Confessions of a fat lady

Yesterday, I had my first session with my personal trainer. I am paying this woman $40/hour to make me do horrible horrible things. Like squats. And leg extensions. And biceps curls. And my nemesis: triceps dips.


This has been a long time coming.

It used to be so easy. If I were somehow gifted with the body I had when I was 17, oh, how I would take care of it. I wouldn’t let it get to the point I am at now, which is… an unhappy place.

See, here’s the thing. I’m okay with myself on the inside. I don’t think I look all that horrible (and yes, compared to some other people, I’m practically Kate Moss). But then I see myself in pictures or a full-length mirror and I’m horrified at what I’m seeing. I need to make my outside match what I feel inside, and a trainer is the way to go.

It was gradual, this weight gain. First I quit my job at Borders, where I drank coffee like water and was on my feet most of the day. I got a desk job and a crazy-amount of stress to go with it (very little of which was related to the job – it was the physical environment I found myself in, but that’s a story for another day). I got out of that job and jumped into another one with a similar amount of stress (though that was a personality conflict, and I swear if I ever see that woman on the street I will be hard-pressed not to hit her with my truck. Horrible woman). Went on anxiety meds around that time, which did help a bit, but also caused me to… gain weight.

But it was gradual. My pants went from size 10 to a stop at 12, then a sojourn in the 14’s (with a brief foray into the wonderful world of maternity pants) and now… I’m around a size 16. This is completely and totally unacceptable to me.

I’m finally at the point where I need to do something about it. I know myself well enough to know that I can’t do it on my own. At least, not at first. I need someone pushing me, getting me past that initial painful stage and then I hope to have enough momentum to keep doing it on my own.

I want to be able to keep up with The Jillian. I’d like to eventually go for a run with Freddie and not feel like I’m going to die. And the very crazy part of me wants to run a marathon, specifically NYC. That is probably not going to happen until 2011, but it’s a shimmery sort of goal, so we’ll see if it comes into clearer focus as we progress.

I am pissed off at myself for letting it get to this point. I was watching in the mirror as I was lifting weights yesterday and I was just disgusted with what I saw. That is NOT what I look like. But it IS, and that’s the problem. So I’m fixing it.

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One Response to Confessions of a fat lady

  1. Good for you! I totally get your last paragraph, which is how I was able to post that godawful photo of myself on my blog months ago. I would have been terrified of displaying that to the world before I started to do anything about it, but oddly enough, once I started working out I viewed that vision of me as a previous I was looking to change – not the (then) current me. If that makes any sense at all.

    As for the marathon, you have cajones girl, I’ll give you that. I ponder it every once in awhile, until I realise that my max right now is about 5 miles and I heard the marathon is slightly longer than that.