I'm too fat to go to the gym...

So I have to rage a little bit here. I can't COUNT the number of times I've heard someone say, "I'd love to go to the gym, I just need to lose a little bit of weight first." 

SERIOUSLY!?!?! What have we done to ourselves? 

I know when I first started working out I was the girl in the back row of treadmills pressed against the wall, PRAYING that no one noticed me in my ratty old t-shirt from some youth gathering and track pants that I had been wearing as PJ pants up until that week that I finally decided to take the plunge. I was a keen watcher trying to discover - What the heck am I supposed to DO here!?!? (or more accurately - What does everyone else do here so I know what I won't be judged for). 

One of the greatest blessings of my gym experience was that I was made to feel welcome. When I looked around the gym at the A.R. Kaufman Y I didn't see a bunch of slender muscular women and men lifting weights gracefully without breaking a sweat. I saw people doing what they could to be fit. I once walked/ran on a treadmill beside a 400 pound man who was carrying his Oxygen tank with him and accompanied by a worker as he sweated heavily through a workout a 2km/hour. I understood very quickly that the Y was not a place where people dressed up and did their makeup to meet men. Nor was it was not a place where bodybuilders stood and checked themselves out in the mirrors, blocking the 60 year old woman's line of sight when she did her bent rows. This was a place where we came to get healthy, whatever stage we were at. 

So I feel lousy when people have a different experience than that. 

My friend Barb sent me some reading today (smart woman, well read), much of it that may inform some of the content you read here day-to-day. The following images were included in the package, and they really tickled me...so I wanted to share. 

Fitness is not for the fit my friends; It is for us all. Fitness does not mean being a size 2 or fitting into the jeans you kept from high school; It means being healthy at every size and every stage. And fitness is not for the put together; it is for the sweaty, the smelly, the grunting and the committed.  Find your fit, and if you're struggling to figure it out, reach out and let someone know you need a hand. We're all in this together!

Confidence

Confidence. 

I am a well adjusted, kind, good looking woman with lots to offer. 

When I am in a room full of strangers, given the task of welcoming or greeting I am the best version of myself, head held high, engaging, sweet. 

When I am given the task of speaking or performing for a large group of people, I am a charismatic, smiling pillar of confidence. 

Strip all that away and I would say my inner self allows me to feel confidence on a ratio of 80:20 on any given day. WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN? 

I have every reason to feel completely self assured. Great jobs that I love, self control and reasonably good looks, a good life with a great man. So what the heck is my problem? 

I typically try to stay away from self-help-esque websites, I tend to have a no-nonsense outlook and a lot of times these websites and books just add to the confusion. However, this one grabbed me: 

Why it that some people, the Donald Trumps of the world, seem to believe only the best about themselves, while others—perhaps especially women, perhaps especially young women—seize on the most self-critical thoughts they can come up with? "It turns out there's an area of your brain that's assigned the task of negative thinking," says Louann Brizendine, MD, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of The Female Brain. "It's judgmental. It says 'I'm too fat' or 'I'm too old.' It's a barometer of every social interaction you have. It goes on red alert when the feedback you're getting from other people isn't going well." This worrywart part of the brain is the anterior cingulate cortex. In women, it's actually larger and more influential, as is the brain circuitry for observing emotions in others. "The reason we think females have more emotional sensitivity," says Brizendine, "is that we've been built to be immediately responsive to the needs of a nonverbal infant. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing." 

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Why-Women-Have-Low-Self-Esteem-How-to-Feel-More-Confident/1#ixzz2fiiNsWLN

Science....egads, predisposition...There are some days I wake up and I feel like I'm on the brink of severe mental illness. I get stuck inside my head, I let myself dwell in the negative, I allow myself to feel weak and ugly and useless and lame. 

Anybody else? Ladies? Gentlemen? 

So fighting the good fight for me means fighting myself a lot of days. Fighting to hear the words of my friends and family as positive rather than a sarcastic dig. Fighting to see the glances of strangers as friendly exploration rather than cold judgement. 

I am my own worst enemy. 

Another Workout Down...Against my Better Judgement

Tired, grumpy, lazy, sad, un-motivated, bored....

Those are all words that described me for most of my day today. I even came home at lunch and shared my doom and gloom with Cliff, who of course takes it all in stride (apparently I'm a moody girlfriend). 

These are the days when I am tempted to eat garbage, laze around and feel miserable for myself. That being said, I'm a happy, well-adjusted person - everybody has bad days. 

Success for me today: 
1. Was able to get out of the house tonight for a bit thanks to a really great friend. 
2. I still had a gold star day despite Falafel dinner and a lameo start.
3. Got a quick cardio workout in to battle the above mentioned dinner - and my mood. 

Am I 100% better? Not likely. 
Am I better at all? Heck yes. 
I never met a workout I regretted when it was all finished. 

Moral of the story: Get up and do something about it. (I'm saying this to me more than anyone else). You can't be in control of your life from the couch and you can't change anything if you keep standing still. Move. 

UPDATE!!!

So it's nearly been a month since I announced our FALL FITNESS CHALLENGE!!! I have to say, things are going better than I thought. 

The first week into the competition was awful - a lot of the same garbage I was up to in August (laziness, eating whatever I felt like, depressed nights, over-wheating) It wasn't until the second week that I really picked myself up and decided to actually give it a go. 

So far, I've had some good days and some bad. I've really been working on not giving in to the part of me that wants to just shut down at the end of the day. I realize I wasted so many hours just sitting around feeling bad for myself and that's not ok no matter how you paint it. So even on my red star days I'm working to stay positive. 

Keys to success
1 day at a time: The nice thing about assigning yourself a star for each day is that it really reinforces that EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY. I might have gotten a red star today, but I can still get a gold star tomorrow. 

Track, track, track: I know I'm more successful when I'm tracking everything I eat. As I mentioned in an earlier post MyFitnessPal is such a great app for that. It's mobile, it's detailed and it's EASY. When I get the craving to drive-thru instead of eating from my cupboards or going to the store, I pull out my phone and type in "McDonalds" to the search bar (MyFitnessPal's users have created a really detailed list of foods that include everything from the good to the bad and even the ugly). When I type in McDonalds and see that a Big Mac Meal with a diet coke is nearly 1000 calories....I can talk myself down WAY easier - because I don't have 2 hours to jump on the elliptical tonight, and I've already eaten half of my calories for the day. 

Scheduled work outs: I have the benefit of teaching classes 2-3 times/week and 3 gyms I could use for my work outs. Regardless of your limitations or accessibility I can't stress enough PLAN YOUR WORKOUTS!!! Set a date with yourself - I'm going to walk for 1 hour tonight, I'm going to do 100 pushups this morning, etc. 

Plan Ahead: If I didn't pack my lunch the night before I would hit up a fast food restaurant every day....I know this, because I lived that life for a couple of months (I was both poor AND chubby...so depressing). Plan it ahead and make it good. Plan for one thing you look forward to every day. I've been putting two pieces of lindt chocolate bar in my lunch every day for that - "UGH" moment of every day. A little chocolate goes a long way when it's so delicious, and because there are only two pieces in there, I only EAT two pieces. :)


SUCCESSES: 
1. 4.4lbs down!!!
2. One of my class participants that I haven't seen in a couple of weeks approached me at the gym last night and was wildly (and unexpectedly) complimentary of my "progress" - this was unsolicited btw. Thanks to his positive vibes I hit up the elliptical for an extra 10 minutes - it all counts!

Progress to date - Looking a little golder ;)