Lose 79 lbs and You May Start DANCING!

And Then She Started Moving

When I was fat and sweaty. When I was tired and sluggish. When I began to have serious health issues. When I looked in the mirror at my feet. At my ankles. At my middle, my blubbery middle. When I did everything possible to make just ONE trip up the stairs with my food and drinks and purse and water bottle. When I bought an expensive recliner and positioned everything around me so I could move as little as possibly possible. Back then. Back when.

I am slow to change. I can hear a thing, something from my therapist or a good friend, or read a very smart thing in a highly-recommended book. Hear something from somewhere that really pisses me off. This is sometimes “advice” about my writing. More often advice about how to lose weight, what to eat, what not to eat, hide the sugar, throw out the salt, get in touch with your inner child, follow your bliss, blah blah. Meh. I can hear something I really NEED to hear but I probably won’t listen until much later. Sometimes a few weeks later. More often a few YEARS later.

I have wanted to be an active, avid exerciser all of my life. Run. Jog. Lift Weights. Belly Dance. Work Out With A Serious Slave-Driver Trainer. Be fit! Be trim! Live Longer Happier Healthier!! And I have done all of these things. But in all my life, I have never “stuck” with whatever exercise I was doing. And LOVING. Isn’t that the awful part? How much we love it? And still don’t do it, or quit doing it, or won’t go for a morning walk because we don’t want to tie our shoelaces? No. It’s too much trouble. I will not go and just like that I have, once again, talked myself out of it.

When I started working with my current therapist, she stressed two things. Do not say “diet.” Do not say “exercise.” Instead, we’ll say “food plan.” We will say “movement.” Move the body. Feed the body. Move the body. And somehow,
I. Am. MOVING.

Maybe it’s been so hard, was so difficult, because I wasn’t taught logic in school, never understood basic scientific concepts. The simplicity of it—Cause and Effect. Cause and Effect. The difference between Responsibility and Guilt. Guess what, Rebecca? If you sit all day your body will hurt. Your back will hurt. Your mood will be crappy and your energy will be nonexistent. And you will grow your butter fat until you weigh even more next month than you do today. And it will never do you any good to feel “guilty” about it. And you refuse to acknowledge that you are responsible for it. But it is so simple. Cause and Effect.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t grow up active. My parents were both extremely active. We went on long bike rides. We camped all over the Great US West. We lived on a farm. I was in and out of hay holes and trees, up and down hills. I frisked and jumped and wriggled and leapfrogged. And moved moved moved. But somewhere, at some point along the long line of my life, I stopped moving. The first baby? The unhappiness? The depression? And at that point, it became harder and harder to keep going.

And then I just stopped.

I have some serious health issues that don’t seem to be getting better. I’m over the 50 hill now and realize that body hurts and difficulties will be an ongoing part of my life. And I had thought that that girl who moved and climbed and ran and jumped was so long ago, that body was so long ago and in the past, that so long ago past youth of my life, that I would never, ever move like that again. Much less look down and see my toes! But I was wrong.

I went to a wedding last weekend. I had felt awful all day—moody, crabby, tired, slightly nauseated. I had to dope myself up to go (stomach meds/pain med) but I did go. And the wedding was marvelous and I DANCED at the wedding. I danced and danced. And I wasn’t drunk. (can’t drink anymore) I was in the moment and dancing and jumping and moving and it was. FANTASTIC. And I knew, I knew that that jumping flibberty-gibbet girl was still in me. And I am MOVING. (and did not get sore from all the dancing)

Losing weight (79 lbs now) has changed my life. And gotten me moving. Up and down the stairs. Doing my own laundry. Stretching all day long. Walking. Even JOGGING a little. And I will move and move and move as much as I can. Life really is too short to not DANCE.

The last time I wrote my “success” story and posted it, I was terrified that I had jinxed myself, that I would dive into a bucket of donuts and chow my way back to the slothish sweaty breathy I am so fat I wish I wasn’t please don’t look at me woman wearing big black shirts and leggings to hide how fat she was. But I didn’t jinx myself. And I kept losing.
The weight is coming off more slowly now, but the MFP “lifestyle” has become second nature to me. Every day I record everything I eat. Sometimes I record my movement. I do not say “diet” and I never, ever say “EXERCISE.” I go for walks. I get into the water and move around. And I dance.

-R.