This is me. Age 14-15 (7th
grade), at 5’5 and 165 pounds. I was living life and truly enjoying myself, spending
my time devouring books as well as meals in between my literary adventures.
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not
like I wasn’t exercising. I was playing soccer when the grass was green and
hockey when there was snow on the ground. I saw that I was staying active, and
most importantly I LIKED how I was living, especially how I was eating and
living for all intents and purposes “comfortably”.
The only thing was that no matter
what I did, I could never seem to get many of my peers to like me. There were
other issues that were becoming apparent as well. I wasn’t able to keep up with
my peers in athletics anymore. I would become winded well before anyone else,
and I was one of the only kids who had a pot-belly and saggy pecs that shook
when I ran (that feeling of my body shaking was one of the main reasons I didn’t
ever like to run at that age, besides the fact that it felt like pure torture
because it always left me gasping for air).
However it wasn’t until the verbal
abuse began to happen, that I really started feeling terrible about what I had
become. In gym class I was always picked last, but I will never forget the time
that the two team captains literally fought over not having me on my team
because they didn’t want the “fat kid” to cause them to lose. I ended up
leaving, sparing them the torment of having the “fat kid” on their team.
The thing was, that I was
strong-willed and could shrug most things off pretty easily. You can only take
so many “Fatty Patty’s, Fat Pat’s, Fatrick’s, and Patty-bo-batty – fe-fi-fo-FATTY!
– Patty’s” before you can’t take any more.
Such abuse inspired me to pick up
my first weights in that year of 7th
grade. I didn’t go out and buy these weights; no I didn’t want people to laugh
at me for trying to change. I found that weight (a single ten pound dumbbell) in
my parents basement and I hid it in my room. The first exercise I ever did –
bicep curls. Push-ups were too difficult so I gave up on those quickly, and
those were the only two things I even knew about, because it is all I had ever
seen people on TV do at the time. I did as many as I could each night before
bed, and I quickly hid them under my bed so that no one would ever know. By the
end of that week I had lost 1 pound. Inspired by my own success I began to add
crunches to the mix, and one fateful day in the beginning off spring, I went
for my first run, which was pure and absolute HELL.
Everything began to change at this
point. I started losing weight; more people began to talk to me and best of all
the Fatty Patty nonsense had stopped. So from that day forward, I have gone on
and never looked back. Some people say I’m crazy with my workouts now, but I
LOVE how I look, and I LOVE how it makes me feel and I never want to go back to
those feelings of how I was. I have more energy to do the things I love, and I
believe that the “Fit Pat” is and will continue to be infinitely more
successful than Fat Pat ever would have been.
People aren’t as open and
expressive now that we’re older than they were when we were children. They won’t
necessarily taunt you, or outright tell you that you’re fat and that they don’t
like you because of it. However I’m one to believe that this outright repulsion
individuals have for people that are overweight doesn’t go away, that the
contempt is still there, hidden behind a mask of sincerity.
Studies show that people make
instant opinions about others within the first few seconds of meeting them, and
then even more so after the first three minutes of just talking to you. Just
ask any corporate interviewer. My point is that just because people don’t like
to talk about it, doesn’t mean that they don’t have an opinion about it. I mean
just think about when we were all kids and remember back to that pudgy child
who was always picked last in gym class, and was teased about their weight
during lunches and outside of the pool. Feelings like that only get suppressed in
one’s mind; I don’t think that they ever really go away.
My advice is to ask someone that
you trust and care about if they feel that you are overweight if you are
questioning it. I asked my mom at that time in my life. She told me that I was
just a “healthy weight” and that I was just “stocky for my age”, or in the
words of a close friend at the time “pleasantly plump”. A friend won’t want to
hurt your feelings, but as we’ve all learned over time it becomes easy to read
between the lines in order to get to what they truly mean. Then you’ll know,
and maybe then you can take that first step to change.
Start with one thing that’s
manageable, and see if it works. Stay consistent with it, and as you watch your
success grow, experiment with adding new things. In the words of a great man
that I know, you have to choose, to take a chance, in order to make the change
that you wish to see in yourself.
I promise that once you start, and
once you see that change, you will start moving forward, and you will NEVER
look back. Yes there will be setbacks. At times you just will want to give up.
However I’ve found that at the end
of the day, you are just as tired if you put in that extra work, than if you
didn’t. Think about it. When you sit in that comfy leather chair at the end of
the day and watch the news, or your shows, or even if you’re reading your
favorite book how do you feel? I feel about the same every single day at the
time. It doesn’t matter if I worked out for 3 hours earlier that day, or 1
hour, or even NO hours at all. So what is your excuse for NOT trying it, and
NOT giving it everything that you have?
Look at your life. Think about it.
If you decide that you do need to make a change then think about that ONE thing
you’re going to do to start to change it and then simple do it. Stay
consistent, and realize that results are slow. I was ecstatic when I
consistently was down 1 pound after an entire week! Be REALISTIC with your
goals, and realize that the “fit you” is going to take a lot of time to work
towards, because it’s not like the “fat you” just popped up overnight either.
It took a lot of time and work/lack-there-of to get to where you are now. So
realize that it’s going to take just as long to get to where you want to go.
Health and Wellness is a LIFESTYLE
and more importantly a CHALLENGE, EVERY SINGLE DAY! So rise to this challenge,
and change your life. Once you adopt this mindset towards yourself for improving
yourself EVERY SINGLE DAY of your life, then you are going to find that it will
carry over into EVERYTHING else that you do. You will be successful, because
you take everything as a challenge of which you know you can surmount over
time. It might not be today, or tomorrow, but you know that you can do it, and
that you will surmount any obstacle that life may throw your way.
So in the words of Barney Stinson from
How I met your mother, challenge accepted?
~PV
*Side note I only grew up to about 5'9" and those 3-4 extra inches came slowly, not all at once. I didn't get saved by the miraculous growth-spurt, I chose to*
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