Some people are “yo-yo” dieters – weight goes down, but right back up. Story of my life, but now I am trying the rubber band diet. I wear a rubber band around my wrist to remind me of the perils of stretching the elastic too far.
I have never really been in shape. I was thinner when I was younger, but never a hard body. I am barely 5’ 3” and I won’t tell you what I weigh, but it is substantially more than I should. I’ve never crossed over into the true “plus” size world, but I have been a solid size 14 for most of my adult life. Well, I am really squishier than I am solid.
I have given up on ever wearing a bikini, but I do occasionally dream of the possibilities when I see before and after shots of people like Valerie Bertonelli. Problem is, all of those people seem to have some deep psychological issues that drive them to eat, so once they deal with their issues, they mange to not only push the plate back, but also train for a marathon. I am not one of those people. I eat because food is yummy and I am always hungry. I don’t exercise because it is hard and I am lazy.
Every so often, I get on a kick where I decide I am going to eat healthy and exercise, but I can usually only focus on one of those challenges at a time. Regulating the calories-in part has been more immediately gratifying when I’ve tried it. I’ve found ways to change what and how I eat for long enough stretches to see real movement on the scale. I tried the no-carb thing once and lost 20 pounds fast. I put it back on just as fast. I lost 25 pounds on Weight Watchers. That took longer to put back on, but I worked really hard at it and it all came back. I lost 15 doing a low-estrogen diet. There was a very complicated science behind it that had something to do with our primitive hunter-gatherer genetics being overloaded with hormones. I loved being able to blame hormones for my chubbiness as well as my crankiness! Damn hormones. But, when I thought about it, the diet was really just about limiting calories. Seriously, if all you eat is veggies, fish and a little rice, you’ll lose weight. Even if the fish is swimming in hormone-infested waters contaminated by birth control pills and estrogen-laced insecticides, you will lose weight.
Exercising has never delivered quick enough results for me to stay motivated. I might have seen increases in strength and endurance, but that still doesn’t look good in a bathing suit. As I get older, I focus more on the health attributes of exercise. Even if I am not losing weight, I figure I must be healthier when I am exercising, so I keep trying different things.
I hate to run, so that never sticks. I am terribly uncoordinated, so aerobics classes are a disaster. I won’t even try Zumba, whatever that is. Circuit training seems to be the best fit for me. There are lots of great DVDs, so I can do it in the safety and privacy of my own home, but the peer pressure thing is a pretty strong motivator, so I stepped outside of my comfort zone and signed up for a class.
It was three days a week in our humble community center. No gym bunnies there – just moms like me. Some were more fit than I, and others were less so. The instructor looked like she was one of us, but she was the “after” shot without the surgery and airbrushing. She looked great, but real. I told myself that if she could do it, I could too. She went easy on us the first class or two and then ramped us up quickly to burpees and planks and jump squats. We sweated and groaned, but we did it. Three days a week for three months. I didn’t lose a pound, but I felt good. I could do real push-ups (not the girly, cheater kind). I could hold a plank for more than a minute. I could do mountain climbers without passing out. I knew I should probably start running on the off days if I really wanted to lose weight, but I never did.
The holidays hit and our trainer got a job at a gym 30-minutes away, too far for me to stay motivated. A new instructor greeted us in January and I knew I was doomed. She was tall and skinny and had clearly always been skinny. She was not prissy, but she was not one of us. She drove a Mercedes and ran marathons and somehow did all of that with three kids. I immediately hated her.
She was a life-long athlete and clearly could not relate to women who had let themselves go. She didn’t laugh at our jokes or even try to make us laugh. She was all business. She knew we had taken a couple of weeks off and wanted us to pay for it. She added intensive cardio to our routine, which we needed but weren’t quite ready to do just days after holiday gorging. We panted and poured sweat and grimaced to one another in solidarity. The New Year resolution newbies only lasted one class. The rest of us were determined to not let her break us, but we did take unauthorized breaks, especially when jumping rope pushed our bladders as well as our lungs to their breaking point. She brought new equipment and new challenges every day. She’d set up stations around the room and we’d circulate, doing 2-5 minute intervals at each. Some were better than others. Some were just awful. We soldiered on, cursing our new drill sergeant behind her back.
One day, she set up a station where we had to strap an elastic band to a belt around our waists. We were supposed to jog in place, pulling against her resistance. This would focus intensely on our quads or something. I made sure I was the last one to try that. I could picture that belt with my fat spilling out over the top of it. I didn’t like the idea of looking like a mule pulling little Blondie like a plow across the gym. When it was finally my turn, I decided to give it my all, so I honored her command to “dig deep” and I felt my quads burn. She commented on my strength (or was it just my weight) that was pulling hard on her. “Keep going,” she yelled. I pictured myself overpowering her, with the band catapulting her over my head and into the wall – splat!. I would show her!
Suddenly, I heard a loud crack and it was me who was plunging forward toward the wall. I managed to stay on my feet, but stumbled like a wounded moose. When I regained my balance and looked back, she was on her knees, holding her hands to her stomach as dark blood soaked her white t-shirt. Her face went grey. I felt immediately ill. That beautiful woman, mother of three, was going to die because some fat chick broke the rubber band. I was the fat chick. My wicked thoughts had come true. I had taken Blondie down and she wasn’t getting up.
We all rushed over to help her and someone ran to the office for help. I was afraid to look too closely, certain we would find the metal clip from the belt lodged like a ninja’s throwing star into her flat abs.
Thankfully, there was no metal clip; it was still on my belt. Her gorgeous abs were unscathed. The band had actually just hit her finger and sliced it clean open. This was clearly not a mortal wound, but there was so much blood that EMTs had to be called to the scene. As she explained to them what happened, I stood sheepishly in the background, the fat chick who broke the rubber band. She kept brushing off my apologies, claiming it was my strength and not my size that snapped the band. The EMTs and I knew better. They got the bleeding to stop, but she was going to need stitches so they sent her to the ER.
Being an iron woman, she showed up for our next session. Her hand was splinted and bandaged. She would need to give up her tennis game for a few weeks, but otherwise was good to go. She told us that the other trainers at her company had gotten a good chuckle at her expense. Who gets hurt by a rubber band? I knew their laughter was really at my expense. Who was the fat girl that broke the band? Do you have video we can post on YouTube?
She set up our stations, including a new band thing. Really?! She said that she had gotten some tips to avoid another disaster, not the least of which was that she had used the wrong kind of band. The one that broke was for arm resistance exercises, not full-body-weight mule-plowing maneuvers! I was feeling less guilty by the second. The new band was thick and blue, and she didn’t attach it to a belt – it was probably the friction of the metal clip that had weakened the band. This time, she would just wrap the band directly around our waist. She told me I had to go first.
As the band dug into my waist like the tourniquet it was, and the fat layer bulged above and below the elastic blubber dividing line, my humiliation set in. I peered over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of her grin. The skinny chick was enjoying her revenge.
From now on, the only rubber band I’ll be wearing will be on my wrist. If I see that woman again, I’ll shoot it straight at her eye.
Confessions of a Target Mom 