It’s rant time people! If you haven’t picked up in some of my posts yet, I’m fighting the Battle of the Bulge. In a nutshell, when I was younger I ate well and was active, and maintained a healthy waistline and suffered no asthma. Fast forward to college – making my own money, eating at fast food joints in between work and school, or on the way to both. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about – breakfast: sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit with a plain toasted bagel and sausage with a hashbrown with a chocolate chip muffin with a XL hot chocolate. Lunch: 2 Rodeo cheeseburgers (at Burger King – they’re awesome!) with a small onion ring with a slice of cheesecake with a large diet soda (ha ha – I know! As if that was gonna help!) Dinner was either Mighty Taco or some other similar fast-food joint, or I would just repeat lunch with a few changes. Now, at this point you might be wondering why my parents never cooked meals and I never ate at home. At the risk of making excuses, going to college and working is a bitch, and if you haven’t got the mindset going into it that you’re going to be healthy, it’s hard. All of this led to a rapidly increasing waistline and lifestyle-induced asthma. I ignored it for awhile, then hopped on MyFitnessPal, thinking I would count calories. I jacked around with that for a few years, and then convinced my best friend to join me so we could be “diet partners”. He lost 63 pounds. Now, before anyone starts the asinine “he’s a guy, it takes less” argument…shut it. He got stubborn, made the necessary changes, and lost the weight. I didn’t. I kept playing games – “if I over eat tonight, I can just workout more tomorrow!”
Recently, I bugged said best friend for how he lost weight. (Or, if I’m going to continue to be honest, I’ve been asking small questions here and there the whole time.) As close as I can remember, here is how he did it:
1. Suck it up. Slathering your pizza in blue cheese? Stop it. Supersize the food? Never. Fast food? Not on your life.
2. No soda for you! Seriously. Soda is bad for you because it’s not water or tea. The closer you are to natural, the better it is for you.
3. Haul ass. During his transformation, he did a shit-ton of cardio and is now incorporating weights. Why? Your body needs to burn off the fat.
4. Get to know protein. Your body needs it to make muscle tissue. You need muscle tissue to increase your fat-burning potential.
5. Hydrate. Apparently your body doesn’t differentiate between hunger and thirst most of the time. Hungry? Chug water or tea and see where it takes you. Still hungry? You might want to eat.
6. One _____ at a time. This one changes based on what I’m bitching about. Exercise? One minute/mile/machine/muscle group at a time. Botched my last meal? One plate at a time. Botched my whole day? One day at a time.
7. Changes and habits. Not shortcuts. Said friend always says that I can’t just do the stuff mentioned above until it works, and then go back to the way I was. He always tells me that I’ve gotta be in it for the long haul.
8. Stop hating yourself. If you workout/eat right because you hate yourself, it’s not going to make a permanent change. (He also says that the time I spend bitching about myself or my situation could be energy used to make good choices. See, J, I do listen!)
9. Stop comparing myself to other people. My fitness journey won’t be the same as anyone else. In other words, put my head down and horse blinders on, and concentrate on what I need to do for myself. If I look up, do it for inspiration, advice, and guidance. Not to hate on myself for not doing better.
With all of this great advice, you wouldn’t think that I’d still be fighting the weight. But I am. And I think it comes down to the fact that I’m just not committing. I give up easily because it’s too hard, or I want my shit-ton of M&Ms, or whatever the reason is at the time. Anyways, this post is me starting over (again). But this time for the last time.
(And just as a side note – typing in “fatass” on google was TERRIFYING. The things that came up that I had to sift through while looking for the picture I used…I may never sleep again.)
