Expert Excuse #1. We don't have any full length mirrors in the house. How could I possibly gauge my weight without seeing myself? First of all, that statement is not entirely true. We have these 1970's mirrored "sliding" doors on a closet in our basement directly across from the laundry room. If I may toot my own horn, I will say that I am quite the seasoned expert at walking past those mirrored doors without looking up once. Oh hey! Does that count as an additional excuse? And, excuse me while I diverge for a moment and ask: what kind of idiot invented mirrored sliding doors? Do you have any idea how heavy mirrors are? How any designer/contractor/inventor expects mirror doors to simply.... glide open... with the slightest push of a finger is beyond me. I have to pick up the damn thing and put my shoulder into it to get it to move 1/4 of an inch. It's like cow tipping. And I'm the cow. ha ha. Actually... it has nothing to do with my strength or figure... I was just trying to be funny. It's just a really, really, really, really, I mean dumb-ass-dumb concept: 1/2 ton mirror that's supposed to be a sliding glass door. Preposterous!
Expert Excuse #2. We don't have a scale. We used to. But not any more. See... we have one bathroom in our lovely "vintage" home and there isn't a lot of room for a scale. The only real space I could manage to tuck the scale was between the wall and the toilet. Which was fine for a little while. Until it came time for my little boy to potty train. Growing up in a home with 3 girls and no boys, oh! I was so blind! So naive! I didn't think a little boy who was potty training would find aim such a challenge. Isn't that supposed to be instinctual, fellas? Like a primitive response, the brain says: AH HA! HOLE! PEE-PEE GO IN HOLE! Apparently not. The stinky pee scale had to go.
Expert Excuse #3. Beside my other two brilliant excuses, there is the real truth: I turned 40. Look, I know people like to say that 40 is the new 20, but for me it was more like "40 is the new 21". Take a moment and think about the first year you were able to buy alcohol legally. Yeeeeeah. Let that feeling sink in. Felt good, right? That's precisely what my mid-life crisis felt like. To me, turning 40 felt like my last opportunity to live life without consequences: as though I were going to live forever. 'I need a mammogram? What? No way!' and 'I'm supposed to get a colonoscopy? Psssssht! How can I have polyps when I poop like an ox?' Yes. Yes, the year of my life between ages 39 and 41 became one giant example of purposeful negligence: "I'm perfectly healthy!", "My metabolism isn't slowly dying!", "My breasts are still perky!" 40 was the year to live the lie. And I was very successful at it.
But let me make myself very clear: it wasn't as though I went from being thin to fat in one year. In fact, since I turned 22 (I blame turning 21, much as I blame turning 40) I have only had occasional bouts of what, in a verbally descriptive scale, I would call "less chunky". I'd swing somewhere between 185 (at my heaviest) and 145 (on our honeymoon), all of which according to the over-rated BMI scale would categorize me as "overweight". Although I hardly think 145 would be overweight... but that's why I've come to the well informed and highly educated* opinion that the Body Mass Index is truly only applicable to movie stars, anorexics and heroine addicts. Here I was, in my troubled 20's, a lonely young lady trying to unravel her confusing and traumatic teenage years using food to protect and comfort. I wasn't thinking 'Dang.. if I stretch out all my skin now, it'll look like a fried egg on a hook when I'm 40!' I had no foresight. No sense of responsibility to my older self. Which now, come to think of it, my older self would love to go back and smack my younger self for NOT thinking about (more on that later). Although... when I was 25 a friend, who I am no longer friends with now, tried to kind of give me that kind of kick in the ass, subtly saying "What happened to you? You used to be so.... svelte." That's the kind of compliment that convinces an insecure girl to head straight to Denny's to order the comfort of cut potatoes fried in lard instead of steamed veggies. "What?" He said, innocently, "I'm just trying to motivate you!" Thanks. Thanks for the motivation. You're a real peach.
So, anyway, Winter 2011 when I was able to zip up my coat, I came in on the scale at the gym at 168. In the month before my 41st birthday when I was unable to zip up my coat, I weighed in at the doctor's office (because obviously I wasn't going to the gym) at 175. Crap. That's near my one-time all-time heaviest weight of 185. I don't want to be there again. Ever. Luckily for everyone in my family, I had bought Just Dance 3 for Kinect and decided that night to give it a shot. And I. had. the best. time. ever. Sure, I looked like the hippo in Fantasia, but I was in the privacy of my own home having a lot of fun with my 7 and 5 year old kids... talking, laughing and connecting with them for an hour before bedtime. It was great! And the kid kept asking me every night to dance with them again, so there I was unwittingly getting exercise 5 days a week for 2 weeks. I lost 2 pounds. I was mentally prepared to sulk back to the gym, feeling guilt that I had let so many months pass without visiting once.
I am skeptical. I have been to the gym many, many, many times before. Needless to say consistency has not been a loyal and trusting friend. In January 2012 I went to the gym not thinking that this year was not going to be anything unusual. What makes this attempt any different from the rest? What would snap in me to convince me to endure and keep at it? Hell... I just wanted to zip up my winter coat because the cold wind was freakin' restlessness.
But here I am: 7 weeks since I started dancing, and
I'm a little scared.
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* I am neither well informed nor highly educated on anything about or to do with body mass index.
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