I have discovered the secret to weight loss.

Call the Nobel committee and tell them to start engraving.  I have figured this whole thing out.  Here is my secret (patent pending mind you) — ready?  You eat healthier, eat less and work out a shitload.  Tah-dah!  Close your gaping mouth.  Really.  That is how it’s done.

About three years ago I found myself recovering from a car wreck with severe neck and back injuries.  I couldn’t work out, hell I couldn’t even move most days.  A few surgeries, a year of prednisone, a lot of physical therapy, an overdose of emotional eating coupled with a bad job situation and a husband I had fallen out of love with a long time ago did not make for a healthy Laura.  In a little over a year and a half I gained over 100 pounds.  Being a blob made me more depressed and made Ben & Jerry’s stock rise considerably.  Now, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly a health nut when all this went down either.  But now I refused to wear a bathing suit, look in a mirror or shop for clothes.  And now I look back at photos of that time and think I was dead on with these choices.  Holy cow…pun intended.

I’ve never been a waif.  Or called petite.  No one has ever called me skinny bitch (but if you want to, I’m willing to pay you for this.  But it has to be in public with my family around!)  But I was an average girl with a few well placed curves (not I’m not talking about junk in my truck kind of curves).  I have big boobs, big hair, shoulders that don’t need padding and hips that would have been considered a selling point in the 1800’s when ‘good hips for birthing’ was popular.  My weight has been up and it’s been down.  And I’ve tried everything under the sun to keep it under control.  Finally at 40 it appeared that I had given up completely.  One day I had this scary thought that I could get so big that they would have to tear out a wall to get to me if I didn’t make some changes.  I don’t know if it was the thought about being so big or the fact that I spent 6 weeks creating a Venetian plaster faux finish on my bedroom walls that they would tear down that scared me the most.  But whatever it was, I wanted a change.   So I went to Krispy Kreme, grabbed a dozen Hot Now and started my plan.  Judge if you will, but seriously a Krispy Kreme donut hot off the conveyer will give you so much energy you can do anything (I know it’s a sugar rush, but when you start to crash, you just pop in another one and you’re back to planning!).

As with many other things in my life, I went about this slow and steady….wait, you don’t believe that either?  I went full force.  I knew I had to.  I went to a nutritionist, got a trainer and signed up for a battery of tests that would immerse me in water, make me work out with a mask on, and gauge every single movement I made (and didn’t make) as well as track every crumb I let pass through my mouth.  It was overwhelming.  I needed a snack.  Or two.

It was all or nothing.  I knew that it took three years to put it on and it could take longer to take it off but that Venetian plaster kept coming to my mind.  So, I dove in.  That is an exaggeration.  I really went kicking and screaming and more screaming than kicking.  My goal?  Be as healthy as I could and not worry about the size or the weight.

I began to work out like a maniac.  And I liked it.  When you’re really overweight you can get that ‘runners high’ by tooling around on the treadmill for 10 minutes at a slow gait.  As two years went by I lost almost all of it.  I work out constantly and eat healthy for the most part.  I liked how I felt — strong.  And I needed strength for what life was throwing at me (death, divorce, destruction).  I learned to make better choices, although I don’t always.  I learned to treat myself – not just with a food treat – but really treat myself.  The first year I was a monster.  I slowed my roll the second year.  I’ve lost  over 100 pounds and maintained it.  And now I’m about to embark on the third year.  I’ve found myself at a plateau and recently decided it was time to ‘mix it up’ which usually involves me spending a bunch of money.

I found a new gym and a new trainer.  I opted for the metabolics testing for $300 (where you work out like an idiot while wearing a mask and they can tell crap about you by analyzing your breath!  And not things like what you had for breakfast or if you snuck a cigarette earlier that day).  I got this 5 page report that even after having it explained, I still cannot tell you what it means or how to use it but Jordan (the 24 year old trainer with 4% body fat) is going to complete a plan for me that will show me exactly how I need to find my inner athlete.  This is his words.  I’m not naive.  There is no athlete living inside me.  There is a girl who loves  Krispy Kremes and if they made a magic pill to keep her thin she’d sell her kidney (hell, I’d steal one of your kidneys for the darn stuff).  Let’s face it, I don’t want to work out to be an athlete.  I want to work out so I don’t have to shop at a fat girl shop or have someone mess up a perfectly painted wall.

