This Was A Bigger Deal Than I Knew...

Yesterday, I drew the line in the sand and made the decision that today was Day One...a new beginning to reclaiming my fitness...the point at which I would head back to the gym and begin my do-over of the past fifteen months.  And I did.  And it was hard.  Really hard.  But it was also a much bigger deal than I anticipated it would be.

Physically, I wasn't nearly as bad off as I was the first time I stepped in a gym four years ago, despite the fact that I now have one new titanium knee and one old bone-on-bone arthritic knee that's getting its own titanium upgrade in four more months.  That was a big surprise for me.  In all fairness, I am nowhere near as fit as I was when the knee problems forced me out of the gym back at the end of 2013. But I'm also not nearly as out of shape as I was my first day in a gym in 2011. Those two and a half years of workouts had some residual effects on my body. They also left an imprint on my brain.

I wanted to get on an elliptical today at the gym to be very friendly to my knees while I did my cardio workout, but they were filled.  So I went to the exercise bikes and was able to raise my heart rate enough to hit my own cardio range while I pedaled for half an hour. My knees did surprisingly well, especially the new one.  The old one balked and squealed at me, but I ignored its whining and went right on pedaling.  Sometimes, you just have to suck it up and do what you have to do, and today was one of those times.



When cardio was done, I moved on to weight training, deliberately choosing the smallest free weights available.  I put my feet shoulder-width apart and picked up the weights for bicep curls. And in this moment, something occurred to me for the first time.

I knew exactly what to do. Exactly.  I knew how to hold those weights, how to curl them so that I isolated my biceps, how to keep my core tight so that I worked it while I was working my arms.  It all came back to me. Immediately.  There are no words for how good it felt when to realize something monumental in the gym today.

I'm a workout girl.  I am an exerciser.

It's who I am now.  It hasn't been my reality for far too long...but nevertheless, it IS who I am, who I have become.  And the realization of that shocked me...and brought me great happiness!

You see, I've spent a large percentage of my adult life as an obese woman.  Not just overweight, because I don't generally ever do things halfway. Nope. Obese. Call it what it rightly is. And for the past few months as I had to face the fact that the weight was coming back on my body with my exercise curtailed and lack of self control in my diet, I've been scared (terrified, really!) that all I ever would be was that obese woman.

Now, I fully acknowledge and believe that I am FAR more than my weight...but it does tend to define many parts of your life when you're large.  There are limits on your existence that you can't even begin to imagine unless you've lived them. From seatbelts on airplanes to lack of options in wardrobe, being obese impacts a person in many ways that are impossible to ignore.

Being a workout girl, though, changes that picture.  Greatly!  It gives me the option for a better, different reality, a new outcome.  Being a woman who knows how and is committed to exercising to improve her fitness says that I don't have to stay obese just because I have been for 25 years.  It gives me a huge dose of HOPE!

So, in the spirit I've recently adopted of uttering wildly audacious statements that I'm willing to be accountable for, I'm ready to make another one.  This realization in the gym today changes everything.

My move forward will be into a future where I am no longer obese.  I am visualizing it right now as I type this, and I am willing and ABLE to do the work that will make that my reality.

I will NOT be an obese woman for the rest of my days.

Period.  End of discussion.

All that's left to do is go get that future, and you can bet on me doing that very thing!

Moving Forward...
Angie
:-)