Mom the Motivation

Okay, so maybe people may not be looking at me. But perhaps the reason I think they are because I am ashamed on some level to be as big as I am.

I was never destined to have a petite figure, if you look at the women in my family it would be more understandable. I’m wanting to make this change so that I’m healthy. So that I don’t end up forever struggling with my weight like I watched my mother do all my life. There was times I saw her give up and stick her head into another bowl of buttered popcorn, and had hidden candy bars in her dresser drawers, and then there was times (unfortunately) toward the end of my mother’s life that I saw her actually changing her efforts. She made the changes too late. Doctors blame her obesity for her breast cancer that came back and spread through her shoulders and then to her brain.

I never got to have a heart to heart with her about being a young adult woman because I was only eighteen when she passed away. Did she gain all the weight after high school? Was it having the three kids and never being able to get the weight off? I’ll never really know. But all I know is I need to change MY habits now. I don’t have children now, so I want to be ahead of the game. If I have good habits when that time comes perhaps I won’t be drowning in regrets for the rest of my life. Maybe my fat won’t end up ending my life. Maybe, I might have a chance at living the right way.

I’m on Day 2 of going to the gym/ eating differently.

I’m increasing my time with Cardio 5 minutes at a time. For 5 consecutives I’ve been told by Connie (aka Personal Trainer/friend) to focus on Cardio this week. My given target heart rate was 165. I thought this would be easy.

Needless to say, I got to 17 minutes and felt as if I was going to pass out. And in my frenzy of trying to slow my heart down when it reached 162, it then flew up to 173…I then had to stop. I was unable to breathe, and I felt faint. My first thought was, Pathetic. I went to the locker room and laid on a bench to catch my breath as I began turning beat red, and I felt the blood rushing to the surface of my chest and face. I then decided I wasn’t done. So I did a few stretches, and headed back out to the intimating floor of already precondidtioned healthy individuals on their separate machines. I got on the treadmill, and I briskly walked on it for 15 minutes, I felt good. I didn’t give up! I completed my 35 minutes at the gym and I felt exhausted!

I’ve worked out before but I never felt like this, maybe this will work. I’m convinced that this is the way to put my body in check and it will be my bitch, ha!

So my energy runs low today, but I’m excited for the change that is necessary in my life.

“I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday.” ~Author Unknown~