Yesterday, I signed up for my fitness club’s 90-Day Challenge. There is a local club prize for obtaining the highest percentage weight loss and one on the national level. I figure I’ve got a great shot at the local level since I’ve lost 30 pounds already between February and May. Thirty…such a round fluffy number to match those round fluffy pounds.
Change is a process. You can read loads of healthy living articles, see the tips, hear “thirty years from now” reality statements from your doctors (I swear my general practitioner is tag teaming with my Gyn) and watch The Biggest Loser success stories on a constant basis. The mind likes to learn, but that is only the first step.
For me, I stopped avoiding the obvious. A funny thing happened on the way to gaining the weight—everyone got silent. Now I bet if I’d picked up a nasty crack habit and become a skeletal base head form, they would have squawked. Or if I made it to the family reunion with patterns of track marks from a heroin love, someone would have eventually intervened. Not with food. Not with weight. It is one of the last silent taboos. Folks will talk about you—“She’s sure put on weight.” “That outfit isn’t fitting right anymore.”—but they won’t talk to you about the why of what’s going on. Everyone bought into the pattern of silence and continued the growing cycle.
How could the concept that you eat because you are hungry have become so foreign to me? Once I understood the whole emotional eating concept (watching Oprah’s denial and regain after the Optifast diet helped), I committed to act out my changed relationship with food. Yes, it is a process and I’m not perfect, but exercise can even out any temporary falls.
My good habits since February have stuck since I’ve also been maintaining minus 30 even after a car accident and a shoulder injury that mandated I stop exercising for a month. The three-month challenge is a slightly shorter time span, but hey, why not go for 30 more? I need a jump-start back on the losing path and couldn’t pass up the challenge. I received a cardio outline and resistance program to follow at least three times a week. Since I do Pilates and work with a personal trainer each week, I think I’ll only be able to add-in one to two days with this routine (to give my muscles a rest). It will be more than my current routine though. I’ll definitely also be ramping up my amount of cardio. I always get in at least 30 minutes when I focus on it, but completing it four to five times a week is my new goal.
Here’s to Week One!
Barbara McDowell 