Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

Being overweight is unfortunately a situation that isn’t as easy to solve as it can seem from an external point of view. “You just have to eat better” or “you just have to undergo a diet” sound very appealing and very evident, yet I keep on thinking (and many others do think the same, from what I could read in various books, blogs and websites) that to really start on seriously losing weight, something in you needs to “click”. You can indeed spend years with ten people around you saying “you need to lose weight” and passing various articles and books to you, the decision and motivation has to come from yourself first and foremost.

It’s a click that doesn’t necessarily stem from a logical source. My boyfriend kept on telling me for years that I should exercise more and not eat as many pizzas and fast-food, this was, so to say, going completely over my head. It’s not that I didn’t care about what he was saying or was considering his advice like not worthy being listened to; it’s simply that at the time, it didn’t “clicked”, it wasn’t the revelation I needed to really understand what was going wrong. The day the appropriate trigger occurs, though, this is a blessed day - perhaps dark in news, but blessed all the same.

There may be one trigger or several, it doesn’t matter - what matters is the result, the decision that is its direct consequence, a decision strong enough to finally help you get rid, little by little, of all the wrong habits, and pick new, healthier ones in turn. As far as I’m concerned, there actually were three that I can consider like my main triggers. The first one came early January this year, in the shape of a letter from the center at which I had had my latest blood test. Everything was still normal, only on the last page was marked, in big, bold letters: “significant increase in LDL cholesterol”. This too was still within the norm, yet it frightened me, because all of a sudden, it made me wonder: if in one year, with the lifestyle and eating style that were mine, it had increased enough for the lab people to feel necessary to mention it, what would it be in five years from now on? In ten years? I was only 25, and suddenly I remembered too that my grandfather had suffered from Type II diabete; that my mother was at risk for it too; that she also had hypothyroidian disorder; that perhaps I, later on, would also be at risk for this. It’s not such an easy age, 25: you’re still young by many standards, yet depending on your degree of maturity, it also dawns on you that it corresponds to a quarter of a century, and that the student years, the “fun” years, are already slowly fading, as you’re working your way deeper into the world of real work. That your body isn’t getting younger with each passing day, much the contrary, and that while it’s still time, it won’t remain “still time” forever.

My second trigger was a book I got advised to read; this was The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom, written by Phil McGraw, and while before this I just had vaguely heard of his show being aired overseas, I didn’t know that he had written this. It opened my eyes on many matters, and helped me get the kick I so much needed. It wasn’t very different from what my boyfriend had been telling me; only his words were reaching me in a different way, one that was “clicking” with me. Finally, my third trigger was plainly physical; as said, I was 25, and getting slight joint pains here and there, or feeling tired upon simply climbing the stairs, was frightening me.

I didn’t wan’t to live and let live. I didn’t want to wait passively for a day when I would barely be able to climb the stairs to my own bedroom. I didn’t want to let the kilograms pile up, year after year, while I’d be keeping on with my eating routine of pizzas, fast-food, bretzels, waffles and potatoes. Not only was it making me fat, it was also not giving me the nutrients I needed. I suddenly understood, in quite a powerful way, may I say, that things wouldn’t go easier on me in the next years, and that I was only fooling and blinding myself, with my constant thoughts of “it’s not a problem, if I take on weight, I’ll just have to be careful for a few days after, and it’ll go away again”. Because it didn’t work: with such a flawed mindset, all the weight that I had lost before, I simply gained it back over less than one year, plus some. The only door I could see at the end of this path was the one leading to an older myself one day waking up to the realization that she was obese, and I didn’t want to walk through this door.

Perhaps it’s in our nature, to need such shocks, such triggers. Mine probably wouldn’t have been as powerful for another person; for me, however, they were my wake-up call, the alarm bells finally set off, the eyes-opening I had been lacking during so many years. I believe that they may be a necessity, in a way, for they’re more powerful reasons than just needing to shake off a few pounds to look better in a bikini this summer. And because getting rid of the excess weight forever is something that requires us to work on it forever too, it’s only logical that the cues and triggers must be strong. It’s not something that can be achieved just by a mere willpower effort.

Finding what will be one’s wake-up call isn’t an easy thing, and even when having finally reached our goals, we must never forget what made us take our decision at first. But once it happens… it’s really a whole other story than simply feeling the need to “go on a diet”.

- Kery