Shakin Bacon

So this is the next topic in DragynAlly’s April Blog Challenge and to be honest with you I have been struggling with this one the past few days, hence my blog is late…

The struggle has not been about finding someone in my life who inspires me but picking just one person. Heck, picking just five would be really hard. I started a list and I got to about 25 people, and then I thought, “OMG what if I leave someone off the list?!?” This topic was creating way too much stress, until I had a moment of clarity and realized where most of my inspiration was coming from these days… myself. 

That’s not to say that I am holding myself up as the end all, be all when it comes to inspiration. What I mean is that I have realized this past year that what it really took for me to be ready to make change was not something I saw in other people, or was given, it was something inside of me that I had just chosen not to recognize yet. Now that I have I feel completely unstoppable, no matter what the challenge is that i face. I think that is a great place to be and one I encourage you to find for yourself. 

So simply put, be your own inspiration. Be proud of the choices and changes you make to better yourself and let them build upon each other. Each good choice leads to another and soon you may find that a year of great choices have passed and you’re at or close to reaching your goals. I know that this is what happened to me. 

For most of my adult life I have had at least 6 X’s in my life. That’s to say that when I went to buy clothing in X sizes, for most of my adult life the size I immediately grabbed was a 6XL. Some of you may not even have known they made clothes that size. Well they do, and bigger, because yes, for a few years there I was actually wearing 7XL and 8XL depending on the shirt. The bathing suit I bought at my heaviest? A 9XL. So that you can wrap your brain around that, here’s a pic of that suit with my new XL bathing suit.

Yes that is my kitchen table being almost completely covered by my old bathing suit that actually fit me. But as I said, my most constant companion in the world of big & tall sizes was the 6XL. When you wear a 6XL you are at the very biggest size the Big & Tall stores carry in stock, go one size bigger and you can only find your clothing online. There is no testing them out first and seeing how they fit, you just click on the image and buy them. 

Now just because I could go to the Casual Male XL and find some 6XL items did not mean I had a lot of selection. And don’t get me started on the prices for clothing that size. When I started just over a year ago, I was comfortably in a 6XL and could get into a few 5XLs depending on the style and brand. One of the goals I laid out for myself was fitting in an XL. Just one X, not 2, or 3 or 9. Just one. 

I’ve been chasing this goal for a while too. I was hoping to get there by Christmas but I did not. I have a few XL shirts I have been dying to wear so I try them on every so often. Always too tight in one area or another. I could see my body changing but I was just not ready for the shirt. Today that changed.

I was spending the day cleaning my room, organizing my book shelves and closets, etc. I decided while sorting laundry to try on one of the XL test shirts. It fit. I was excited yet cautious. I grabbed another, it fit too. Today I have finally realized one of my major goals. I can wear an XL shirt. Now The shirts I tried on were t-shirts, not sure if I am ready for an XL button down yet but I am certainly close, closer than I have been since my senior year of high school at least!!

The feeling of accomplishment is incredible. I don’t define myself by the number of X’s on my shirt tag, but needing just one X certainly opens up many new doors to me in terms of shopping and clothes, etc. I take that as a nice Non-Scale Victory (NSV). 

Here is a picture of me in one of my XL shirts. It is a t-shirt that my good friend and often training Chris had made for me at Christmas as inspiration. He knows my love of Disney and added one of his favorite quotes from my blog. The front of the shirt is Mickey with the tagline “Training In Process.” 

The back reads…

“Which is it…

Can’t or Won’t?

It’s Your Choice!”

Today, my choice is Will & Have!

Today’s blog challenge is to talk about a goal I want to accomplish. You guys know many of my goals and I have even recently highlighted some of my long term goals. I decided instead to discuss a new one that has arisen the past week or so…

Ok, no, I do not necessarily want to look like Schwarzenegger, calm down. lol. I do however want to be able to what he is doing there, a pull up. I have never been able to do one in my life and I was watching someone pound them out at the gym last week and I though, “Dang it, I want to do that!” So the gauntlet is thrown, I want to be able to do a pull up. Let’s make it interesting and try to set a deadline… how about Thanksgiving of this year? Sounds good to me! Wish me luck!

