I resurrected my annual-ish quest to lose 30 pounds, 360 hours ago. I’m currently sitting on my office bed (yes, I have a bed instead of a desk in my office because I don’t run my business from home for no damn reason!) eating boiled eggs and berries with 10 pound shackles around my ankles. This is not my preferred state of affairs as you may have guessed by my need to lose said 30 elbees. #BoujAche, I know.
I have made some progress lo these long 360 hours. I am down 6.9 pounds. I know what you are thinking, “Marianne, that’s 110.4 ounces which means I’ve lost an ounce every 195 minutes!!” I know, right?! ALSO, my jeans are not currently suffocating my love handles like a noose. I’m gonna call that a win and take a bow. I’m ROCKING the shit out of this diet. To be clear, I DO mean to sound like I’m bragging because that gets at my singular motivation to lose the weight… again. There is not a smaller amount I could care about values of weight loss. The number I tip the scales at, the number on the inside of my jeans, the number of calories or “points” I consumed today, all asinine. I only care that my husband seems to be impressed when those numbers are lower than higher and my friends give me kind words of motivation and love when I tell them those numbers are ratcheting down. Does that make you cringe? The beautiful horror of honesty. Let me break it down. The numbers have no value to me, but the adulation is priceless and addictive. So here I am, 6.9 pounds down, but it should really read “I’ve reached one ‘you look like the swelling in your face is going down’, two ‘that diet is working for you!’s, and one ‘Congratulations, if I KNOW ANYBODY who can reach a goal it’s you’ on my way towards the endgame of “WOW, you did it!! Your tenacity is contagious!!” I recognize that the right thing to say is that I’m losing weight for me, not for anyone else, and that I just want the euphoric feeling of knowing I’m healthier or some bullshit like that. Here are the brass tacks though: the beautiful fact that I’m 4 People Points ahead of where I was 360 hours ago, is apparently motivation enough to keep these ankle weights puttering around my house and keep the hay and birdseed shoveling into my mouth hole for a few more trips around the clock. WHY does this kind of extrinsic motivation make people uncomfortable? Why is motivation only valid if it’s purely intrinsic? It’s like we’ve replaced the word intrinsic with altruistic. I do not think that word means what you think it means, people. I’ll tell you, I’ve done next to nothing in my life for purely personal ends and I have a pretty sweet life. I’m a loving wife of 14 years, I operate a successful business, I’ve made 3 humans AND kept them alive AND I go to PTO meetings! I’ll give you the shirt off of my back and I ALWAYS have time to help the people who give me People Points… I mean the people I love. Truly, I HEART MY LIFE. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got PLENTY of faults, obvious ones, but I’m not willing to include “losing weight for a socially unacceptable reason” among my actual sins.
Here’s the catch though, I’ve done this all before. I’ve lost count of how many times I have lost this same 30 pounds. You see, what I do is I lose the weight through one horrific diet plan or another. Then, once I get to my goal weight, I start to believe the hype. I think, I’m a skinny person now!! WAHOO!! We all know, diets are for fat people. I don’t need to diet, look at me!! I then proceed to eat like an actual skinny person with a fantastic God-given freakin Ferrari metabolism. You know where that drives me and my Subaru 4 banger? Right back to Fatso Land. SO here’s what I need. I need lots of encouragement (People Points) when I’m losing the weight. THEN I need lots of reminders of the hard work (cue the “tenacity” and whatnot) that it took to get there and a mental montage of all those People Points I got along the way. I need a reminder that I’m actually a fat person impersonating a skinny person. I know, that’s a lot of NEEDYNESS, but please reference my good qualities above, either that math works for you and we’re friends, or it doesn’t. So anyway, that’s my goal. Once I lose this weight, I will FAKE IT TILL I MAKE IT. I will remain aware that I am a chubby monkey precariously disguised inside my beautiful sexy cirque du soleil costume and the tightrope I’m walking is as thin as my “intrinsic motivation”. I will be in touch with my inner chubby monkey fat girl. Please keep her in your prayers! And throw me an adulating bone once in a while, would you? Thanks in advance. XOXO
#BoujAche
BoujAche Chronicles 