Tipping the scales (2)

So my story has brought me to two weeks ago when my Dad suggested we should go to a fitness. It had long crossed my mind that I should really start to do something about my weight, so this seemed like a good enough chance to turn things around.

But I wasn't expecting to walk into a gym full of perfectly sculpted bodies and veritable athletes. I though the gym was meant for people who wanted to lose weight? Yet I didn't see a single person weighing more than 75 kilos. I felt the desperation infiltrate my mind and spreading fear throughout my system.

Wherever I turned I saw men with huge arms (plus the matching tribal tattoos) and girls who seemed as if they could go on for hours on those treadmills. And then you look at yourself in one of the wall-to-wall mirrors, which if you ask me, are just meant to torture the not-perfectly-trained, and you realize you look like a complete pig compared to them. I ran on the treadmill for fifteen minutes and I was sweating like you wouldn't believe, but the guy next to me who was running even harder, never even broke a sweat. Sometimes, I think God has it in for people who diverge from the so-called perfect man, the Adam, he created. And society agrees. If you don't look like a Brad Pitt or a Megan Fox, you don't get to be happy. You just end up bitter and alone. Or maybe this is just my cynicism talking.

But I knew it was time to turn back the tide that had robbed me from the person I was one year prior. I'm not ashamed to say that I've resorted to extreme measures to lose weight, but in my opinion it's just what needs to be done. If you've never been fat, you cannot possibly begin to understand how the world looks to us and how it looks at us. I pray that nobody out there feels like me when they enter a swimming pool or when they try their best to keep up in gym class. But I know that those people are out there and that they'd understand me. They understand the need to change, the need to feel accepted and to feel good about themselves whenever they see themselves in the mirror.

And this time, when I reach my goal weight, I won't stop running, I will keep doing what I have to do. Because I cannot let it all slip away from me again. Not after knowing how wonderful that one year was that I didn't have to suck in my gut every time I walked into a crowded room. I just know that I don't wanna be that person again. I want to feel free and unashamed of who I am. And I want to be able to fit back into my old clothes again. I want the real me back.