No Apologies

I had an epiphany of sorts today. As I was walking through a local shopping center, I found myself with my eyes on the ground, moving somewhat quickly without making eye contact with anyone, trying to be invisible. Now, this shopping complex was not located in the ghetto, where one might expect a bit of quick maneuvering and people-evading in order to remain safe. No, this nearby shopping center (which also happens to be the one which houses Hubby’s restaurant of employment) is a very upscale place, defined by the marketers as being akin to shopping in San Francisco (once again, the good part of town, not the scary part.) So why was my head down? While I was bee-lining for Hubby’s restaurant, it hit me – I was apologizing for myself. I was awash with the feeling that I was in a place where I didn’t belong, surrounded as I was by swanky, skinny, trendy women, and my first reaction was to be sorry to them for being in their space. I started to think about some of the other times when I apologize for who I am and what I look like, and I was upset to find that I hadn’t even noticed before that I was doing it.

Every time I hunch my shoulders and avoid making eye contact with the people walking around me, I am apologizing for myself. When I look at my favorite pair of workout pants folded in my drawer and choose the other pair because they are more forgiving in the general butt area, I am apologizing for myself. When I don’t take another piece of something at a dinner party because I am ashamed of being the fat girl who is still hungry, I am apologizing for myself. And my epiphany was – wait for it.....I don’t want to apologize for myself anymore. Apologizing for who I am isn’t making me any better liked, by others or by myself.

So I will walk with my shoulders back and my head up, and I will look people in the eye and let them know that I am there. I will wear my black stretchy workout pants to the gym, and if anyone has an opinion on my butt or my thighs, that is their problem (unless it is a good opinion, at which point they may by all means share it with me.) I will eat more if I am hungry, regardless of whose company I am in or how I think it makes me look.

I don’t want to be sorry to be me anymore.

Stranger in my Bed

Last night, as Hubby and I were involved in some, ahem, amorous activity...(it is amazing what can happen when your husband comes home from work at one in the morning to find you sleeping naked)...I had my arms wrapped around him, quite involved in certain areas of thought, when something passed suddenly through my mind. “This is not my Jon.” My arms wrapped around his waist, crossing each other with ease. In the last 6 months, under the stress and demand of his job, and due in no small part to working 9+ hour shifts on his feet with no meals, Hubby has lost quite a bit of weight, delving into numbers he hasn’t seen since high school. But last night, I could feel even more of a difference than I have become used to. Since we married, my hubby has seen my body go from that of an 18 year old to that of a 30 year old, increasing and decreasing in size and shape, gaining and losing tone, and changing drastically through the birth of four children. And he has desired and loved me through these 12 years, never wavering or wishing I was any different. I have dreamed of being slender, of being someone who was readily thought of as pretty, with no second glance given to the girth of my hips, but for the most part that has not been as much for Hubby as for myself. Until last night. Last night, with realizing how slim he has become, my next thought, arriving unbidden in the midst of our dalliance, was “I don’t want to be his Morgan.” What I meant by that thought was not that I didn’t want to belong to him, but rather that I don’t want to be this Morgan, in this body, belonging to him. I want to be a woman who matches him physically (as much as is possible against his lofty height of 6’7” from down here at 5’6”.) I want to feel like I am as attractive and slender as he is. I want him to see and feel my body and think, “This is not my Morgan.”

Struggling

I'm not gonna lie - I am STRUGGLING. I got off of my rules sometime last week before we left on our camping trip, and I have been off ever since. I have been eating what I want, when I want. And after several days of this, I am having a hard time forcing myself back into it (just like I will be having a hard time forcing myself back into my pants pretty soon if I keep this up.) Mentally I just haven't been up to the challenge, and I am playing all sorts of games with myself about how I should be happy with who I am and how I look. Then I turn to the blogs and see how on fire all of you out there are right now, and I feel so overwhelmed by how far I have to go (by the way, if one or two of you could just not be so awesome for a little while, it might make it easier for me. I'll let you decide amongst yourselves who it will be ;P )

I feel alone and incapable with this whole thing while everyone around me has their stuff together, and it stinks.

Working it out

After I managed to wrangle the four kids into bed tonight, I changed into my workout clothes and hit the gym. I didn't stuff food in my face like I wanted, instead I sweated it out on the stair-steppy elliptical-type machine (someone please tell me what it is called) and then did some weights. I worked out my frustration with my mother-in-law and my father (at this age I have determined that I do not want to be parented, and yet I am unfortunately in a situation in life right now that doesn't offer me protection from it) and then went and waited for my hubby to get off of work.

