Thursday, March 11, 2010

Week 9 - Look at Yourself Through Someone Else's Eyes

I am the epitome of "Do as I say, not as I do". I am great at dishing out advice that I know I should follow too, but I'm not always good at it. Granted - I do usually have reason. I can mostly give good advice because I've been there, done that. While it does also apply to me, I've also been following said advice for much longer and have been waiting much longer for a result that usually comes quicker to most people.

I am very frustrated with my weight loss progress in general. I'm not talking about since I started this weekly blog, I mean since I started losing weight at age 18. I see other people's pictures and see what they look like after 90 days on P90X, and quite frankly it pisses me off. Here's this person who has neglected their body and in 90 days they get abs? In 90 days?! I've been working out for over ten years AND have done 150 days of that same program and got no where close to the results they got. W.T.F.?!! I honestly don't get it. My argument is not that change isn't happening, my argument is that it is happening far too slowly when you look at what I'm doing to reach my goal and the changes I've made. I'm basically doing all I can: really clean eating, calorie consideration, double workouts, working out 6 days a week, supplements...I don't know what else I can do. Except wait. That seems to be the only thing left to do is just wait for something to start working. Why does it take me literally 3x as long to reach the same result as someone who has not put in nearly as much effort? I really don't know, but I am working on figuring it out.

One day this week, I was feeling particularly bummed. I looked at the 90 day transformation of a woman who started bigger than me and ended with defined, awesome abs. In 90 days. It was so upsetting to see it happen for someone else, and not me. I had put in the work, I didn't skip workouts, I followed the diet - why didn't my results look like that? Had I made any progress at all? Losing 1/2 a pant size in 150 days isn't good enough for me. I'm sorry, but that's just too much damn effort for 1/2 pant size. I went over to my friend's house to work on dance choreography. He has a wall of mirrors in his basement that we use to dance in front of. I've been to his house many, many times over the years. He told me I looked smaller, but I didn't so much believe him. I mean - he has no reason to lie, but still -he's my friend. Since he's smaller than me, I had commented once that if I could ever fit his skinny jeans - I'd know I was on my way. He told me I should try them on again and the last thing I wanted to do was squeeze myself into this skinny boy's jeans and feel like even more of a fat ass, but I relented. And wouldn't you know....

They fit. I was pleasantly surprised. We went downstairs to dance and I even looked skinnier in his mirror than I had last time I was there. It was probably just that little boost - a small thing like him saying he could tell I was smaller and me fitting into those jeans, and all of the sudden I looked skinnier to myself.

I try to tell people all the time that we ourselves are so used to seeing our own bodies, that it's tough to tell when change has happened. We see ourselves daily so the day-to-day change is undetectable thus making it hard to tell when bigger change has happened. I still don't love my progress pics. I still don't love that it's taken me two rounds of P90X and will take ???? rounds of Insanity for me to see the results I want. I really don't love that other people can do it with less time and less effort. But that is life. At least change is happening. At least I don't have thyroid issues, or a debilitating disease, or a disability. Yes, it sucks that this process is taking so freaking long - but it could certainly be worse.

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