Hold Up…Weight
One painfully noticeable effect of alcohol is weight gain…but not just overall weight gain. I’m talking “I used to have an athletic build and now I look seven months pregnant” kind of weight gain. On my body, it looks kind of like a “ponch” that a 60-year old man would have – fairly flat on the ribs, rounds out in the middle and then a little baby fupa that I never wanted. So here I am, the heaviest I’ve ever been, asking myself how the hell I got here. How did I let it get this bad? I’ll tell you how. I didn’t care about going to the gym because there seemed to be no point. I stopped looking in the mirror. Anytime my pants got a little snug, I’d call it body positivity and go up another size. I’m not bashing body positivity if that works for some, but for me, there’s comes a point where that can be toxic positivity. The toughest thing for me to accept is that I don’t look and FEEL the way I know I can.
I mentioned in my week one reflection that the first week of Sober October typically results in binge snacking (aka having snacks for dinner), which is really just swapping one vice for another, am I right? The problem is, this has been another long-standing vice that I’ve never paid attention to. I’m more of a savory-over-sweet gal, so I go for the chips. Almost any chip, but the saltier the better. I’ll go to Trader Joe’s 100% confident in swapping the chips for cucumbers or cauliflower - pretty bomb on occasion, not gonna lie - but inevitably, I end up grabbing the TJ’s corn dippers (my favorite) with cauliflower jalapeno dip. I then proceed to go home and make that my dinner and don’t stop until my stomach hurts.
When I cut out alcohol, I do get back into working out more regularly, whether that’s walking the canal behind my house, doing Peloton app workouts in my living room (least fave, if I’m being honest) or going to the gym and trying to remember what the heck I’m doing when it’s not a group fitness class. The second week of Sober October this year I exercised five our of seven days. A couple days were just walking, which I’ve really come to enjoy, and others I surprised myself by stepping into the gym, ignoring the anxiety of being an out-of-shape person surrounded by the fittest people (all in my head, I know). I was proud of week two me…then I decided to allow myself a cheat weekend and have a few (several) drinks and that proud, anxiety-ignoring person hibernated for a couple days. That was how I started week three…not my best. I’d planned to go for a sunrise walk with a couple friends mid-week, which meant getting up early enough to physically be somewhere by 5:30am - it was still dark out. My biggest motivator that morning was not bailing last-minute…and the coffee shop we’d planned to make our turnaround point. I ended up really enjoying the walk, the conversation and the beautiful sunrise pics I got along the way. I’m already looking forward to next week’s sunrise stroll.
This brings us to motivation vs. discipline – I’m aware that motivation can be fluid, and that it’s discipline that will really get you where you want to be on your health & fitness journey. Logically, I know these things. But emotion, especially when it comes to emotional eating, is not logical. Instead, emotions feed off of each other like fire and gasoline. I can have every intention of going to the gym and then a swift breeze of anxiety rolls in and there goes my motivation. So I try to convince myself my body, shape and size, is normal (quite possibly the most subjective word in the English language) and tell myself I’m embracing it. The “love yourself the way you are” is ever-present, but it’s pretty heavily focused on body shape/size, rather than how you feel about who you are.
I believe that health and fitness is all-encompassing, so why do I try to compartmentalize it? Perhaps to make it easier to emotionally digest…one part physical shape and size, one part actual physical health (i.e. blood sugar, cholesterol, body fat – things you are forced to monitor when you’re a gal my age) and one part mental health and fitness. That last one is a doozy, let me tell ya. The physical and the mental go hand in hand, so why is the discipline part so damn hard?! I don’t know about you, but historically I’ve relied so fervently on motivation to get me going, keep me working out consistently and keep me from giving in to something that would only be temporarily satisfying (aka snacks and booze). So where can I get me some discipline - do they sell that on Amazon?! UGH…add this to the list of things I am still learning about myself as I go.
If you read the title of this post to the tune of Dr. Dre’s song The Next Episode, we can be friends…and if it didn’t click until you saw the song reference just now, no one will ever know ;)
