Finished Being Fat: An Accidental Adventure in Losing Weight and Learning How to Finish (4 page)

Are you that arrogant to think that people would pay to read something you wrote. Come on. This is the dumbest story I have ever heard. You’ll never finish it, and even if you did, no agent would take it, let alone a publishing house. Maybe you can wallpaper your office with the rejection letters. This sentence right there is so trite, like a junior high book report. Wouldn’t it be better to give up now while you can still pretend you have talent? They can’t tell you it sucks if no one ever reads it.

Once again, I berated myself into quitting because I was afraid that everything I was telling myself was true. Experience and that voice were my most trusted teachers, showing me that I was nobody and nothing. Better yet, if you didn’t put yourself out there, you couldn’t get stepped on. So that’s what I did—I stopped trying altogether.

I literally lived in bed during some periods of my life because I was afraid of everything and had regular panic attacks from the thought of talking to any human being. They would laugh at me, judge me, and see through me. I was convinced that if I couldn’t love me, then everyone else must despise me. Funny thing about hiding though: no matter how deeply I was buried under the covers, I couldn’t escape myself.

My mind told me the world was full of monsters ready to tear me apart, but in truth, the only monster was in my head. Looking back, it’s sad and ironic. I turned away friends and opportunities because I was afraid they would hurt and reject me. The problem was that even the harshest of criticisms from someone else wouldn’t come close to the things I said to myself.

I even went so far as to turn from God for a time. When you took away school, hobbies and friends, then the only thing left I had left to destroy was my faith. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what that little voice was doing, destroying everything good in my life. Already on shaky ground, it didn’t take much convincing to think that even heaven wouldn’t take me.

Focusing on the list of things that a good Christian woman should be, I found my own list bleak and lacking. My home was always dirty, my husband and I didn’t have family prayer or scripture study, and I quit sewing after I sewed through my thumb. I almost burned down the house the last time I tried to make baked potatoes, so making bread from scratch was completely out of the question.

In my eyes, the sins were endless. From occasionally swearing to the time I gossiped and hurt a little girl’s feelings back in sixth grade, repenting never touched the memories etched in stone. Religion should have been a comfort for me, a shield against the world that scared me. Instead it became the courtroom where all my failures were laid bare.

Someone so flawed and broken could never make it into the Lord’s presence.

The pain that one little thought caused surpassed any that I had ever felt. Even God wouldn’t want me. So I went on the offense, telling myself he didn’t exist, because, after all, you couldn’t be judged by a God if there wasn’t one, right?

***

But that didn’t solve the problem. The little voice continued to belittle me every chance it had, chipping away any self-worth that I gained when I lost weight, building walls that kept me from finishing anything and reaching my goals. So when, in the middle of the night, it resurfaced again, reminding me that my success wouldn’t last, I crawled back in bed next to my husband and wept. My poor dear husband just couldn’t catch a good night’s sleep because even though I tried to be silent, I am not a quiet crier. Leaking tears turned to loud racking sobs that would have woken the dead.

Jarom rolled over and opened one eye partway. “Wassup? Somun rung?”

I don’t remember what I said or how much of it he could understand being half asleep, but it was to the effect that I was scared that when I started eating normally I would get fat and that I was tired and couldn’t live with myself if I failed again.

“Hmphm. You’re fine. You’ll think of something…”

The next minute I remember exactly. “The only thing I can think of is that I’m going to do something wrong.”

“Then tell your thinker to shut up and do something about it. Now go to sleep.”

How rude! Just like that he dropped back off and started sawing logs again. Did he really just tell me to shut up? The stupidhead. That’s it—I was filing for divorce in the morning. I went to bed in a huff, my mind too busy worrying about the cost of the attorney to think about voices or Dickens’s ghosts. When confronted in the morning, my husband claimed innocence and had no recollection of our conversation. How convenient for him. Well, I did, and I would remind him. So I told him what he said, word for word.

