Failure is most definitely an option.

Well, I had my first official Couch-to-5K FAIL today when I attempted day three of the training. As I mentioned yesterday, Fridays are days off for me, so getting up at 4:50 or 5:00 to go run was just probably never going to happen. Especially since the Heat/Spurs game went so late, and my brother is visiting with his girlfriend and I just didn't want to go to bed and miss out on everything.

I look so cute after exercise.

This morning I woke up (or was woken up by my brother pounding on my door and yelling at me to get up) at 8:15, and around 9:15, I decided to just go do it, regardless of how hot and humid it was outside. So I drove to the hospital to do my training around the pretty trail.

It was only 85 degrees when I started, and I made it through all the walk/run intervals until 55 seconds into running spurt number 7. And then my will to keep pushing myself just disintegrated. I felt like I was going to throw up, it was miserably hot, the sun was beating right down on me, and I just quit. I started walking, and walked through the final running spurt as well. At the time, I felt like I just could NOT keep going, and I resigned myself to it. I had pushed myself through running spurts 3 through 6 even though I wanted to quit then, too, but by the 7th 60-second run, I lost all motivation. I quit with 65 second of running remaining. Really, Me? Really???

Sigh. On the drive home, I decided to get my elliptical trainer back from one of my other brothers (I sold it to him a year ago, but he never uses it), because I am obviously a failure at running. Now that I've cooled off and the nausea his dissipated, I know I shouldn't just throw in the towel so easily, but I do think that having the elliptical would be nice. I can exercise more often, and from the comfort of my air conditioned home.

My body feels like jelly, and it's worse than how I felt on days one and two. Even my wrists and fingers hurt. Does the heat and humidity really make that much of a difference? Then again, I only did like two half-hearted stretches before I left the house.

The jury is out on what I'm gonna do. I guess I should just attempt day three again on Sunday, but this time do it before the sun comes up and conspires to kill me. Do I sound whiny enough? Cause I can try harder if I need to...

Good Stuff:
There are a few teeny victories to report today. First, I lost one of the three pounds that I gained when I started exercising! I was surprised to see that, too, because I felt like yesterday sucked eating-wise. My coworkers begged me to go out to lunch with them to this new, overpriced restaurant, and even though I was careful and ordered a salad, I ate too much. I had a few chips with guacamole before the salad came, ate almost my entire salad and half the dressing, and then I had four bites of a skillet cookie with ice cream that someone ordered because they hate me. Oh my word, it was delicious. After those four bites, I covered my dessert spoon with salt so I wouldn't take any more.

Another good thing is that I've been tracking the workouts I've been doing in my SparkPeople app, and today I saw that I've burned 1,103 calories exercising this week. For some reason, that made me so excited! I think it would be fun to challenge myself with a weekly calories burned total. It seems a lot more motivational than just tracking how many workouts I do.

I'm off to do something inspirational now, like watch episodes of Extreme Weight Loss... I need a little pick-me-up in the motivation department right now.

The end is nowhere in sight.

So you may be wondering why I felt the need to write a blog yesterday about the fact that I’ll be blogging the bad with the good. Welllll, it might have had a teeny bit to do with the way that I felt all day yesterday. Or everything to do with it.

I GAINED 3 POUNDS IN 48 HOURS. 

If I had binged or over-eaten, I’d probably be dealing better with it. But it happened despite staying within my calorie allotment, and despite working out twice. I gained three freaking pounds!!! Now, I know that this has everything to do with starting to exercise, that it is likely just my muscles holding on to water, and that I’ll probably lose it again soon… but. I’m at the beginning of my long road to fitness, so a sudden gain of all the weight I just spent ten days losing is SUPER discouraging. And in the past, it has taken my body a good two weeks to begin losing weight again after I start exercising. In the words of Sweet Brown: Ain’t nobody got time fo dat!

While I was feeling discouraged, I started watching a show called “Ruby” on Netflix. It’s about a sweet, bubbly woman who weighed 478 lbs (but was 700+ lbs at her highest) and was trying to lose the weight once and for all. I thought it would be motivational, but after a few episodes, I made the mistake of googling her. Apparently, she started cheating on her diet a few seasons in, and they ended up cancelling the show because she was putting on a lot of weight. Presently, I think she is under 400 lbs, but the never-ending struggle is still going.

