The 10 Things I Did to Sabotage My Weight Loss

I was skinny when I was little, like super skinny, the type of skinny where people made fun of you for being anorexic. People assume that only heavier people have body shaming issues, but that wasn’t true for me. The summer between 6th and 7th grade I decided that I needed to gain weight so I ate McDonald’s 3–4 times a week, and before I knew it, I had put on much more weight than I had ever thought was possible. So, for years, I tried to work it off, but I would get to a point where I felt good in my skin and months later I would put the weight back on. I got pregnant, lost the weight, then got pregnant again. Repeat that cycle 1 more time and I was sitting at 185lbs and I’m only 5'2". At that point I really had to take the time to figure out what the hell was going on. I mean I obviously was doing some things right if I could initially lose, but it seriously could not be that hard. I needed to make it more efficient, and here’s what I found out:

I failed before I even tried
 After the birth of my first daughter I decided to splurge on a personal trainer. I remember him talking about pushups and I immediately told him I couldn’t. “Try”, he said, “Everyone can do a pushup on their knees” but I had already decided that I couldn’t. I “knew” that I couldn’t do it. Flash forward, I’m using this workout app and it wants me to do jumping jacks for 30 seconds. “I can’t do that for 30 seconds! I’ll just tap my foot side to side. I need low impact”. I doubted myself, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but honestly, who gives a shit if you can’t do it. If you could do it you probably wouldn’t be trying to lose weight or get healthy cause you would either A. Already be healthy or B. Almost at healthy. By the way, the second that I decided to try, guess what, I was actually able to get a few pushups out and yeah, I could do some jumping jacks.

I let other people’s negativity impact my positivity
 You would think that people would want to see you get healthy — They probably do, it takes a very special kind of person to think “I don’t want that person to be healthy, I want them to be unhealthy just for the hell of it” — but here’s the thing, most people don’t realize that they’re being negative. Like my mom, I love her, and she loves me, but every time I tell her I’m trying to lose weight/get healthy/eat better, etc. she laughs at me. She laughs and says “Oh yeah, everyone is always trying to lose weight” she’s not trying to be negative but it makes me feel like crap. I let her negativity impact how I feel about the situation. It’s kind of like quitting smoking I decided to quit smoking, then had a day of relapse, the following day I was off them again, but then I started to get the comments from the peanut gallery “Yeah, she quit smoking, for a couple of days, she’ll smoke again”. Obviously not helpful. So how do you get past it? I hate when people say “Just let it go” or “Don’t think about it” because it’s not that easy. I get so many negative comments, people don’t understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I have to consistently tell myself that their opinions don’t have to affect my actions.

I didn’t share my goals
I’ve got a friend who bitches about the people who post all their fitness and health crap on Facebook, she makes all types of snide remarks and jokes, so I kept everything hidden. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing so that when I failed, no one would know. I would only work out in the basement because I didn’t want my husband to watch me working out. I stopped telling people at work that I was on a diet because then I got the “You shouldn’t eat carbs, you’re on a diet”, “You shouldn’t be on a diet, you look fine to me” or your choice of a million passive aggressive remarks.

I stepped on the scale
The scale sucks. It’s a necessary evil but it freaking sucks. Your weight can fluctuate all day every day. It’s demotivating. You know what else sucks? Body Mass Index. If you calculate Brad Pitt’s BMI he’s in the obese category. Why? Because BMI only really cares about your weight in comparison to your height. We’ve all heard the saying “ muscle weighs more than fat” which, by the way, is also incredibly inaccurate, but muscle does take up less space than fat. So a pound of muscle has smaller dimensions than a pound of fat. You may look as svelte as a gazelle but still be considered obese. I stopped weighing myself. I take my measurements once a month and I revel in the fact that each day I feel a little more badass.

I made it all or nothing
 Let’s go back to the smoking thing. I used to feel like if I slipped, that meant it was over. I felt like I had failed, but that’s not entirely true. When I first started to quit I smoked every other day, then I started smoking once every three days. Then you start smoking one every week, is it perfect? No. Do I still suffer from the side effects, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, smoking once a week is better than smoking every day. The same thing can be applied to fitness and diet. Having a piece of cake does not mean that you failed. It means that you’re human. What’s the point of getting healthy and extending your years if your years suck. Diet and fitness is NOT a prison sentence.

I hid my progress
So yeah, that friend on FB? Guess who I was most afraid to see after I had lost a few pounds? I didn’t want her to know that I had made any progress, I didn’t want to be subjected to the dirty looks, the sarcastic “Wow, 3 pounds in 4 weeks, are you sure it’s not just water weight?” I didn’t tell my brother, cause he’s a badass, I mean, how can you run up to someone who is seriously built and expect them to get excited about your 3 pounds, or the fact that your stomach actually fits into the pants that you have so you can wear a shirt that doesn’t come from the maternity department? I mean, my sister-in-law is stronger than most men I know! Then one day, we hadn’t seen each other in a while and she says “Wow, you really look great! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in something form fitting” and that was a pretty freaking good feeling, I couldn’t believe that I was taking that away from myself.

I ate “diet” food
 Well that was a huge reality check. Here I was thinking I was really eating healthy because I got Fiber One Bars, my cream cheese had 1/3 less fat, and I gave up soda for juice. Then I get the smack in the face. Just because something is low fat doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a shit ton of sugar. Just because something is low in sugar doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a shit ton of sodium, or a laundry list of other crap in it. My brownie has 1/3 less fat *cue sarcasm* it’s only 20 grams instead of 30!! By the way, if you really want to learn something about “diet” food, watch the movie “Fed Up” that’s a phone book to the face.

I didn’t get that what worked for one person may not work for me
Back to the badass brother, he trains like a beast. He uses kettlebells, he lifts, he runs, he has mastered pretty much every HIIT there is out there without an app on his phone. That’s just crazy. So I tried what he tried, and some things worked for a while, other things left me with pains in places I can’t even describe. I was so intent on wanting to be like him that I didn’t think about what would work best for me. I needed to find something that was my speed, but still pushed me. It took awhile but when I found my “thing” it made it so much easier (and less daunting) to work out.

I justified my complacency
I can’t believe how many times I convinced myself it was okay to not do something. “It’s okay, I’ll work out twice tomorrow” became “It’s okay, I’ll work out next week” and I justified it. I made excuses. I blamed it on the kids (yes I sometimes blame my kids for stuff). I “needed” to scrub the oven for the 10th time. I was too stressed out from work. I couldn’t fall asleep, and the list went on and on and on. I was okay with being average, and that’s a pretty shitty mindset. I mean take a moment to really think about that. Who the hell wants to be average?? Have you ever thought to yourself, “I just want to be average at my job”. What about “I just want to be an average parent.” Probably not, so why was I so cool with being “average” when it came to my health?

I wasn’t invested
I was never really invested. I would do all of these 7/14/21 day free challenges but I never took them seriously. If there was a diet plan I would half ass it, if there was an exercise I was afraid to do, I would skip it. That’s a lie, I would skip the entire workout. Any time or money I invested was minimal, because that gave me another excuse to be the way that I was. I didn’t have the time to get healthy, I didn’t have the money to spend on a gym membership, workout program or health supplement; all excuses that I could use to justify my weight and my health. I finally made an investment, I committed to a program because I was tired of failing and I was tired of having no confidence in myself.