Dear Diary,
Everyone always talks about the Freshman 15, but I somehow escaped it, like Casey Anthony and 20 to life. But the Freshman 15 isn't confined to rules. It tracks you down, and fluffs you up no matter how old you are.
Sophomore year- 1 year, 15 pounds, lots of new clothes. I've always wanted to be a movie star but the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory wasn't really what I had in mind. I've always imagined the fitness and appearance god deciding that I was a little too happy with myself, and it was time to rattle the cages, and make me feel some good old fashioned hatred for myself for awhile.
So after scoffing at myself in the mirror for a couple months, I decided I had to be proactive and I started to "diet" and "exercise". You know, the normal weight loss stuff: eating 3 cheese biscuits instead of 4, getting a medium fry instead of a large, cutting down to 8 meals a day instead of 9. I worked so hard at it. I lost 0 pounds.
I had no idea what it took to lose even just one measly pound until I started doing extensive research online about it, over last summer.
I learned a wealth of knowledge. Like that the Milky Way you hide in your bedside table and shove in your mouth with the door locked where no one sees- yeah that has calories too. I know, it blew my mind. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise? Yes, and that Milky Way just went straight to your thighs.
I also found out that pinning exercise plans and pictures of ripped girls to my Pinterest board for an hour actually doesn't equate to an hour of exercising. Man what a lot of wasted hard work!
The third thing I learned was the most difficult to swallow, pun intended, and that is that you actually can't eat McDonald's 4 times a week and not slowly morph into the Pillsbury Doughboy, but darn if those fries don't still give me inexpressible joy.
Here's something I don't understand. I know people who really don't ever put that much thought into eating. So much so that sometimes they forget to eat meals. This is absolute absurdity to me. You forgot to EAT? That's like the equivalent of forgetting to breathe for me. My life consists of always thinking about my next meal. My most popular thoughts while eating breakfast are not what I'm going to eat for lunch, but what I am going to eat for 2nd and 3rd breakfast. Yeah. Most important meal of the day.
There are two types of people in this world: those who eat to live and those who live to eat. I am the latter. I think it's actually starting to transition into sin at this point and severe gluttony, but I live to eat. Sometimes I feel myself start to get really jealous of people who only eat to live. They really don't care that much about food and it doesn't get them going that much. But then I think, holy crap if I was like those people, I would lose my biggest hobby! I like food and I love that I like food. So I've decided that if you eat to live, I think I feel sad for you more than feeling jealous of you. You look super hot and skinny without needing to work at it, but you must be so unhappy!
Shifting gears a little bit here, but just like anything, once someone sees you have a flaw, they attach onto it like a leech so they have something to think about besides their own imperfections. But sometimes the constructive criticism that people give me is anything but constructive.
People who are motivated by criticism simply do not understand how to encourage people who are motivated by encouragement. If you tell me how fat I look in an attempt to motivate me, I'm going to lay on my floor and eat 10 cupcakes. Also, for the love of God, do not refer to my weight as “the weight" as though it is some kind of unplanned mutant baby that I am trying to figure out what to do with it, it makes me vastly uncomfortable, not to mention unspeakably angry.
On the other hand, if you tell me I look great and you can see improvement, I will probably go to the gym twice that day. I am convinced that this is why Rob Kardashian is still horribly overweight, because of his insensitive family who hasn't taken the time to realize that he is motivated by encouragement, not criticism. LOOKING AT YOU KIM. That may not have been necessary to the overall point here, but it needed to be said.
I have a serious weight loss tip for all of you worker outers out there. I am not even remotely ashamed of it. When I climb up on the elliptical, the first thing I do is pull out my phone and open up Instagram and look at pictures of super skinny girls that I follow. If you're pretty in shape and I follow you on Instagram, there's a 90% chance I have looked at your pictures to motivate me while I'm working out. You should feel flattered, with maybe a pinch of creeped out, so block me if you feel so moved to, but my overall point in this confession is that that is how I'm motivated! If I looked at pictures of overweight girls while I worked out, I wouldn't stay on that elliptical for even 5 minutes, because I would feel so discouraged. Maybe one day some other girl will be looking at pictures of me on Instagram while she works out. That's the dream right.
All I have left to say is this: food rocks. It freaking rocks. If I could marry food it would be in the shape of a doughnut and it would unconditionally love me without making me fat. But too much of a good thing can actually be a really bad thing. Once I lose “the weight" (I can say it, you're not allowed to) I gained, something else inevitably bad will happen to me, like my hair will start falling out, because that's the way life goes. But I'm ready to tackle it like a boss.
