!!RANT ALERT / NOVEL ALERT!!
So I find myself in a bit of a frustrating pickle and need to write it out. My sister, “Buddha Sis”, is my exercise buddy (a term I use very loosely) but the only thing she is exercising is my patience.
Buddha Sis had been wanting to lose weight for a very long time now, but the stars never seemed to align. In May 2012 she found out she was pregnant and decided she needed to at least maintain her weight for the duration of the baby-baking. She suggested we walk together as I had been walking on my own for a few months at that point. I agreed and soon regretted the decision.
~ She walks so much slower than me. While I can’t fault her completely, as she is a smoker and I’ve been walking longer, I can fault her for not even attempting to walk faster. I tried to tell her she wasn’t going to get better if she didn’t challenge herself, but she always had an excuse for not picking up the pace.
~ Because she walks slower than me I had to slow down. I ended up not getting as much out of the walks as I use to. I felt like we were just strolling and I started to resent her a bit.
~ She whined about strength training and refused to do it as it was “too hard”. Between compromising for her, cooking all my own meals, and everything else I let strength training fall from my routine (a mistake I can only blame myself for.)
~ She negated anything our “walks” may have accomplished by ordering out every night.
~ She and the husband have a camper up in PA that they go too on the weekends. This is not camping in the traditional sense – the camper is like a small rancher (running water, full bathroom, stove, fridge, heat/AC, cable, etc.). There was no restraint while there, she would eat whatever and however much she wanted without a second thought.
~ She would eat junk like baked ziti, gnocchi, garlic knots, pizza, etc. at home for dinner, snack the rest of the evening, then get upset when doctor visits showed she’d gained weight. She just couldn’t understand how she was gaining a pound a week. “I don’t drink beer on the weekends anymore and I’ve been walking every day!!” she lamented. All I could do was shake my head.
~ I started falling off the wagon after buddying up with her. I allowed myself to be talked out of exercising while being talked into eating junk. In the end those were my decisions to make, but she’s such a bad influence. She herself admitted to it being such.
~ By the end she stopped walking and gained a total of 35 to 40 pounds. She put her hope behind the idea that it was all water weight and she’d just pee it all out after birth like she did in her last pregnancy (19 years ago.) Well that didn’t happen.
And now we’re back right where we started, except I have a new nephew
She now wants to lose the baby weight and has called upon me to be her walking buddy once again. Already demotivated by the weight itself and comments from her husband, I didn’t want to tell her no and demotivate her further. I’m going in very cautiously this time though. I’m not hesitating to put my needs before hers. No more accommodations.
~ I told her I strength train on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so I won’t be available until after 6:30. My routine will no longer be put on the back burner.
~ It is up to her to contact me for walks. If I don't hear from her by a certain time I go out on my own.
~ I will not be staying at her house after walking. It’s walk, go home, eat healthy, and pack lunch for tomorrow. There is just too much temptation at her house.
I hate to say it, but it’s only been a week and I resent her already. As much as I try not to, I get irritated by her attitude and approach to the situation. Her expectations are unrealistic as she still lives in the weight-loss fantasy world that she has created.
~ She stills walks slow and now has the excuse that she’d pushing the baby stroller. When I mentioned that one of my goals is to take up jogging she said, “I don’t jog.” And that’s why I was never going to ask her :P
~ She wants to walk off her “fupa” and made the comment that it was weird and protruding. I reminded her that the protrusion was due too her abs splitting during pregnancy (she agreed), and that no amount of walking would fix it (she disagreed). I argued that you can’t fix damaged muscles with cardio, but strength training would help. Nope, wants absolutely nothing to do with strength training.
~ I walked in one day to find her eating Chinese food and questioned it since she said she was going to eat better. The response I got was, “The batter-dipped shrimp in fruit sauce sounded healthy.” She then rolls her eyes at me when I said there is no such thing as healthy take-out and she KNOWS that batter-dipped anything is not healthy. Rather than man up she instead tries to justify her bad choices.
~ While out walking she told me she’d done good that day food-wise: no breakfast, half a sandwich and a small bowl of soup from the hospital cafeteria, and a granola bar. I told her that wasn’t enough and then listed what I’d eaten that day. She told me I eat too much. I’d barely broken 1,400 calories that day and all of it was unprocessed, healthy foods. She then went home and had a frozen meal for dinner.
~ Last I saw her she said there was nothing in the house and she was thinking of ordering out. I left before seeing if she really did it, though I have no doubt she did.
~ She has declared that she will not stop eating and drinking whatever she wants while up at the camper. Now that she is baby-free she has to make up for the nine months of drinking that she missed, her words not mine. So if, by some miracle, she did create a deficit during the week she has no problem obliterating it on the weekends.
~ This is Week One of walking for her and so far she has missed three days out of four. Monday was good, Tuesday she was too tired, Wednesday I never heard from her, Thursday we got 23 minutes in before the baby got fussy and she went home, and every Friday she’ll be unavailable as they leave after work for their camper weekend.
As my sister I love her, but I can’t take the whining and excuses anymore. She keeps saying she wants this but then doesn’t follow up with the necessary actions. I have no desire to be her babysitter, especially if she’s going to fight me the whole way. I hate the idea of leaving her behind but at the same time I can’t have her holding me back. Like I said, a frustrating pickle but I know, in the end, I have to do what is best for me and my progress. I will gladly help her when she is truly ready to lose weight and is dedicated to the idea.
Thanks for reading,
Buddha Gal
I just need to rant about my exercise buddy/sister
