Find Your "It" and Get Fit

Welcome to the Good, the Fat and the Hungry. I'm Karla and I have been -- or am -- all those things. Here, I will share with you my lifelong struggle with my weight, and I hope you'll follow along on with my determined attempt to lose the last 40 pounds. I promise to tell you every Wednesday about every win and setback along the way.

Exercise is my drug. Not. I'm just playing. I wish I were strung out on it, but I'm not. I know, I need it, and it's good for me. However, a junkie for it? Not so much. I consider myself relatively smart, so making it an integral part of my lifestyle only makes sense. But I don't love it. I'm just smart enough to do it because I need it. Who knows? I may grow to love it, however, that has not happened -- yet.

My first stab at fitness didn't turn out so well. My older sister had lost a significant amount of weight by abolishing whites (starch, bread, sugar, etc.) from her diet and incorporating regular exercise. Having watched her success, I decided to accept her invitation -- to Boot Camp. To this day, I still don't know why the words "Boot" and "Camp" together didn't make my Spidey senses tingle, but there I stood, with 350+ pre-gastric-bypass pounds, in Boot Camp. To my left stood Adonis, and to my right was a beautiful man who had to be the nephew of Zeus or some other Greek god. How did I end up sandwiched between two beautiful men with my sister in front, and of course, directly in front of her stood a 5'6" jet black version of the Terminator, in camouflage with a whistle and a stack of bright orange cones.

Ohhhhh, Boot Camp. The words together finally started to make sense. My sister turned to smile and wish me luck. The lump of fear in my throat prevented me from making my mental plea for help audible, so I just dumbly smiled back. I was scared witless! I just knew that somehow I would embarrass my big ol' self. My worst nightmare was that I'd pass out, crush gorgeous Adonis on the way down, only to wake up being CPR'd by the very handsome nephew of Zeus, who happens to be life partner to Adonis, the guy I crushed on my way down.

Luckily, that didn't happen. Just as I thought I had almost made it through the grueling class, the instructor I'd secretly named Major Pain said, "Let's hit the stairs!" I looked at my sister and mouthed the word, "Stairs?" She said, "Yeah, come on." I asked, "Why would we do that when there's a working elevator?" She said, "No silly, we run up and down them." With a very serious look on my face, I asked her if she'd lost her mind. Stairs were unfamiliar territory, but food was not. I then said, "Do you want a biscuit from Chik-fil-a cause I'm leaving? I'm about to take the elevator (not the stairs) down to my car and drive (not walk) to get a fried (not grilled) chicken biscuit for breakfast. She just laughed and jogged away. All those not's should tell you that this was not the best way to start. Not even the extra jelly on my biscuit could soothe the agony I felt.

Once my nightmares of the Black Terminator ended, I decided to try again. Wisdom told me to do what I could do. Well, I could walk. So I did. I started walking 10 minutes in one direction and 10 minutes back. From there, I went to 15 minutes each way until I was walking an hour round trip, four days a week. The more I walked, the better I felt. Many pounds lost with a few years gained, and today I am running.

Fitness is for you. I agree with the slogan, "Just Do It," but what you call your "It" is completely up to you. Find your "It" to get fit. Just do it. You really can.