So, you all will never guess what I did this week! This fat, middle-aged mom went jogging…Twice! My trainer had given me some kind of an exercise called Farkel (have you heard of it?). It was basically intervals of fast and slow. The first one was a total of 24 mins, 14 of those mins were fast, and the rest slow. The second time it was 30 mins and 15 of those mins were fast. In the past when she has written fast vs slow, I have speed walked, or gone a lot harder on the elliptical. But, I just suddenly had a thought, maybe I could jog? So, I tried. And survived 30 seconds of jogging. Then I survived 1 minute of jogging. Then I survived 2 minutes of jogging, and then, by that time I was determined to jog every time it called for “fast”.
The first time I tried it we were at my parent’s house, out in the country, and all my kids were playing outside. I was determinedly jogging along and I glanced to the side and there was my four year old son, sitting by the path. His mouth was wide open in shock while he watched me. I was too out of breath to laugh. I managed to gasp out, “Mommy is exercising!” He stood up and announced that he could run too! And then he came and joined me, out-lapping me very easily.
I felt very accomplished and proud of myself afterwards.
The second time, two days later, I went to the park and took my seven and six year old with me. Fortunately it was in the morning on a very cloudy day, so there were only two other people at the park. Adults sitting under the pavilion. I say this is lucky because I really didn’t want to jog in front of an audience. When I say that I am “jogging” I mean that I am making my body do jogging movements. I am actually going about as fast as a six year old can speed walk, as was shown to me on Wednesday. This time I had to go “fast” for 5 minutes, and I actually jogged an entire lap around the park (quarter mile). I have no idea why, but this has been a big boost to my confidence. I have been out of shape for so long, I really didn’t know if my body could do “fit” things properly every again. Now I am envisioning myself one day actually Running!
At the same time, my jeans that I’ve been wearing since the beginning of this journey, finally started being really loose. Women’s plus size pants accommodate a lot of pounds. Which is great when you are gaining weight. A little depressing when you are trying to lose it. But, this week, I finally tried the next size pants down and I was able to get into them. Still a bit too tight. Maybe another 5 pounds and they’ll be wearable?
After all the confidence boosting I had this week, it was a bit of a let-down to find that I had only lost 1 pound. But, I am determined to not care. My fasting blood sugar was 100 this morning and I am planning on going on a hike this weekend with my family. I have lost a total of 19 pounds in 9 weeks, and I am feeling good about my accomplishments.
Life With Esther 