Wheezing. On the verge of passing out from lack of oxygen. My chest would heave in and out with so much effort and force that you would think I was hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro. I loathed running, it was as much torture to me as eating liver. Let's just think about that for a moment. When I ran I heaved, when I ate liver I heaved. When I knew I was going to have to run I cried, when I knew I was going to have to eat liver I cried. See? Torture! In junior high running was required as part of our physical education experience. Of course when I was 12 asthma attacks were not something P.E. teachers had much compassion for. I would run that track day after day with a face so beat red people would think I was either a) burnt like a lobster or b) going to keel over on the middle of the track. I would run though, forced to endure this torture every day for weeks at a time. As I ran I would tell myself that someday when I was all grown up I would never, never, EVER run again. And then I would secretly wish death upon my P.E. teachers. Okay, let's not be overly dramatic, at least they they could be deathly ill for a week and put me out of my misery!
Fast forward 25 years and what have I decided to do? Yep, run! Why? Really, I don't understand it myself. Six years ago we were living in a neighborhood with a bunch of young in shape, extremely attractive women. What did they all do to keep in shape might you ask? Yep, you're right, they ran. At first I feigned indifference. Quite frankly I was due with my sixth child and the last thing on my mind was running with my fat body violently jiggling with every step I took. But a few months after giving birth to Jillian I started wondering what in the world all of these women saw in such a barbaric sport. Why would they all love something that tortured them?
I pondered these questions for months until the fall of 2006. Enough time had gone by after giving birth to my youngest that I realized if I didn't do something drastic I was going to be fat and hate myself forever. Let me repeat that. FOR-EV-ER. FOR-EV-ER. FOR-EV-ER! (Yes I did just insert the line form The Sandlot there) So, I decided that I wanted to understand why these women loved to run and I was going to run until I figured it out for myself. We bought a treadmill and I started VERY slowly; I walked a bunch, ran a minute. Repeat. Then, I increased to running 2 min. then 3 and so on. By Spring of the following year I could run for 45 min. straight on the treadmill and I still didn't understand why people ran, however I decided that I ran because it was an emotional high when I was done. Emotional because it was so much torture that when I was done running every time I had accomplished a huge mental uphill battle for every moment I was on the treadmill! In addition to this running goal I had made a goal to run a 5K someday. This would be my ultimate accomplishment and a very real manifestation of this insane goal.
Of course there was one glaring problem staring me in the face after 6 months of working on running. I hadn't lost any weight! Oh come on! Really? I killed myself for what? I was 175 pounds after the birth of my sixth child and at 5ft. 1 1/2 inches I needed to loose weight desperately! In the mean time I had reached a goal with running so it was time to take it outside and start training in order to achieve my goal of running the 5K. So, with trepidation, I put on my skin tight exercise clothes (that honestly, no person should have caught vision of), and headed outdoors to start running. How bad could it be? I had been running for months on my treadmill and was in really good shape...or so I thought.
I don't think I made it even one mile down the road before I realized that running on a treadmill was nothing like running down (or up) the street. So, what did I do? I gave up on myself. I wallowed in self pity feeling like loosing weight and running were both out of my grasp. I gave up on myself. This wasn't the first time I had given up on me, in fact I wasn't a quitter in anything in life other than with exception of myself. I constantly felt inadequate as a person and ate my way into larger pant sizes proving myself right. This situation was no different. I gave up exercising, and gave up dieting and went back to "normal life."
In the fall of that year I got a job at Costco that was supposed to be a seasonal job but turned into a year long adventure. I was sure that when I started at Costco the weight would drop off of me due to the shear volume of movement I was doing in a day, but I was very wrong. I analyzed this phenomenon and the more I stewed about it the more I decided that I was going to have to exercise (or work) AND diet for the weight to come off. I wasn't motivated though. In the recesses of my mind I had decided that it wasn't within my grasp to be skinny so even though I had a game plan that might work I wasn't willing to work on it. Yet.
