bodevolve scholarship application
I don't remember the first time someone suggested I should lose weight. Perhaps it was when we had to go to the "6X" section of clothes when we went school clothes shopping when I was in elementary school. Maybe it was after the first time I was told I needed "husky" pants or that I was "chubby". Possibly it was at a doctor visit for my incessant strep throat as a kid, even though it had exactly zero relation to why I was there.
No matter the timeline, it was long ago, and it's the same refrain I've heard most of my life. People, even friends and family, feel they have the right to comment on someone's weight - be they either too thin or too fat. It's the socially acceptable judgment not fraught with true potential offense.
I, like so many others who have weight struggles, have fallen prey to the toxic culture of magazines in the check-out lines, advertisements, the latest statistics on obesity, and the latest fads: Alli, Olestra, apple cider vinegar, green tea extract, Chitosan, Glucomannan, green coffee extract, hoodia, ephedra, and raspberry ketone. There's always the latest "natural" weight loss magic berry or root. We turn to these even though we know the way to lose weight. Change your eating habits, exercise, and be more active.
So we do - I do. Dedicate myself to an overload of vegetables and inevitably dry chicken. I don't eat out. I try not to overindulge.
Moderation. Moderation. Moderation.
I'm a mom of two boys who works full-time. Planning ahead for meals - one or all of them - requires following through on those plans, even when there's homework and housework and PTA and overtime. When you come home tired, but there's still so much to do. Moderation is difficult when you inevitably have to either eat what's for the kids or make two meals. I've measured out the ounces of the chicken breast, not the ladle of spaghetti, but the spaghetti is already made and so much easier.
Despite all of that, I have had some weight loss success. With a diet consisting of said combination of vegetables and chicken, and at least three hours of intense cardio - well, intense for someone who weighed close to three-hundred pounds - per week, I managed to lose seventy pounds. Then I plateaued.
Despite riding my bike daily, giving up caffeine and candy, nothing really changed other than vacillating five pounds one way or the other. That lasted for another year, and then I started Weight Watchers with a friend. Like I'd already known, tracking what I ate made a huge difference in what and how I ate, and as a result, I lost eighty pounds.I actually weighed the weight on my driver's license in, probably, at least 12 years.
And then I gained back forty pounds.
Weight Watchers changed their plan, and I didn't like it and found it didn't work for me. And now I have to find something else, because there's a pair of jeans in my closet I don't ever want to have to wear again.
I'm not actually unhealthy beyond being overweight and, for the most part, I'm okay with the state of my body. But, like the women who nodded and laughed at my weight and my size while I was visiting China, more people will offer their opinions and suggest their ideas for my weight loss.
And I'll probably try the next thing on the market that comes along, because this might be the thing that makes it easier.
I know it isn't, and I know it won't.
Scholarship sponsor: BodEvolve
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