As anyone who spends more than 2 minutes around me knows, I work out with this insanely enthusiastic (and effective) trainer named Sheila. She’s like the most peppy, friendly, masochistic drill instructor ever. And I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit scared of her. So when she announced that she was doing this pedometer challenge thingy and then said that I BETTER BE PARTICIPATING, I strapped on the pedometer and dutifully kept track of all my prancy steps for a week. (She also bribed me with the possibility of a free month’s worth of workouts so it was totally worth it.)
There was just one little thing; I also had to enter my starting and ending weight on the tracking sheet. Now see, I don’t care about Sheila knowing how much I weigh because hell, I started working out with her 3 weeks after my surgery so she knows where I started from. So yesterday on my way out I tossed it on the scanner and emailed it to my personal address so I could send it on to Sheila. Except it never got to my personal email address because duh, it’s only set up to send things to email addresses on the network.
Instead, it printed out a nifty little scan of the tracking sheet, complete with my email address and yes, my starting and ending weights. And this morning, I found it sitting face up right on top of the copier. The copier that everyone in the company uses, that everyone walks by a million times a day. The onlything that could have made it even MORE AWESOME is if someone had been nice enough to highlight the weight numbers and then stuck it on the bulletin board in the kitchen.
Oddly, I was less embarrassed about the whole thing than I would have expected. Rather than a panicky “OMG THE NUMBER!! THE NUMBER IS OUT THERE!!I DIE NOW!” the thought that crossed my mind was “Wow, I’m a dumbass. Meh.” And then I went back to my coffee and the intricate little tables I needed to re-create for some FDA documents today.
Apparently, somewhere along the way, that whole “the number on the scale is just a number” thing has gotten into my brain and I finally, FINALLY believe it, and that is awesome. (Alternatively, I just hadn’t had enough coffee for my panic response to kick in correctly, but I’m going to claim it as a victory over My Issues anyway!)
lisa-marie said,
December 9, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I know what you mean! I don’t pay as much attention to the number on the scale as I do how tight or loose my jeans fit! Total win!
JohnSherck said,
December 9, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Just wandered over from Holidailies–great story, and even better because you’ve reached a certain equilibrium. You’re absolutely right: numbers are just numbers. They can be useful for certain purposes, but it’s ultimately all about becoming happy with yourself, your progress, and your habits. I see people go into the weight room and get discouraged all the time because their weight doesn’t plummet down the way they think it should or because they’re embarassed that they can’t lift a certain weight or run at a certain pace or for a certain amount of time on the treadmill, but it really doesn’t matter. We all start somewhere, and the only standard that matters is our own: am I happy with the effort I’m putting in, the progress I’m making? And if not, is it because of something I can change, or am I just being unreasonable?
But I’m rambling on–it sounds like you got it a while ago.