Every year Walt Disney World hosts several running events. The biggest of them all is Marathon Weekend, during which time they hold a Marathon, a half-marathon, a 10K and a 5K. For years I have read about these events, how awesome they are, how well run they are, etc. but I never thought I would be a part of one.

Yesterday I was bit down about the fact that a charity walk I wanted to do at Disney later this year was just not going to happen for me. As if by divine intervention, I saw mention that registration for the marathon opened yesterday. I decided to check it out and discovered the Family Fun 5K was also open, though it was almost 90% full already. I knew I only had a few minutes to decide, and couldn’t even secure permission for the time off right away, but I registered anyway!! That’s right, I signed up to do an actual RACE!

Now yes, it is a 5K and I have done one already but that one was just a walk. This event has a pacing requirement. I will need to cut 5min off of my mile pace I do now in order to do the race. If I don’t meet that pace, I will be picked up in a van and driven to the finish line. How embarrassing!!! So I will need to actually train for this event. I am excited! 

The race happens at EPCOT in January. So I have around 8 months to get ready. I feel like this is the perfect event for me to challenge myself with, because of what is required and of course because of where it is being held. You see, going to this race will mean I get to check in one on my very first goals I set when I started this journey. And that goal is… 

Riding Space Mountain!! Look at those seats, so thin. I know I will fit now, even though the last time I road this attraction I was squeezed in so tight that I injured myself. That was New Year’s 2000. Since then, I just never tried again because I knew I would not fit. When I sat down and thought about starting to get healthier and make changes, riding Space Mountain was one of the first goals that surfaced. I’ve always had a connection to that place so going back there to run an actual race will be a big deal.

The bonus is now I get to plan a Disney trip too, one of my absolute favorite things in the world! The other planning component I need to work on is getting my mile pace down and working on actually running/jogging. To that end, I am going to start a Couch to 5K plan next week. There are a ton of them out there and I think I found one that starts off gently enough for my poor battered knees. I will definitely fill you all in on the details of it soon!

For now, thank you for sharing in my enthusiasm. I am very excited for this opportunity and if you’re running a Disney race that weekend, let me know!!! 

It’s funny that this graphic popped up on my Facebook newsfeed this morning because this very thought was on my brain at the gym this morning. 

I realized today that many of the people who I had been seeing bright & early every Monday morning for weeks were no longer showing up. Now certainly, some probably decided that they had better things to do at 5am than show up to Planet Fitness & have found a new time to workout, but there is that part of me that knows many if not most are just not coming anymore. How do I know this?

Because that was me.

Many times in my past I had attempted to make fitness and working out a part of my daily routine. I did all the things I thought I needed to do in order to make it habit, but it just did not stick. I would go several times a week for months at a time, and then just one day wake up and decide I was done, for whatever reason. Maybe it was cold. Maybe my car was running rough. Maybe I had stayed up late the night before having a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon with friends. (Hey, it happens!) Or maybe I decided it was more comfortable just to not go, and to settle back into the patterns I had known most of my life. 

For whatever reason, I would let it go. I would allow myself to forget how good I felt in the gym and how good I felt after. How energized I felt. How much easier I was moving around. My initial thought is why I would do that? Why would I give up on something that was clearly benefiting me? The answers to that question are pretty plain and simple. I gave up. I found something else I considered at that time to be more important, whether it was food, or TV, or hanging out, or even work. I made other things a higher priority and I think that is the difference now. 

I have made fitness & working out a priority in my life. I schedule it like I schedule work and I turn down other offers of plans when they conflict. I have to treat this time with the importance it deserves so that I can treat my body with the importance that it deserves. It’s again, plain and simple. 

Now to go back to the initial thoughts that brought me to this topic today, missing people at the gym. I too wonder if anyone ever noticed me when I disappeared. I am sure someone did. Think about that when you’re considering stopping yourself. Someone will miss you whether you know it or not. So maybe, if you’re willing to let yourself down & stop, maybe knowing you might like someone else down could keep you going! hehe