Reflections...

In less than four months I will have been trying to do this whole gym weight loss thing for a year. A full year. It's very momentous. I have never been able to stick with something for this long. It's also very easy to look at the past 8 months as time wasted. Not because I haven't made progress, because I have. But because I haven't made enough progress, in my opinion. So the following entry is a selfish one. It's a reminder to myself why I am doing this and it's helpful for me to write it down so I can occasionally check back in and remind myself of my reasons for doing this, however trivial they may seem to those of you who are reading.

Two weeks ago I visited my parents in Minnesota. It was an awesome time and I was really happy to be back, but on my inevitably uncomfortable three-hour plane rides, I had a lot of time to think. Thinking is a dangerous thing because it leads to ideas and for me, often leads to being self-critical. Let me just say that if you've never been fat, you have no idea how awful it is for a fat person to be on an airplane. No one wants to sit next to you. You enter the plane and as you walk past aisles of people who are already seated (I have never had the privilege of being the first person on an airplane) you can almost hear people thinking "please don't be seated next to me". Not that I blame them. Airplanes are already small and claustrophobic so who would want to sit next to the biggest person on the plane? I hope no one else has to be the cause of the look on someone's face when they realize that I am sharing their aisle on a plane. So that's reason number 1. I want to fly without being embarrassed.

I started this thing in the fall and continued it through the winter. Now as spring is almost over and summer is fast approaching, all I can think about is how I don't ever go to the beach. That sucks. The beach sounds like it would be fun, in theory, but it's scary to take off your shirt knowing that people will stare, comment behind your back, maybe even make fun of you to your face. Because people can be mean. I would love to play frisbee with my shirt off or heaven forbid get a tan! Reason number 2: beach activities.

I love roller coasters and I want to be able to wait in line and sit in the front row without the fear that the harness won't come down enough for me to safely ride. I don't want to be a headline in a newspaper reading 'fat person dies after being thrown from roller coaster'. May seem a little morbid, but I won't apologize for what I don't want. I want to be able to spend a day in a water park. I want to go to a backyard BBQ and sit in a chair without it sinking all the way into the ground. I want to be invited to play a pickup game of soccer or football (not that I like either, but I am in no physical shape to do so). I want to go boating and water skiing without stressing out a motor. I want go to family reunions without people commenting on how big I am. I want to fit comfortably in the back seat of a car (width wise, anyways). I want to be able to confidently ask for a phone number. I want to be able to go clothes shopping at a regular clothing store. I want to scuba dive. I want to skydive. I want to run a marathon (I really do). I want to compete on The Amazing Race. I want to compete on Wipeout. I want to be a platform diver. I want to be a hip hop dancer.

I can claim that it's because I want to be healthy and it is, but it's because I want to enjoy everything I possibly can and I don't think I can do that with my physical state being where it is. That is why I'm doing this. And that's why I woke up at 5:45am to go to the gym TWICE last week. That's why I continue to go. That's why I subject myself to awful (and yet awesome) half hour training sessions. That's why I've started jogging (and oh my gosh do I hate it). That's why I try to make good choices about what I eat, even though I often cave and eat bad things in massive quantities.

In my training sessions tonight, Justin told me I need to stop being afraid of success. I may have already written about him saying this (he does repeat it quite frequently) but he is right, to an extent. I can want all of the things that I listed, but there is an element of fear when it comes to success. I don't want to succeed only to fail at maintaining my weight. I don't want to succeed and have my ideas about what skinny is like to not be true. It's far easier to avoid disappointment if I never get to the my goal where those expectations have a chance of not being met. Maybe that's why I never actually finished a single book I started writing. It was far easier to think I had a great book buried somewhere in my brain but choose not to write it down than to write one and find out that in actuality it was quite awful. 

Today is the day I stop being afraid of success. Who knows what I'll achieve as a result, but it will be spectacular, if to no one else but myself. Maybe I'll even become a motivational speaker or a personal trainer.