The Summer of Awesome Adventures: an Otter’s Tale

Seventeen years ago, a child was born. Though Otter, the child’s mother, loved him dearly, having him caused Otter’s thyroid and pituitary to create a ruckus. Thyroid got very tired and decided to take a rest. Pituitary was supposed to wake Thyroid up, but was tired too and instead let it sleep. Otter got fat, very very fat very very quickly. Doctors 1, 2, and 3 checked to see if Pituitary was trying to wake Thyroid up, and when they saw that it wasn’t, they thought that Thyroid was working A-OK. They told Otter to eat less and exercise more. Otter tried. She lost a little bit of weight, but it took a very long time. Otter thought that she just wasn’t trying hard enough. So, she ate less and less and exercised more and more. After a long time, Otter was very sad and decided to eat as many donuts as she wanted, stop exercising, and just stay fat. This was not the right choice, and she got even fatter. At least the donuts were very yummy.



Two years ago, Otter talked to a new doctor. This doctor told her that she should go see a special doctor, we’ll call her the EndoWizard. The EndoWizard was very smart, she didn’t only check to see if Pituitary was trying to wake up Thyroid, but she checked to see if Thyroid was awake at all. Otter was very relieved to see that she wasn’t only fat and lazy. She was fat and lazy, but being not only fat and lazy meant that maybe she could get less fat. A year later, she was still fat. But, silly Otter thought that she could just eat like she always had.. One day, she was walking down the stairs and became distracted by her garden (as often happened). Otter fell and hurt her knee. A new doctor, Mean Doctor, told her that her knee wasn’t broken, but that she had arthritis so she should lose weight so that it didn’t hurt as much. Otter was very upset. She thought that Mean Doctor made it sound so easy, but it wasn’t easy and it never worked.

That night, Otter thought about what Mean Doctor had said and realized that she had not really tried to get less fat since she saw EndoWizard and woke up Thyroid. So, she looked and looked for a way to count her calories, and found MyFitnessPal. Later that week she found that she was less fat! So, she counted her calories for another week, then another. After a month, she decided to try to exercise more. It was hard. But, she kept going and it got easier. Then Otter decided she wanted to be stronger, too. So, she started to lift weights.

At first they were little weights:



But when those got too easy, she started using big weights:



Otter loves adventures, but being fat and slow made it hard. So, when walking got too easy, she started running. It was very very hard. But, she got strong enough and healthy enough that she could go on adventures! At first she climbed hills, but then she started climbing mountains:



Sometimes she took a backpack with her and went on adventures for days:



On her adventures, she remembered how much she loved to swim. Otter found hidden lakes.



When that got too easy, she went down big rivers:



And started jumping off of cliffs:



When that got too easy, she jumped off of bigger cliffs:



She ended her summer of adventure very happy, and with one last adventure; running in Warrior Dash:






TLDR: exercise is good, do it. Track your calories. Do increasingly difficult stuff to get fitter.

I also want to shout out to my amazing FL - while I would probably still have been able to get to this point without you, you have made it so much more fun and I loves you guys

For the guy who made my brutal/incredible workout ruytine: thank you thank you thank you. It’s working. I’m not naming you so that you aren’t inundated with requests and I can selfishly keep you to myself.