Bridget Jonesing

by Sariah S. Wilson

For those who haven’t read the book/seen the cleaned up version of the movie, besides launching the chick lit craze, Bridget Jones was big on keeping track of her “progress” in not smoking, not drinking, losing weight and dealing with men. She never quite conquers the drinking/smoking/weight issues but throughout the course of the books does get better about the men thing.

I don’t have drinking, smoking or men issues, all of which my bishop is grateful for.

Which would leave…something of a weight problem.

I am in awe of people who play volleyball on the weekends or go hiking or climb Mt. Everest or whatever it is active people do. I am an inert slug. My relationship with activity has never been good. I was very, very good at getting out of running in PE. There was nothing worse to me than having to run laps. I was so bad and so slow that I remember the year when the cheerleaders were put in the same PE class with the basketball team and Coach Lake had us run a mile and timed us. Anyone who came in under a certain time would get a soda. Of course I was last. I was dying, my lungs had that metallic breathing going on and as I circled around on the third lap the coach congratulated me and told me to come in. Yes, I had one more lap. It would have been more honest to keep running. But I chose to save my life instead and collapsed in a heap on the ground. I don’t think I moved for the next two hours.

And that was when I was skinny. I had muscle tone and everything because our cheerleading coach made us lift weights. I was very proud of the fact that I could do more weight on my leg press than a lot of the football players. Now, I couldn’t bench the bar even without any weights on it, but I sure could push with my feet!

I had ambitions in college to lose weight. I even joined gyms that I went to once or twice. I tried to use BYU’s athletic facilities…it just didn’t happen. I didn’t actually need to lose weight then. I was a great weight for my height, but like every other young woman in this country, I was convinced I needed to be the size of Kate Moss. My mom kept trying to tell me that someday I would look back and realize how good I looked. She was right, as usual.

I started gaining weight my first year of marriage, which is normal, right? We had some extreme stresses from outside influences and my way of coping was food. I also pretty much expected to get fat because of hundreds of years of Germanic influence. It is the way of my people. I figured there was no hope. Medications I took contributed to the weight gain, more stress, more problems, pregnancies with enormous children, more and more food with zero activity. I am now in the scary BMI zone.

My life is feeling very out of control right now. I am at the mercy of a 12 pound person who seems to enjoy being the boss (the cutest, most adorable and cuddly boss in the whole world). I’ve recognized this urge I have to eat junk to get some sort of hold back. I decided instead to focus my efforts on trying to lose weight, doing the best I can to work with the baby’s non-existent schedule.

I’ve had bursts in the past where I’ve tried to lose weight. I joined Weight Watchers, which did help, but I found the speakers so incredibly boring that I loathed the idea of going to the meetings. What I did like was the accountability. So I thought I’d be accountable here. I started a diet this past Monday and have been forcing myself to exercise. I’ll check in every Saturday and let everyone know if I’ve met my exercise goals for the week, and post if I lost any weight in my weekly weigh-in. I’m not going to tell you my starting weight because, hello, that’s totally mortifying.

This week I exercised three times for 30 minutes. I’ll do that again next week and then the week after that I’ll go to five days for 30 minutes. Yay me.

If anyone wants to try and exercise and lose weight with me, I invite you to join me and post about your progress. Or feel free to give me lots of rah-rahs in the comments. I need them.