I'm going to start off this post with a little something I saw on Facebook yesterday that sort of sat on my mind...probably longer than it should have, but anywho, one of my FB friends started out a post of hers saying something to the effect of "I'm not one of 'those people that have to post every workout they do on here', but..." and then she went on to state she had starting working out and somehow gained weight. Anyway, I realize sometimes when people post on Facebook, they don't always consider their entire friends list audience, or they don't realize something can be taken the wrong way, blah blah blah, but this sort of made me want to comment her post with a little funny sarcastic note because admittedly, I AM one of "those" people. But I refrained, for I didn't want to appear snarky or rude, as that would not have been my intention...and writing can be misconstrued oh so badly sometimes.
Anyway, I get it. I see how it can be annoying when people are always checking in at the gym, updating their statuses with "getting my workout on" or "killed those quads today" and auto-posting their runs with their MapMyRun app. But I don't believe that at the heart of it, most people do it to be braggarts. Yes, I'm sure some of "them" do, but it's not why I do.
So why do I?
It's simple. Motivation and accountability.
No, I don't care if you didn't work out today and my aim isn't to make you feel bad if you didn't. If my post ended up motivating or inspiring you to get off your ass, well then, that's flippin' fantastic. Go you! Go me! Inspiring others is an amazing feeling. But if you'd rather spend your moments eating bon bons on the couch, then by all means, it doesn't affect me and I'm not shaming you for it. Hell, if I could sit on the couch and relax with bon bons whilst still having the waist of Peggy Bundy, then I'd be all about it.
Bottom line: My workouts don't have anything to do with other people.
Truthfully, I know that you could just as easily think I'm bullshitting anyway and what I'm really doing is this:
To be honest, what I'm doing right now is very humbling to myself. I was a dancer for years. After having both Tanner and Breckin, I got my body back to the best it has ever been and even then, I was still constantly working to improve. I love being fit and right now, I just don't feel like myself. Trying to lose the almost 60 lbs I gained in my 3rd pregnancy and being open and honest about it has been very humbling. Yes, I know pregnancy is a perfectly good reason to pack on extra lbs, but to me, it doesn't make it OK that I look the way I do right now. I have an ideal and a standard I set for myself. That is personal. It is downright embarrassing for me to admit to others that I somehow gained what I did. In my mind, I should have gained 25 lbs and no more...and if I had, I'd weigh less now than I did prior to pregnancy because I've been busting my ass for the last 5 months and I've managed to shed 42 of those 57 lbs. But how did I do that?
I did that because I didn't hide in my house until I lost the weight. I put my struggle out there in "public" knowing that if I did that, then in my {albeit a little mentally unstable} mind, people would be "watching" and would expect that if I'm working out so much, I should start looking good again very soon and if I didn't, I would look like a failure. {Yes, I know, mentally unstable.} It also motivates me to keep going...if I get nice compliments like, "you look great" or "keep it up, girl!" then it only makes me want to work that much harder. Compliments are nice. I guess you can consider my "fitness posts" as fishing for cheerleaders.
At 5 weeks postpartum, I still had 38 lbs to lose.
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| {taken at 18 weeks postpartum with 18 lbs to go} |
My workouts are far from making me feel like a rockstar. When I go to the gym and sit on the leg press machine, my belly fat squishes together to form what looks like a beer gut. When I take a class, for the first time in my life, I stand near the back. I used to feel I was one of the fittest whenever I took a class, now I don't. When I run, I jiggle. I might as well rename it joggling. My saddlebags have their own saddlebags. These things make me wish I could carry around a neon sign saying, "I'm not fat, I just had a baby." But the truth is...fat is fat...is fat. And I know that.
While I posted this workout this morning on Facebook:
I wasn't bragging because it's not like I made great time and I actually felt more like this:
So, I hope those of you out there that get annoyed with your friends' fitness posts will start looking at it from the other side. Maybe there is a real struggle coming from it. Don't always assume it's a "look at me, I'm so awesome" post. I mean, I could be the same way. I know TONS of girls that workout FAR LESS than I do and I could only dream to be as tiny as they are. I want to smack them and ask them to at least workout a little bit so I don't have to feel so bad that I have to workout a lot. If there is one thing I've learned in life, it's that genetics are a bitch.
But that's another story for another day. Happy Wednesday, y'all!
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