“Huh. Seems like pretty sound advice to me.” He patted himself on the back for being so smart, even if he didn’t remember it. “Stop worrying about it and do something. Don’t even try to think about it anymore. Nothing good could come out of it, so just turn your brain off. “

Now it was my turn to go “Huh.” I guess it couldn’t hurt to try. Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it—just do whatever I had to do to keep going. For a stupidhead, I guess my husband was pretty smart after all.

W
hen I was a kid, my grandma was obsessed with Richard Simmons. So when she visited for a week, we would sweat to the oldies, and when she left, I’d go back to being a lump.

As an adult, quick weight loss and fad diets had never managed to keep the weight off, so I decided once the diet was over I was going to have to take a proactive approach to weight management. The problem with being proactive lies in the root word: active. I’ve had a passing acquaintance with exercise in the past but never formed a meaningful relationship.

I had gone to the gym for six months with my dad. In high school my mom enrolled me in cheerleading classes, but after two lessons, the instructor said it was hopeless and gave her back her money. Then nothing until I met my husband who was an avid hiker, rock climber, and mountaineer. If I wanted to keep his interest, I had to fool him into thinking I was into all those things too. So I feigned enthusiasm because I loved him way more than I hated hiking. I bought hundreds of dollars in rock climbing gear so I could go with him and try to reach the top, sure that if I did, he’d be mine. I sucked at it, but he must’ve appreciated the effort because he married me anyway.

I’m ashamed to say that as soon as the ink on the marriage license was dry, I magically lost all interest in the outdoors. Jarom would take me camping and try to coax me up a mountain. I’d make it maybe a quarter of the way and stop, my motivation to prove myself gone since he’d already put a ring on it. Armed with a good book, I would urge him on and plop myself down and await his return. Three or four hours later, he’d find me where he left me and we would traverse the steep descent. He would bound down the slick rock like a mountain goat. I would slide down most of the way on my bum, more often than not ripping a giant hole in the seam of my pants. Half of the pictures from those trips and climbs feature what I call the baboon butt: a shot of me from behind, pants ripped open showing a big patch of whatever color underwear I was wearing.

Yep, exercise and I were not friends. But no matter how many times I had told this to my doctor, he insisted that I needed it to be healthy. For years I’d scoffed that being healthy was overrated, but now I wasn’t so sure. Before the thud, I would go to the doctor with complaints of lethargy, depression, and feeling generally like roadkill. He ran tests but warned that he already knew what the results would be. I was obese, maybe even morbidly obese, and prediabetic to boot. Unless I started exercising and losing weight, I was going to keep being miserable until I died.

That sounded a little harsh to me. I was fat, but morbidly obese? Puh-lease. I just had a slow metabolism, that’s all. Maybe I could take some thyroid pills or something—that would speed it up. Doctor said nope: the only way I was going to feel better was to start exercising because even though it defied logic, apparently the moving around gave you more energy. It’s totally a case of the chicken and the egg. If I had more energy, then maybe I’d move more, but I couldn’t get more energy until I moved. The circular logic gave me a headache.

Now that my thinker was supposed to be turned off, I needed to go out there and just do. But do what? Jarom suggested hiking again. Um, no. It was winter, and slogging through snow might be great for burning calories, but it sounded like my version of hell literally being frozen over. Biking? Nope, I was not going to get squished by a car that skidded on black ice. Out of ideas, Jarom remembered that earlier that year I had joined a gym in a moment of insanity.

“Hey, do you still belong to that gym down the road?”

I cringed. I’d meant to cancel the membership, but the $29.99 was still being deducted every month from my checking account. For once my propensity for procrastination was going to pay off. I wasn’t going to have to go gym shopping; it was traumatic enough the first time.

***

Finding a gym is a lot like buying a used car; it’s a big commitment and involves pushy obnoxious salespeople who want you to spend way more than you need to. When I started looking around, trying to find the best gym, one of the most important factors for me was the length of contract. I was completely amazed to find out that some of these gyms wanted you to sign a two-year contract of around forty dollars a month. Oh, and by the way, if they close that particular location, as long as there was another in the chain within twenty miles, you were still obligated to pay.

