So, I’m kind of built like a guy with boobs…
I used to run track in high school for the sole purpose of keeping in shape between basketball and volleyball seasons. I didn’t enjoy running and I wasn’t very good at it. I wasn’t fast or good at hurdles, so none of the sprinting events were for me. I couldn’t jump worth a crap. And I certainly wasn’t going to be lumped in with the group of bruisers who were the ’throwers.’ So, that left distance running. Distance running is the food you push around and leave on your cafeteria tray, and only the hungriest, most desperate kid, will ask, “Hey. You gonna eat that?” No one else wanted to eat that, so I did. At every meet, I would run the 3200, the 3200 relay, the 1600, and the 800. Collectively, 4 miles. I would gut it out each time, dragging my wheezing, cramped-up body across the finish line in a glorious whimper. I’m pretty sure I never, ever won or came close to winning a race.
The stupid thing, and also my biggest high school athletic regret, is not joining the throwers. I would have made a GREAT thrower. I was tall and lean and freakishly strong. My Mom and Dad used to shake their heads and remark that I was “built like a brick shithouse.” (It took my preteen/teenage self a while to realize that that was kind of a compliment.) I have a linebacker frame, with Russian power-lifter muscle, camouflaged by some of the necessary curvy girly bits. Probably I could have put the shot farther than most of the boys.
All of that is to say that I also lose weight kind of like a guy, at least partly because of the large amount of muscle I’m carting around. It comes in handy when moving pianos and sleeper sofas, too.
Week one was successful! I bought a new scale on Amazon, because my old Tanita was no longer the reliable horse she once was. You could shift your weight from heel to toe and get a 3 lb. variance in the reading. LOVE the new scale. It’s solid, weighs you in .2 lb. increments, and is 100% consistent so far.
From 7/17 to 7/24 I dropped 5 lbs. I know. That’s too much in one week and most likely it was a lot of water weight. Still, it’s encouraging to see the numbers drop daily. (I weigh myself nekkid every morning at 8:00 a.m.) I tracked all of my calories and nutrition and I got in 4.5 hours of walking/jogging/running, 1/2 hour shy of my goal. And, here I am reporting it, albeit a couple of days late.
This week is not shaping up so well. I’ll be lucky to hold on to any loss from week one. We’re at my mother-in-law’s lake house in SC and the food is good and flowing freely. I’ve tucked that new scale that I love so much and brought with me for motivation under a wicker stand in our bathroom and I’m avoiding eye contact with it.










