Thanks to Eric Carle’s kids book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” and my friend Erica for the inspiration for this post. I made a rather sarcastic comment on Facebook recently about finally seeing my waist and how it’s been a log time. Well not that long but long enough. So why the reference to a childrens book? It’s one of my favorites plus my friend and coworker started calling me her “hungry caterpillar.” In the childrens story the caterpillar eats and eats and eats finally making its cocoon and emerging at the end a beautiful butterfly. It’s a good analogy for this whole process. At first you’re a caterpillar and you’re eating everything in sight and you reach a point where you say, “hey wait I want to be a butterfly.” You go into a hibernation of sorts doing everything you need to do to prepare for surgery and you emerge a butterfly.
Mind you the butterfly part doesn’t happen as quickly as you’d like it to but it does happen. 30 lbs lost in about a month and half never would have happened any other way for me. I’ve even gotten more active. I’m not sure that would have happened either if I hadn’t had the surgey and didn’t want to be successful with it. I’ve seen a couple episodes of “My 600 Pound Life” I can’t ever imagine letting myself get that way. I was angry that I let myself get as heavy as I did in the first place. The most recently watched episode was a follow up on a kid (don’t know how old) who went into his surgical consult at something like 986lbs! The doc told him he had to loose 100lbs and come back in a month. This kids eating habbits were awful and his mother was not helping the situation he went back and was 1002 lbs. Absolutely boggled my mind how this man could even be living at that weight. To make a long story short he was hospitalized to loose weight had gastric bypass and struggled with his eating habbits and doing things for himself. He did loose half his weight which I’m sure prolonged his life greatly, but all the stories I’ve seen on that show includig his have definitely inspired me to get way more active.
I’ve never been a fan of the gym, although it’s convenient equipment wise, I’ve always felt like people were watching me and criticizing me in their heads. I also have a bad habbit of going for a few months and letting it fall by the wayside. So the gym for me is out. I had to think of what I like to do that gets you up and moving and isn’t done in the bedroom ?. Yes that counts as exercise btw! In any case I remembered my mom had this walking dvd and she’d pop that in if it was nasty out or even if it was late and she hadn’t gotten out to do her walk. So I asked her for it—she couldn’t find it of course so I bought a couple of my own one of which has circuit workouts for lower and upper body that include weights. They’re great and the plus side is I don’t have to feel like I’m being watched because I’m in the privacy of my own home. As far as getting out to walk it’s not really ideal on back country roads with a 50 mph speed limit, but I do have a friend who wants to so at some point we will walk the kids and dogs either at the park or on the closed road near our homes. So needless to say I think I’m getting on track, exercising, eating pretty well, and ready to go back to work. Happy reading! Until next time ? ?!