Don't have all the answers

Yesterday I felt great, today I feel like shit. You know that is how the universe works, right? If you feel on top of the world one day odds are you will come crashing down the next. It’s not exactly like that, a total crash or anything, just an attitude shift that leaves me going, grrr… argh… (Also another Buffy reference) Anyhow Monday night’s gym session was killer, like crazy killer and I didn’t realize it until my legs were solidly on fire yesterday and then I did end up doing a ½ hour class which further put strain on my legs and therefore have left my entire lower body burning today.

What this all ultimately means is that because my personal training sessions have forever been moved to Wednesday nights at the request of my trainer, that tonight should be “interesting”. What I tend to notice is that when something really burns the irony of life is that this will most likely be the exact area we end up focusing on. We did core last week and arms the week prior so I’m guessing tonight is in fact going to be leg day which is going to be brutal. I can barely squat as it is but last night I noticed her training someone else in the gym and they were in fact doing squats across the gym. We don’t all always do the exact same thing but I do notice that she tends to focus the weekly workouts on the same things for people, which seems smart. Anyhow, putting all the clues together I am guessing I am in for some real awful leg torture this evening. We will see though.

I think I am generally just kind of sore all over so I’m not certain any area in particular is really going to be easy. Guess is, no matter what I do it’s going to be hard and I’m going to struggle, but no matter what it is, I am going to do it because that’s just what I do. This is exactly why we need personal trainers in our lives because I promise you this, there is zero way I would work as hard as I know she is going to make me work tonight on my own. I guess that’s why I pay her every week to kick my ass, even when my ass is sore and doesn’t want to.

This is where being obsessive compulsive really helps a girl out. This is the point when a normal less insane girl would probably go, nope, don’t go to the gym; reschedule with the trainer and take it easy. Not this girl. I do what I always do, which is leave work and head straight to the gym. This is my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides I have people to see, like the trainer girl who is my friend that I totally chat it up with on Facebook. We are buds now. Anyway, she was like, see you later tonight on Facebook this morning so I couldn’t possibly disappoint, right? This is what comes of establishing relationships at a gym, support and motivation. It’s really an amazing thing. Love the trainer girls who teach the classes that really have become my friends.

It’s funny because our minds can one day make us feel strong and confident and then with a flip of a switch another day we can feel like we have 20 pounds to lose. How do we see ourselves so vastly different varying on the day? It’s such a psychological mind-fuck. I teeter between 135-140 pounds pretty consistently for the past 4 months and clearly this is a weight that my body is comfortable at, where I get to eat foods I want within reason and enjoy my life while building muscle which should in theory be making me “appear” smaller. And usually I am as happy as a clam with this.

Then I had a moment last night where I looked in the mirror and was like, who am I kidding I need to lose like 15-20 pounds. I don’t know where this thought comes from. I really don’t. I don’t think I could be 120 pounds. I think what I probably am after is a more toned body and therefore it’s easy for our mind to go to a place of losing weight because this is how we’ve been programmed our whole lives. I think my disapproval was really in the saggy areas and the lack of tone I was seeing which doesn’t necessarily translate to needing to lose pounds as much as tighten up everything. How easy it still is for me to jump to the conclusion that simply losing another 15 pounds would solve my feelings of inadequacy in the mirror. I know that is not the case at all. If suddenly I were 15 pounds lighter my body would still not be as tight as I want. The only way to get more toned is to put in the time and effort and strength train. Basically, in a nut shell, keep doing exactly everything I am already doing. There is no quick fixes to this. There is just not a simple shortcut in life to anywhere worth going. Time has taught me that. All the quick fixes are just that simple instant fixes that don’t last because you didn’t properly earn them to begin with.

So I had to remind myself when looking in the mirror that simply losing more weight would not be the answer and would not solve the feeling of inadequacy I was presently feeling. That’s just my brains knee jerk reaction to bouts of body dysmorphic** thoughts.

**Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD, also known as body dysmorphia, dysmorphic syndrome; originally dysmorphophobia) is a chronic mental illness, a somatoform disorder, wherein the afflicted individual is concerned with body image, manifested as excessive concern about and preoccupation with a perceived defect of their physical appearance. An individual with BDD has perpetual negative thoughts about their appearance; in the majority of cases, an individual suffering from BDD is obsessed with a minor or imagined flaw.[1][2][3] An afflicted individual thinks they have a defect in either one or several features of their body, which causes psychological and clinically significant distress or impairs occupational or social functioning.

I have to remind myself that being 135-140 pounds is perfectly healthy and acceptable for me and one should never try and compare themselves to anyone else. Especially 5 foot 7 girls who weigh 120 pounds. I sincerely do not think I would care what the scale said if I didn’t feel like all this loose skin was my nemesis. If I was tight and toned what would it really matter if the scale said 120 or 220. Seriously. It’s the most stupid fucking pointless number in the world. It can say whatever it wants to say but it does not define who you are. Only you get to decide how you are going to love yourself and the image you see in the mirror. That scale has far too much control on women in society as a whole. For the record I don’t even know what the scale says it has been weeks since I have gotten on it. No joke. I really don’t let the scale define me. Every so often I get an overwhelming feeling that I have to get on the thing because I somehow talk myself into believing that I am gaining weight based on the guilt I feel over my food choices. Up until now I have been wrong on every occasion. I always come in between 135-140 pounds. I don’t think right now would be any different.

My blanket observation that I need to lose 15-20 pounds comes from a different place of an inside feeling, nothing exterior. It’s good to take a deep breath and try to focus on the reality that this is an internal feeling completely independent of what is physically occurring in our bodies. This is a mental issue that is indicative of some other feeling I am having. I am trying to accept and understand these impulse feelings so that I can learn to not let them talk me into negative behaviors.

Weight loss is a very hard battle because it never ends. We can work so hard to get to a desired place, a magical goal if you will and ultimately I do think most everyone finds a certain element of dissatisfaction in the end result. We are never as perfect as we perceived that we would be when we made it to this magical goal land. I honestly believe that part of why so many woman gain weight back after working so hard to lose it is because ultimately we were not as satisfied with ourselves at our goal weights as we thought we would be. We didn’t suddenly turn into fit, rock hard, supermodels. Shocking I know. Therefore, the sense of working hard to maintain kind of goes out the window because we were never that satisfied to begin with.

If I had to explain in a nutshell why I feel this time is so vastly different for me and why suddenly it became a life changer after having gone to the gym, it is this… While certainly not perfect, my body is starting to finally match the mental image of what I had always wanted. I am not there yet and I get discouraged on occasion (thus last night), but it’s finally worth fighting for. The desired outcome is finally good enough, fit enough, and strong enough that it’s worth maintaining forever because the results are more in line with what I always desired my body to look like. That is completely because of the gym and strength training. I finally have hope that if I keep working hard the results will keep coming and that is worth fighting for to me.

It’s so easy to be discouraged when we reach goal and we still see all the problems in ourselves. We will always focus on the areas we are least satisfied with. That is human nature. Last night was just a good reminder of why I still am fighting working hard day in and day out, because while I am closer than I was yesterday, I don’t have this whole thing figured out just yet, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. In a nutshell, I am still just trying to figure out how to get this all right.