Cool, Sandi! We’ll be really interested in the results. Hopefully whoever gives you the test will put the number into some kind of perspective for you.
About the gym and all … it happens to all of us, like Jiff said. We’re going along great and then life happens and boom! we fall right back into all those bad old habits and routines. It’s scary how close to the surface all the old habits and ways of coping lie — and they have a nasty way of popping back into our lives as soon as we start to get complacent. For me, it’s been almost two years that I’ve had the weight off and I still want to revert right back to being an emotional binge eater when something goes wrong or I get stressed. Sigh. I guess the great lesson here is that we’re never cured; we only learn how to cope with all the habits and behaviors that got us heavy in the first place.
Anyway, how to get back to the gym? Well, Jiff’s right — bottom line is that you just have to do it. But something that helps me when I’m struggling — like having a really tough food day — is to make a commitment to someone else. It would be nice if I could make a commitment to myself and have that work, but I know myself too well. I have a tendency to play little games with myself:
one won’t hurt, you deserve it, you can start again tomorrow …. yadda yadda … that evil little voice that goes through my head.
So what I do is make myself accountable to someone else; someone I really don’t want to mess up in front of. For example, I’ll call DH at work and say that they are 13 chocolate chip cookies in the freezer calling my name and that I want him to count every last one when he gets home. Or I’ll email a buddy and tell her what I’m going to eat for the day. Or I’ll post at LWL and say that it’s after dinner and I’ve got the munchies but I’m not going to give in. And whenever the little
voice tempts me, I think about how I’m going to report back to whomever and how I don’t want to admit defeat. Kind of like: 'failure is not an option'?
Now you can see that my little
s are all food–related. I know your
is getting to the gym but maybe the same thing would work for you. How about if you make a commitment — to DH or a friend or here — that you’ll go to the gym tomorrow and this is what you’ll do? And then come back and report?
Making appointments with a trainer is a terrific way to make a commitment to someone else, but unfortunately it’s not possible for everyone. For me, though, that’s probably what made this whole weight-loss thing work. I joined a gym on a whim with DD and immediately had a panic attack when I realized how alien it was to my couch-potato self. So I signed up for five weeks with one of the trainers and told him that I would do everything that he told me to do for five weeks, no questions asked. The fact that I had appointments with him got me there and that’s how I learned about lifting weights and cardio and a totally different way to eat. I doubt that I ever would have gone on my own; I was way too intimidated by the machines and the weights. Not to mention way too intimidated by weighing 257 pounds and imagining (incorrectly, as it turns out) that everyone was staring at me (specifically, my 57” butt
).
It took me a long time to get hooked on exercise — maybe about six months? It wasn’t instantaneous by any means — in fact, I thought I was going to die at first.
But I stuck it out and slowly it dawned on me that I ALWAYS felt better when I walked out of the gym than when I walked in. That exercise really WAS a de-stressor. That it gave me tons of energy. And that it was cool to be a mom with muscles! And of course, I loved the results.
Doing cardio burned the fat and building muscle revved up my metabolism and made things look tight and toned as the weight came off. I’m not going to kid you and say that exercise is easy for us at first, but if you stick with it, the pay-off is huge.
I know — beyond the shadow of a doubt — that I would not have lost (and kept off) 122 pounds without exercise being an integral part of every day of my life.
So what I’m saying (in my usual long winded way), Sandi, is that you almost have to go on faith at first with exercise (and weight-loss in general). Karen (MrsJim) likened losing 100+ pounds to moving a mountain with a teaspoon and a cup. When you look a the big picture, it seems impossible. The only way to tackle that mountain is to break it down and do it one day at a time. Just make a commitment to exercise, one day at a time. Plan your food for one day. Don’t worry about tomorrow or six months from now. Every one of us can do it for
JUST ONE DAY.
How about if you plan your exercise for tomorrow, come here and post about it,
DO IT, and then come back and tell us about it?
Bodygem - RMR
Meg
that's going to be waiting for you to report back and tell us that you did it!
