determination

It’s gone. I asked Bradley to hide it somewhere since I seemed scale obsessed and I was allowing it to control my determination blah blah blah… I came home Monday afternoon to find it still exposed, out in a useful area. I looked furtively around, tried to walk by, but instead, like a junkie, took one final look around, quickly shed my clothes and hopped on to take measurement. Of course it was up from the morning and of course I was a giant grimace. I went to put away my clothes and get sweats on to find my scale gone. In my absence, she was hidden away for real. So, I’m off the scale. And this is significant enough to note in writing it’s effect on me. Just sayin…

The hard part is realizing what a motivator stepping on that silly thing was! Seeing that number dipping and rising is enough to propel me forward sometimes. Other times, not so much. I guess it’s finding the balance. The balance, I’m sure, is not getting on the scale in the morning, after a shower, after work, before bed, the middle of the night – basically anytime I’m in my bathroom.

I haven’t lost weight in ages. I’m trying to just trust that a clean diet and lots of exercise will take me in the right direction. I don’t know how how true it is, but my mom always says ‘muscle weighs more than fat.’ I hope it’s water retention and a little muscle mass. But I know it takes a long time to build muscle so… It’s fat or water mostly. Sigh.

I’ll admit that I’ve been feeling my determination oozing out of every pore this week. My determination is running low, I’m looking for motivation, and like yin and yang, it seems to be very important to allow both to play their role; determination takes over when motivation runs low and vice versa.

Not having a scale has forced me to seek motivation elsewhere.
*In the soreness of my muscles.
*Window shopping my spring and summer wardrobes in smaller sizes.
*Running and training for the Color Me Rad 5k.
*Writing about weightloss.
*In talking about exercise and weightloss. Ad nauseum.
*In the compliments from my friends and coworkers (I hate/love compliments so am awkward as ass receiving them but glow for hours after receiving one- I’m a total praise-junkie)
*When my friend (who runs half marathons y’all) tells me that she’s so proud of me and my training- that she thinks I’m a runner now! (I cried real tears privately after that one. I’m such a cheeze.)
*In the stories all over the Internet.
*And in the stories I know:

That look on my dad’s face when my mom came home with her stack perm in the 1980’s. We all stopped short that night and SAW my beautiful mother and what she done clearly for the first time. She worked for ages on Weight Watchers and was trim and tiny. My dad got the camera out that night and took several photos of my mom. Every time I see those photos in the scrapbook, I see the power and determination on her face. I can also see, quite plainly, that she felt smoking hot that night. It was true. She looked amazing.
***
A parent friend of mine from my school with a similar build to me melted away one spring, revealing this tall, striking amazon woman (we share an adoration for Wonder Woman so I know she will hear that as a compliment). She looked amazing. She felt amazing. She wore heels and stood so tall against the sky. I wanted to join her superhero squad so I decided to follow her footsteps. If she could do it then I certainly could too.
***
One of my oldest friends dropped ten pounds and another ten and another and kept going for a year before she met her husband. She turned into this powerful motivational speaker of sorts. She modeled this healthy lifestyle as she fought her way down the scale, passing me by and leaving me in the dust. To this day she is still shaking it at Zumba and grooving with water aerobics. She still is heavy, but ever determined, thus incredibly inspiring to me.
***
My husband picked up running a few years ago using the Couch to 5k app. He regularly ran miles upon miles for a few years before he built our house. He fell out of the habit but is getting back to it. His willingness to jump into anything physical is pretty amazing to me. And to go from not being an athlete at all, really, to being able to run miles at a go showed me how fitness is accessible to anyone.
***
There are more stories. My brother lost weight and ran races. Friends upon friends have lost weight successfully. My mom revisited her lower weight recently and became tiny. The battle still wages for her, but she still fights. Blogs and websites and Facebook and… It all comes together nicely to motivate me. Hopefully as I continue to read and explore, my determination will become stronger again. I’m resolute, just a little thinner on determination. But I’m determined to get my determination back. Ha!