I’m not sure why the show hit me so hard, but I was emotionally devastated. I just felt so much compassion for Ruby, and wanted so badly for her to succeed. And I felt like if she could do it, I could do it, too. In the end, though, it put a glaring light on the reality that weight loss—especially permanent weight loss—is SO HARD. That’s a tough pill to swallow, knowing that I’m trying to achieve what so few people seem to be able to.

I have given myself several pep talks over the last few days, because the weight gain and reality of how LONG this process is put me in a foul disposition. The good news is that I’m not giving up, and I haven’t purchased any pints of Blue Bell Banana Pudding ice cream to ease my troubled mind. This is the reality, after all. This is the part of weight loss that SUCKS, that doesn’t make the highlight reel on Extreme Weight Loss, and that gets condensed into a one-sentence blurb in People Mag’s “Half Their Size” articles.

When I started college, everyone told me that sophomore year would be the hardest, because the newness and excitement of starting college would have worn off, but I wouldn’t be anywhere near the end. That’s kind of how I’m feeling right about now. I’m in the bloody middle. I’ve already taken that first dramatic step of deciding to lose the weight, but the excitement of that has worn off, I’m still huge, and I’ve hit the daily grind of eating right, exercising, and staying on track so that SOME DAY (in what right now feels like a million years) I’ll be at the end of the weight loss process.

This is the point at which I usually turn to food for comfort and end up piling back on the weight I just lost. I’m not doing that this time, though. Because if I stop now, I’m 100% guaranteed to stay fat. If I keep going, however, and keep at it day after day after day, no matter how I “feel,” the weight WILL come off. 365 days are going to go by this year, regardless of what I do. But if I do what I know is right for my body, at the end of that 365 days there will be significant, amazing transformation. Waiting for that is the hard part, but I know I can do it. I just have to keep going.

My blog is not Tony Robbins

I feel like I need to issue a warning. 

Let me start by saying that this blog, no matter what else it is, will always be REAL. If you’ve never struggled with the raw emotions, discouragement, despair, ______ (insert fat girl feeling of choice here), etc. that is associated with being significantly overweight and/or trying to lose a significant amount of weight, this blog may not be your favorite.

I’ve been very tempted to stop posting anything negative about the weight loss process, because I don’t want to be a discouragement to anyone, and I don’t want to sound whiny. However. When I read various tales of women who have lost weight, if everything they say about the WL process is all rainbows and sunshine and joy and half marathons, I’m left feeling as though it’s something I could never do. Because in my experience, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine and endless joy, and I have trouble imagining myself running 13.1 miles without dying of a stroke 1/1000^th of the way through. While there are many “ups,” to the whole process of losing a lot of weight, it is hard work, it takes a long freaking time, and there are minutes, hours, days and for some people even weeks or months of feeling down and discouraged over the whole thing.

I got it in my head somehow recently that it is my blog’s job to motivate, challenge and encourage all (three people) who read it, and that I must deal with my struggles privately, hide all of my self-doubt, and only post my thoughts when I have a “win” to share. Well. I’m not going to do that. I started this blog as an outlet for my feelings and emotions as I struggle to lose 100 pounds and learn to treat my body right in the process. That means there are going to be a LOT of struggles to share, and I intend to share them, because that’s the whole point of me writing all of this out.

This blog is for me first and foremost, to muddle through the millions of feelings I experience that I’m pretty sure have made and kept me fat since I was seven years old. But it’s also hopefully relatable to anyone who has ever bawled in a department store dressing room, been called “Moby Dick” by a grade school friend’s older brother, had to buy kids jeans in size “Extra Special,” been forced to eat a popsicle while the rest of her siblings had ice cream cones, been referred to as an “elephant” by those same siblings, preferred giving birth to quadruplets without anesthesia over going to a pool party, or any of the plethora of negative experiences overweight people go through in a lifetime.

