Reasons To Lose Weight

Tomorrow is the big day - the start of my internship, the start of my commuting efforts and weight-loss journey, the end of my free time! I'm nervous and excited and generally feeling all those mixed emotions that come with starting something new. I really am nervous about biking to school, even if I've done it before and I know the route and I know how long it's going to take. It's completely different now - I'll be wearing counselling pants, for one thing, and now that I've publicized my efforts and my general route there's the daunting possibility that someone might actually LOOK at me while I'm biking. DON'T DO THAT!!! It's nerve-racking enough as it is, being overweight and moving slowly and panting hard and not fully knowing how to ride on the road properly (like, how do you make a left turn when you've been riding in the curb lane the whole time??). So the thought of calling attention to myself, aside from being an obvious and total amateur on the bike, is especially unnerving.

Despite all my misgivings, I believe it'll be well worth the effort. I'll be saving gas money, saving the environment (well, maybe if I breathed in carbon dioxide and breathed out oxygen I'd be SAVING the environment, but as it is I guess I'll just be contributing less to its demise), and contributing to my weight-loss efforts. Those are all very good and valid reasons to bicycle-commute, and that's why I intend to stick with it for the next twelve months at the very least.

I feel it necessary to expand on the weight-loss issue. As much as there are a number of awesome parts about being overweight that I'm going to miss, there are also myriad reasons why I do want to lose weight. They are as follows:

1. BETTER SLEEP. I'm a single parent and full-time student, and if there's anything I need more of it's better sleep. At one point in my life I was able to sleep anywhere, anytime, but around the same time I started grad school, I also lost my ability to sleep well (hmm, interesting correlation . . .). For years now, I've often had difficulty falling asleep, been waking frequently in the night, and sometimes when I do awaken in the night I have a great deal of difficulty getting back to sleep. This has both contributed to my weight gain (the more tired I am, the more I seek out extra calories, especially in the guise of high-sugar foods) and been caused by my excess weight (the more sugar I eat during the day, the worse I sleep at night) - a vicious sweet, sweet, cycle. There's also ample evidence to suggest that obese people disproportionately suffer from sleep apnea, which causes sleep difficulties and daytime exhaustion. I'm looking forward to breaking that cycle. When I exercise, I tend also to eat better, and it also means I tire myself out during the day. This leads to better sleep, which leads to less excuses for avoiding exercise and better eating, and the cycle continues. The best part of this cycle, in my humble opinion, is the sleeping part. Mmm, I can't wait!

2. RECOGNIZING MYSELF AGAIN. I've always had weight issues, so even the image of myself in my mind's eye includes a little chub. Even then, I am continually surprised every time I see myself in the mirror because what I see reflected back at me does not match the picture of myself I have in my head. I've steadily been gaining weight over the past few years, but around the 60-lbs-overweight mark I really started to see a difference in not just my body shape (which changes continually, so I don't really notice it that much), but in the structure of my face. My pretty blue eyes shrink against the growing mass of my face, my jaw line disappears, my cheeks lose their apples and become simultaneously inflated and shapeless. The features that I've long identified with myself - my smiling eyes, my rosy cheeks, the tapering of my face towards my chin - all of it is altered or completely gone. I don't see myself anymore, I see someone I don't recognize, and that's terrifying. I was relatively fine with my weight gain until that point - but now, the gloves are off. If I don't know myself anymore, it's ON!

3. MY DAUGHTER. A lot of eating habits are learned in the home, passed on from one generation to the next. Recently, my daughter and I were eating a meal and when I finished, I picked up my plate to lick it clean. Yes, I am an adult, and I do lick my plate clean (come on, it's part of the clean-up process!! Alright, alright, I know, it's a shameful admission). A few moments later, I looked over at my daughter to see she had picked up her plate to lick it clean, but it still had food on it, so she successfully covered herself entirely with pasta. Aside from how adorably cute that was, I felt the familiar pangs of guilt in my core as I watched her mimic my terrible eating habits. What am I teaching her? I want to lose weight and develop a healthier relationship with food - none of this binging and withdrawing that I've been doing my whole life, this feeling guilt and shame and comfort all somehow related to food. I want her to enjoy eating, but not use it to fill any voids in her life. I want to teach her to love her body. I want to show her what a healthy, happy woman looks like. And I can't do that the way I am now.

4. SAVING MONEY. I've made the argument before that it's cheaper to eat poorly than eat well - just look at the price difference between eating at McDonald's and eating at some high-quality vegetarian restaurant. It's a whole different world. However, I must admit, overall it costs A LOT to maintain a large figure. I usually stock my fridge with plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains - I know how to eat well and I usually set myself up to be able to do so every time I go shopping. However, I ALSO buy total crap on top of it. Going for a TimBits and Iced Cap run at Tim Horton's, grabbing a slurpee with the requisite gummi candies on the side, even being lazy and ordering Chinese food made with more cooking oil than I would ever make a home-cooked meal with. Then I get home and eat too much of the good stuff that I bought! It's great having whole grains in the house, but not if you eat three slices of bread as a snack, or bake whole-wheat banana muffins and eat them in pairs topped with margarine. Getting back into an exercise routine, going back to work so I have a schedule again, and being out of the house more will be a huge boon to the ol' savings account (or, more accurately, the debt repayment schedule). That means less boredom-eating, more packing lunches (which inherently limits how much I can eat), and more cooking for myself (because I won't have time to order food and then go pick it up, or wait for it to be delivered). With a highly regimented life, I find it infinitely easier to eat better, eat less, and spend a whole lot less money.

5. BRINGING SEXY BACK. Sorry, I had to say it. I'm lovin' it. Aside from not recognizing myself, I've also become remarkably self-conscious. If you knew me, you would know that being self-conscious is not the kind of person I am. I'm loud and outgoing and playful and silly, none of which comes across in the first impression I project. I come off as self-conscious, uncomfortable in my own skin, and maybe even a bit angry (to look at myself in pictures I see a definite "don't look at me" kind of vibe being projected, which is no doubt a defensive thing that comes out of fear of being rejected or made fun of). Who IS that?? Surely not me! I'm fun and flirty and uninhibited - or at least that's how I used to be. I don't see myself that way anymore, and as much as I still have the kick-ass personality I've always had, I don't look the part, which makes me not act the part when meeting new people. I'm looking forward to bringing sexy back - reuniting with my fun, flirty, life-of-the-party self that's been hiding under layers of negative-me. I've gotta get out of those damn layers! I need to re-reveal the positive-me again! I'm tired of just the people who know me knowing I'm a good person. I want even strangers to be able to see that about me as well. And that means getting back to being recognizable to myself. More self-confident. Less fearful. More sexy back.