Oh hello again, my ugly rolly-polly friend. Haven't seen you in a while.
My little snuggle bug will be 1 on June 3rd, and for the past year I have worked my ass off--literally--to get my body back. Six weeks after the baby was born, my family and I had a friendly weight loss competition. We each paid $50, and whoever lost the greatest percentage of body weight in 15 weeks won the pot. Motivation! I tracked my calories on www.myfitnesspal.com. One of the perks of the app that I love is that you can follow friends. My sister and sister-in-law could see whether I had eaten over or under my calorie goal each day. They knew how many calories I burned from exericise, and I could see how many my sister was burning.
I registered for a half marathon and started aggressively training. My first mile nearly killed me. I texted my friend to relay the horrible stats--1 mile, 13 minutes. But, I kept running. I kept doing everything because I wanted nothing more than to feel good about my body. By some stroke of luck, I finished the half marathon at what was an impressive pace for me, and I felt decent about my waistline. I also won the weight loss competition by a very slim margin. The number on the scale, though, was not where I wanted to be.
So, from pole dancing classes to barre and boot camp, I crunched and squatted my way to a new wardrobe. I've done so many god damn burpees and lunges that I should have legs of steel--though I don't. I still see flab jiggle when I run on the treadmill in front of the mirror. In kindness to myself, I will concede that my body has definitely changed for the better. More than 50 pounds were shed. Even my pre-baby clothes were too big, which was very exciting. My husband complimented me and swooned over my butt in jeans or my legs in skirts. "But look at my belly," I'd say. "It will get there," he consoled.
Then I started doing Jillian Michael's 6 week 6 pack ab video. OH MY GOD! It's ridiculously hard. She recommends doing the video 5 days a week for 6 weeks. It's only about 25 minutes, so the issue isn't time as much as ability. The shit is hard! Thankfully, Jillian's promise paid off and I saw big results. So did other people. There's little in this world that feels better than validation for hard work. Naturally, once I received such validation, I decided that I didn't have to work hard anymore.
I can't recall the last time I did the video. It's probably been a couple months. I stopped tracking my food, started drinking a little more wine, indulging in a few more sweet treats, and when I got on the scale Tuesday, I not only had 4 extra pounds but my old friend Ms. Muffin Top showed up when I put on my jeans. Ugh. Why can't I just eat, drink, be merry, and be skinny? I'm so tired of working out.
What I hate even more is when people tell me not to weigh myself. Here's why: I haven't weighed myself in about 3 weeks. In that span of time when I was embracing this "I don't care about the numbers on the scale" mentality, I also stopped caring about the number of calories I was consuming. I turned around, and found 4 pounds slapped on my ass. I'm just not lucky enough to eat whatever I want without gaining any weight. I have to worry about the numbers. I have to work--hard--every day. I have to say 'yes' to Jillian Michaels and 'NO!' to ice cream and IPAs. That's just my reality. Because I'm not only shallow and concerned with what I look like, but I also just spent a shit ton of money on new clothes, and I can't afford to gain any more weight!
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