’m too tired, and the kids are running me ragged, and I have no time to exercise, and hell if I’m going to get up at the crack of dawn to work out when I HAVE to stay up past midnight every single night, doing nothing but fucking around online, trying to carve out a tiny little bit of my day where I’m not wiping anyone’s nose or ass because all the kids are asleep in bed. I have arthritis, mostly thanks to the fact that I’ve been abusing my joints for the past decade or so. I’m not sure what the approach should be there - take painkillers before and after every workout until I actually LOSE some weight and my knees stop hurting? Whatever. People get through it; apparently I am not one of those people.
So. A few weeks back, I was chatting with a very good friend of mine. We were best friends in high school, and have kept in touch off and on throughout our adult lives. She’s always been, oh, around the same size as me, sometimes bigger, usually smaller, but never SKINNY, y’know? She’s always been A Big Girl. And then, like a year ago, I saw some new pictures of her and she was LITTLE. Tiny! Smaller than I’d EVER seen her, even when we were in high school, at our skinniest. I wrote about it back then (and posted pictures!) here. I was so proud of her, and awestruck, and naturally, JEALOUS, and wishing MY stretched-out-to-there double-twin-pregnancies belly looked like hers! So while we were chatting the other week, for the first time in forever, I asked her how she lost so much weight. And her answer was sooooo annoyingly predictable:
I stopped eating all the time and only ate when I was hungry. And I got up early and worked out with my friend 5 days a week. It took about a year, but I lost about seventy pounds!
Bitch! She couldn’t have told me, “I picked up a meth habit!” or “I had cancer, but beat it,” or even, “I had lap band!” Nope. She had to give me the complete logical, common sense, “I did this the way you’re supposed to do it, dumbass, through lots of hard work” answer. Such a buzzkill!
I kid, I kid. I AM thrilled for her, proud of her, and after knowing her more than half my life, really just giddy for her. What must it be like to be…skinny? After being fat pretty much your whole life?
I’m posting it all here because it IS giving me newfound motivation! She lost a ton of weight as a busy, working, single mom of teenagers. Surely, I can find it within myself to get off my fat ass and start moving my body, yes? Yes? I know it can be done.
I might be filling my cart with Ben-Gay and Doan’s Back Pills every time I’m at the market, but arthritis be damned! It’s on, now!