Oh and I'm training for a 1/2 marathon. Not a full one because I just don't have time for that. I mean come on, where would I fit in 25-30 MORE miles of running a week? Right now though I'm only training for the couch olympics though on account of the fact that my leg is broken from the 30 miles a week of running. So NOW I have TONS of free time. Literally TONS. LOADS.
In addition to those miniscule things I am on Weight Watchers which means I am weight watching. This means trying to watch it decrease. This doesn't occupy THAT much of my free time though because I only obsess about my weight about 80% of the day. I used to be skinny. Isn't that what every fat person says?"Oh I wasn't always fat. That only happened after I got married, had kids, got stressed, _____________ ." (insert your life stressor here). But really though all that malarky is true in my case. I was literally the SMALLEST child in grade school. I mean 80 pounds in junior high. I finally hit 100 in high school. It wasn't because I didn't eat either. My great-grandmother, who was a product of the Depression era, and my surrogate mother (when my real actual mother was out clubbin', which in the 1970's meant being drunk at a bar, but that's another blog altogether) thought that because she had done without everything
1. Everyone else had to Eat everything
2. Everyone else had to Eat approximately 5 pounds of everything
3. Cookies were a food group
4. Half and half was what you put on cereal.
5. Twinkies were a food group.
6. You had to to eat a box of Twinkies a week.
7. Grape soda was a food group and you could make an ice cream float out of it and anything else that you could find that was even potentially carbonated.
God rest her merry little soul. I loved that woman. She literally worked her fingers to the bone picking cotton and altering clothes that were too big for other people because she was hoarding all the food for me, so that I could have all of the aforementioned food. I never gained an ounce.
Oh but the happy times were short lived. I should have seen it coming. I went to Europe when I was 16. It was a wonderfully depressing time. I had never been so utterly alone. Legal drinking age in Europe was 16 so that's what I did. And I ate. Cheese. Bread. Other things that are not low fat. I cam home after 3 months and I weighed 130. Still relatively thin but that was a 15 pound gain in as many weeks. So... I got married? That's what you do when you gain weight, turn 18, graduate from high school, leave home at 17. That's doesn't make sense does it?
Anyway I did the next logical thing. I quit my University education, because that's overrated, and had babies. Well that's what I wanted to do so it made sense at the time. I made it through one failed pregnancy and one successful one with a 5 lb weight gain. This is when I started to realize my destiny as an addict. Well lets just say that while clubbin' like my ma would have been a viable option, it wasn't my first choice. Food was. So I had yet another baby. That one left me a little larger. Maybe 155 pounds. Now I was on a roll. I couldn't get pregnant to save my life, then I couldn't STOP being pregnant so I had yet ANOTHER baby. Oh I love that little dude. What a great surprise he was. And the result... one adorable baby and 15 more pounds.
So I did the only sensible thing. I threw the scale away. When he was 3 (in 2003) my MIL started WW. I thought for fun I would get on her scale. Uh oh. 178 pounds. How did I not know I weighed 178 pounds? Well I think the answer might have been spandex and sweat pants and some denial. But I started WW that day. October 2003. By February I weighed 138 pounds.
But that wasn't to be. I loathed exercise. Ew. Sweat. Exertion. Ew. And thus to maintain 138 I had to literally starve and let's not forget that I ate a box of Twinkies a week as a kid. SO I settled for 140-145. A size 10. I was feeling great. I became a RN. I started working nights. uh oh. I gained 5 pounds the first month. Oh geez I was too tired to care though. Unfortunately I was also too tired to care when 5 becamse 10 than 20 then 30 then 35. I gave away all the skiny clothes and bought new ones. Better to be fat and happy then skinny and miserable? Hm. Then one day, after working 6 days in a row (which is a little like suicide) I realized that my legs were in absolute agony. Not unusual. But after two days when they still hurt I said OK enough is enough. I pulled out the scale which had been hiding in the cupboard for about a year and got on.
178 pounds
Good grief. I was where I started. So I started WW that day. Today I weigh 145 and I am training for a 1/2 marathon (or at least I was). I like sweat. I like to run. I am liking the new me. Not just the lower scale reading but the transformed thinking. I still have a way to go before I am "done". 5 years ago I never would have believed that I would weigh 178 I also never would have believed that I would run anywhere, except to Macy's.
