Finished Being Fat: An Accidental Adventure in Losing Weight and Learning How to Finish (9 page)

1.You don’t have to count the calories if you are picking off someone else’s plate.

I am a forever eating off my kids’ plates. They eat like birds, and there is something about a mostly untouched plate of food that I find morally offensive. I just paid five bucks for those nuggets and fries and, gosh darnit, somebody was going to enjoy it. Did I add it to my daily food tally? No, they ordered it, so they could pick up the caloric tab.

2.Dropped food has no caloric value.

It’s like the five-second rule. You choose to believe that there are no germs on that piece of food you just dropped. I choose to believe that the calories fell off on impact with the ground.

3.Milk chocolate is in the dairy food group

Says it right there in the name, doesn’t it? And you’re supposed to have three servings a day. My size servings.

4.You don’t have to count the calories in anything you add to vegetables to make them taste good.

Because that would be mean to make me eat brussels sprouts and then penalize me for the pound of butter I had to put on them.

5.When sharing a dessert, always assume that 90 percent of the calories are in the other person’s half.

After all you don’t know how those ingredients got dispersed in baking. I’m sure my husband’s half soaked up all the caramel.

Now I laugh at the absurdity of these claims (although I still think the chocolate one makes sense), but I totally bought into them at the time. A few years ago, the doctor told me to keep a food journal so we could figure out where all my unwanted pounds were coming from. When I came back a month later and two pounds heavier, he was as mystified as I was since my journal was the picture of healthy eating. When he implied that I must be cheating, I was outraged. How dare he! Why on earth would I cheat? I was the one that came to him, after all. I had written down everything I had made myself at mealtimes. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to write down the bite or two from the unfinished plates. That wasn’t my food, and I wrote down all of my food. So I didn’t cheat, I must be a medical marvel. I was just destined to be fat, I guess, because it couldn’t be my fault.

And that’s what it boiled down to. I lied to myself, rationalizing my actions so that they fell within the rules. And if I followed the rules, it couldn’t be my fault, right? Something, or someone else, was to blame for my unhappiness, not little old me.

It wasn’t just lying about food, though. When I looked at other things I’d failed at, I found a whole slew of excuses I used to make myself feel better about quitting. Stop me if these sound familiar.

1.I can’t be skinny like the other girls because I’m big boned.

An oldie but a goodie. It’s not my fault I’m fat; I was just built this way. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I just ate my meal plus Lily’s plus the doggie bag from Jarom’s meal.

2.I can’t exercise because I’m not athletic.

I’ve been knocked out by a goal post, a volleyball, and a tennis racket (all true). Clearly I am not the type of person made for sports, so I should just stay on the couch, where it’s safe.

3.My house is only messy because I’m really busy.

My day is scheduled down to the minute. And yes, that includes the time I’m sitting on the couch, reading a book, or watching TV. This six-hour marathon of
Friends
will not watch itself.

4.I haven’t quit. I’m only taking a break.

Everybody needs a sabbatical now and then. Scrapbook paper doesn’t have an expiration date. Sure the kids might be twenty-five by the time I get back around to their scrapbooks, but it’ll still get done.

5.I’m not very good at it, so I shouldn’t waste my time on it.

Because I’m sure that all the musicians in the world were born with that kind of talent and didn’t have to practice for years to get that good. And my time is precious (see number three).

Now that the only thing I was giving up was quitting, the excuses rang hollow and untrue in my ears. One by one, I was proving them wrong. While it’s true I’m taller and broader than the average woman, the amount of fat I stored (a whopping forty-five percent body fat) had a whole lot less to do with genetics than with the pint of Ben and Jerry’s I ate when I got depressed.

Now that I was counting calories and controlling portion sizes, the fat was disappearing. I had debunked the big-boned myth. Running helped me dispel number two. Don’t get me wrong, I am still not an athlete. I routinely trip over my running shoes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go out and do it anyway. Numbers three and four were pretty obvious once I started being honest with myself.

