Revelations

I have had a few revelations the last few days.  Ok, maybe they aren’t overly profound.  Maybe these revelations aren’t even new to me.  I very well could have written these thoughts and ideas as some great epiphany a few months or years back.  Who knows….but if I did already write this?  Oh well, here it is again.

I made a vow that I was going to hit the month of April hard.  I was going to get home from work and either walk or bike with Jason and if that didn’t happen I was going to go for a run by myself!  No ifs ands or buts.   April first rolled around and it didn’t happen.  Nor did it happen on April second. Hey, it was cold! (Excuse alert in case you hadn’t picked up on that already.)   I vowed and promised myself that since the weather was not going to be cold on Wednesday the third of April that I would be starting then!  No excuses this time.  Right?   Wednesday rolled around and…….

Holy cow, is that a boil on my butt?  (Stop laughing, this is a serious matter!)  Yes, there is a hard knot of pain on my buttock!  Ok, maybe it’s not a boil….it’s a follicle cyst…an ingrown hair….a really big pimple?  How in the world did I get a boil (or whatever it is) on my arse cheek?  I have no clue, but it hurts!  It rubs.  It isn’t comfortable.  And that my friends is why I didn’t run on Wednesday.  I stayed home and applied a hot compress (hot washcloth) to my keister.  (Being honest with myself, this was also an excuse!)

So here comes the first of my revelations.  I was still planning on running the WHOLE DRIVE HOME, even with the budding boil on my backside.   It wasn’t until I started walking into our apartment that I talked myself out of it.  But I had some interesting thoughts while I was driving and planning on going.  My personal mini me (the voice of discontent and unhealthy that screams in my head telling me to not exercise and to instead eat ice cream) was telling me that if I go running after work that there were going to be SOOOO many people outside and driving by. They would see my sorry boiled ass. (Well, not the boil, because I would be wearing pants….obviously.) They would see how out of shape I was.  They would see my shameful pace. They would see and I would be embarrassed.  You see, I almost have always run in the morning…before the world starts to move about too much.  I ran in more deserted areas…a National park in the morning before the tourists arrived, the C&O Canal out in the middle of the woods, back alleys and paths.  I always ran more privately, away from the eyes of others….especially when I was just starting out after a hiatus from running.  Where I live now is very open.  I would be running in a more populated area with no alleys to duck down to have some privacy while I struggle to breathe due to the affects of my attempt to run. (People would probably call 911 thinking I was in some kind of distress!)   Embarrassment is definitely a deterrent to doing the ‘right’ thing.

So that was my first revelation.

The second thing wasn’t anything profound and not really a revelation, just a realization.  I woke up on Thursday and weighed myself.  I was happy to see my weight down at a nice low number. (A low number being relative to the most recent numbers that I have been seeing on the scales!)   I was so happy!  I planned my lunch with thoughts of my planned dinner and calories in mind.  I was going to slay this weight.  I was so close to dropping into a new ‘decade’ of weight on the scales!  I was going to do it!   On the way to work I realized something.  I was totally focused on this ‘new decade’ and losing weight.  The lower number had made me dig in my heels to really do this.  I don’t know what had changed in my thinking, but I was tickled with the determination that the nice number on the scales had given me.  It was a total change from previous months.  In the past few months I’ve had some successful weigh ins where I saw lower numbers.  But without fail, almost every time I had a great number on the scale I would sabotage myself.  How?  I would be driving to work flying high on nice number I saw on the scale.  I would have my breakfast fruit sitting beside me ready to eat but then the thought of tater tots and breakfast muffins would enter my mind.  Instead of saying ‘The scales are going down, I need to keep it going down’ I had defaulted to saying “I did good, lets reward myself with some tater tots for breakfast.” (or a muffin, or a bag of chips at lunch or maybe even a full lunch at the cafeteria instead of my healthy lunch that I had packed.)  I was sabotaging myself by rewarding myself with food.  BAD BAD MaryFran.

Luckily something clicked yesterday morning and I got excited by the number and motivated!  I knew that breaking from my packed breakfast (and lunch) would only result in the numbers on the scale going back up and as soon as I realized that, I knew that I had indeed been sabotaging myself and that it had to stop!

Soooo…there you go.  My revelations from the first week of April.  Oh and for the record.  On Thursday I did NOT sabotage my eating by rewarding myself with food.  I DID also walk on my lunch break (both Wednesday and Thursday)Go me!  Still working on the after work activity...and still using hot compresses on my butt cheek!  And the scales…well they rewarded me.  I’m still not down into a new ‘decade’ but I’m close!