As many people do upon entering a new year, I was reflecting on the past year and some of the significant changes I made concerning my health. Things on January 1, 2012, were not at all where I wanted to be: I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life, I was abnormally inactive, and I was overindulging with food and drink. When I got sick in December 2011, my doctor of 10 years handed me a printout about how to lose weight. I was mortified. I had to do something differently or I was going to be facing some serious consequences.
It’s a funny game your head plays with your appearance. Even when you are not looking and feeling like you want to, you still need to leave the house. So you buy new clothes that you HATE to fit your new body, or squeeze into your “fat” clothes. You avoid having pictures taken and full length mirrors. The scale is neatly tucked away in the bathroom, not to be confronted. In the back of the closet are your “skinny” jeans (this was a thing well before Sex and the City talked about it) that you will someday get back into. How I got there was no longer important, only how I was going to move forward.
My friends and I started the year with a 90 day challenge to see who could lose the most weight. During that time, I cashed in a Groupon for ballroom dance lessons. I enjoyed dancing and it was great exercise, but I couldn’t believe who I saw in the mirror. Was that really me? I was a professional dancer for six years and now this is what I look like? Over the 90 days, I dropped 10 pounds, but I was still heavier than I’d ever been and not necessarily healthier.
One day, I received a Groupon (I swear this isn’t an ad for Groupon) for several sessions with a fitness trainer. My budget had not allowed me to engage one prior to this, so I seized the opportunity to work with someone at a significant discount. He was extremely busy, which I took as a good sign, so it took a while to get in to his schedule. I finally started with him in late April, and it’s been quite a journey since then.
I came away from the first few sessions with mixed feelings – good that I was working out, bad that I had allowed myself to get so out of shape. But I kept going back. We started discussing my eating AND drinking habits and goals. Part of that discussion was my obsession of the the number on the scale and me constantly weighing myself. I used to not be a slave to the scale, relying on the fact that at my fittest, I had no idea what I weighed. I knew I was in shape and what size clothing I was wearing so the actual number made no difference to me. Having fallen away from my ideal fitness level and weight in the subsequent years and then attempting to get it under control made me, for the first time, a slave to the scale.
I would get on it in the morning, after certain rituals took place so that I could get the optimum results. Then I would hop on again at night at the gym to see if it had changed/varied from my scale at home. It was becoming problematic. My trainer kept saying that so long as I keep doing what I’m doing, the numbers will change but more importantly, they won’t matter. Today, I realize that he could not have been more right.
As promised, the weight started coming off and my body shape changed. I started retrieving the clothes from the back of the closet that I had held onto in hopes that I would be able to wear them and started a donation bag of the other clothes. I stayed on with my trainer because there was nothing more important to me than to get back to good health. I made room for it in my budget which was easier considering I was spending a LOT less money on wining and dining out. We set six week goals and he helped me understand that there is no “wagon” to fall off of and no need to get a case of the “fuck-its” just because I had one bad meal in a day. The “lifestyle” he was suggesting was just life, and I finally came to embrace it.
In the end, I lost 31 pounds in 2012. I also ran three races of at least three miles, including a mud/obstacle run. It would be easy to sit in the place that shames myself for having 31 pounds to lose but I’m not equipped to do that anymore. I will keep moving and keep moving forward. I know the consequences of my dietary choices and I understand that life does not begin or end with a slice of coffee cake.
If one of your goals for 2013 is to get in shape and/or lose weight, you absolutely can do it WITHOUT the scale. If you want to get a starting point, get on sometime, any time today and then put the scale away. You will know when changes start happening. Like age, weight is nothing but a number.