Let’s Get Physical: Before Before

Next week I am joining a weight loss challenge called Let’s Get Physical”. I will be joining about fifty women with similar goals: to do something about our weight, the way we are living and the way we look.

In the past when I have started weight loss goals, diets, changes in life style I have felt overwhelming resentment. Despite the choice being mine, I always feel as if the restrictions are from someone else, that I should be ashamed of the way I look and that I should apologize for my largeness. Each time someone utters something about my weight (“When are you due?” “Oh wow! Look at you!”) I attempt a snappy comeback but I really get angry and resentful and vow to “show them” and we’ve all seen how that works (it hasn’t).

This time around I feel like something is different. It’s not the lure of a prize, although the cash prize would be the icing on top of the cake. It’s not that I realize that what worked in the past may or may not work now and that I have to change my approach. There are still moments when I hope to get to “that weight” and make it my mission to find every person who made me feel bad and let them have it in some Count of Monte Cristo type of revenge plot. No. I realize that I have to roll with the good and the bad. I won’t always like it but at least I can acknowledge the feeling and let it go.

Today I read two blogs that made me so much more aware of how apologizing for the way I look does nothing but make me feel worse, nothing but make me want to hide, try those stupid diet tricks from before and for what?

Reading Cecily’s blog I got so angry. Here is a woman who is smart, she sparkles, she pops yet the number on the scale and the way she looks can make her doubt herself. Reading Kelly’s post also made me angry. We live in a world where being fat is the last accepted prejudice and now medical doctors can try and shame people into felling bad about themselves?

Bah!

I start this challenge with a few goals in mind…not the weight loss ones; those will come later. But here are some things I will keep in mind for the next eight weeks when those negative thoughts TRY to creep in.

1. It’s not a punishment.
There has been so many times that dieting has felt like a punishment. I have restricted what and how I can eat only to sneak and break the diet, feeling bad which leads me to overeat and well I’m where I was again.

Which leads me to
2. This is not a diet.
Instead of eat this, NOT that I am going to eat mindfully. I tend to be a nervous nosher, a rushed, unplanned eater and that’s when I lose control. If I prepare then I can eat better and feel fuller, save a few dollars because I am not running to Wawa to buy a bunch of stuff to feed that need to eat.

3. I am doing this for me.
Well, and maybe my kid, cause she needs a healthy mom.
Ahem.
I am not losing weight to “show them” or to get him (I’ve got me a him that is loving me exclusively).
No, this is all for ME to feel better, look better and because that pain in my knee is no joke.
*shakes fist*

4. It’s not forever.
Diets always make me feel like I am going to be missing something and then I panic and shenanigans, and trips to Wawa and/ or the frozen food aisle ensue. This challenge is 8 weeks and for eight weeks I can allow myself the option of more veggies, less crap and know that while I may want to continue the change I make, I don’t *HAVE* to forever. This sounds very counter productive but it works for me. Knowing that I can, and will, be able to eat when this is all over makes me feel like I can push myself to “train.”

5. This.

I’ve got this.
Get physical with me!
-r

r’s note: In the spirit of disclosure, I used an Amazon affiliate link for the book.