Keeping up with the Jones'. We all mock the idea yet it we all do it. Nevermore so than when we are working on weight loss. You make yourself go to the gym and happily (or not so happily) jump on the treadmill ready to have a nice 40 minute workout. When you look left, at the treadmill next to you, and see a woman running at 6.0 miles an hour, making your brisk pace of 3.8 look like nothing. Or you are working with the free weights, proud that you can now do chest-flys with the 10 lbs. weights only to turn to our right and see another woman doing the same exercise...only with 20 lbs. weights. Thus, making our latest triumph seem mediocre.
None of us are immune, our insecurities about our bodies tend to make us slightly crazy, leading to extremes. We either start crash dieting and exercising or we give up and sit on the couch consoling ourselves with ice cream or potato chips, watching others on television working to change their lives.
I have been on both extremes. I have been overweight since junior high school and done the crash dieting, but never got smaller than a size ten. More often than not though, I found myself on the couch with my friends Ben and Jerry.
Fifteen years ago I bought a gym membership-thinking that paying to work out might make me go- it didn't work. Maybe once every three months I would drag my gym bag out of hiding and trudge to the gym for a week or so. But eventually I would give up knowing that I just wasn't as good as everyone else and knew, after only a few days, I would never accomplish anything there.
It took me years to figure out it didn't matter. It took me years to figure out that I was going to the gym for me, not for other people. Yes there are still times that I feel self-conscious, where I don't think my efforts measure up to Sally Jones our John Jones working out beside me but then I just have to keep pushing forward. I may not keep up with the Jones' but I am better and stronger than I was yesterday and isn't that what matters?
That is absolutely what matters! I was super proud of my 5.5mph run this morning. :)
ReplyDeleteThough I am the one with the, ahem, 25lb (tyvm) dumbbells doing flys.
Seriously though, the feeling of beating someone you don't even know PALES in comparison to beating yourself.