Someone called me fat, and I didn’t like it. Find out who!

Been There, Done that

If you are like me, you have had some type of gym membership since you were eighteen years old. My first gym membership was Bally’s Total Fitness. The kind of gym where they advertised great low rates and no commitment on TV, and then somehow you were tricked into signing up for a lifetime membership. You know, the one where you basically have to fake your death for them to stop debiting the monthly dues from your checking account. I am sure you know exactly what I mean! In the last twenty years or so, I have had flirtations with many fitness trends, but none of them stayed with me for the haul. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and remember some of those fitness fads. There was step aerobics, Tae Bo, 8-minute Abs, Buns of Steel, the Thighmaster, cardio striptease, kickboxing, boot camp, hot yoga, Zumba, spinning, and CrossFit. How many of these workouts have you tried?

my doctor called me Fat!

Priyanka Chopra-Jones said it best when she was once quoted as saying, “Working out is an acquired taste. I haven’t acquired it yet.” I feel the same way, sister! So, what changed for me? After all these years, how did I finally start working out consistently? Did I finally stick to my New Year’s resolution? No. Find the one perfect workout I will do for the rest of my life? No. Start dating a personal trainer? I wish! Here is the life-changing event that finally got me on the fitness train. At my annual check-up, my doctor weighed me and told me I was slightly overweight. Although my doctor told me I was slightly overweight for my height, all I heard was that I was “OVERWEIGHT!” Mind you that my check-up was in mid-December, and I was wearing winter clothes. Also, because my schedule was hectic, the only time I could fit in my check-up was the day after a friend’s holiday party. I had a couple of strikes against me going into that doctor’s appointment, but nevertheless, someone called me fat, and I didn’t like it.

thanks for nothing!

To make matters worse, my doctor referred me to a nutritionist and wrote I was overweight in my medical chart. Are you kidding me? It is one thing to say it to my face. When it is written down for any medical professional to see, I knew I had to take immediate action. Three weeks after Christmas, I marched into that nutritionist’s office, ready to get down to business. My new nutritionist looked at me and asked why I was here. “My doctor told me I was overweight,” I replied. She looked at me like I was crazy and told me I was definitely not overweight. What kind of life-changing advice did the nutritionist give me? Nada. I spent several hundred dollars to receive validation that I was not fat and a photocopy of a food pyramid chart like the ones we got in sixth-grade health class. The moral of my story is that in order to take my health seriously, someone had to call me fat first.

5 Things That Worked For Me

MyFitnessPal App - A free calorie and exercise tracker designed by Under Armour. This tracker keeps track of your daily food and beverage intake while calculating your nutrients, calories, and vitamins for you. The app’s massive food database makes it easy to log in your meals. It is eye-opening to see how quickly calories add up even when you are mindful of what you are eating.
Ditch the Scale - Despite what my doctor told me, I have never been overweight. However, losing ten pounds would be beneficial to my health. Anyone that has been on a weight-loss journey knows that the last ten pounds are the hardest to lose. Also, as women, our hormones affect our weight-loss. For me, weighing myself on the same day at the same time week after week was demotivating. True story, this past spring, I weighed in at the exact weight for 5 straight weeks! Week after week, I would eat fewer calories and exercise more, and nothing would change. It was so depressing! I decided to ditch the scale for good a few weeks later when I tried on my summer clothes from last summer. Everything fit or was loose. I realized the number of the scale was irrelevant. I was eating better and workout more than I had in years, and that was good enough for me. Ditching the scale has been totally freeing. Have you had a frustrating experience with using a scale for tracking weight loss? How did you overcome it?
Couch to 5K -This app has changed my life in 2020, but to be honest, I have had this app on my phone since 2014! It took 6 years and a global pandemic for me to use it. I live in New York City, which was not an ideal place to be quarantined for 8 weeks. Luckily, I live near a park. Therefore, Park + Obscene Amount of Free Time = Running. As someone who was super busy before the pandemic, exercise gave me something to do every day. It was something to check off on my empty To-Do list. The program is designed for beginners with little to no running experience. With so much free time on my hands, it was easy to commit to 3 days a week to run. I am proud to say I have stayed committed to running after returning to work. Who would have thought?
Tone It Up Studio App - A subscription-based app that has on-demand workout videos. I am not a fan of home-based workouts because NYC apartments are notoriously small. Working out at home for me involves moving at least one piece of living room furniture. But since I am in my forties, it is not suitable for my body to run more than 3 times a week. What do I like about Tone It Up? The workouts are only 20 minutes long. Anyone can do anything for 20 minutes. It’s just enough exercise to make me feel like I did something. Workout videos include HIIT, Total Body, Abs/Core, Yoga+Stretch, plus so much more.
Consistency - You know what they say, “It takes 3 weeks to form a new habit.” Consistency is something that I can achieve in my professional life but fail miserably in my personal life. Can anyone else relate? Perhaps the silver lining in 2020 is that it allowed me the time to be consistent with my meals and exercise. Usually, I have such big swings in my work schedule. For example, a typical week would be me at work at 5am on Monday, then 11am on Wednesday, then back to work at 5am on Thursday. An inconsistent work schedule wreaks havoc on your body. I am proud to say that I kept up with my running during the grueling summer months. It wasn’t perfect. Some weeks were better than others, but I kept running. Do you know what happened? I discovered that I love to run! Remember, I am the same person who had a running app on her phone for 6 years before actually using it. I can contribute my newfound love for running because I was consistent with it all summer and never gave up.

you can do it!

By all means, I am not the athletic type. If I can establish a fitness routine in my forties, so can you! Try to incorporate some of the steps I used in my fitness and health journey. Already on the fitness train? What was the life-changing event that got you motivated? Comment below and share your story. I would love to know!! Share your favorite workout on IG with Facing Forty! Tag @FacingForty and use hashtags #fitnessinmy40s and #facingforty.