KS&L 321 The Image Element in Weight Loss - a Personal Story Part 2

Jeanne Marie and I began to outline a plan. We analyzed what I eat, which wasn’t really bad. The changes to my eating plan were actually minimal; we just cut portion size down. I do not use diet anything, so I did not have to get aspartame out of my system. The real issue, was exercise.

I have come to understand that you cannot lose weight if you do not exercise. I think I knew that on some level, but exercise took me back to middle school and high school gym class where being the shortest person in the class was always a challenge. The fact is, I hated gym with a passion and that feeling had been with me all my life. So, let us fast forward to now.

My daughter had me join a local YMCA and joined me in enrolling in a step aerobics class. The first day, we noted that the room was air-conditioned and that I could place my ‘step’ in front of a fan. I made it through the first class. I noticed that there were other chunky women in that class. I had to push myself for the first six months to go to the class religiously, and that brings up a very important issue: time.

I discovered that to lose weight, you have to consciously decide to spend time on yourself. That sounds like a no-brainer to most people perhaps, but it was huge to me. By the time, I changed clothes and drove 15 minutes one way to class, spent an hour there, drove back, changed clothes, I had lost about an hour and a half of productive time. Do that four times a week and that is not quite a day of productive time. My personal challenge was to realize that the exercise time was productive time, because it was productive time I was spending on myself.

Jeanne Marie would also run me all around the block and up and down the hills of Mt. Helix. And you know, the weight began to come off at the rate of about 5-6 pounds a month. What became a challenge, however was that as my first book became published, I was traveling all the time. In one year I made seven trips, including three round-trips to the East Coast, and one trip to Europe. Traveling is a profound challenge to anyone seeking to lose weight, but I did not give up.

As the weight came off, my daughter insisted that we go clothes shopping. In this year, I have gone from a size 1X or really extra large, to fitting into size 8 petite jeans. Starting in March of 2009, my daughter and I went clothes shopping at Nordstrom’s. We bought size 12 and 14 clothes and they were really tight, but she insisted I wear them. She also insisted that I stop wearing pants with elastic tops. Now that may not seem like a big deal, but when you wear pants with zipped and buttoned fasteners, you cannot fudge. They either fit, or they don’t.

I had to stop wearing loose fitting clothes that hid my body. So the message was that I had to stop hiding my body. I began wearing clothes that really fit. Emotionally, I had to change my image of myself and that change took a year to accomplish.

Along the way, I had several makeovers, but finally, I realized that I had to have a more youthful haircut and I had to really learn how to put on makeup that looked youthful and professional. I also had to spend the money on myself.

So, to take weight off, I had to look inside myself and agree to change. I had to start to see myself as a thin person. I had to decide that the old me was chunky and that the new me was very chic and that under the chunk, was a really terrific body. I bought two size 8 bathing suits and wore them. When you have avoided using a swimming pool because of how you look in a bathing suit, it is its own miracle to put on a size 8 bathing suit and have your husband say 'WOW.'

But that wasn’t all, I had to change other things too, to be discussed in the final chapter, part 3.