Feeling somewhat better than I was a few hours ago when I posted, I will now be heading to bed.

Night all.

Aaarrrggghhh.

I am having a day. One of those days when I keep hearing that inner voice fighting me on everything. Maybe you know it? The voice that keeps whispering at me to eat what I want. The one that by this time of day has begun shouting to me "Just love yourself the way you are! Why do you need to get into a size 12? Oh, and doesn't peanut butter frozen yogurt after 7:30 sound like just about the best thing you could ever eat?" And I am going to tell you, I have not been winning against it all day. I made it most of the day without sweets, but had a small bowl of Cap'n Crunch before dinnertime. Ugh. I just want to shovel food in my mouth.

All day I have gone back and forth between thinking "Screw it, what kind of life is this to live?" and "Really, are you going to quit again and condemn yourself once more to life with these thighs and that butt?" It has been rough. The situation is being further exacerbated by my continued dwelling in my mother-in-law's house and my current inability to get my freaking laundry folded and put away. I am cranky, I am unhappy with myself, and I just want some joy or some progress or something. Aaarrrggghhh.

I'm Back

Hello all. I can't seem to kick this habit of writing only once every week. I am working on it, though. 

I spent the past weekend in Long Beach with a good friend, her daughter, and my second daughter. We drove down Thursday night and came back Sunday night. In between those two days there was Magic Mountain, a wedding rehearsal and bachelorette dinner, the actual wedding, a meet-up with one of my best friends from high school, and of course a trip to the beach. And something else. What am I forgetting? Oh, that's right, a TON of bad eating. 

This is the part where I lament my food choices and blatant rule breaking and give my excuses and also lace it through with a tone of despair at why I continue to fall back into old patterns. Well not today, dear readers. Last weekend is in the past. Today is my future. I am back on the wagon with a vengeance, and I am actually grateful to have found that all that food and soda I had over the weekend made me SICK. Blech. Here comes a TMI moment: I didn't "go to the bathroom" the entire weekend. We all know how great that feels. Double blech. So I am grateful to have had that experience, and know that I will not fall so far off the wagon again. (Who am I kidding - I jumped off the damn wagon and then ran about half a mile away so that it couldn't find me!) 

In other news, I did my second day at the gym today, and it was glorious. Yesterday I had gone and done twenty-five minutes on the treadmill and then a program on one of those bikes with the video program that you follow. Now, I have heard some of you out there rave about those bikes, and I was excited about it. But then I got on it and got started, and I just felt awkward the whole time. Maybe some of you can give me some pointers? Like what gears should I be using when? And am I supposed to stand some of the time? 

Today I did this thing that was like the love child of an elliptical and a stair master - any idea what it is called anyone? I loved it! 350 calories in 30 minutes - bring it on. Plus all the sweat I could handle. And some I couldn't. Then I did 30 minutes on different weight machines. It was everything that I have been missing. 

One more question for you all before I go - those of you who work out first thing in the morning, do you eat beforehand, and if so, what? Yesterday when I went, it was a bit later in the morning and I hadn't eaten yet, and I got so dizzy after the bike that I thought I might throw up. This morning I went at 8, after I made myself eat an apple so that I at least had something in my stomach. Normally I will be shooting to go no later than 7, and I usually have trouble eating that early, but I want to be fueled for my workouts. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day in their respective parts of the world - I am off to water my garden and check on my chickens.

Membership

Remember a few days ago when I said that I was going to check out the little gym up the road? Well I did. And I joined!!! They are having a free summer special, so I don't have to pay dues until September, and then it is only $38 a month, which I can pay with what I make cleaning once a week. So yay! I walked in there yesterday morning, and as the guy was showing me around, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of "oh yes, this is where I belong. This is what I have been missing." It was such a good, completing feeling. I didn't actually get to work out yesterday, but I am going today. I can't wait! They are small, but they have free weights, weight machines, ab machines, treadmills, ellipticals, bikes with the cool video programs on them, and then something that looks like an elliptical but isn't (I can't remember what it was called.) It is just what I need! They even have a few classes and a tanning bed (not that I plan to use that last one, but still cool!)

In other news, I am leaving today with my second oldest daughter Hailey to go on a fun weekend girls trip to Long Beach. A friend of mine has a mom who is getting remarried (who she doesn't have a great relationship with, which I know all about from my own experience) and just she and her daughter were going, so they asked if we wanted to come along. I haven't taken a girls trip with a friend since high school, and I am totally excited! I am also thankful for a dad who loves me and my kids and doesn't mind keeping the other three while I'm gone (he more than makes up for a useless mother.)