But number five took a little bit of work and a whole lot longer to get over. Some days I still get stuck in this trap. My aim in life has always been to be the best at whatever I do. That’s an admirable goal, but I took it to the extreme. Anything but the best resulted in failure. So when it appeared that I was not going to master something, I’d quit, thinking that stopping was better than failure. I was not in control of my life. I swayed whatever way the wind blew. If I wasn’t good at something, then fate must have decreed that it wasn’t to be. I didn’t want to take responsibility for the choices that led to my failures. My unhappiness couldn’t be my fault—stuff just happened to me and kept me from my dreams.

***

Jarom had his heart set on running the St. George Marathon. Growing up, when he saw himself running a marathon, that was the one he envisioned. It’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful races in the country with the red rock and sandstone cliffs of Zion National Park in the backdrop. And that’s why everyone else wants to run it too. Upwards of 20,000 racers are vying for 7,400 spots. (Yes, I think its crazy too that this many people want to kill themselves running in the desert.) Registration opens up each year only during April. Anyone who signs up and pays the entry fee will be entered in the computerized lottery. The winners are posted the second week of May.

This made for a tense month of April. We signed up on the first day of registration, then we waited. I was really nervous, and I had no idea which result I was rooting for. If we made it into the race, then we had the pressure of being registered and paid for a marathon I didn’t think we could run. This made the possibility of failure much more real. On the other hand, if we weren’t selected, then we could always say “Well, we tried. We’ll try again next year.” Then it wouldn’t directly be our fault that we didn’t meet our goal; the blame would be diverted to the stupid computers. But let’s be honest, what are the odds that we would still be running in a year?

In the meantime, we ran and discussed what we were going to do.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Plan for what?” Jarom wheezed.

“Plan B if we don’t make the cut.”

“I’m sure we’ll get in.”

“But what if we don’t?”

Jarom stopped to take a swig of water before replying. “Then I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? This whole thing was your idea! You don’t have a backup plan, and we might have been running these last two months for nothing?” I squeaked, horrified.

Jarom chuckled. “So now you’re saying you want to run a marathon.”

“No, I’m saying it’s really stupid to have put forth all this effort on the off chance we would make it in.”

“Okay, smartie pants, then what’s your backup plan?”

“Humph. I’ll get back to you on that.” More chuckling from the peanut gallery.

I didn’t have a plan either. I was too conflicted. We’d been telling our friends and family that we were training for a marathon. Everyone knew what we were attempting to do. Most of them thought we were crazy, myself included. I felt the pressure of everyone’s gaze, watching whether or not we would actually complete our goal. I dreaded the prospect of telling people when they asked that we had not in fact run a marathon—that we’d given up. But what if when people asked I could honestly say, “We entered St. George but weren’t selected, so we’ll try again another year.” It was an excuse, but one that would probably spare us a good deal of embarrassment later on.

I waffled back and forth all month until one morning I opened my email and saw the automated message from the race officials. The results were in. I held my breath and double clicked. We’re sorry to inform you…

That was as far as I got before tears obscured my vision. Why on earth was I crying? Come on. I should be relieved. My easy out had just been handed to me, practically gift-wrapped. I wouldn’t have to run a marathon. I could crawl back into my little comfort zone without the threat of impending failure constantly hanging over my head. That was what I wanted, right?

I realized that it wasn’t anymore. I didn’t want to be the girl that was always offering excuses for the things I didn’t do. I wanted to be the woman that tried to run a marathon, whether I could finish it or not. To put myself out there and reach for something more, even when it meant that I would be opening myself up to the possibility of failure. It would be embarrassing if I had to tell people that I didn’t finish the marathon, but I felt like it was going to hurt worse if I knew in my heart that I hadn’t even tried.

