f-a-t

that's about how i feel! i'm coming off a whole week layoff from exercise...i was just getting completely burned out on it after doing it pretty darn regularly since mid-january. to use some modern-day parlance, i just wasn't that into it anymore. my dvds no longer beckoned seductively. i no longer felt like leaping to my feet to go for a 2 or 4 mile walk around the neighborhood every night. and i sure as heck no longer felt like jotting down everything i ate all day every day... so i took a 7-day break.

and boy, do i feel fat!

and not the good, p-h-a-t kind either. the b-l-o-b-b-y kind!

now, logically, i do understand that i'm probably not actually fat. LOGICALLY. but a woman's mind is a bizarre wonderworld of illogicality from time to time...and this is one of those times. i look in the mirror, and i can fairly see the muscle i've built up turning to globby silly putty goo before my very eyes.

of course, the fact this past weekend was a HOLIDAY weekend doesn't help either. i spazzed out - hamburgers, hot dogs, COOKIES - and the ultimate sweet nectar of the south...sweet tea. ahhhhhhhhhh. *glug*

now, in reality, i do realize taking the week off is good in the long run, blah blah blah, mental burnout, blah blah, this, that, the other, but I FEEL FAT.

walk by the mirror, glance sideways, and cluck my tongue over the seeming potbelly i am convinced i can see poking through my clothes. that kind of thing. stupid, huh?

so i had a mini-epiphany, actually, which is helping me get over all this - actually, a two-part epiphany. one part came on sunday, when j and i went by my mother-in-law's house to drop off some pictures of the kids for her. she has stepping stones outside her house, pavers leading up to her back door. the pavers are set adult-step-length apart, which is normally no problem for me and my long step. however, it posed a bit more of a challenge for jacob, who had to carefully step from paver to paver.

and i was behind him, and the fact he was going slower made me have to slow down and focus all my energies on my own stepping (which normally requires no thought). made me stop and think for a minute - we were focusing so intently on the simple act of walking that nothing else was on our minds right then - not the beautiful lushness of my mother-in-law's backyard - not the ever-present rabbits - not the singing birds - not the sunshine. just focusing on that very next step.

and it kind of made me wonder if maybe i'm not approaching this whole fit-and-healthy thing a little too single-mindedly. maybe i should look up from the pavers once in a while and see what's going on.

the other part of the epiphany was meeting a woman who, until 2 years ago, weighed 300 pounds. she is 6' tall, and had a defective thyroid which went undiagnosed for twenty years. she lost 150 pounds in a year and a half after the thyroid was finally removed and she was given medication to compensate for its function. she told me, "sometimes, when i look in the mirror, i still see the fat me."

and it made me realize, hey... me obsessing over a pound here or a cookie there is kind of inane. and a waste of time and mental and emotional energy that can be much better spent doing something like enjoying that cookie with my kids. bringing the joy of food into a life full of joy itself. tapping into my deep-rooted love/adoration of good food, a love i've fed since childhood and the days of homemade peach ice cream, eaten on a back porch swing, cicadas humming in the trees.

so last night, i slid back into exercising with a brisk 2-mile walk. this time, i made sure to spend less time checking my heart rate and more time looking around me. for my efforts, or lack thereof, i saw a beautiful whitetail deer pricking to attention at my approach, then gracefully bounding off into the dusky woods. a cottontail hiding in the tall grasses by the side of the road, trying to steel itself for my presence, and its courage failing at the last moment - the only thing i glimpsed was two long soft ears and a white stubby tail as it leaped off to safety. and last, but not least, five fireflies, winking at me in the deepening twilight. i don't remember seeing those for a while. it was like welcoming back an old friend from childhood.

kind of like welcoming back myself.