It's Not Your Stomach That's Fat, It's Your Mind: A List of Things I Thought I Couldn't Do But Did

I've pushed well past 100 pounds lost and could probably lose another 75 but it's been ages since I've felt overweight.

I'm a quarter decade into to my reclaiming of me and I achieved yet another goal, one that I barely even dreamed of achieving because it seemed so far-fetched. It's got me to thinking about all the things I thought I couldn't do but did, one by one over the last two and a half years.

Regular readers know that I believe obesity has more to do with one's mind rather than one's body. I'm sure everyone who has a severe weight problem is different but my experience has been one of finding out just how messed up my mind got. The fat person's mind develops an attitude of "I can't."

Why do people seldom take action on their weight? I think it's because they gradually change their thought process on the issue. How is it we never do anything even when we're faced with possible death? Could it be because it's like raising a loaded gun to our heads in super-slow motion over time? One millimetre per day over the course of years until we just start to ignore the gun we're raising to our heads?

Here is the list of "I can't dos" that I've knocked off through the course of my life-changing journey, in chronological order:

1. At 380 pounds, after many failures, I thought I couldn't lose weight again. I'm now in the mid-two-hundreds and feel like I'm 18.
2. I thought I could never go tobogganing with my kids. Wrong.
3. I thought my body wouldn't respond to exercise in middle-age. As long as you're alive, it responds at any age.
4. I thought I could never walk longer than fifteen minutes. I've gone on two hour hikes in the mountains.
5. I thought I could never get on a bicycle again. I've ridden hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. It's always been my favourite activity and I'm doing it again.
6. I thought I could never jog. I started jogging and soon got up to fifteen minutes and stayed there for two years because I thought I couldn't go any longer.
7. I thought mountain biking was for young people because the hills--the hills are deadly, aren't they? I trained for a mountain biking race and completed the course successfully dozens of times.
8. I thought I could never do strength training because it was too hard and not for me. I started this summer and I feel even better about myself than I did with just cardio.
9. I thought my fat body could never cross country ski. I must have skied more than a hundred kilometres last winter and had a fun winter doing it.
10. I thought I couldn't exercise outside in cold weather. I've exercised in the coldest weather and not been cold because I learned how to dress.
11. After thinking I couldn't jog longer than fifteen minutes, I bumped it up to twenty last summer. How crazy is this, I thought. Then I had a bad day and bumped it up to thirty to make myself feel better about a new achievement. Even crazier, I thought, surely the longest I'm capable of doing.

My latest achievement has been running my first 5K, then I did it again two days later. That's 50 minutes at my pace. My knees are fine, everything's fine. I'm dong it outside, not on a treadmill. Even after all the things I thought I couldn't do but proved myself wrong by doing them, I still thought I couldn't do this. Not until I just decided to do it one day. Then, and only then, did I realize it was possible. 

It's hard to change a broken mind. But whatever you think you can't do physically, question that thought and know that you'll never stop thinking you can't do something until you actually just go out and do it. Proving yourself wrong is so liberating! It's the only way the fat mind will believe.

You're worth getting off the couch and moving for. Don't listen to that voice in your head. S/he is dead wrong.