Lately, I’ve been feeling blah and gross and foggy in the brain… Pretty much everything that one can feel when out of shape. I pretty much walked around with the wool pulled over my eyes until a few things happened recently.
First, I crocheted myself a piece of lingerie. It didn’t turn out like I wanted exactly (it ended up looking more like a cabaret costume than lingerie) and part of that was because I was obsessed with coverage when making it.
Now, take that in a minute. There I was, making something sexy to wow the boyfriend and I was trying to ensure that it provided coverage. When I wore it for him, he liked it but I was self-conscious (even though I’d gone through all the steps to ensure all my flabby bits were covered).
The boyfriend insisted I was beautiful and told me that I should be more confident. Meanwhile, I was busy trying to cover myself with my hands. It was… Pathetic.
Some time after that, my kids begged me to go to the pool. I came up with reason after reason why we shouldn’t go and then it rained and I praised baby Jesus for the reprieve. Around that time, the boyfriend came over and made the mistake of tickling me. Of course, I didn’t see that as tickling but touching my fat so I swatted at his hand and glared at him.
That’s when it finally sunk in.
I have let myself go.
I mean, it’s not like this was news, exactly. I haven’t liked what I’ve seen in the mirror for quite awhile but other things were more pressing and I basically just ignored it. I kept promising myself that I’d workout ‘tomorrow’.
Yeah, I’m sure you know how that worked out.
So yesterday, I decided that tomorrow wasn’t soon enough and I went for a walk with my sister. We did four miles around the neighborhood and I realized halfway through that blammed if I’m not despairingly out of shape. But what I like about walking outside versus being on a treadmill or track is that in order to get home, I have to keep going.
I returned home all jazzed about my newfound fitness, complete with blisters on my feet (we didn’t change or anything, just went out in dresses and flats). Then today I decided to put in the ‘workout’ on mapmyrun and made an account on myfitnesspal.
Boy, did that open my eyes. I hadn’t really considered that I ate too much. Instead, I blamed my weight gain on my sedentary lifestyle. So I hadn’t intended to make any changes to my eating habits, just add in some workouts.
I didn’t really think about what I eat each day so it took some thought. Today I had multiple cups of coffee drenched in sugar (and I’m not talking your baby-sized cups. Coffee and I have a special relationship and I require at least 16 oz at a time) and two chili dogs. After inputting that I was disturbed with how many calories I’d already eaten.
You see, I’m supposed to eat 1200 calories a day in order to lose weight at the pace that I want. No problemo. I thought.
Ha.
I had 226 calories left for the day. I was intending to have a pot pie for dinner so I checked the calorie content of it and almost had a heart attack (probably literally with all the crap I’ve been eating lately) when I saw that it was over 900 calories.
Immediately, I was faced with a choice. Go over my allotted calories for the day (by an unforgivable amount) or skip the pot pie and scrounge up something that’d keep me under my limit. The fat girl in me said, Eat ittttt. You can just start eating 1200 calories a day tomorrow. But then reason took over as I realized:
Why put off until tomorrow what I should darn well start today?
I mean, I’m still under my limit for the day. Why just throw that away by going over the limit because I’m ‘hungry’?
Since I fully intend to have more coffee tonight (no rest for the weary), I reasoned that I needed to keep dinner under 100 calories to be on the safe side. As I’m impatient at the best of times and didn’t feel like looking very hard, I ended up with a cup of grapes at 62 calories.
Am I still hungry? Minorly. I smell the dinner that everyone else is going to eat tonight as it’s cooking and my stomach is a bit growly. But then I think about my goals and how I don’t want to be embarrassed at the thought of a swimsuit or when trying to look sexy for the boyfriend and suddenly I’m not nearly so hungry after all.
I haven’t gotten in my workout today either. Once again, laziness and fat girl tendencies want to say, skip it and pick it up tomorrow. Instead, I’m going to finish up this post, change into something that won’t leave me limping halfway through the walk, and get out there and get my miles in.