My metabolic testing says I have to work out in a few different ‘zones’ and how do I find these zones?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  I apparently need some expensive heart rate watch.  In all fairness they had cheaper ones but I wanted the pretty one that didn’t make me look like a lesbian (the one that makes me look like that inner athlete living inside my fat ass).  And I wanted GPS.  Now, GPS costs a $100 more — but seriously, how could I possibly live without it?  I don’t know what it does.  I don’t even know what the darn watch does either.  But if it will help keep me in my ‘zones’ then I think the world will be a better place.  (Actually I may try to come up with a watch that will keep my mouth from saying stupid things in pubic and this is where I will make my millions!).

I also had to go through another battery of test.  Strength (BTW I can do exactly 13 push ups in one minute — and apparently that is the same amount a 4 year old can do), flexibility (to which Jordan said those 3 words we all dream of, “You need Yoga”, and a body fat analysis.  Which is total BS. Now I love me some charts and graphs.  But these are mine and I know these aren’t good.

 

And now my mission is two fold, one make these pie charts look better and after that find the butthole who put SHOULD In all CAPS and kick him in the balls (yes, I’m assuming it’s a man).  By the way, this is my resting metabolism.  My body is at rest is a serious overachiever at not doing a damn thing.  I’m about to kick my asses ass.

I want to lose 40 more pounds.  These tests & Jordan suggest I should lose double that.  Ummm…no.  However I signed up for three months of training, bought the watch and am going for it.

The weirdest part of the testing was they produced a report that said my left leg weighed 22 pounds and my right leg only weighed 19.5.  No wonder boys don’t want me.  Who would want to settle down with horribly disfigured legs like mine?  And how is this possible (actually I Googled it and I know the scientific answer for this about muscle development, etc.), however it got me thinking.  I think they need to adjust these results a bit to get an accurate baseline weight.  And I’ve done some research.

I have big hair.  Really big, Southern hair.  It’s thick as well.  And I’m not cutting it to lose weight.  So, I’ve decided to deduct 10 pounds to my goal for this.  I had my iPhone in my pocket when weighing and that shouldn’t count.  What does that thing weigh? 20 pounds?  Okay, 2 pounds.  I’ve cut 12 off their ‘goal’ and I still have ideas.  I had to pee when I got weighed and that’s at least a pound.   I’m deducting 5 pounds for my clothing.  I mean the sports bra that I have to wear in order to keep my girls at bay weighs at least 4 pounds (and cost $130).  I’m down 22 pounds.  Speaking of breasts.  I have them.  Lots of them.  Well, technically not ‘lots of breasts’ because if I did have lots of breasts I would be on the road in a sideshow making a million or on a porn site — whichever made me the most money.  But I have big breasts.  They should be deducted.  The problem is that I didn’t know how much they weighed.  I mean one drunken night at Mega Market in the early 90’s my gay roommate, Raymond, and I tried to weigh them on a produce scale and almost got arrested.  I couldn’t remember what they weighed.  So, tonight I took out my postal scale I use for work (now don’t tell my boss or it would possibly be the oddest write up ever).  And guess what?  They weigh almost 3 pounds each.  Minus six pounds (and yes, I honestly wish at this moment that I had ‘lots of breasts’ for this deduction.  That’s a total of 28 pounds.  And yes, I’ve just emailed this hypothesis to Jordan and cannot wait for his response.

With my calculations they want me to lose 76 pounds and if you subtract my new deductions that would take their analytical number down to 48 which is more in line with my own goal.  Say we split the difference and that means I only have to lose 44 pounds to make my pie charts (and my ass) look amazing.  And I’ve got the watch to show me how to do it or find me in the forest or whatever the damn thing does.

Now I’ve done some other calculations and figured with what I’m spending/spent for the next three months to lose 44 pounds is going to cost me $24.52 a pound (this ain’t ground chuck baby).  Now I’m thinking I could have just had plastic surgery.

And I can’t stop laughing that I have 10 pounds of hair and 6 pounds of boobs and am thinking if I ever have to do another online profile for a dating site I should use that in my profile!

I need a beer.  I’ve got a busy day tomorrow trying to figure out why my watch won’t stop beeping and trying to stay in a zone.  It sounds like such hard work.  I may have to go to Cracker Barrel for a good breakfast to build my strength up in order to make it through the day.