Exposing myself

No you dirty minds, I didnt flash The Girls!!

No, I actually acknowledged my weight loss, out loud, to somebody today. Oh, you think that's not a big deal? Well, it was for me. As completely and totally proud I am of myself, there is a big part of me that would like to hope that people who didnt know me "before" would never know about "before". I guess it's shame. Pride. Fear of being judged retroactively. It, like everything else, is probably a lot of things. At my office, there is a picture of me with my 'class' hanging in the hall. I want to break into the office in the middle of the night and steal it. As much as I dont want to ever forget where I came from, I have a hard time with the visual reminder. And a hard time knowing the visual reminder is there for everybody to see. For those who saw the real thing, its no shock. For those who didnt, I hate that its there.

Anyway, so I was talking to somebody at work today and without really thinking about it I said something that essentially forced me to fess up. I'm pretty sure I turned about 80 shades of red, but I confessed, giving the exact number. (Oh, for those keeping tabs its 137. 13 more pounds and I jump out of a plane!) So you don't that's a big deal? Well there are plenty of my friends who don't know the exact number.
It's kind of odd that I spilled the beans on myself, really. Considering how much I've been bothered by the attention that I get for it. But those ambush "oh my gosh how much weight have you lost" encounters are unsettling. Sharing the information willingly turned out to be not unsettling at all. Although I have to admit, for about ten minutes I felt like I was walking around naked. Very, very exposed. But after that, I felt a strange sense of relief. Which was probably in part due to the fact that during the conversation, I felt not a single ounce of judgment. And the biggest celebration in that is not that the person wasn't being judgmental, but that I wasn't looking for ways to interpret him as being judgmental. Which is what I've always done. Assume people are judging me. Assume the worst. Walk through life with a chip on my shoulder about the size of my butt. Why did I not do that today?
Could it be I'm finally shedding the fat girl identity along with the pounds?

An Open Letter to Myself...

Dear Me,

I wanted to write and let you know I think about you a lot. I think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. I wanted to remind you that you CAN do this. Yes, you've gotten a little bit sloppy over the last month or so, but that doesn't mean you can't pull it back together.

I also wanted to remind you about some of the things that got you this far, because it seems like maybe you've lost sight of some of them. (And I'm sorry if you feel like I'm calling you out, but somebody once said about you "you know when the time for empathy ends and ass-kicking begins" and I think the time for ass kicking has arrived.)

Okay first off, you've been doing too much eating without thinking lately. Stop that. It's a bad, bad habit. Also, you've gotten less selective over when you chose to indulge. Which has lead to you indulging too much. And that goes back to thinking about what you eat first. Really think about what is most worth it.
You know those things will ALWAYS be there. You don't have to have them 'just because.' You don't have to eat any more than you are hungry for, regardless of what people say. You know that. You've been doing it long enough to not lose your focus now. I know you're scared of that. But you don't have to be. Harness the fear and use it to fuel your passion to reach your health and fitness goals.

And another thing. Maybe it's time you start believing in yourself as much as other people believe in you. They all can't be stupid, you know.

Just remember, set backs are part of life. It's how you react to them that will set you apart.

Hello. I'm fattarded.

Yep. Fattarded.
So it's hilarious enough that people keep asking if Jessica and I are sisters. Scroll back and look at her picture, then look at mine. I personally don't think we bear any resemblance at all. Other than the fact that we're both heavier than we'd like to be.

Anyway...so this lady at the gym and I ended up at the drinking fountains together after the cardio funk class we both just took. The most I've ever really said to her before was "hello" or "excuse me" as we pass in the locker room. So she looks at me and says "So how is your look-alike?" I stood there a little perplexed for a second. Oh wait, she means Jessica!!! (Which is odd that she'd ask how she was, considering we all just spent the previous hour shaking our groove things...but whatever.)

So then she starts talking about Jessica and I coming to the gym in a way that I'm sure SHE thought was supportive and encouraging, but in reality was just plain condescending. Like she was saying "how special it is that you can come work out, being so fat and all." Like it's so challenging just for the fattarded kids to make it from the car to the gym.

Come on! We are there doing the exact same thing she's doing (except with less sex-with-herself-in-the-mirror time.)

Wow...you are hard core!

Did you catch that? HARD CORE!! That's what somebody said to me when I told her about the newest exercise my Evil Angel Karen had me do. (And I have to admit, it was kinda cool. But don't tell Karen I said that. This post has an Evil Karen Invisibility Cloak on it so she can't see it.) It was pushups using a medicine ball. But that's really beside the point.
If you read back, you'll see where I actually said in a post that I wanted people to think "that girl is hard core". Now I realize the world at large doesnt yet think that. But ONE person did. And that was pretty cool to me!

We can choose to be miserable, or we can choose to be strong.

The work is the same.

A friend at Weight Watchers shared this quote today (unknown as to who to attribute it to...) And it hits home. Especially for me this week.

So things aren't going our way. Or things get hard. We all face trials and tribulations every day. Some are relatively minor. Some are major, life altering events. Sometimes we just get one thing after another dumped on us. If we look around our lives, it probably wouldn't take most of us that long to find reasons to be miserable. Shut ourselves off and just wallow in self pity.

But why? It really does take the same amount of effort to be miserable as it does to be strong through adversity. It's a choice we have to make though. Do you want to be the ever suffering victim? I guess some people do. I know a few. And I feel bad to see them go through the world so closed off. I just want to go shake them, then hug them. Because you know when we choose to be miserable, we are usually miserable alone. Even when surrounded by lots of people. We shut down and pull into ourselves. Or people get put off by the 'debbie downer' stuff and they pull away.

Part of being strong is reaching out. It takes an incredible amount of strength to reach out to another person and say "hey, I need your support." It's damn hard to admit we need something from another person in a time when we're feeling particularly vulnerable. And I can't speak for anybody else, but whenever somebody has asked me to help them, I have bent over backwards to do it. Because I know how hard it is to ask.

It takes work to maintain a constant state of misery. It really does. So why not take that energy and put it towards being strong. Embracing your flaws and challenges and shortcomings and finding strength in adversity.

We can CHOOSE to be miserable.

Or, we can CHOOSE to be strong.

What will you choose?

Race Update...

I know this is really late, but....

So I managed to finish the Race for the Cure. I really doubted my ability to do it, but in retrospect I don't know why. I could have gone a lot longer! My goal was to finish in an hour. Jessica and I finished in about 53 minutes. She could have finished a lot faster without hanging back with me and my bum leg! But I'm glad she stuck with me!