I guess I run now

My title is a sort of surprised mantra. I’m constantly and pleasantly surprised whenever I do a run. I’ve wanted to run for years, but I’ve always been terrified of running for a number of crazy reasons, not the least of which is the fear that I’ll just drop dead on the spot. Of course, the irony is that the more I run, the smaller my chances of dropping dead during a run. At some point I realized I just needed to do it, put on the shoes and move in a way that resembled or at least felt like running to me. I figured the title, which was a poor fit when I started this blog, would fit me eventually…eventually I would be a runner. In short, I guess I run now.

Who I am: I’m a 41 year old college professor (rhetoric and writing) living in the Midwest of the US. Married to a much younger man who is the light of my life. We were married just over a year ago, and I’d like to live a long and healthy life with this wonderful man by my side. I want to be fit, strong, powerful, athletic, and (most of all) healthy.

My starting weight was 183.5, my heaviest ever & I began this blog realizing that since I gained the last 10 pds over the holidays alone, my summer clothes were not going to fit. But it’s not all about weight! My father had his first heart attack at the ripe old age of 37, open heart surgery, and he died during his second surgery at the age of 45.  My collesterol isn’t crazy & my blood pressure’s always been low, but I need to get control of my health before it gets control of me.

I also felt really unattractive and insecure at that weight…someone with a 5-foot tall frame simply doesn’t carry 180 pds the way that women of 5′5″ and above do. It’s just not an attractive weight for me.

To make matters worse, my weight gain over the last 5 years has sapped my enthusiasm for just about everything and turned me into someone who is almost afraid to go out…cause nothing fits & the stuff that does fit looks awful (hello muffin top!).

In front of my students I make fat jokes about myself, afraid that they’re thinking it anyway, so I’ll beat them to it. It hit me this past semester, though, that my jokes might make them feel uncomfortable & while the majority of the college students I teach are in incredible shape, I do have some students who are overweight. I wonder how mocking my own weight in front of them makes them feel. So it was time to do something and the only something that I could come up with to solve all of these problems was for me to move it and lose it!

Okay, enough negative. Here’s what I’ve been learning these past 2+ months:

1. going down in weight is so much nicer than going up. Putting on clothes that I wore this past summer felt amazing. I feel like I look amazing in them. And when I bought them, they were my “fat clothes” and I hated how I looked in them. Now, they’re my “thinner” clothes & I can’t wait to get into the next set!

2. eating right and exercising isn’t as big a deal as I thought. I love veggies right now & we’re not even into summer where the veggies and fruit will be awesome. And while I absolutely HATE constantly washing my workout clothes, I sort of love putting them on cause that’s the signal for me time…leave the stress and the todo list in the locker room & just workout.

3. losing weight…how the hell did I ever do it before I found this community of bloggers? I kept food journals, exercise journals, weight and measurement journals, attended weight watchers, got hypnotized, did atkins and south beach, tried everything. Turns out, I just needed to turn outward & start making connections with real people who are going through the same damn thing & sort of hating it & sort of loving it all at the same time.  I love reading the blogs here and getting inspiration, wisdom, laughs, and cries from the women who write here.