Seriously? Not only did they want me to commit to the idea that I will be working out for the next two years (which considering I couldn’t commit to a hair color for that long seemed unlikely), but if they close the gym that I visit, they still expected me to pay for the privilege of driving twenty minutes each way to get sweaty and stinky. No, thank you.

That old dusty Bowflex was starting to look better, but still I persevered until I found a “fitness club” about a mile from my house that billed month to month. It sounded too good to be true. I could quit when I wanted to and not be stuck on the hook for another twenty-three months? Sign me up.

If only it were that easy. Before you sign the paper, they have to tell you all about their personal training service, and lucky you, they’re running a special so you get a free session. Now you’re stuck at peak business hours in a Lycra tank top and shorts that show every roll and bump in the wall-to-wall mirrors, with some kid, who can’t be more than twelve, attempting to show you the proper push-up position.

And then at the end of your “free” session, you get a ten-minute high-pressured sales pitch to enroll in the sixty-five-dollars-an-hour personal training program. Amazingly after the first no, they’re having a special with three sessions for a hundred dollars. Before you have a chance to say no again, they subtly remind you why you’re there… because you’re fat.

“You want to see results, don’t you? And so far, going it alone hasn’t really worked out for you, has it?”

I admit it: I was weak. One week later, I was one pound and a hundred bucks lighter. I had at least fifty pounds to lose… do the math. Personal training was not the right fit for me or my wallet. I much preferred humiliating myself without an audience, even one I’d paid for.

In the middle of the day, the gym was infested with gym rats and gym bunnies. Gym rats are the guys that work out in small groups. Big and beefy, they stare at themselves in the mirror and flex their muscles while they take turns spotting each other on the bench press. They aren’t so bad because they’re too busy admiring their own reflections to notice anyone else. Much worse are the gym bunnies with their perfectly coiffed hair and makeup, looking more like they’re about to enter a beauty pageant than exercise. They’ll jog slowly or walk on the treadmill, glancing critically around the room, checking out the competition. Phone in hand, they text constantly and laugh conspiratorially at some inside joke.

It’s like high school all over again. Well, I was too old for high school, so I ditched the midday workouts and started stalking the gym, driving by at all hours looking for an empty parking lot—10:00 p.m. was the sweet spot.

Thirty minutes on the elliptical machine was the most I could do at first. Even that much was exhausting and a real effort to complete. I won’t lie, some days I walked in and after five minutes walked back out. The voice in my head would tell me how ridiculous I looked and remind me of how nice and cozy my bed would feel. So I’d give up, go home, and go to sleep. Eventually I skipped the whole going part and talked myself out of it before I left the house.

***

Starting again this time, my thinker was supposed to be off, and thirty minutes was a long time, so I would need a distraction. I tried to read, but I bounced too much and just got seasick. Next I bought an audiobook on iTunes and swore that I’d only listen to it while I was at the gym. Unfortunately I picked a really good book, so unable to put it away, I kept my headphones on long after I was home. It’s a lot easier to follow the story line when your heavy breathing doesn’t drown out the narrator.

Finally I settled on making a playlist for my iPod. The songs I chose were catchy and fast-paced, easy to move to. I made little inside jokes with my choices like “Shut Up and Let Me Go” by the Ting Tings or “Misery Business” by Paramore, timed to play just when my legs were hurting and I wanted to go home. And when my little voice popped up, trying to persuade me that leaving ten minutes early wouldn’t hurt anything, I made sure I couldn’t think anymore. After all, you can’t think and sing at the same time.

If no one else was there, I belted it out with conviction, and if I had company I sung softly with gusto. I enjoyed it. It was fun. Sure I got some odd looks, but either no one had the courage to talk to the deranged lady on the elliptical, or they just turned their music up louder. Every day that I kept doing my thing, it got easier, and I started staying longer. The thirty minutes turning into thirty-five… forty… until I was starring in my own sixty-minute version of
American Idol
—cardio edition.