Yesterday was Saturday and I spent a majority of my day laying in bed. I was not sick. I just wanted to lay around catching up on the shows in my dvr, knit a scarf for my hubby and flip through a magazine or two. While relaxing, the thought that I need to work out was always on my mind. Usually, I like to get up early and do it first thing in the morning, have a nice breakfast in bed and relax. It was as though a little bird would pop up and go
"did you workout yet? what are you going to do? run? walk?" I would keep telling the little bird to be quiet. I am trying to relax after all. There is nothing wrong with that. After several hours in my nightgown and multiple episodes of The View, I started to think about going for a run. As the sun began to set, I realized that I had wasted a perfectly sunny day in bed. I got up and slowly put on my running gear. I also started to channel surf to check out the weather. I found this episode on OWN about a man with a tumor growing out of his face who had to travel from his small town in Portugal to Chicago where surgeons would remove this tumor. It was so interesting. I was mesmerized . I wanted to know how it would end. I pressed record and then sat there and watched it to the end.
My hubby came along and started watching too. Then he noticed that I was dressed and asked me what was I doing.
I am going for a run I guess, I replied. And that's when I realized, I was negotiating putting off my run. Shame on me. Here was this man who had been living with a tumor covering his whole face to the point that he had to hold it up to breathe, who would travel around the world to try to have some semblance of normalcy and all I had to do was roll out of bed, throw on clothes and run. And I did. All through my run I thought about how lucky I am that I had two working legs to run with. I started thinking about my journey with weight loss and how I figured that I wouldn't run until I was thin. But here I was all two hundred plus pounds of me running non stop for 3.18 miles. I felt great. I did not want to collapse. I felt empowered. I even went to the grocery store before going home. I was lucky.
I have been pushing myself almost everyday to do something whether it's walking a couple of miles or running to train for the upcoming 5K in March. I started to keep a log on an excel spreadsheet to encourage me to keep it moving. Of course I also log in my journal along with what I have eaten that day.
Last weigh-in, I was a little disappointed about losing .02lbs. I think it is because I keep expecting the scale to reward me with the spoils of my hard work. But the truth of it is, I am lucky that I can do this at all. I have lost lots of weight. I started jogging. I started biking. I do monthly 5K's with my friends. I got my family to eat brown bread, rice and pasta. Sometimes I fall of the wagon, but I get right back on. I am lucky.
Years ago, I was not so lucky. I had a better body and I threw it away in depression and despair of things not going my way. Well guess what? There are still a lot of things that do not go my way. But I am not going to numb myself with food anymore. I am not going to avoid activity. I am going to use this body for all it's worth and I am going to have some fun while doing it. And I am not going to let the scale control the goodness I feel for the changes I made. I will still weigh-in every week.
I found a Facebook page and blog of a man who also decided not to wait until he is thin to run. This is something that was unheard of years ago but now this is the new reality folks. Use it or lose it. His blog is
http://bigrunnertraining.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/runningwalking-vs-treadmill-a-few-thoughts/.
Bobism: It doesn't get any easier. We get better at it.
