You'd Better Run, Run, Run
**This is an old post moved over from my other blog. If you're reading from mobile it shows up as recent.**
This post is inspired by the Velvet Underground song. It is here:
I bought a treadmill, which is ridiculous. It weighs 300 lbs. It retails for $5600 brand new. The woman I bought it from used it to train for marathons.
I am not a runner. I used to jog when I played rugby, and once regularly in a fitness gym class. I like being active but concentrating exercise is not really my thing, so the idea that I own this top of the line treadmill is pretty absurd.
But I got it for $100 because the dear woman who owned it was moving to Greece and needed to get it out of her apartment ASAP. It was fortuitous. I'll probably never get a deal like this again, on anything. I am amazed and grateful.
I desperately need it. I gained 50 lbs. FIFTY. POUNDS. I'm 5'3.5". I'm not delicately built but that's still a lot of weight on limited real estate. I was doing really well throughout my pregnancy and was only gaining what the doctor recommended - 0.5lbs/week, I think. It was only in the last couple of months that I really lost my resolve. The stress and the physical discomfort was too much and I started inhaling chocolate. I got up to 205 lbs. When Kal was born I immediately lost 25 of that and was encouraged. At 180 I wasn't the heaviest I'd ever been. I was convinced I could take care of it by keeping a slight eye on what I ate and that was it.
But taking care of a newborn at all hours of the day and night is exhausting. Chocolate has caffeine in it. I once ate 16 pieces of chocolate from a Christmas box in 10 minutes like it was nothing. So I stopped losing the little bit of weight I had and quickly gained it back. Then I started a new form of birth control and overnight I was 10 lbs heavier.
And then I was pissed about gaining more weight so I ate some more, and added a couple more pounds. Because fuck you, self, that's why.
So now I'm the heaviest I've ever been in my life while not nine months pregnant. It isn't helped by the fact that I've never been in worse shape. I feel heavy and tired, my circulation is bad and my goddamn knees hurt. I'm not horrified by the way I look - I don't think being overweight makes you unattractive. But on me this amount of weight isn't a look I like. I'm not my ideal self, or whatever Oprah would say.
Mostly it's stressful psychologically. I was a fat kid, and mostly a fat teen and quite a fat young adult. There were times when I was really into rugby and weight watchers where I was thinner than not but mostly it was rough. I've always been chubby. Being slender is not in the cards for me and I'm more than fine with that now, but as a child I outweighed all my female classmates and most of the guys by a good 20 lbs. No clothes in any stores fit me (I mean that - I would spend hours trying things on and walk away with nothing).
I feel so bad for that poor girl who had to pull on so many pieces of clothes until she was flush in the face and crying, whose stomach always hurt from too tight waistbands, who was mocked and targetted and bullied daily for years. It shouldn't be like that for any child. It's incredibly stressful and it makes no sense. And it makes no sense. Some kids are that size. It's just reality. They should have clothes and be able to exist in life without being attacked.
For the record this is what I looked like:
You'd have thought I'd burned people's houses down with their pets still inside for the way they sometimes treated me. In fact I looked totally adorable. Nice t-shirt, Dawg.
When I was in my early 20s I slimmed down for the first time ever. I lost I think 40 lbs in one shot and never gained it back. I sailed right to 30 at a fairly reasonable weight for my size. I was almost always happy with it.
So now, with the weight I've gained, I'm fat again for the first time in almost 10 years and it's making me a little panicky.
I don't want people to mock me and/or ignore me. I don't want to look in the mirror and feel that burning shame I used to when I was a kid (I don't, but you never know when it will resurface), I don't want to have to hunt down clothes or consider what my stomach fat is doing when I sit or feel envious of other people's bodies. It's hard to feel good things about yourself when you're fat. I enjoyed not having to think about it when I wasn't overweight.
So that's why this treadmill is a serious boon. If you read my last post you'll remember I'm somewhat shut in because of the freezing cold. I can't wait another 3 months (I know spring technically starts sooner than that but let's be real actual going outside weather doesn't begin until mid April where I live). I've already gone on it twice, and even jogged for an 8 minute stretch. It was amazing.
I'm tracking what I eat, which is an enormous amount of food. I've slowly started cutting back on that, counting calories and opting for less processed fats and sugars. It's not an exciting process and it requires constant vigilance, but that's how you've got to do it. I've lost weight healthfully before and I'll do it again. Hurray!