No secrets

Maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t written much about getting fit and healthy recently. Well, I’m still trying to sort myself out after all of these years. At the end of October, it will be five years since I decided to go on a starvation diet and strap myself to a treadmill until I lost forty pounds. If you remember my story from then, you know I was talked out of the “failure diet and full treadmill treatment”. In the past five years I have learned extreme workouts and deprivation diets aren’t the answer to being fit and healthy. Five years ago, I met a couple who were concerned about my extreme approach to getting healthy. Thanks to Jennifer and Paul, I am on a lifelong journey instead of shortterm, cyclical blitzes. I am changing the way I live. I’m loving the way I’ve changed.

For those of you who have stopped me on the street to say “looking good”, I thank you from the bottom of my healthy heart. It hasn’t been about good luck, as some have suggested. I’m not harbouring a secret method for weight loss and fitness. And for those of you who’ve said, “you must be done with the gym by now” I wonder if you understand the meaning of a lifelong commitment. I am committed to a life of eating right, working out and eliminating stress. This is a big change for me. I am a person who skated on thin ice, with regard to my health, for most of my adult life. Whatever didn’t kill me immediately, was okay in my estimation. In 2009, LOML and I became involved with the Ride for Heart, raising funds for heart health programs, research and advocacy. LOML is a heart surgery survivor. It only took one look from his surgeon to convince me we needed to stop acting like idiots, and we vowed to get healthy. For LOML, it meant making better food choices. For me, it meant better food choices, stopping the yo-yo dieting and getting fit. Like I said, way back, I had a Body by Brownies.

Wind forward to 2015. I haven’t forsaken the brownies, but I no longer sweat chocolate when I work out. I don’t smell like hot chocolate during a cardio session. Brownies still feature in my life, but not every day and not three or four at a time. I am not afraid of food anymore. Food is fuel, and I know what fuels my workouts—and the rest of my day—best. I don’t make excuses to avoid a workout or eating right. Believe me, in the past I was a professional excuse maker. Maybe you recognize some of my best excuses. “I don’t have time to walk/run/cycle/workout or go to yoga/pilates/ martial arts.”

That, my friends, was my numero uno, top of the heap, classic excuse. I tossed that one around like rice at a wedding. Now, when I speak with people who want to get fit and eat right, I often hear the time whine. I used the time whine for years, and the only person I fooled was myself.

For me, it was a matter of putting myself first. A healthier me was better for everyone in my life. Next up was “I’ll do something about exercising when I lose weight.” As if that made any sense at all. Who the H E double chocolate brownies did I think would fall for that one? Third on my list was “I can’t afford to go to a gym.” Well, maybe I couldn’t afford a gym membership, but I could afford to buy my huge clothes at a shop that specialized in my size, I could afford the extra groceries, I could afford to supersize my meals, I could afford to have pizza delivered, I could afford to buy a $4 brownie to go with my $5 latte— and I always had enough money for popcorn and a drink at the theatre.

Getting fit and healthy doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does involve being honest with yourself. Honestly, the only food I fear is Lays Plain Potato Chips. Kryptonite I tell you, that’s what they are.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca