Do You Feel The Burn?

Recently, I have decided to start to get in shape and lose some weight. I am proud of my curves, but in the past couple years, ever since I stopped having a free membership to my college gym, my body has definitely suffered a bit.  The problem is that I have never before in my life been able to lose weight on purpose. I stayed the same weight pretty much all through high school. Then, when I came to college, I lost 8 pounds my freshman year because the campus was so huge that I walked a ton, and I didn’t really like the dining hall food, so I didn’t eat much of it. But then, my sophomore year, when I lived right next to the gym and actually tried to lose more weight, it didn’t happen.

Well now I am determined once again, and I hope it will go differently this time. First of all, I’m doing it with other people. Some coworkers set up a little contest to motivate each other. Second, I am actually trying to drastically change my diet, instead of just exercising a few times a week and eating whatever I want. Now I’ve only been doing this for a week, so we’ll see how it goes. But even with my renewed determination, there are some very annoying and frustrating parts to trying to lose weight that I want to share with you.

1. Real results take time: we live in a society that expects instant gratification, and it is hard to overcome that desire. I’ve been working really hard this week, and yet the numbers on the scale have only changed a minute amount. Now I know that any progress is good, but man would it feel good to have jumped down like  5 pounds instead of 1 1/2.

2. Super Fit People Are Obnoxious: To make working out easier on myself, I decided to buy a workout DVD that I can do in my home, so that there is no excuse not to work out. I bought a Jillian Michaels DVD. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this name, she was a trainer on The Biggest Loser reality show, and was known for being the tough, scary one. She goes on and on in the dvd about how we shouldn’t cheat on the moves, because it makes you a wimp, and she even tells one of the girls working with her “I’m going to end you”. But what I find annoying is that while she’s saying all of these things, she is standing and looking at the camera–not doing the workout at all. I’m sitting in my living room, doing my best to complete this insane workout that has a lot of moves that I’m not even strong enough to do, and she has the audacity to sit there nice and comfy and complain about us being lazy! I’m sorry Miss ‘already perfectly sculpted’ Jillian, that according to you anyone who cannot already do one leg plank jumps is not trying hard enough.

3. Eating Healthy Sucks:  I do care about what I put into my body. And there are plenty of healthy foods that I like to eat. Fresh spinach is so yummy, and I’ve always preferred whole grains and leaner meats like chicken. However, I found that if you really want to be serious about losing weight, you can’t just eat more vegetables, and stop buying potato chips. You have to drastically reduce your portion sizes from what you’re used to. And that is what sucks. It is very hard to reverse years of gluttonous american thinking about how much food actually constitutes a meal. I measured out what a correct serving size of cereal for my breakfast actually is, and it was puny! Every time I sit down to have a 300-400 calorie meal I have to seriously exercise my willpower to not wolf down twice as many crackers as I’m supposed to. I feel so restricted, and I hate that. I want to be able to eat as much as I want. Now I know that if I train my body to eat correct portion sizes than eventually my feeling of needing more food should stop, but in the interim it sucks. A lot.

So wish my luck on the journey! I’m just hoping these annoyances don’t overcome me in the long run.