Fast forward 25 years and what have I decided to do? Yep, run! Why? Really, I don't understand it myself. Six years ago we were living in a neighborhood with a bunch of young in shape, extremely attractive women. What did they all do to keep in shape might you ask? Yep, you're right, they ran. At first I feigned indifference. Quite frankly I was due with my sixth child and the last thing on my mind was running with my fat body violently jiggling with every step I took. But a few months after giving birth to Jillian I started wondering what in the world all of these women saw in such a barbaric sport. Why would they all love something that tortured them?
I pondered these questions for months until the fall of 2006. Enough time had gone by after giving birth to my youngest that I realized if I didn't do something drastic I was going to be fat and hate myself forever. Let me repeat that. FOR-EV-ER. FOR-EV-ER. FOR-EV-ER! (Yes I did just insert the line form The Sandlot there) So, I decided that I wanted to understand why these women loved to run and I was going to run until I figured it out for myself. We bought a treadmill and I started VERY slowly; I walked a bunch, ran a minute. Repeat. Then, I increased to running 2 min. then 3 and so on. By Spring of the following year I could run for 45 min. straight on the treadmill and I still didn't understand why people ran, however I decided that I ran because it was an emotional high when I was done. Emotional because it was so much torture that when I was done running every time I had accomplished a huge mental uphill battle for every moment I was on the treadmill! In addition to this running goal I had made a goal to run a 5K someday. This would be my ultimate accomplishment and a very real manifestation of this insane goal.
Of course there was one glaring problem staring me in the face after 6 months of working on running. I hadn't lost any weight! Oh come on! Really? I killed myself for what? I was 175 pounds after the birth of my sixth child and at 5ft. 1 1/2 inches I needed to loose weight desperately! In the mean time I had reached a goal with running so it was time to take it outside and start training in order to achieve my goal of running the 5K. So, with trepidation, I put on my skin tight exercise clothes (that honestly, no person should have caught vision of), and headed outdoors to start running. How bad could it be? I had been running for months on my treadmill and was in really good shape...or so I thought.
I don't think I made it even one mile down the road before I realized that running on a treadmill was nothing like running down (or up) the street. So, what did I do? I gave up on myself. I wallowed in self pity feeling like loosing weight and running were both out of my grasp. I gave up on myself. This wasn't the first time I had given up on me, in fact I wasn't a quitter in anything in life other than with exception of myself. I constantly felt inadequate as a person and ate my way into larger pant sizes proving myself right. This situation was no different. I gave up exercising, and gave up dieting and went back to "normal life."
In the fall of that year I got a job at Costco that was supposed to be a seasonal job but turned into a year long adventure. I was sure that when I started at Costco the weight would drop off of me due to the shear volume of movement I was doing in a day, but I was very wrong. I analyzed this phenomenon and the more I stewed about it the more I decided that I was going to have to exercise (or work) AND diet for the weight to come off. I wasn't motivated though. In the recesses of my mind I had decided that it wasn't within my grasp to be skinny so even though I had a game plan that might work I wasn't willing to work on it. Yet.
Then in July of 2009, July 4th to be exact, things took a drastic turn in the get in shape direction for me. We had gone down to St. George to celebrate the holiday with cousins of mine. Part of that celebration involved the most greasy, juicy, mouth watering concoction of smoked, baked, and BBQ'd tasty meats I had ever eaten. I ate and enjoyed! However, my body didn't enjoy as much as my mouth did. Within a couple of hour of eating my delicious morsels of heavenly indulgence my stomach started hurting, and it didn't stop hurting until my gallbladder was removed a month later. In order for doctors to decide what the cause of my stomach pain was they performed an ultrasound. The results came back with gallstones for sure but the side note to all of this was that I had a slightly fatty liver. For those of you who don't know, fatty livers can lead to decreased ability to fight infection and it can be quite dangerous. I asked the doctor what I could do to prevent having a fatty liver and his advice was this..."loose weight, and do it slowly." This was the changing point for me. I used Costco as my exercise and started Weight Watchers for my diet plan.
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