This Is Why I'm Fat

I have started my exercise regime lightly, not wanting to take on too much and get discouraged. During my "fitness craze" 6 years ago, I biked 25 miles per day, every single day, on a stationary bike. Yesterday, I biked 7.5 miles (30 minutes) and I thought I was going to keel over. I spent a good part of my back 15 minutes thinking that exercise sucks and I hate it. It is not fun. It is not comfortable. My feet were cramping up because I wasn't wearing a proper pair of tennis shoes so my feet were curving around the bike pedal instead of resting on them. Exercise sucks and that is why I'm fat. Well, that and a love of donuts and french fries.

I am trying to recreate my success from the fitness craze but less obsessive and in a more healthy way. I had dedication back then. I had been handed a huge disappointment that just broke something inside of me and the only way I could deal was by sitting there biking...for hours...every single day. So I biked and watched trash TV (Flavor of Love, I miss you) and read about a thousands books while biking. Now here I am trying to recreate my success with no Flavor of Love, more boring reading material (hello grad school), and less patience. 

I already feel like I am failing at my plan because I got a latte from Starbucks this morning. It was of course  the smallest size and made with soy milk and sugar free but it was still a latte, which is a symbol of the larger problem. It's about overindulgence. If I couldn't make it a week without a latte how am I going to get through this?  So I swore to myself this would be my last latte until I lose 10 pounds. After 10 pounds I can have one latte. I need to learn to love black coffee again (I lived on the stuff in college). I need to learn to step away from the donuts and to stop relying on fast food to feed myself. Just because I live alone doesn't mean I should indulge in trash food every day. 

Lifestyle changes are hard but they shouldn't be impossible, right? I need to have faith in myself. I can do this. I will do this. I must do this. I don't want my cat to outlive me. Dying and being eaten by your cat is just way too crazy cat lady for my liking and I feel like that is the road I'm on.

Haven't We Been Here Before?

Haven't we been here before? It's the second day of spring and yesterday I started a new workout regime. I've been here before. Once or twice...a week. Sometimes I'll do really well and make it a week or a month or even two months of my new crazy exercise program is going to "fix" my fat girl problem. About 6 years ago I was really successful and dropped about 90 pounds one summer. OK, maybe that wasn't very well but more a mental break of epic proportion that I could only deal with by exercising for 2 hours a day. Over the last 6 years though I have slowly put all 90 of those pounds back on and they brought a few (but not many) friends. This time isn't like before though. It's not a coping mechanism or a whim. This is my life. This is what needs to be done. I preach personal responsibility constantly and yet can't be responsible for myself putting the donuts down.  So here we are, day two of my program. You may ask, what brought this on? Why now?

2 weeks ago on my way home from work, a wino on the bus told me that I needed to lose weight. I mean sure he was totally sloshed and a homeless wino but still, it cut deep. I started looking through pictures of myself from what I call, "my fitness craze." I was barely recognizable. I was so beautiful. I have always found myself, to an extent, beautiful. I'm just conceited that way. I think I have great eyes and awesome lips and a nice curve of the hip but during those days I was something else all together. I don't think I realized it at the time because like many fat girls gone skinny, I just didn't see myself as thin. In my own mind, nothing had really changed except I was suddenly able to buy clothes at regular stores instead of plus sized ones.  So suddenly there I was, deemed too fat by the winos and double my old size, unrecognizable underneath my ever growing layer of fat. How can you want to live this way, I asked myself. The answer is I don't want to and I do what I want so I need to make a change.

So I'm making a change. I'm writing this blog so that I'm disciplined to make a change and prove I can hold myself accountable.  Here's hoping this is the one that sticks.