There will be plenty of “wins,” big and small, to blog about along the way, but my main goal in blogging is simply to write out the entire emotional and physical experience, good, bad or binge, of dropping 100 lbs. And who knows? When I’m all done, maybe someone else who is struggling, wondering how they’ll ever get to their “After” shot, will read it and find some inspiration to start their own weight loss story.

Bottom line: I might sound like a Negative Nancy at times. I might not be a prime candidate for Motivational Speaker of the Year. I might be seemingly riddled with self-doubt. But gosh darnit, I’m going to be REAL. If you’re not an overweight, emotionally unbalanced nut-case, you may want to run for the hills. (And if you’re a thin woman trying to go from a size small string bikini to a size extra-small string bikini, Google was just trying to be funny.) 

Just Do It. No, really. Just do it.

Yesterday after lamenting (and blogging about) my long cultivated desire to sit on my posterior for 23.87 hours a day, I got over it. Sometimes all it takes to overcome a mental hurdle is to stop obsessing over it for a few minutes. So, instead of freaking out that I had negative desire to be active and therefore would always be overweight and duct taped to my couch until someone removed me with a crane, I chilled out and watched a Lifetime movie to take my mind off of things for a bit.

Halfway through Not Without My Adopted Daughter's Cousin or The Sinister Man She Met Online or whatever, I got excited about exercising again, and called up my mom to see if she wanted to go for a walk. She did, and we headed to the local hospital to walk the path that winds around a scenic little pond out front.

I have no idea how long the path is, but we walked around it three times, and I was all breathless and itchy and sweaty and sore when we were finished, so I will count it a success. I'm sure my mom felt like she was walking in slow motion, or maybe sleeping, since she's super tiny and has always been a speed walker without trying (and I was moving at a pace that after two years of no exercise probably resembled a statue of a person walking), but she was nice about it and didn't complain.

I felt so good after walking, and the high stayed with me for the remainder of the evening. I need to bottle up that feeling! Or, I guess I just need to keep exercising...

When I was shopping for workout clothes yesterday, I kept looking at a display of Nike t-shirts with the super famous "Just Do It" slogans. I'm not sure what I thought it meant in the past, or if I've ever really thought about it at all, but as I was battling the desire to ditch exercise for a few more months, the only thing that really snapped me out of it was Just Do(ing) It.

That's the bottom line, isn't it? I may never feel warm and fuzzy and giddy with excitement over exercise. I may always prefer sleeping in or watching tv or undergoing major surgery or removing my own fingernails with pliers over going for a run. I may have to battle through this mental block that tells me fitness is something to fear every day for the rest of my bloody life. But how I feel isn't what is going to get me results. I need to just do it.

The first step is the hardest, right?

The Couch to Kohl's Program

I've been watching episodes of Extreme Weight Loss over the last few days, and I have been so inspired by how people with 150+ pounds to lose have started running. I've always wanted to be a person who loved to run.

Recognize the "b" word there? Much like my desire to "be" an After Shot of myself, I just want to be a person who loves to run. I don't want to feel like actually putting in the time, effort, energy, sweat, tears and inconvenience, I just want to BE a runner. Magically! Or by osmosis. I'm pretty sure that if I watch enough episodes of Extreme Weight Loss and get super amped up seeing morbidly obese people turn into athletes, that should be enough transform me into a fit, muscular size 6 who adores running with all of her being. And who looks hot in spandex.

Is there any question why I'm 85 pounds overweight and 3,000% out of shape? I have a problem with turning my desires into action, and the reason is every. bit. mental. Because action requires me to ditch comfort and change my behavior, and that is something that my brain rebels against like crazy. Right now, I am literally having severe emotional anxiety over the thought of spending 30 minutes exercising, and I know that the only way to make the anxiety stop is to decide not to exercise, thus returning to my comfort zone of immobility.

This isn't about the exercise itself--I've done plenty of that in my life, and I can get through it--it's about getting past my ginormous mental block that is terrified of change. And becoming a person who exercises regularly instead of sitting on her ample behind 24/7 is a big change.

Honestly, I wish that I had something wise or inspiring to say that would be the key to unlocking the motivation to tell my emo brain to shove it and get off the couch and move my rear end, but I'm not there yet. I'm at the beginning of this whole weight loss/get fit process, and I'm still trying to figure out how to push myself through these stupid mental blocks and become the person I want to be, or  at least figure out why I am so afraid of becoming that person.

