Loss of self

I have been a closet fan of Cézanne’s blog for a while, and I was absolutely delighted to read her recent post on healthy people. She and I appear to share a sense of bewilderment in this regard, because I cannot wrap my mind around the concept of getting up at 5 in the morning to run. I run in the following situations:

1. when late for some mode of transportation, especially flights

2. when being chased by ferocious things that crawl, including – no, especially – snails

That’s it. I have friends who will willingly go to the gym before sunrise on a Sunday morning because it makes them “feel good” – I don’t know how I could possibly feel good while at the gym after an average Saturday night, when all I really want the next morning is a heavy dose of rat poison. This attitude, however, has wiped away my teenage level of physical fitness and has replaced it with a, one might say, rather large derriere. This is a problem, and it’s one I’m finally determined to do something about.

I won’t reveal any numbers just yet, mostly because they’re scary to type, but I am on a mission to lose 13% of myself. I have lost 2% of myself in a week and a half by, well, mostly just no longer stuffing my face with all the things that make life beautiful. That and tracking what I eat on Livestrong, which just makes me sad. However, I’ve learned that figure skating – the one form of physical activity I never have to force myself into – apparently burns close to 500 calories an hour, which is excellent news. There’s a catch, though, because now that I’m skating more and more (8-10 hours a week), I have to come to terms with the realization that I need to spend $900 I don’t have on new skates. This is a problem.

The other problem is that my nutrition regimen as prescribed by Livestrong has me hungry ALL. the TIME. I caved today and went to town on… oh god, I don’t even know, I think it started with chocolate and by the end of it I’d consumed about half of my fridge. I think I may have gained those 2% back in the process as well, so I’m going to pretend today never happened. It’s much easier than confronting that bright red bar on the Livestrong website that shames you for having gone over your calorie goal.

Wish me luck? I wish I had a tenth of the motivation some people have to take classes or whatever. Also, I’m disappointed that Livestrong doesn’t have “crawling around on the floor looking for your cat’s toy mouse under the fridge” as a legitimate form of physical activity, because that’s what I just spent 20 minutes doing. Unsuccessfully, mind you. The mouse is under the damn fridge, and there it will stay. Cat, don’t pretend you really care about it now, given that you’ve spent the past three months eating my feet instead.

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