I wanted this. I needed this. If Jarom really wanted to, we would enter the St. George Marathon lottery again next year. But as for this year, I had to find myself a new race. I dried my tears and did a little digging and discovered that Park City (an hour and a half north of us) had a marathon and it still had plenty of spots available, with no lottery. The only problem was the timing. It was a month and a half sooner than the St. George Marathon. If I was already worried whether we would be ready in five months, how were we going to be ready in three and a half? The probability of failure just doubled in my mind. I didn’t know what to do. Luckily, I had my running partner that I could consult.

Jarom was pretty sad that we weren’t picked to run in the St. George Marathon. I told him about my backup plan, but he wasn’t sure. When he dreamt about running a marathon, he saw himself among the picturesque canyons in the south. The thought of running near the ski slopes in the north threw him for a loop. His brain did not want to adjust to the vision I had presented him.

“I don’t know, Betsy. It’s too soon. And the course is supposed to be harder.”

“It is?” Hmmm, my Internet research had not turned up that little bit of information.

“Yes, it is. I looked up a bunch of different races. Park City is supposed to be one of the hardest in the state. Probably not one you want to do for your first marathon.”

I was not even going to address the first marathon comment. As if there were going to be a second? Magic eight ball says all signs point to no.

“So did you find any better options?” I asked.

“Nothing in state. Any of the easier courses are scheduled even sooner that the Park City one.”

“So you’re saying our choices are basically between doing a difficult course before we’re ready or putting it off until next year so we have more time to train.”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Great. Lovely. So what do you want to do?” I flopped down on the bed defeated.

Jarom patted my shoulder. “I’ll leave that up to you. If you really want to run Park City, we’ll give it a shot.”

Super, I got to decide. So if I picked to run Park City and we weren’t ready and didn’t finish, then it was my fault. But if I picked next year, that meant I would have to keep running even longer, something I still didn’t really enjoy. Maybe we wouldn’t even last long enough to get to next year’s races.

Going back a few chapters, you might remember that I have a hard time with choices. I had resolved after the shoe incident to pick whatever I wanted and then deal with the consequences. Even though there were more reasons against than for, I really wanted to run Park City. The cons were the ones we’d already gone over: too soon and tough course. A big pro for me was getting it done while I still had the motivation to do it. I was new to the no-quit pledge, and I didn’t know how long it would last.

The other pro was kind of silly and shallow—the finisher medal. Everybody that finished the race in the allotted time got a finisher medal. Park City is a very artsy community, so their finisher medals were unique handmade stained-glass leaves. They were gorgeous, and I wanted one.

“Okay, let’s do it,” I resolved.

“All right, Park City it is.”

I had listened to my own excuses and decided to try anyway. Yes, chances were high that we would fail miserably, but who knew? If we didn’t make it, we didn’t make it, but at least we would have tried. Not to mention, the chances of getting my pretty finisher medal went up dramatically if we actually entered.

***

I was finally taking responsibility for my life and my actions. I think that up to this point I had been a passenger on the road of life, plodding along in some junker. And when it inevitably broke down, I would whine about my rotten luck, but what could I do? After all, I was just a passenger, and it wasn’t as if I had any control over the things that happened to me.

Seeing myself as a victim of fate, is it any wonder that I was unhappy with the way things were going? Losing the excuses had put me squarely in the driver’s seat of what I envisioned as an armored Jeep. I had driven myself to this point in my life. Sure, genetics definitely played a part, but I think the empty pizza boxes spoke a lot louder about the choices I had been making that led me to the thud.

For me, taking responsibility is not a matter of blame but of control. As a passenger, I had no control over my life. Living in constant worry waiting for the other shoe to drop was not healthy for my mind or my indigestion. Bad things happened, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hate that feeling of helplessness. Always looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to push me down. It took consciously choosing what I believed about myself and my relationship with the world. Was there some predestined life that I was supposed to lead and I just had to bear the rough patches? Or did I decide what I would do and who I would be?