I am well aware that there is a full moon right now...even if I hadn't seen the huge orange globe on my way home tonight. It looked like a giant pumpkin in the sky and was simply confirmation that every thing that I have always thought about full moons is probably tragically correct.
It has been a week.
Actually, it has been a month.
A month since I've had great weight loss and wasn't struggling. A month of going to the gym and working hard...only to hop on the scale and see it registering something similar to the day before. Some days it would go down and other days it would go up. But on average...it was moving slower than I do after leg day at the gym.
That's frustrating.
Okay, it isn't earth-shattering. It isn't even really that bad in the grand scheme of things. People started reminding me that muscle weighs more than fat. Telling me not to give up because it was just a plateau...and I'd eventually have another drop in weight soon.
As you know..."soon" is relative. Two weeks seems like an eternity when you are 8 1/2 months pregnant. An hour seems like a week when you have been in a car for 18 1/2 hours. Five minutes seems like a whole lot longer when you are waiting outside the bathroom and you need to go.
You know what I mean.
What I've been through is a test. Was I going to stay with the program? Keep going to the gym? Stay positive? Be faithful to my goals for myself? Or was I going to quit and go facedown in a bag of Oreos?
I'm really not that big on tests. But you do learn a bit about your resolve when you are in the midst of one. I learned that I am going to stay with the program...and will be embracing the most strict part of it again for the next few weeks. That going to the gym - and pushing myself to progress without injury - is not going to stop just because my relationship with gravity is a bit tense.
I'll admit that staying positive was not maintained 100% as I started getting angry with my metabolism again and calling myself names that I shall not repeat here because I know it was just the frustration talking. I also decided that my goals are not changing simply because the scale is taunting me.
Oreos? No thank you. Seriously.
I did learn that one of the delusions that I had for years was that I was the only person in my family who was of a "healthy" size. I use that positive term "healthy" because it sounds so much better than "fat girl." And then I saw a photo in Pennsylvania that really changed my mindset and made me feel so much better. It was of my great-grandmother...who was not as "healthy" as I was or even currently am...but I did see where the thicker thighs and rear end may have originated.
Thanks, Nana.
Somehow knowing that I wasn't alone really did help me. Strange, but true. I suppose that having the "lemon" of extra badonkadonk that I've struggled with for decades really isn't something that you can make lemonade out of. It just IS. The funny thing is that I don't remember Nana but in her older years. And as such...I never knew that she was a beautiful full figured lady when she was about my age.
I suppose she took those lemons and made lemon pies out of them. I heard that her lemon pie was the best in the world.
But speaking of lemons...I've had a lot of friends dealing with various things right now. Probably more so right now than I've seen in quite awhile. Maybe it's the full moon...or maybe it is just that time in our lives when we have to deal with everything on a much larger scale. I don't know. What I do know...is that we'll get through it.
After all...there's always the option of freezing those lemons and then hurling them at the people who are causing us problems. (That's not an original thought, by the way, but I like it.)
Maybe you are at a place in your life when you are tired of the lemons and would really just like something sweet and light for a change. Perhaps you don't really know which way to go or who to trust or how to extract yourself from a sticky situation. As I see it...you have a trio of choices. You can keep doing what you are doing, you can change it, or you can change perspective. Those are pretty much the only options.
Unless you win the Publishers Clearinghouse or something and buy your way out. That's back, you know...but it isn't the same without Ed McMahon.
If you decide to keep at it...just be sure that you are doing the best that you can and aren't just treading water and wearing yourself out in water shallow enough to stand. Exhausting yourself because you don't want to stop long enough to devise a plan. Be faithful to your best self. Be persistent if it will eventually make a difference or the storm will pass in time.
If you choose to change it...then by all means do...but don't throw away the baby with the bathwater. Some people like to just walk away from problems because they don't want to deal with unpleasantness. They don't want to be hassled with the needs of others, the maintenance of relationships, or the time it takes to be a true friend. Don't be that person. There are enough of them already...and I've met my quota for this lifetime. Truly. But I admire people who choose to fix their problems instead of blaming them on other people.
Your last choice is to change perspective. To look at what is negative and take yourself to the worst possible place and see what it looks like. Would you survive? Would you be able to take care of yourself and/or your family? Would your stress level go down by a tremendous amount or climb to the stratosphere? I just know that most of the time when I'm in a tight spot...I have to change perspective. I have to look at the lemons all around me and figure out what to do with them.
Sometimes lemonade is in order. Sometimes lemon pie. Sometimes you need to squeeze it in your hair and make it blonder. That's what my Mom used to do when I was a little girl in the days before "Sun In" and highlighting.
Just don't give up.
I'm just newly on the other side of the plateau and I'm back in the saddle trying to move that scale down again. I realize that I'm fighting a little genetics, hormones, age, and many years of body neglect, but it is getting better all of the time. If I keep doing the right things...that scale will eventually move.
In fact, it did yesterday...and again today. I am hopeful that it will again tomorrow.
But if it doesn't...it won't be the end of the world.
It really won't. After all, I'm nearly 60 pounds down right now. And I'm smiling as I just typed that.
So there's that.
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