Since there's no trumpet blasting in the sky or voice from heaven explaining what the problem is, I'm going to do the only thing I know how: I'm going to put one foot in front of the other, and start.

Today, I decided to take the first very teeny steps toward removing the mental blocks. I went shopping, of course! I had a $10 off coupon for Kohl's, so I went there and bought some comfy socks, a nice pair of spandex capris and several t-shirts that will be perfect for exercise. I also came home and found my old iPhone armband and earbuds, made an awesome workout playlist, downloaded a Couch to 5K app to my phone and even bookmarked a page of pre-run stretches on my laptop.

I've officially got all the tools I need to succeed. All that's left is to do it.

The Weightness Protection Program

Yesterday while at work, I received a panicked call from my best friend. She wanted me to go on facebook and check to see if a picture of her had been posted (she doesn’t do facebook). One of her relatives had taken a picture of her and posted it to their page, and my friend received a text message about it, and was horrified (seriously, close to hyperventilating). Like me, she doesn’t let people post pictures of her on social media sites, because she has gained a significant amount of weight over the last few years, and doesn’t want certain people to know, or to judge her.

I did my best to calm her, assured her she looked fine in the pic (she really did), then proceeded to do what any true friend would—I attempted to hack into the facebook account of the person who posted it, so I could delete it for her. Unfortunately, my attempts were unsuccessful (and I don’t have Kim Kardashian’s number), so now anyone who has seen the photo knows that my friend isn’t a size 4 anymore. She’s emotionally devastated.

This story probably seems a tad melodramatic to anyone who has never struggled with their weight, but to someone who has, I’m betting it’s pretty relatable. Similar scenarios have played out in my own life more times than I care to admit. I went into my Dad’s facebook over Christmas—hey, he left his iPad lying around—to delete several horribly unflattering photos he posted of me without make-up, in mismatched pajamas and at my highest weight EVER, so I completely understand the oh-my-gosh-someone-posted-a-fat-pic-of-me-I-am-going-to-DIE-OF-HUMILIATION feeling.

Since I’ve gained 80 pounds in the last two years, the last thing on earth that I want is for my out-of-state friends, relatives or old boyfriends to see that I have let myself get to my present state of hugeness. I only want to be seen by friends and acquaintances when I look gorgeous and trim, so I’ve avoided events and gatherings of all kinds. I’ve even been scared of my boyfriend proposing (!) because I can’t imagine having engagement or wedding photos of me at this size.

SERIOUSLY?

Why am I living like this? Why am I in constant fear whenever I go out of my house, terrified that a few extremely shallow former guy friends of mine might see me? Why do I refuse to go to events where I might run into someone I haven’t seen in two years? Why am I skipping vacations to visit cousins and aunts I adore, simply because I can’t bear for them to see what I’ve let my body become?

Those questions are a big part of the reason that I decided enough was enough, and made the decision to lose this weight once and for all. I got to the point where my weight was totally controlling my life, and I was serving a self-inflicted prison sentence that only made me rely even more on food for solace and comfort.  

Well. I’m tired of living in my own personal Weightness Protection Program. I’m tired of being afraid of events and people and gossip and Instagram posts. I'm tired of being miserable. I deserve to live a full, happy, healthy life, and this debilitating cycle of overeating, shame and fear is not going to be what drives every decision I make.

I’m officially coming out of hiding. Join me?

"Before & After" doesn't tell the whole story...

Whenever I need a little shove in the motivation department, I grab the Mac and search online for weight loss before/after photos. Come on, you do it too... Today I searched before/after pics on Pinterest while inhaling a BK Big Fish sandwich and medium fries. (But hey—no tartar sauce, and diet soda instead of regular, which I’m pretty sure is kind of… not at all what health professionals have in mind when they talk about making “healthy choices.” Sigh.)

