The Long Walk Continues

I felt better both physically and mentally yesterday, but still didn't walk until after 11 PM. Not good. Anyway, Letterman was coming on, so I decided that would be my carrot, but it wasn't such a great carrot. Turns out he had one of those shows that meanders all over the place last night. Oh well. At least I walked and got to make that much coveted check mark in my journal.

I think those crazy little check marks are perhaps my real motivation, a childish desire to make an A+ 100 on my paper. Only this time, the benefits of being able to make that check mark every day are real and not childish at all.

When you have a long-term goal that requires steady devotion to a regimen in order to achieve the goal, but you don't really want to do the work; you have to figure out a way to trick yourself into compliance. My carrot is TV that I would not otherwise be watching. I know; it's lame, but it works.

I have been walking according to The 90 Day Fitness Walking Program for 19 days now; an all-time world champion record for me. Usually I last two to three days on an exercise program, tops. The last few days I have been resistant to the idea that I really needed to keep exercising; I was entertaining this fantasy where one day, I woke up and the pounds had all just magically melted away, no effort or caloric reduction required on my part. But not only am I slender when I wake up, I am buff, no exercise needed. Isn't that the secret dream of all overweight people, that somehow we don't have to do anything or change anything and yet, still miraculously get to our goal weight in record time? That we can still be sedentary or even slothful and the muscles will somehow spontaneously start to ripple?

Ha!

That's what I was going for.

But after 10 years of hearing that childhood taunt echo through my mind, (Fatty-Patty two-by-four, can't get through the bathroom door) I finally gave up and realized I had to do something. My body hadn't betrayed me; I had betrayed my body through years of stuffing whatever caught my eye into my mouth. And to make matters worse, convincing myself I could burn up the extra calories by slumping into my recliner or plopping down in front of my computer. As Scotty once said to Captain Kirk, "Ye canna change the laws of physics!" I thought I could, but no. If those pounds are going to drop off my double-wide and Virginia Hams, I'm going to have to beat them off.

As for those childhood taunts, the weird thing is that in my childhood, I was lean and taut as an arrow, not an ounce of fat anywhere. But my fellow students liked to hurl that insult at me because my first name is Pat. Note to parents; do not ever name your girl child Pat. First because it rhymes with almost everything; you can practically just go down the alphabet: Pat the Bat, Pat the Cat, Pat the Fat, Pat the Mat, Pat the Rat, and even, when I first reached adolescence, Pat the Flat. Ha! If only you could see me now, boys. Fat makes a great rack in more ways than one. Too bad it insisted on going all over my body, instead of only arranging itself fetchingly in the desired locations.

Anyway, my schoolmates, particularly the giggly girls, were given to goading the class bully into calling me Pat the Fat, just to see me lay him out on the asphalt and bloody his nose. I cannot recall how many hours I spent in Sister Agnes Cecile's office being lectured about going to hell. I cannot tell you how many stripes she put on the back of my calves with her willow switch (she was a sadistic Nazi who posed as a kind-hearted nun whilst taking parents of prospective students on tours of the school). Finally, the school worked it out by expelling the bully for some other sins; he'd been caught stealing lunch money and cheating on tests by terrorizing smaller boys into giving him the answers. And I morphed into a pseudo-angel.

Even though I was not fat back then when I was being taunted, I am fat now. For the record, 203 pounds on a 5-foot-six-inch frame. The pounds really started creeping on back in 1999 when I had emergency surgery for suspected ovarian cancer. Thank God, the diagnosis was wrong, but they stripped out all my female plumbing, and the pounds crept on. I weighed 145 pounds back then, and almost 207 pounds when I started this program, a gain of 62 pounds over the last eight years. By sticking to my program, I should lose a steady, safe, but I admit, not particularly impressive pound a week. My goal weight is 150 pounds, so I have 53 pounds and 53 weeks to go.

In a way, the one-pound-a-week thing makes me feel bad. On this week's episode of The Biggest Loser, two of the girls lost just a pound each and they burst into tears, as if they had somehow let down their teams. I saw how hard they worked, they turned down all the food temptations they were given, and exercised like maniacs, going full out for hours in the gym every day. By comparison, all I've done is given up all soda, I don't eat after 8 p.m. and I take a rather leisurely 3 miles per hour stroll on my treadmill 5 or 6 days a week, whatever the program stipulates. And I still lost a pound a week, too, without all the torture and public humiliation the BL contestants endure. Not that I don't love that show. The courage of those contestants is what inspired me to start exercising in the first place.

I guess my point is...if you have weight you want to lose, you have to put yourself first. You have to find an exercise program that works for you, you have to find some basic dietary modifications that you can stick with for the rest of your life, and you have to love yourself enough to make daily exercise a priority in your life, not just something you do if and when you have time for it...because we all know, with that approach you will NEVER have time for it.

And you deserve better.