Wellington on the Run

trying to make training for a 5k a little less painful

Weighty Issues

This has been brewing in my head for a while now, and I’ve just been hesitant to put it down in writing because, well, I’m just not all that daring when it comes to revealing how much I weigh.  

When I started this whole running/losing weight craziness, I got all excited and downloaded alltheapps to do with weight loss, counting calories, tracking exercise etc.  And then I realized it was App Overload.  But that’s not the issue.

My beginning weight, according to a scale we had inherited from a friend, was 226.5 lbs.  This was my heaviest (supposedly!) and I was feeling gross and unlovely.  You know how some girls can pull off that buxom curvy look and feel comfortable in their own skin and have no problem shopping?  My friend Cara is one of them - she’s gorgeous, stylish, and looks amazing in her clothes - just check out her popular blog and you’ll see what I mean.  There are a whole population of girls who are what the BMI charts would term ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’, and yet they’re still rocking their bodies and their own personal styles. 

Yeah, nah, I can’t pull that off.  My body does not accumulate fat in any kind of attractive way, and I like to wear clothes that aren’t that interesting, that blend in, and that are comfortable.  I cannot pull off stylish.  

I was almost not fitting into my current-size clothes and I was NOT going to buy up another size; clothes are freakin expensive here in NZ enough as it is, I didn’t need to waste money on a whole other wardrobe.

Now, I had been working out a little bit, and had started incorporating a little bit (read: I was up to 7 minutes) into my routine, but it was at most three times a week and not very intense.  And I was eating allthethings.  Hence, no weight loss.

At some point on Facebook I noticed that my friend Erica from college had lost heaps of weight and that she had written a blog about it.  I started reading it, and discovered that the Internets had started running in order to get fit and lose weight.  And that great part was that it was all kinds of people involved in this - from the overweight, obese, out of shape, to the in shape, recreational athletes - and they were ALL encouraged, supported and cheered on by everyone else.  It was a revelation that people were putting themselves out there to be scrutinized, and THEY WERE OK WITH IT.  Shit, they did it to hold themselves accountable to the exercise things they said they’d do, and IT WAS WORKING.  Eureka!  

Then when I was back in the States over Christmas I went “running” with my (smaller, trimmer) Seester, who had recently embraced this crazy fad, and she was actually liking it.  I was flabbergasted - a Hoey girl, running?!  We do not do that.  We grew up swimming cycling and marching and jazz running short distances, not running.  

The rest is all blogged here - the decision to start running, my husband’s support, then a triathlon and a couple of 5Ks, now cycling and the Taupo Cycle Challenge - and I have been slowly but steadily losing weight through it all.  As of last week, I was down to 213 lbs, a loss of about 13 lbs.  My goal for now is 198 - that will take me down from ‘obese’ to ‘overweight’ according to the BMI scale.  

BUT BUT BUT last weekend Jonno bought us a new scale, because he was convinced our inherited one was wonky.  So we’re trying out scales in the store, and I was absolutely HORRIFIED that all of them were saying that I weighed somewhere around 221. What the hell?!  Had I gained 8 lbs overnight?!  

But no, it’s true, that’s my true weight and our old scale was indeed effed-up.  So while I have lost those 13 or so pounds, I’m not as far down in the numbers as I thought.  Upset, to say the least.  

So I have further to go than I thought, and I don’t know what to do with my weight loss app, since the data I was entering is completely incorrect.  GAH!!!!  First world problems.  Bloody stupid scales.  

  1. wellingtonontherun posted this