Before I go any further, I want to note that this story is my own. I’m not a medical professional and so on. I’m just a person who found some stuff that made her happy.
After I quit smoking, I spent a few months adjusting to my new non-smoking lifestyle, gained an additional 20 pounds (making me 280 pounds), and moved on to increasing my daily activity. I left off last week talking about taking a walk. And for the first few weeks of May, that’s what I did. I picked a landmark near my house, which wound up being about a mile, and I started walking there once a day. When I started doing it, I didn’t set up a daily walk as a goal and if I had, I don’t think I would have met it. I did walk nearly every day, but weather and general malaise got in the way sometimes.
Chloe, my chunky puppy, Christmas of 2014.
It must have taken me half an hour to walk a mile then. Sometimes I took my dog with me for the walk. She was also overweight. The two of us made quite a sight waddling down the road and I say that with the greatest affection. This may seem out of line but I look back on those days with fondness. Too often, fat is associated with shame and misery. I was heavy, true, but I was also alive.
When I say that, I don’t just mean literally. Equally important in this story is how I had not been walking up to this point. I spent much of my time on a couch or in a bed, in front of a computer or a television. I had a more than sedentary lifestyle. I could do some things for my kids, such as getting to their games and schools. I could put up occasional bursts of energy such as hauling beach gear down to the shore. But these activities were far more taxing than they would have been had I been spending more time doing them.
Me, skating with my daughter, winter 2013. Check out the face of abject terror and how stiff I was!
When I first started walking, I first started realizing how much I had been missing. The sun and the air felt so good! And the smells and sounds of the outdoors were near overwhelming. The look on the dog’s face when I pulled out the leash; such animalistic joy. I felt that and I think that, more than any goal setting, is what motivated me much of the time.
I know that sounds ridiculous. If the outdoors was so great, why did I stop being outside? Well, I believed that a life of convenience was both the gift and the goal of adulthood, starting with being able to drive yourself where you needed to be. Adults also choose what they want to eat and what is the ultimate dinner convenience? Eating at a restaurant or getting take out.
Being able to do this meant success. Look at what is considered an appropriate household budget. Entertainment and dining out are luxury entries. If I was enjoying those things, it must mean I was successful! I understand now that this is a juvenile way of looking at life, but I don’t think I’m the only one who received this message (check out this infographic from TurboTax). And if a life of convenience was the mark of success, the reverse was the mark of failure.
But once I started walking, I started to see a new type of success and before long, I wanted to run.