This is Where it Starts

Everything has to start somewhere, right? Here's where my Me 2.0 blog starts. I was in my Weight Watchers meeting today and we talked about You 2.0, all the differences that come along with losing weight and changing your lifestyle. A lot of it has nothing to do with numbers on a scale. It's about confidence, not just in how you look, but in your ability to change, to stick with something difficult, to see things through. Sticking with things is not my forte, I have a tendency to give up when the going gets tough. That's not an option anymore, not if I want to live and be healthy. I've been changing my life for the past three months now, so I'm not where I was, but I'm really not where I want to be yet, either. Call it Me 1.1.

One of the big things I did when I decided to get in shape was join the local Gold's Gym. I'm taking classes there four or five times a week: Zumba, Bodycombat, Bodyflow Yoga, and cycling. A huge concept in exercise classes is resistance, how much weight you're pushing against when you exercise. Cycling or weightlifting or just moving your body, resistance matters. I exercise with a lot more resistance to start with because I weight so much right now. Every step I take is loaded with resistance, and sometimes that makes it very hard and discouraging.

Inertia is resistance too, and I've got a ton of that. Not just in exercise (though I think about inertia a lot when I do Zumba and the leader is performing moves that can only be done when one has no breast or butt to speak of!) I'm talking inertia in my life, the fact that it's so much easier to not change when I've done things the same way for so long. I spend too much time sitting in a chair, and too many nights fooling with my computer instead of sleeping. I don't go outside enough, and I don't experiment with new healthy foods as much as I could. But just as I'm reducing my physical inertia an inch at a time by exercise, I'm going to work the mental inertia off as well, in small steps.

That's what this blog is for. The thing about small steps is that they don't amount to much unless you can look back and see your footprints. I want to note down every small step, so that eventually I can look back when I feel frustrated and fat and slow, and remind myself that I'm not the me I used to be. So here goes!