Monday Confessionals - Reese Witherspoon or Betty White?

I will be happy when I figure out how to create all of those cute little buttons my girlfriends use. When I actually get the time to sit down and look into it, maybe I will. Then I'll be able to create a cute 'Monday Confessionals' one. : )


Monday's confession: I'm a little too much like Betty White.


But I digress...I have never been a big workout/fitness kind of girl. I wish I was! I strongly admire anyone who is.

In the last 6 months, my body has been through a lot. Not only did I give birth (and a difficult one), but I was also hospitalized with heart failure. The short (or 'Natalie short' which means not short to most, but in way less detail than I usually give) story. When I had Collins at the end of July, we headed home from the hospital within a couple of days. About a week and a half later, I had a really difficult time breathing in the middle of the night one night. The next day I went to a minor medical where I was diagnosed with bronchitis. The next day I wasn't feeling any better even after all of the meds, so I went to a general practitioner. The nurse took my bp and oxygen levels. Without even examining me, they then sent me to the ER. After many tests in the ER, I was admitted to the hospital. I was in heart failure, and would soon learn I had Postpartum Cardiomyopathy which is a heart disease. The postpartum means the disease was caused from my pregnancy. They had to get the fluid from my body as quickly as possible to keep me out of the ICU (I overheard my OB telling a nurse this as they hooked up me to several more machines). By the grace of God, they were able to drain over 28 pounds of fluid from my body in two days. I still have Cardiomyopathy and take medications daily, but it is now under control. Thanks to God. So in less than one month, my body gave birth and had 28 lbs of fluid quickly sucked out. This will leave a girl with an 'interesting' figure. Since I had had a baby, I was obviously already overweight big. My belly had already been stretched to make room for Collins. After I had the fluid drained, I began to lose some of the baby weight. The problem with losing weight after having that much fluid drained so quickly is that things don't stay tight. So even though I am now a decent weight (certainly not my goal weight!), I still feel very very fat big. All that to get to my point. Ha!!!

Saturday was my first time at a gym in a long long long long long time. I did the treadmill, and Chris showed me how to do a few of the machines. (Chris is a huge workout guy who does extreme workouts 5-6 days a week at a gym where college and professional football players train.) I decided that I would go to the gym Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. That was the most realistic for me to keep up, and it helps that Harper goes to school on M, W, F. I just leave Collins in the gym nursery. Today was my first day to  make myself go (by myself). We (Collins & I) took HA to school. It was freezing. It would have been so easy to go right back to my comfort zone home and crank up the heat. Instead, I forced myself to head to the gym. If I didn't go right then, it was definitely not going to happen. I parked. Dropped Collins in the nursery, and headed to the workout room.

The major reason I hate working out is not that it is hard or makes me sore. It is because I'm not good at it. I have always pretty much stuck to doing things that I am good at. If I'm not good at it, I find a way to get out of it, because it terrifies me. I always think I am going to look like an idiot. I think that people are looking at me laughing inside at how out of place I obviously am. It's actually a pretty self-centered way of looking at things. To think that everyone who is working out is focused only on me. Looking at me and laughing at me. It is like when you are a teenager with a pimple. You are absolutely mortified to go outside of your house. When you do have to leave the house, you think everyone is looking at you, and that they are looking at your pimple thinking how horrible you look. You are embarrassed. When, in fact, not only are they not looking at you or if they are they are not even noticing your pimple. Most likely they have a pimple themselves (or another imperfection) that they assume everyone is noticing while looking at them. Saturday at the gym, I told Chris I was embarrassed to go in the workout room. I said I would be the slowest person on the treadmill. His response? "Natalie, they are not looking at you judging your speed, they are worried about focused on theirs. Okay, okay. So he had a good point.

Saturday I was on a treadmill very slowly trucking along. I was Betty White. To my left was a ridiculously fit 30ish year old guy running so fast I thought he would fly off the machine at any moment. To my right was a 'hot even when you are sweaty working out' chick jogging along. She was Reese Witherspoon. I was embarrassed. I felt like an idiot. But I was proud. Proud of myself for going in the first place. Proud of myself for not figuring a way out. Proud of myself for facing yet another fear. So, even if I was Betty White, I was headed in the right direction. Guess it is better to start as Betty and end up and Reese other than to start as Reese and end up as Betty (in terms of working out).

 

 

 

 

 

~ Nattie B