Awhile back I sent an email to a bunch of my friends. It was heartfelt and truthful and inspirational. It said,
"I'm fat and I need to lose weight. Who wants to make this into a game because I'm sure as heck not going to be able to do this w/o some sort of motivation."
I proposed we all throw something into a general pot to play for. Could have been money, gift cards, hand made things, whatever. Just something to donate to a winner of the most weight loss, inches lost, and muscle gained. I got one reply. From my sister. Soooo needless to say that was a bust and I just went on my way, attempting to watch my diet and exercise every now and then. Nothing really worked though and as I sat leaning over the kitchen sink, eating a pecan caramel roll, I remembered a post a friend had shared on Facebook a few weeks back. Looking down at myself, I decided it was time to do this. No more excuses, no more wussing out. I accept that I don't have a substantial amount of will power, and motivation is usually required for things that involve things I hate; such as giving up sweets and exercising. And cleaning.
Now, I'm not the largest person in these parts. I can still hide a bit of flub with a regular pair of jeans *coughsize14cough*. However, I'm 5' 3" and weight 166lbs. according to the doctors office scale. That's not good. I may be able to hide it, but I can't hide the joint pain, the aching back, the arthritis that flairs from time to time, the acid reflux that hits me randomly, and the fact that running up the stairs two at a time has me gasping for breath and light headed half way up. Not cool man. Yea, I've had 3 kids, but the last one was almost 9 years ago and I'm pretty sure I can't use that 'baby fat' claim anymore. I'm a stay at home mom and while I can work up a good sweat cleaning my house, it's far from enough to burn the calories I keep consuming with my horrible sweet tooth..or rather teeth. I have a whole flippin set of those buggers....
So, here I am now. On the 10th I will embark on my journey to losing 4% of my weight. That's approx. 6.64 lbs. It's not near the amount I want to lose, but maybe small steps would be far more encouraging than thinking, "I need to lose 46 lbs."
Also, money.
I'm not a greedy person, but I grew up eating mac and cheese and hot dogs about 4-5 days a week for dinner because that was all we could afford. I'm not greedy, but I don't like wasting money. There was a good amount of back and forth on my decision to put $30 towards this, but it suddenly hit me that if I REALLY hate losing money THAT much, then it's the perfect motivation to do it.
Plus, I have 2-3 Rubbermaid totes of clothing that I seriously love, are still fashionable, and I look awesome in. I NEED THOSE CLOTHES.