Fashionably Fit

Sometimes I think about what would happen if I could travel back in time and introduce myself to my 300-pound self.

I know that thinking about yourself in the third person like that is really narcissistic and all I can say is that losing 100 pounds will do that to you.

But I think about what my 300-pound self would think. She’d see that going blonde was a really great idea and probably not waste a year thinking about it. She’d also be kinda disappointed to learn that even more than 100 pounds lighter, her future self is still kinda chunky, not rail thin like she’d have thought. I know she’d be thrilled to learn that not only will she eventually get married, she won’t be a fat bride.

I know what I would tell my old self. I would tell her that watching her body transform through a 100-plus-pound weight loss will be more fascinating and satisfying than she could ever imagine. There’s a lot of stuff I wouldn’t even bother with because she’ll just have to figure it out as she goes, but there are two things I would get down on my knees and beg of her.

The first is simple: Start strength training from the very beginning. Pick up some dumbbells the first time you ever go to a gym. It will make a huge difference, and she shouldn’t have to wait several years to figure that out.

The second is a little bit more complicated: Don’t ever start running. And I mean it.

That might sound a bit odd coming from someone who was just bragging up her first half marathon two months ago. But that runner’s high wore off pretty quick, and I was left with a medal and 10 or 15 extra pounds and wondering why in the hell I ever thought that was a good idea.

Here’s the deal with running: It doesn’t make everyone ravenous or send them on a carb bender. It does have that effect on some people. I am one of those people. The weight I gain running is not muscle. It is fat, because running makes me  so hungry that I eat more than I burn.

I started running in 2009, and the last major change I saw in my body was in 2009. I don’t think those two facts are entirely unrelated. I did drop some weight between December 2010 and July 2011, when I stopped running and focused on strength training. It cost me more than $200 in wedding dress alterations. The seamstress’ gushing over how big my dress was was easily worth 10 times that much.

After the half marathon, I would pull out my medal and look at the sparkly details, glittering like fool’s gold, which for me, it actually was. Then I would look at the lumps and rolls of fat that had reappeared and couldn’t help but think of that 1990s safe-sex tagline that said something along the lines of “A few seconds of pleasure aren’t worth a lifetime of pain.”

And I know that my old self wouldn’t believe me. She’d think that running 13.1 miles sounds like an amazing accomplishment and not understand how her future self can think a 12:30 pace is an embarrassment when she couldn’t even complete one mile in less than 17 or 18 minutes when forced to “run the mile” in high school gym class.

But I would insist. I would assure her that fitting into a smaller size trumps crossing the finish line, it really does. Take up Pilates, I’d plead. You’ll love Spinning, I’d tell her — get up the nerve to go to a class sooner. Spend the money you would have spent on races on cute fitness clothes. You’ll look better in them if you don’t ever start running.

I’ve lost most of the weight I gained training for and running the half marathon. What I didn’t know when I set out to do it is that my life would have been 100 percent complete without the experience. I also know that I’d have always wondered about it if I’d never done it.

That’s why my current and former selves need to meet. They could learn a lot from each other.

 

 

Posted January 11th, 2012 under Weight loss. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.