My Fitness Bully

You know what feels great?  When your jeans just glide on.  You know what doesn’t feel great?  When they don’t.  You know that sensation of  “uh-oh” you get when you go to put your jeans on and they don’t want to go on?  You decide that they don’t own you, you own them and they are going on.  So you tug.  And by tug, I mean you pull on the belt loops with all your might, suck in your stomach, cry just a little and hop around until that zipper is up and the button submits to your superior will.  You try to convince yourself that they are tight from the dryer.  You conveniently forget that you wore them already this week.  I spent my first year of college blaming the dryer for my incredibly uncomfortable jeans and not my vending machine habit and lack of exercise.  Yoga pants are like your mom and tell you that you look great all the time.  Jeans are like that girl you hated in high school – they tell it just like it is. 

Last month, I felt like my jeans were telling me “uh-oh”. Actually, they were SCREAMING it at me; I just didn’t want to hear.  I also realized that I was gaining and losing the same three pounds every week.  Drink and eat on the weekend, try harder during the week, oh I did so well, let’s drink and eat again this weekend!  I work out, I eat well, but I am at that age where once calories go in, they like to stay in.  (And I have a vicious oat bar addiction.)  Anyway, I thought I would turn to technology to help me stay the course and get back to being the boss of my jeans.  I downloaded My Fitness Pal and let it keep track of my calories and exercise and stay the course.  I hate this damn app more than anything in my life.  My Fitness Pal?  More like My Fitness Bully.  I hate how I type in the oat bar I ate for breakfast and it tells me “This food is high in saturated fat.”  Great, oats and shame for breakfast.  I especially hate when it lights up to let me know that I “have exceeded my fat intake for the day.”  I don’t care about that, how many calories do I have left to eat?  That is all I care about.

Resident evil.

I find I have entered into a very passive-aggressive relationship with this damn app.  It yells at me about fat intake and I stand in the kitchen eating chocolate chips by the handful and recording that I ate one tablespoon of chocolate chips.  HAHAHAHA!  Do you know how many chocolate chips are in a tablespoon?  Four, maybe five, if you lick them first and stick them together.  (Just guessing at this, by the way).  I also get annoyed when I go to type in what I had for dinner, let’s say tofu tacos, and forty different items come up.  You know what I do?  I choose the one with the fewest calories.  Don’t judge, you know you would do it too.

This app managed to bring out the thirteen year old girl that resides in my head and tells me that I am not pretty enough or smart enough or good enough.  No matter how hard you think you have killed off your thirteen year old girl, she is in there lurking and waiting for her comeback.  (Mine has really bad hair and is wearing a stupid shirt with teddy bears on it and acid washed jeans.)  I have really had to step back from my inner crazy this week and remind myself I am not thirteen. My jeans may have been a little tight, but I am mostly healthy.  I am strong; I can dead-lift two hundred pounds for crying out loud.  Take that thirteen year old girl in my head!  I don’t need you or this stupid blue app to tell me I shouldn’t eat oat bars for breakfast.   

I am sure there is a balance of being smart about what you eat and how you exercise, but I find that this app and the scale left out drive me to extremes.  I will tuck the scale away and delete the app (ha-ha, I win!) and go back to the thinking that if the jeans fit, all is good.  If they don’t fit, well, I did see that HEB is selling snap-up house dresses now, so there are always options.