I read this post by Suzanne last week that really made me think about why I’m doing what I’m doing with this whole McFatty thing. She talks about her history of having an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. (Seriously. Go read the post.)
Anyway, that post got me thinking about what it is I’m doing here, and I wanted to take today to write it out. For y’all AND for me.
Because this isn’t JUST about food (and if I wrote out my diet for the past week, you’d totally see that) and this isn’t JUST about exercise for me (because…uh…my gym closed).
This is about being healthy. For me. For my husband. For my son.
Sure, there’s the perk of being able to fit into that super awesome dress that’s been hanging in my closet since I graduated from college.
But there’s also the perk of knowing that I’m doing everything I can to make sure that I’m physically healthy so that I can be around for Joshua’s milestones. And so that he can see what it means to live a healthy lifestyle.
So I joined the gym. And when it closed, instead of taking that as the Universe’s way of telling me to climb down off the McFatty Wagon, I joined another gym a week later.
In the “intake” visit with the personal trainer at the new gym, he asked what my goals were. I flippantly said “To fit into my clothes again.” And he gave me this look: o_o
It’s hard to admit to a perfect stranger that you’re physically not fit and you want to be but you don’t know how to get there. Especially when you know lots of stuff but have to admit that this is an area which you just don’t know much about. And I? Am sometimes not good with admitting that I don’t know stuff. And I know very little about fitness.
When we set weight loss goals for ourselves, we set ourselves up for failure. We set ourselves up for meeting a goal, discontinuing whatever it was that we did to reach that goal, and sliding down the slippery slope of regression to our previous ways of doing things.
I’ve done that.
I don’t want to do that again.
The more I talked to the trainer, the more my goals became clear. When I said to him “I want to be healthy” he gave me the look of approval. He said “now THAT’S a goal I can work with! Because it’s not superficial.” And he’s right. It’s not superficial. It’s beneficial.
Because I know that I cannot make the changes I want to make by only watching what I eat. The results from that don’t last forever. It is time I get serious about incorporating good exercise habits, too.
McFatty for me isn’t going to be about the number on the scale anymore. When I weighed myself this morning, it was kind of an afterthought. Instead, I’m focusing on getting myself to the gym on a regular basis. I’m focusing on not making excuses for myself. On not sabotaging my hard work (except for tonight when I will sabotage away with twice-baked potatoes and a triple chocolate cake, homemade by my husband in celebration of Valentine’s Day).
I’m focusing on how exercising makes me FEEL. Not how it makes me look.