My loving girlfriend told me last night, out of love, "your stomach is fat." Shock, embarrassment, anxiety, feeling overweight, many negative emotions came over me then, a deep-rooted emotion that goes back all the way to childhood days of being overweight and being picked on my kids. Nowadays I feel better about myself, but I totally understand those people who are sensitive about weight gain, count calories every day, monitor themselves in the mirror, hang on comments made by others about their appearance. It can be very consuming, the need to feel good about one's body and dealing with weight gain.
It's also easy to get too hung up on others' comments. When I was a kid, some of the most traumatic moments happened when my parents commented on how I looked, or classmates (who were kids at the time, kids are at once the most honest and harshest people) told me "I have a fatface" or "I had gained another circle since I last saw them." As shocking as these comments were, I could at least take solace that these subjective comments were made just by personal opinion, not by any objective standard of measurement, and could vary based on how the viewer was feeling that day, whether I was wearing a tight shirt, etc.
I will admit, though, that if there's a physical defect for me, my stomach is it.......it just never seems to go down, like a full balloon that never loses air. Recently in Chicago I haven't been able to run outside at all because a) it's cold b) the ground is frozen or slippery, d) it's windy and this is the windiest city in the country and have i mentioned that it's cold? As much as I love the scenery and fresh feeling of running outside, I've conceded defeat and taken my running indoors.
A treadmill doesn't lie. A treadmill doesn't take breaks. A treadmill doesn't slow down subconsciously. A treadmill doesn't get tired. Doesn't blow into ones face while running. Treadmill can give nice visual images (on its TV screen). treadmill can tell you everything you need to know about your workout, not just a guess. A treadmill is like a scale: literally cold and calculating, it doesn't care how much willpower you have, how much you dieted, how much you spent on a trainer or weight coach, what diet video you watched. And that's sort of the approach I hope to take to exercising and weights; objective analysis. Don't be too caught up in how other view you and keep thinking about it, dwelling on the negative comment that hangs in the air, go to objective analysis, measure, write down, record, and run. That's how to measure my weight, and eventually those things like girlfriend calling my stomach fat will take care of itself.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
No comments:
Post a Comment