My Fat Suit

June 23, 2011

I once weighed 300 lbs.  Well, 301 to be exact…but what’s a pound once you’ve hit 3 bills?  Not proud of it…I ate my way to every freakin’ ounce of it.  Not going to blame it on a thyroid problem, slow metabolism or say I was “big boned” (those would have to be dinosaur bones!!!) I just wouldn’t put the fork down.

Like the hair?  I used to think that if my hair was big enough it would take the focus away from how wide my hips were…like it would all be proportionate??  Teased up so big I could carry my wallet and car keys up in it!  And look at those chubby cheeks… I think I look like Gweneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal when she was wearing the fat suit…only problem, I couldn’t take mine off like she could when the director said “Cut”.

So how did I allow myself to get to that size?  Well, like Mark Twain said, Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…and we all know that being overweight isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem.  Don’t know if I’ll ever find out what “the problem” really is…probably would take the budget of a small country in psychiatric bills to figure it out.  I had Gastric Bypass surgery in 2001…and lost 135 lbs.  I would sneeze and lose 10 lbs!  Of course, go from regularly eating a medium pizza all by yourself to barely being able to eat one piece…and that will happen! But, I didn’t change the how’s and why’s of eating and gained about half of it back over the next 8 years.  The Doctor operated on my stomach not my head…should have been the other way around!

Then, turning 40 was looming large on the horizon.  I wasn’t freaking out about getting older…Hey, I still act like I’m 10…I just kept wondering to myself, do I really want to spend the second half of my life like I have the first half?  I literally woke up one morning and said “ENOUGH!” I’m too much of a control freak to let this warped relationship with food win.  I decided to completely turn my life around…it’s amazing…this eating right and exercise shit really works!!  I’ve seen how unhealthy and unfit I can be…now I’m going to the opposite end of the spectrum and find out how healthy and fit I can be.  So on to the running….

I’m now running regularly outside.  I have mapped out a course in my neighborhood which is exactly 3.1 miles…if I want to run a 5k by the end of summer, I better practice on 5k right??!!  Not running the full distance yet…at times it’s run a minute, walk a minute.  Lungs are being so stubborn!!  I had to stop for a second this morning after making my way up a small incline (fine, go ahead, laugh) when the driver of a CCTA bus stopped and asked me if I needed a ride… “No,” I said in between gulps of air, “I’m…in…training…”  He shook his head in bewilderment and drove away…leaving me in a cloud of bus exhaust.  Thanks a lot Ralph Kramden.  I also think I need to invest in a  Runner’s Belt so I can haul some water with me…getting a little parched on my run.  It would be embarrassing if I were caught kneeling on someone’s lawn, mouth positioned over an automatic sprinkler head waiting for it to come on….