Falling off the weight-loss wagon

Posted On September 8, 2020

It was a dark and stormy night…and our protagonist (that’s me) got up to let out her dogs, who apparently didn’t care that it was raining and blowing outside and still insisted they had to go to the bathroom. Now our protagonist is up and at ’em and it’s only 2:18 a.m. [Insert sigh here.] The protagonist realizes she will likely need more coffee than usual this Monday-that’s-luckily-a-Tuesday.

Okay, switching back to first person narrative now. Whew! Too hard to keep up that referring to myself in the third person thing.

So why don’t we talk about something that’s not hard for me to do–gain weight.

We could blame it on COVID. It’s an easy scapegoat right now. We could blame it on the fact that I’m 48 and have thyroid disease and am currently taking three different medications for anxiety and depression. However, my thyroid disease is managed pretty well and none of my medications are supposed to really make me gain weight.

Here’s the real problem, folks: I hate to exercise, and I love to eat.

That’s it. Right there. Oh and top that off with the fact that my willpower is currently at its lowest it’s been in a long time, and I’ve set myself up for gaining back all that weight that I lost pre-COVID.

And I’m angry at myself, but not angry enough to seriously change my lifestyle. Complaining is easier than counting calories.

I had an inkling it was happening–the weight was sneaking back on. And then suddenly my pants wouldn’t button and I swore every photo of myself was taken from that angle that makes you look fat–even when it wasn’t.

I finally mustered up the courage to step back on the scale. It had been MONTHS. And my suspicions were confirmed in a big 20 pounds kind of way.

When I lost weight for the first and only time (on purpose) last year, I followed the Keto plan, which worked pretty well for me after getting past the first few weeks of carb withdrawal and a bout of the “Keto flu.” I can eat cheese, meat, those tasty Weight Watchers peanut butter cups…But now that I’ve had bread, chips, donuts and SUGAR again, I realize I really, really like them.

How in the world I can have a son who meal preps for his week by making chicken, rice, steak and vegetables AND works out religiously is beyond me. He obviously did not get those healthy genes from me.

How I can also have two sisters who exercise daily is a mystery. I, on the other hand, don’t just hate exercising, I LOATHE it. Go on, try to think of an exercise program I’d like to do and I’ll tell you why I hate it.

For one thing, I don’t want to leave my house to do it. That’s just not happening. And I definitely don’t want to pay to leave my house and go somewhere else to get sweaty and feel like I’m going to die. Believe me, I’ve tried it. I gave up before, and I’m older and more tired now.

Running? Nope. I actually think I MIGHT run if I had a treadmill. But conveniently we have no place for one and probably no money in the budget for one either, so it’s a moot point. I don’t like to run outside because I don’t like to be too cold or too hot, and running outside in Iowa, I’m going to be one or the other. I also don’t like anyone see me try to run. If you can believe it, many moons ago, when my kids were all little, I trained for two half-marathons and completed them. I’m actually pretty proud of that accomplishment, even though I didn’t run the whole thing and stopped to walk, and I completely hyperventilated after the Omaha Marathon which was super embarrassing, I trained for them and I stuck with it and I did it.

Now I’m old and lazy.

The trick with the training was I had two friends I did it with, and they pushed me to get up early every morning with them and made it halfway fun (as fun as running can be). If left to my own devices, I will choose my warm bed over getting up to sweat every time.

Both of my sisters work out daily, and I’m insanely jealous of their commitment. I’ve tried going over to my middle sister’s house and doing Jillian Michaels tapes with her. All it did was make my feel like I was going to die and cuss out Jillian. Poor Jillian. She was just trying to help.

Part of my problem is that any type of aerobic activity makes me get overheated super quickly, which makes my face get super red and hot and makes me feel like death. I’m blaming it on my thyroid, but the truth is, it would probably get better if I would exercise regularly.

I don’t mind lifting weights, but I don’t have equipment or a place for it at home, and I’m not going to go do it in front of other people–especially if I have to pay to do it.

I’m full of excuses. Go ahead–try to help and tell me something else I could try. I’ll give you a reason why it’s not for me.

I get that once you start exercising, you start craving it and then want to do it more. I am just too lazy to try to get to that point, and apparently complaining is just plain easier and doesn’t make me overheat.

I know if I would just exercise, I could eat more of what I want because I’d actually be burning some of those calories off. I get that, I just don’t like it.

I would actually like to try yoga. I think it would be good for my mental health. But I don’t think it’s going to make me be able to eat carbs without gaining weight, so forget it. If I’m going to do something, it better make me skinny or at least toned.

The thought of even trying to find a pair of matching socks to work out in every morning makes me about hyperventilate. It’s bad enough I have to put together an outfit for work. But I have to put together an outfit to work out in too? That’s asking too much.

I’ve been trying to eat better, but it seems like every time I have a day where I am doing pretty well, I will sabotage myself later by inhaling two pieces of cheesecake. It’s like when my kids were little and I would see them eating dirt out of the plant from across the room. The closer I got to them, the more they would shove in their mouths. That was me with a huge blueberry muffin last week as my husband  came into my classroom after school. As he walked from my doorway to my desk, I just kept shoving it in faster and when he got to me I looked up, huge crumbs sticking to the sides of my mouth and in my lap, I said, “No one was supposed to see that.”

Last night I opened a bag of tortilla chips for no good reason and pretty soon my husband said, “Are you going to eat that whole bag?” No, HUSBAND, I only ate HALF the bag, thank you very much. This after I’d actually had a pretty healthy supper and right before I went to bed, which I’ve heard is the BEST time to eat half a bag of chips. See? Sabotage.

I wish I loved to eat right. I wish I loved to exercise. I wish I hadn’t given away all of my “fat pants” last year because “I’m never going to gain that weight back.”

I wish you all the success on your journey to good health and good weight management.

One more thing–calories don’t count if it’s between 3 and 4 a.m., right?

Photo credit: https://stocksnap.io/author/foodiegirl