Bad Decision

I may have made a bad decision. To be honest it started with another bad decision, which really came about because of another bad decision. Really, if I think back, everything has just been the horrible result of a series of bad decisions starting with the decision to slide out of the birth canal and start breathing on my own. But to go that far back and cover every awful decision I’ve ever made would only accomplish two things. First, I would run out of space on this page, and second, I would only bore you to tears with the mundane details of my life. So let’s not go there.

Let’s start with my decision to lose some weight. I thought it would be a good decision. My body was starting to age and it was getting more and more difficult to get up every day. The doctor even noted that while I was clearly enjoying married life, I was probably enjoying it a little too much and my waistline was suffering because of it. I had always enjoyed exercise, so this should have been a no brainer. I had become a little bit lackluster with my running as of late and it wouldn’t hurt my race times to put in a few more miles. So I started running every day at lunch.

At first it was great. Twenty pounds fell right off of me. This was the kind of progress I wanted to see. Then my weight flat lined. I increased my mileage a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. Nothing. Six months of weighing myself practically every day and not one tiny pound had come off. In fact, even after adding on miles, the weight was starting to come back.

Then I made another bad decision. At the start of this year I threw away my scale. My new year’s resolution was to not step on a scale for an entire year. I had read a few different posts (okay it was just a blip from one post) about how this woman had stopped weighing herself and how it had made all the difference in the world. She had found that her daily weigh-ins were controlling her and it was making her miserable. So I weighed myself one last time on December 31st.

If you asked me what I weigh I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know, I don’t care, and the down and dirty truth is that it doesn’t matter. Then I made another bad decision. I signed up for a marathon. I’m super competitive by nature. I used to race pretty seriously and I was, at one point, a pretty formidable runner. That was 15 years ago, but don’t tell my mind. It still wants to get out there and run the hell out of this marathon. I have no illusions of winning or anything (I was never that good), but I am deluded enough to believe that I can run just as fast as I did at 21. My mind might not know the difference, but my body sure does. After a bitter argument between the two I made another bad decision.

I stopped running every day. I know what you’re thinking, “Aren’t you training for a marathon, don’t you need to run a lot for that?” While that is true, my body won the fight with my mind and I’ve come to the realization that it’s just not good for my body anymore. So now I run just four days a week. On the off days I’m not just sitting around slacking, but I’m not running, and that’s important. I’ve taken to doing yoga in the mornings when I wake up early enough. I walk and bike to get my muscles used to doing stuff other than running. It’s made a big difference. My times are getting faster, not near where I used to be, but they are getting better.

I’m pretty sure I’m losing weight again too. I can’t be sure, but my clothes are fitting better and that’s more important to me than my actual weight. I still haven’t stepped on a scale since that fateful New Year’s Eve, and I don’t believe I ever will again. It seems to go against the very logic of what I was trying to accomplish in the first place. But I have found that it was exactly what I needed. With the elimination of the scale, I’ve eliminated the stress that was attached to the scale. I started listening to my body and not the scale. Whether or not I’ve lost weight I know that I’ve become healthier and that is more important in the long run, pun intended.

 

Tags: dieting, running, weight loss