The Hardest Thing About Weight Loss

I know a lot of dieters complain that the hardest thing about losing weight is sticking to a food plan and staying motivated with their exercise plan. Most people have a lot of trouble with uncontrollable cravings which for the most part don't trouble me.

Now I'll admit I hate to exercise, so that part is somewhat hard for me. Even when I was in good shape and able to swim and run several times a week, I just wasn't into it. I hated every minute I was exercising, and that hasn't changed the heavier I've become. But truly, that's not the hardest part of weight loss.

The hardest part for me is just all the waiting around you have to do.

It's easy to count calories. It's pretty easy to be more active (even if I hate it), but once I've eaten what I'm supposed to eat, and exercised like I'm supposed to, there's nothing else I can do but sit around and wait. There's nothing I can do to rush the process more than I'm already doing, so the rest of the time I just have to try and find something else to do. Sure, I can surf the blogosphere, write in my own blog about how I'm feeling, or pretend to work, but really that's just a time-killing effort to distract myself from the fact that I'm waiting to lose weight.

It's kind of boring, really.

Yeah, I suppose there's something to be said about going off and just living the rest of my life, but in a way it feels like it's on hold. Losing weight has moved to the top of my priority queue, and I don't care as much about other aspects of my life. Add to that the fact that there are a lot of activities that I might enjoy that I'm just too heavy to do right now. I used to love horseback riding, but there's no way I can do it now. I doubt I could get on the horse, and even if I did manage to climb aboard, I'd probably break the poor beast's back.

Even though I despise exercising, I also realize that some of the fat has to come off before I can do much in that department. At this point, running would probably give me a heart attack or an irreparable knee injury. I think it's a bad idea to pound my femur into the top of my tibia while trying to jog down the street. Besides, even if I didn't die (literally or figuratively) doing it, I would probably frighten all the small children or be chased by neighborhood dogs. What is that hideous monster rolling down the street? Is an ostrich, is it an elephant? No, it's just Oinkstop pounding holes in the sidewalk, while trying to get in shape.

Right now, my exercise regimen is pretty much limited to walking or stair climbing at a nearby office building. I could go swimming if I could just get up the courage to go to the municipal pool in my new bathing suit. I just don't know if I can stomach that, though. Although the suit fits, I look pretty bad in it.

When I was kid, my mother would take me grocery shopping. Every once in a while, she'd spot someone who was 100+ pounds overweight. "Oh gross," she would whisper to me, "that woman is so obese!" She'd hiss out the words like they were something vulgar and despicable.

I didn't realize it until I looked at my bathing suit pictures yesterday. I have become one of the people my mother used to insult under her breath.