You (me)

YOU:

You’re so frustrated with yourself.

Here you are again deciding to do something about the weight that you’ve carried around for so long. This will be the (insert number here) time you’ve cleaned out your refrigerator, thrown away all the half eaten bags of chips waiting to be consumed during late night parties of channel surfing or video game playing. You cleared the cupboards of the cookies, the chocolate bars, the left over Halloween candy that you bought on sale a week after the trick-or-treaters stopped pounding on your door. You opened up the freezer door and looked longingly at the ice cream that you mustered up the courage to discard…after you take a few spoonfuls of course because seriously you can’t let just throw away good ice cream. You vowed to only buy veggies, rice cakes and sugar-free jello. No high calorie foods from here on out. This is the last time! The weight has to come off…

ME:

Used to feel the same frustration.

The first time I had  consciously decided to lose weight I was about 210 pounds. After being fat my entire life I was ready to do something about it. I was young (early 20’s). I couldn’t rely on me being a drug addict anymore to “regulate” my weight. I lived in a neighborhood where pizza and fast food were a stone’s throw away from my apartment. I worked crappy hours and I wanted to be healthy. I vowed to only eat healthy food (no exercise because seriously it was not my thing). In the midst of all this I broke up with my first girlfriend and I give all the credit to her for losing the 30 or so pounds and getting down to 170ish. Chain smoking and being so distraught over the break up does wonders on a girl’s appetite. Over time though I found the missed comfort in the foods I ate. The “I’ll just go once a week for pizza” became the “I eat pizza everyday” diet. The “one Jack in the Box cheeseburger isn’t going to kill me” became the “one Jack in the Box cheeseburger for breakfast, lunch and dinner” diet. The 170 was quickly replaced by 210 and the number slowly crept in an upwards motion.

From there is was a running standard of try / fail. I would try. I would fail. I would try to eat better. I would fail. I would try to move more. I would fail. I would try to make conscious choices about how I was taking care of my body. I would fail. Over and over again I would look in the mirror and proclaim “This is it! This is the time I would be successful and finally lose the weight and be happy….”

I failed a lot.

Until I didn’t.

YOU:

You’re so frustrated with yourself.

You want to move. You even get excited when you decide to join the gym or renew your membership for the (insert number here) time. You set your alarm so that you can be an early bird and get to the gym before anyone else. You have the motivation, the drive, the will. Everything goes great for the first week. Then it doesn’t go so great after that. You start to feel self-conscious because the people around you look so much stronger than you. You don’t understand how to work the equipment and for the love of god you can’t be on the treadmill more than 10 minutes at a time before you feel like you’re going to hurl. You lifted the weights last week and now you’re too sore to even lift the weight off the ground let alone above your head. The stairs you so enthusiastically took last week now taunt you and laugh because you’re still out of breath after the second floor. You sleep in one day. But vow to go back the next day. Instead of going back to the gym where all the skinny people are you decide that working out at home will be better. Jillian Michaels is in the dvd player ready to scream at you as you sweat your ass off because this time it is going to be different. The next time you walk around your neighborhood people are going to take notice of how fast the weight is coming off of you…Until you decide that you’d rather watch tv than do sit-ups in the middle of the living room floor. Tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll begin again. Tomorrow turns into next week. Next week turns into next month. Next month turns into Jillian Michaels joining Billy Blanks, Tony Little and Richard Simmons on the bottom shelf and once again you’re growing into the couch from which you so desperately try to escape.

ME:

Used to feel the same frustrations.

Countless times I joined a gym. Countless times I stopped going and pretended I didn’t give a shit. Countless times I watched runners on the streets and thought they were crazy but wished that I was able to do the same thing. Countless times I would get stuck in some redirected traffic because of a race in my city and while swearing out loud for inconveniencing me I was wondering what it would be like to look down and see a number on my shirt. I wondered what it would be like to climb stairs and not be out of breath. I wondered what it was like to look in the mirror and see muscles instead of flab. To see definition instead of heat rashes. To be stronger and thinner instead of morbidly obese.

Countless times I gave up on changing.

Until I didn’t.

I stopped looking at what I thought was the final destination (having to lose 100+ pounds) because that’s what scared me and kept me from moving forward. 100 plus pounds?!? That’s impossible and seriously the way I was going if I put it off any longer it was going to a lot more than 100 – 120 pounds. I stopped thinking about what I was going to look like six months from now, one year from now because in my mind I was still going to weigh 270 pounds. I allowed myself to be frustrated at having gotten myself to this place. This place of obesity. This place of the size 24 pants and XXL (and sometimes XXXL). This place of feeling like I will not succeed and it will be just like all the other countless times. I allowed myself to feel…

Then I allowed myself to CHANGE.

Not in leaps and bounds. Small achievable steps. A flight of steps today. Three flights next week. A walk around the block today. A two mile walk with my dogs next month. A three minute run without stopping today. The ability to run a sub two hour half marathon a year later. Not being able to even lift the lightest bar in the weight area of the gym today. Flexing my arms and seeing a pretty nice freaking gun show almost 24 months after I started this journey.

There were countless times I didn’t…

Until the one time I did.

YOU

You’re so frustrated with yourself.

You can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here), you can’t (insert word here)….

 ME:

I couldn’t either.

And I believed that.

Until I didn’t.

Now I can.

I don’t care if this is your first attempt at changing your life or your 99th time (or more) and today you’re at that same crossroads you’ve been at before: Move and Live or Stay and Die. You keep fighting. You keeping struggling to make the choices and decisions that put you on a healthy path, not just to losing weight but to reclaiming what is rightfully yours: Your life. You fight for your life. You fight to love yourself. You fight to find the good in you even when for so long you thought the only thing you were good for was so that the world had something to point and laugh at.

Allow yourself to feel frustrated and mad. Allow yourself to feel scared at the unknown. Allow yourself to feel fucking fantastic even if the goal you succeeded at seems small and worthless. Nothing about saving your life is small. Nothing about standing up and taking control and fighting for what you deserve is worthless. NOTHING!

YOU (ME):

Deserve this.