Saturday Sweat..My Never Ending Weight Battle.

The weekends are usually dedicated to the gym. I hit it hard - about 5x a week. I have made it a habit for quite sometime and if  I skip either a Saturday or Sunday morning yoga class I am pretty cranky. If I miss both days then that means I'm vacation or deathly ill.

I guess you can say I take my workouts pretty seriously. I am also my worse critic and enemy. Yes, I'm back to the way I was before I got pregnant - trying to lose those dreaded 20lbs. It's also the time where magazines are pushing us to work out till we puke to acquire that BIKINI BODY and it doesn't help when I receive the swimsuit editions of the Victoria Secrets catalog in the mail. Wow, really I wasn't feel like a big tub of goo until seeing this:


(I know, I really don't compare myself to a Vicky's model -that would just be cruel)

Yes, I aware of photoshopping and heavy airbrushing but something tells me that this girl is still a size 2 and looks amazing when she's an Off Duty Model in sweat pants.

I signed up for a free 3 day membership at Equinox, Downtown SF - a great freebie from Daily Candy. This is no 24 hr Fitness - this is a serious gym with all the luxury amenities of a 5 star hotel - HELLO KIEHL'S PRODUCTS in the locker rooms!! With all these great exercise classes offered, free use of Kiehl's products, in house Full Service Spa, towel service...blah blah blah comes a hefty monthly membership/initiation fee - $138 month and $495 initiation fee ($175 before 3/22 - SF). So naturally I was thinking of all the things I can cut out to furbish my plan to sculpt a new body at a fancy gym. I am saying good bye to regular highlights - I am missing my natural black hair, no more monthly pedicures (I usually paint my own nails) and the most obvious NO MORE MAKEUP SHOPPING. I know myself well enough to know that I am really dedicated and take my workouts very seriously. Other than makeup, I keep up with all the new fitness activities and I'm game to try any crazy sounding class at least once. I have a love/hate relationship with the whole Zumba craze - it's fun, you do sweat buckets but the classes are always packed and I feel like it's a fad that will probably fade like Tae Bo did.

(is this guy still around)

Well maybe I can curb my cosmetics shopping, afterall I do need stuff to write about, right? Okay a severely tight makeup budget would have to be put into place.

I know what your saying, "Lex, you can just put that money into hiring a trainer on your own or just investigate other classes your inexpensive gym offers" Yes, I have thought about this and also another obvious piece of advice - FINE TUNE YOUR DIET. I have joined Weight Watchers before and yes, I have lost some weight but I also had to rejoin three separate times. I guess this time around I feel like I should no better - why can't I take the tools I have learned and do it on my own? Do I really need to sit in a group meeting discussing strategies on how not to pig out at your next company party? Don't get me wrong I am not bashing the Program or any of you that are members - I am speaking about the way I feel.

I also LOVE to eat and drink booze - therein lies the problem.

Once upon a time, I was a Free Style Women's Wrestler. I was 23 and I didn't do so bad - I actually won some matches.The men's team constantly beat me up but that's how I got stronger and I dropped 15lbs in about a month to make a smaller weight class for a big competition at Northwestern University in Illinois. An impossible feat but also it hindered me - I was so dehydrated and malnourished that I lost all my matches at my last competition - I really felt defeated and I went against my coach's advise - stay in your weight class where you are at your strongest and you will win. NO - VANITY got in the way, even in sports. He was right.

I guess that bit of advise is still in my head - you do not need to stress yourself out into a size 2 or even a 6. Be comfortable in your skin and just get stronger and healthy. I am slowly trying to accept this - I know that to have a better BMI (body mass index) I need to seriously drop 20lbs. I would love to drop 2 dress sized, shoot I'll even take one dress size smaller. I still fight my vanity issues but I know that I can never be a size 6 again and I need to be okay with that.  But when you trained in a sport where you are divided into specific weight classes you can't help to feel frustrated when you are doing everything you can and that scale isn't dipping lower but slowly climbing up!

What I really need to do is work on my own body issues and hang ups before my daughter gets to that age where she'll feel peer pressure to keep up with the other girls or whatever standard the media is pushing. It's still sad to me that the standard fit model size is a 0 or 2, what happened to being a size 4 or 6 - I think that's what Cindy Crawford size was at the height of her modeling career in the 90's. Okay I'm not going there - I will not bitch and moan about the industry that I buy into, it's just a never ending argument.




(Crazy to think that these 90's beauties would be considered plus sized on the runways now)

I just need to be okay with myself before I tell my daughter that she's beautiful no matter what size she is. Why can't I say that to myself?



(more play time like this please!)

 Sorry, this was a weight battle rant, just something I had to get off my chest, er uh gut!