There’s something so gratifying about looking at split shot after split shot of the complete body transformations of people who have lost 60, 80, 100+ pounds, and to see the dramatic difference between the two sides of the photo. In a split second, before/after photos show a woman at her absolute worst—the fattest point of her life that somehow got captured in a photo that she probably wept when she looked at for the first time—and then at her absolute best: a skinny, sexy version of her, radiantly happy and proud and bikini-clad. Her weight loss story is told in less than one second.

The good thing about Before/After photos is that they inspire me to be thin (other than the occasional selfie of Spray Tan Teen Girl in her panties as a size two, and three weeks later as a size 00, which mainly inspires me to hunt her down and wring her scrawny neck). 

Yeah, stop it.

The bad thing about before/after photos is that they inspire me to “BE” thin. Not necessarily to exercise, eat right, choose a salad over a fried meal, or spend month after hellish month fighting all of my natural instincts to eat a lot and be lazy.

The truth about weight loss would be better portrayed in a before, during and after photo (Before/HELL ON EARTH/After). But the edited version is what we love because we don’t have to be bothered with all the hard work and sacrifice that made “after” possible. At least, that's my problem. I don’t want to think about the reality of “during” because I’d rather skip that part of my own weight loss story. I want to decide, mentally, to lose weight, and then a split second later become my “after” shot, without killing myself for a year or two or five minutes to get there.

This isn’t a problem with photos, obviously. It’s a problem with me. The before/after pics just put a spotlight on one of my glaring faults: the desire for immediate gratification. When I had 20 pounds to go before I reached my goal weight, my struggle with immediate gratification wasn’t as bad, but now that I need to lose 100 pounds, it’s something I have to fight constantly. I’m fighting the knowledge that if I eat a healthy meal instead of fries for lunch today, it’s a better choice but I’ll still be fat tomorrow. And I’ll be fat the next day, and next month and probably the month after that. I could lose 70 pounds and still be fat, so my inner comfort-seeker is constantly popping into my head asking why she can’t just go ahead and have ice cream when it’s not going to make me look any different to eat carrots, and it definitely won’t feel as good in the moment.

Of course, the truth is that when you string together dozens, hundreds, thousands of healthy choices, (the often painful, difficult choices that the before/after pictures don’t show you), eventually they’ll add up to an “after.” It’s a long, tough road, but I know that “after” is not impossible if I’m willing to work at it, and make those torturous carrots-rather-than-ice-cream decisions. That’s the truth that I need to focus on as I set out to lose 100 pounds. The before shot has been taken. I’m officially in the “during” phase of my photograph. It’s the phase that no one is very excited to see, but it will determine the end result: my after. 

I wouldn't read my blog, and other welcoming thoughts...

My name is Kelly. When I was a skinny kid, my dad and my brothers called me "Kelly the Jelly Belly" to annoy me. (It worked.) A few years later, when my struggle with weight began and I actually did have a jelly belly, people called me that to be mean. I'm starting this blog as an outlet for my thoughts, feelings and experiences as I attempt to lose 100 pounds and banish the jelly belly for good.

This is supposed to be where I say something amaze-balls (thank you, tweens and Giuliana Rancic) to capture your attention and superglue your eyes to my blog for the rest of eternity. 

I'm going to fail.

The truth is, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't read my blog. At least not for a year or two. I much prefer to read the blogs of women who are at the end of their long struggle with weight loss, and not just starting out with 100 pounds to lose. There are mind-blowing Before & After pictures to enjoy, pages filled with inspirational messages, and RESULTS, which you definitely won't find here just yet. But if you're different from me, and were born with even the tiniest capacity for patience, and you want to read along while I type my way to a 100-lb weight loss, well, welcome to my blog.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be writing or how often, but here are a few things you can expect from me:

1. Lots and lots of italics. Because I have to.
2. Sentences that most English teachers would encourage me to break up into smaller pieces in order to make them more palatable, but that I can't seem to bring myself to because I prefer to write the way I talk.
2. Self deprecation. (It may not be healthy, but it's what I do.)
3. After this post, a total absence of the word "journey." Unless you are on this season of the Bachelorette or were born in 1712, you are not now, nor have you ever been on a journey. This is a struggle, a road, an event, a time, a trip or a challenge, but it is not the j word. Stop it, America.

There you go. This is my blog. I'd understand if you never returned, but I'm really glad you're here.