It seems like since my last birthday the struggle has been more real than ever to be happy with myself. I'm daily trying to convince myself that losing weight should not be this hard. I have tried the fitness pal app on my phone and it seemed to work a little, but to be honest I think that this electronic beast expected so much from me and no matter what I tried to do to please her - well it just wasn't possible. A good friend of mine did it and he is a perfect example of what one should achieve by doing it. I tried working out with some of my girlfriends and if it wasn't for the fact that deep down I know they love me I would've sworn they were trying to kill me. I even told myself every night that my day wouldn't come to a successful ending unless I went to bed feeling like I had just channeled Jillian Michaels - but that was a constant argument between the proposed skinny me sitting on one shoulder and the real me sitting on the other. I tried to get into the walking thing - to the point of walking 6 miles in 20 degree weather, gasping for breath before my lungs froze and crumbled inside me. I even (when no one was looking of course - because my daughter has repeatedly told me I shouldn't do it in public) have tried...or at least tried to run on some occasions. But to be perfectly honest I think that it should probably be considered a hazard to my well being, because the faster I tried to run the more I felt as if my inner thighs were going to spontaneously combust from all the friction between them. At the end of each futile attempt to gain a smoking hot body I have almost resigned to the fact that I still haven't found what is going to work for me.
I cannot fathom why to some people that losing weight is so easy....or that it looks like that anyway. I have this one friend of mine that has lost an amazing amount of weight and looks fabulous! I asked her to tell me her secret, as it was obvious that nothing else was getting the job done for me. She tells me to limit myself to 30 carbs a day - no bread, no potatoes, no sweets and carbonated beverage products. Well it's quite obvious that I have not achieved this larger version of me by skipping the bread and potato part of the side dishes on the menu; in fact I have a rather close relationship with those two and am having a harder time letting them go than my favorite pair of shoes that I wore until a hole was worn through them. It's not like those two can't survive without ME - it's more of a me not surviving without THEM kind of dilemma. It's giving separation anxiety a whole new meaning. BUT once again I'm going to put forth the effort.
I was sitting looking at a magazine tonight with Heidi Klum on the front, taunting that not so very nice part of me that rarely comes out, as she was plastered all over the cover with her swimsuit that was more skimpy than a mosquito net. The fact that she could make a blind man drool is not so much the dagger through my ego as the fact that she is older than I am and looks like she has the body of me when I was 20.
I truly believe that deep inside of me is a much skinnier me that is dying to escape the part of me that surrounds her. I know beyond any doubt that there IS a way to devise an escape plan for that skinny me, but for the life of me I can't figure out what the plan is.
I have been told more times than I can count that after about the age of 35 that it grows increasingly harder to lose weight and I would believe that analogy is somewhat true if it wasn't for the fact that my Mom has had no problem doing it and she is...well let's say a few (not a lot) of years older than me and by the way she looks amazing!
I was flipping through a magazine on the way home from a business trip the other day and they had this section on Hollywood moms who had no signs of having a baby 2, 5 or 6 months ago. Are you kidding? What did they do give birth to? A guppy??? My youngest child is almost 15 and I am STILL carrying my "baby fat" from him. Heck if the truth me known, I'm sure that my 24 year can still take some of the blame for leaving her part of that baby fat behind too.
I can make excuses all day long for not being the person that I am happy with. I can look down and pretend that I don't look THAT bad - but in actuality that person that I wonder who she is as I walk towards a glass door and see my reflection is the person that I really am. I know that one day I will finally wake up and say "okay - enough is enough" and I'll eventually find that me that is long lost and submerged under the me that I don't like very much.
I think that finally that day will come when I walk past the bikini section and wish for the last time that I can make one of those cute little numbers look good and I will finally reach that "I can really do this" stage of my life. Now granted I am more quickly than I would hope approaching 50 - but if I have it my way I will be my own version of Heidi Klum when I look in the mirror - before I reach that milestone in my life.
Until then I guess I will give the no bread and potatoes theory a try, but I'll be honest with you I'm not going to be a happy camper while I'm doing it.
