Day Two - Just when I needed it.

I should admit at this point that I probably have accumulated the most outstanding group of individuals in the world that anyone could call friends. I was feeling a little down yesterday after what I am going to forevermore call the great elliptical debacle, and I received the best timed email correspondence ever. 

*Insert short back story here* my pre-baby employment was as a referral coordinator at a local medical office. For anyone interested that isn’t up on their medical speak, I made patient referrals to other offices and set up diagnostic testing, oh yeah, and I made sure that their insurance would pay for it. I made an ungodly amount of contacts through this job. One of my “contacts” that evolved into a dear friend will for the sake of keeping personal lives personal be referred to as “D”. Well since I had a baby and fell out of the local medi-circle, D quit her job at the medical facility through which I met her. She is now a personal trainer, and from the praises I have heard sang of her, a really good one.

So anywho, I got an email from D yesterday, which was  a reply to an earlier message in which I was asking her about how to best build up to a normal fitness routine. She was full of support and advice, she didn’t judge or preach, which to me is a big thing. Something some people don’t realize is that overweight people know that we need to lost weight. Doctors let us know every chance they get (oh you have another cold? Well if you lost weight you might reduce the chances and symptoms of that – yeah totally not joking there) as does the rest of the populace. Our entire society impresses upon us daily that we are wrong for being overweight. It is in magazine ads, on television, and even in children’s programming (which I consequently watch a lot of). Getting preached at by someone about the benefits of weight loss, while well intentioned, can be very discouraging.

Let’s just put it this way… if it were that easy, to say ‘hey, I wanna be 50 pounds lighter’, and poof it worked, there wouldn’t be fat people.  It is hard work, and in a time where most of the world has a day job, children to raise, school to attend, and social engagements, hard work is neither appealing nor convenient to add into the mix. For most of us, it is just easier to be fat… and consequently miserable.

Back to my original point, I got the encouragement I so desperately needed from D, and then when my husband got home from work he built me up even more. Upon visiting with some of our other friends, I was loaned a zumba for beginners dvd. I was super excited to get my zumba on, as I have heard great things about it from so many.

That dvd kicked my butt all the way across my living room. It was only about 20 or so minutes (a guestimation on my part) but oh my goodness. I was a large sweaty spaghetti noodle when it was over. But, I finished it. It is a small victory on my part, but it made me happier than anyone else is likely to realize. I feel like I accomplished something today, it makes me eager to get to Sunday. (I’m going to try alternating, elliptical training one day, zumba the next so that my legs are still semi-useful when I am in need of ambulation.) I’m not as eager to tackle the elliptical tomorrow, but I will do it all the same.

I also have been looking up recipes for healthier meals. (Oh yes, another reason I am overweight, I LOVE food. I love cooking, I love smelling it, I love eating it. For me Food = Happy.) I want to find ways to enjoy healthier options. I know that a turkey burger is never going to hold the joy for me that a giant slice of red velvet cake will, but maybe if I can make a healthy meal utilizing things like turkey burgers, I can have a (very less than giant) slice of cake, and not have to feel like I am a complete failure. I have found a few recipes I am eager to try. Tonight will be ground chicken burgers, with bbq spices added in for flavor. I am going to skip the bread on mine, or at least half of it. I have to kind of make baby steps or I run the risk of sabotaging myself unintentionally.  I will try to report on the success of the chicken burger experiment tomorrow. Until then.

Day one

Today marks day one. It isn't the first day one, and I doubt it will be the last, but I will call it day one any way.  To clarify, I started my first ever blog and I began a new attempt at losing weight today. My husband finally broke down to my whining and bought me an elliptical. Now before I go on, I have to say something, I am not chubby girl that “needs” to lose five pounds, nor am I that friend of yours that is always complaining about her fat thighs. These people annoy the piss out of me because I am genuinely overweight, and I have been all of my life; in case you were wondering, by all of my life I mean since I was about 3 months old. Yeah, I was THAT kid. I weighed 165 pounds in the third grade. I don’t say this as a complaint, this is not an attempt to blame my stature on anyone or anything; I am simply giving background information. 

I have been attempting to eat healthier for a few years now. I switched to more fresh foods than processed, began eating less white flour (and I am a southern girl that loves her bread, so that was hard) and I've been making my husband suffer with me. To be fair, although we are both (very) overweight, we are otherwise the picture of health. We have beautiful cholesterol and blood pressure and are rarely sick. My efforts were proving successful as I had successfully lost about 45lbs when I found out that I was going to have a baby. 

I was fortunate enough to lose weight while I was pregnant with my son, but I had many complications (most due to my being overweight) and was placed on bed rest for the last 3 1/2 months of my pregnancy, much of which was spent in the hospital. I went from being marginally active in working a fast-paced job and attending school full time to being forced to lie down all day save frequent bathroom breaks.  I thought I would die of boredom, but alas, I did not.  I did however begin to gain weight rapidly after his birth. 

After being released from the hospital with the most beautiful baby that I have ever seen, my less than active lifestyle continued, as my husband and I decided that it was the best decision for our family for me to stay at home with our son while I finished my bachelors degree and attended graduate school. I am proud to say that I have finished the first semester of graduate school at this point and my son is a year old. I am much less proud to admit that I am currently the largest I have ever been in my life. We will call it somewhere just north of 300lbs. It is physically painful for me to type that. My hands shake in admitting where anyone could possibly see that I have gotten to this point.

So that is a *brief* synopsis of how I have gotten here. It will probably get less brief in the future. Needless to say I am WAY out of shape. I am proud to say that I got on my elliptical today, armed with a blaring iPod and headphones while my son was napping. I made it a whole five minutes before I thought surely I would die. When attempting to step off of said elliptical my thigh muscles gave up on supporting me long enough for me to fall into the wall. I now know what a baby giraffe feels like when trying to walk for the first time. I was pretty disappointed at my failure. 

I didn’t give up yet though. I tried again about 30 minutes later in an attempt at a few more minutes. After one minute and 45 seconds I couldn’t hold myself up again. I don’t know if you can possibly fathom how frustrating this is. So this is where I am now. It is 2pm on day one. I have thus far managed to make it almost seven minutes on my shiny new elliptical trainer.

 I don’t know of one single person that I could vent my frustrations to that would understand where I am coming from, so I am talking to my shiny new blog. I don’t expect any support from my zero followers, but it gives me a place to vent, so I love it the same. I have plenty of “support” podcasts that promise me insane things such as, “in six weeks you will be able to finish that 5k you have always wanted to run!” I know that they are full of crap, but I have yet to find the podcast for the truly fat woman that is struggling to take some control of her body back, so I will take what I can get. 

It is time to get my baby up from his nap, and I know that he will smile and giggle at me even though I didn’t manage to work out for even ten minutes and feel like a failure. He always makes me feel special, and hey, who knows, maybe I will make another 2 or 3 minutes again later. I can always build up to that 5k I have always (read: never) wanted to run, it just may take me longer than six weeks. I will get there; I won’t give up this time. I owe it to myself to keep trying.