Out of the Mouths of Babes

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I love kids. I don’t have them, but I love them. And I want my own. My future children are the main reason I am on this quest for fitness. I am a healthy person aside from the weight. I have no cholesterol or blood pressure issues, no diabetes, no aches and pains other than occasional workout soreness. I don’t get sick often other than the occasional allergy attack and I want it to stay that way. And I want to get pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy, so aside from fitting into those Calvin Klein jeans that are hanging in my closet that are just able to slide (ahem, get tugged) over my knees at this point, my whole purpose for this pursuit of fitness is not only to be able to have kids, but for them to only know me as their mom who runs, and does the occasional triathlon. Their mom who bikes and swims and can (and wants to) run and play and keep up with their spastic little selves. Not their overweight mom who is trying so darn hard to lose weight and fit in the occasional workout. I want to be The Fit Mom by the time they are able to understand the difference. Which, in my experience with all of the kids I know (and I know a lot of them), is that they understand the difference pretty darn quickly.

One of the things I love about kids is their brutal honesty. And it can be b-r-u-t-a-l for sure, but not because they’re brats (at least for most of them). It’s because they don’t know any other way to be than honest.  It can be so eye-opening to see yourself through untarnished-by-social-mores-and-fear-of-saying-the-wrong-thing eyes. Understand this - I have a terrible self body image. Oh, I’m not one of those girls who fits into size 2 jeans and complains that her butt looks fat. Not that kind of terrible self body image. I have a worst kind. The kind that thinks that I still have the body of a 16 year old high school pom pon girl, not of a 37 year old obese woman. In my head, I look great. And thin. And not at all old. Then I see a photo of myself and am shocked. Shocked! Every. Single. Time. Am I mental or what? So the other day when I was sitting with one of my favorite (and innocently, brutally, honest) seven year olds and a very large woman walked by and she nonchalantly said to me, “That looks like you,” I was shocked. Yet again. Yes, mental, indeed.

I’ve come to realize that this is the reason that I’ve been fluctuating so badly with my weight over the last several months. Up one week, down the next. Up again, down again. I’m working out regularly and still doing Weight Watchers. But I have one good week, then start slacking on the eating and food tracking the next. Then I gain the weight back and buckle back down. What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right? So while the seven year old’s observation stung and I was tempted to retort with, “Yeah, well, I’m rubber and you’re glue and whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you,” with my nose crinkled and my foot stomping, I remembered that I am not seven, nor am I 16. I’m on a journey and I need to stick to it. Because this journey ain’t gonna end folks. It’s going to be for the rest of my life. Even when I hit my “goal” weight, whatever that is, and am strutting around in those Calvin’s. And for the sake of my future wee ones, I need to stick to it. Think of the children (she says with dramatic inflection). But seriously, I need to remember that woman/mirror image of me who walked by and remember that I want my own brutally honest kid telling me something that I’d rather not, but need to, hear.