Ok, so I plan to be back later to let you all know how my first gym workout goes - have a great morning!

Damn Unpretty

I had plenty of time to think while I was hanging laundry out in the warm California sun today (do my kids really need so many clothes? I am thinking they each only really need two outfits plus one nice outfit...) and my mind turned to the issue of "pretty." All my life, I have equated "pretty" and "beautiful" with thin. It has remained this out-of-reach thing for me, always eluding my grasp. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that I am ugly, but I have real trouble labeling myself as pretty (and it only happens once in a while on a really good day) and have never thought of myself as beautiful. However, when it comes to other people, I don't use this same standard. I see lots of beautiful women everywhere who are not "thin" or "skinny." It is a terrible double standard. 

I was thinking about it and looking at myself in the mirror, and thinking that even if I some day manage to fit into a "skinny" size, my face will pretty much look the same as it does now. My hair won't be any more luxurious or suddenly become a perfect coif. My breasts will not be any larger, unfortunately probably just the opposite. In many ways, I will look much the same as a "thin" person as I do now as a chunky one. So if I don't think I am pretty now, the odds that I will suddenly think I am are pretty slim (no pun intended.) What this requires is a whole mind shift. I have to find love for myself as I am. The question is how? 

What works for you? Is it daily affirmation? Lipstick? Hypnosis? Lobotomy?

Independence (from the scale at least)

As I was laying in bed this morning, feeling a little sick from so much time in the sun this week, I had a great idea for a blog post. It was insightful and interesting and thoughtful and just all around good. Couldn't blog this morning as I had to singlehandedly get all four kids ready for church - in the midst of which I had to go save my Hubby who had run out of gas on his way to work. So I have finally sat down to blog, and the idea is GONE. No idea of the general idea I was following or anything - just vague traces of the feeling that it was going to be wonderful. Now I am sitting here wondering if it was like those ideas you get when you are drunk - you know, the ones that seem SO smart and amazing and change-the-world, but that you just can't quite remember the next day and actually were completely idiotic and made no sense to begin with! Sigh.

Well, as long as I am here I suppose that I could check in with my progress. Geez. It seems so lackluster and the complete opposite of changing-the-world, that I almost wonder what the point is. Well, I just completed week 3 of my new plan and I have to say that it is going swimmingly. The first two weeks were gangbusters - I found that abstaining from things wasn't too hard and when I had those things on my allotted time I didn't feel guilty. It has felt so good to stay on track with it. I finally got to weigh myself, and I was 181. That is about 2 pounds less than usual, which is great. Afterwards, Hubby asked if I had weighed myself yet (which I could tell he was asking so that he could re-hide the scale.)

We had a disagreement discussion about his taking my scale away again, and I talked him into letting me have it once every two weeks to weigh in. Well, he agreed to it but wasn't happy, and so he left it out instead as though to let me know that he was saying "forget it, you can keep it then if you want it" (in a snotty tone, not a nice one.) After two days of having it, I was begging him to take it back and not give it to me again for a long while - I could actually see in those two days what constant access to the freaking ridiculous, unreliable, unnecessary number was doing to me. I was bargaining with myself over whether or not to work out, what I could eat, etc, all based on the number that was popping up. Not to mention that seeing it go even marginally up was making me crazy. Week 3 was not nearly so much under my control as the other two weeks, and I blame it mainly on my access to my scale. I tell you, it was a huge break through for me.

So now I am on a no-scale diet, at least for a few weeks. Who was I kidding? I can tell whether I am doing things right, and whether my body is changing, without that stupid number. And I am proudly back to living with the rules I set for myself so that I can get myself happy and under control. Yay me.

This week I am going to go check out this small workout place about 2 miles from my house called Anytime Fitness. They are offering a free summer deal when you sign up, meaning no dues until September. I think it may be the shot in the arm that my workouts need.

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering if my eldest daughter succeeded in getting me to work out a couple of weeks ago - she did. There was no way I could not work out when she was being so positive and happy and really trying to help me. I can turn down flat someone who is trying to push me into it by guilt, or by aggressive behavior, but how could I disappoint someone who was trying to succeed at doing what I had asked her? She is a very powerful weapon that someone could use against me - I hope she doesn't fall into the wrong hands.