Happy Easter all.
I'm not a religious person, so this has never been a holiday I pay much attention to, but I do know the story and thought it might give me a theme for the day.
On the exercise and diet front, it's been a pretty simple day. I am between workout days, so today will just have a long dog walk. On the food front, I went to visit family at my mom's for an Easter gathering and I can proudly say I didn't over indulge. I did a fair amount of grazing and probably over consumed jelly beans, but my meal had one reasonable serving of ham, potatoes and veggies. All in all a pretty good food day thus far.
What I really want to write about today is more complicated and I'm not even sure I really know how to get at it or want to share it. But if this project is supposed to demonstrate the Constanzaish (you know from Seinfeld) notion of going against your instincts, then I honor that premise by writing what's running in the loop in my head today.
Do you know the song 2 a.m. by Anna Nalick? Not the manliest tune, but I've always been drawn to it. There's a great lyric that goes like this "2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to"
I don't write songs, but if you substitute blog for song, it feels like my truth for today.
Well onto the point...
I saw my sister-in-law's facebook post recently about the struggle to lose her last 10 pounds (she's lost a bunch of weight through really hard work). A friend of hers talked about the last 10-15 pounds being emotional baggage. My initial instinct was, what a bunch of crap, but now I wonder.
At our little gathering today, my uncle had old holiday videos from 20+ years ago and wanted to share them because some of us had been in them. On the surface, this should be a nice thing, but I struggle to describe the visceral negative reaction I had to the idea, much less how I felt for the short while I actually sat through some of them. In fact, I walked out to play with my kids and my nephews before they were finished. Why on earth was this? Well here is what I think.
There are some obvious reasons. The time he happened to capture was not a great time for my family or for me. I had just had a disastrous semester at college that I was keeping secret from everyone. Much of this stemmed from an anxiety issue that I wouldn't even realize I had for another 15 years, although it would become my defining characteristic for most of my 20's. My mom was also about 6 months from divorcing my stepfather, who is in the video, and I don't have any positive feelings for him, then or now. Between those two things (an urge to hide and the palpable yuckiness at home), it would make sense that the video would make me cringe, but it was more than that. It was emotional baggage for lack of a better term.
As I watched the little I could stand, and made sarcastic comments to cover my discomfort, what I really wanted was to talk with the 19 year old me (he's pictured above). I wanted to tell the skinny kid with the bad hair and big glasses that I knew he was as uncomfortable as he looked to me. Maybe not to others but to me. I wanted to assure him that it was ok to fail and that people could know and life would go on. I wanted him to understand, he wasn't nearly as old as he thought he was. I wished I could tell him that if you eat your stress and cover your mistakes, it can detour your life for years(and make you chubby). I was watching a person at a turning point in their life and I knew he would make every wrong decision for the next 6 years. Even typing this now, I can feel my heart rate pick up and my anxiety peak. I just wanted to tell him to ask for help.
Now why does this matter in a weight loss blog? Well, it might not if the thoughts above were something I had thought a lot about before, but they aren't. It is something that came bubbling to the surface today after 5 minutes of video from 21 years ago. My sister-in-law's friend was right, we carry our baggage and I hope unloading mine will be part of a pathway to health. If I can acknowledge the past and move on, I have hope of changing other bad habits as well. Hence the tale of resurrection.
So there, it's out on virtual paper, no longer tucked away to surface at weird times. Will it help me weigh 180 lbs. or complete a triathlon? I don't know, but if we are going to get different results, we must do things differently.
Back to fitness blogging tomorrow, with my exciting return to spin class. Thank you for indulging my self-analysis.
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