Bellies, bellies everywhere!

I love this site.  

I was directed there via a blog written by the folks over at sparkpeople.com, which is a free fitness and nutrition tracker that has helped me stay on track the last four months.

My belly, which after gaining close to 30 lbs and being pregnant twice, is a constant source of annoyance.  Constant.  It's the one thing that despite losing over 10 lbs still hasn't really budged. It's gone down in circumference, yes, but the flabby mess it consists of probably won't go away without surgery.  Because of this I'm always fascinated by how differently we women are all shaped.  Even in my own genetic line.  

I wish I could say that I wear my belly mess proudly because it helped nurture two babies and blah, blah, blah, but honestly, I'm a little too vain, and a whole lot more cynical to be so sentimental about flab.  I want it gone despite the reassurance that other women have bellies like mine.  I would very much like to wear pants that don't resemble "mom jeans" so that the belly stays where it should.  That would be great.  

I've been trying to remember what it was like to be thin.  Before I started packing on the pounds with age and bad habits.  I have to go all the way back to high school.  Junior year to be exact.  I was in a size 3.  I know I took my fit and healthy body for granted, as we all do when we are young, and I really wish I hadn't.  I wish to heck that I had kept up with my PT while I was in the AF.  Back then the fitness test consisted of a ride on a stationary bike with a heart rate monitor strapped to your chest.  They would measure your heart rate and your vO2 rate via a breathing tube.  As a pack a day smoker, I should technically have FAILED those "fitness tests" but lo, I did not.  I would pass them, consistently.  They left it up to you to go to the gym and workout.  Going to the gym wasn't on my priority list back then.  There really wasn't much of an incentive.  I was much more concerned with where we were going to go get a beer after work.  Now, they make you run and do those pushups and sit-ups as a group to measure your fitness. 

All the bad habits, and the lack of respect I gave my body has caught up to me.  Here I am, 20 lbs over where I should be, and miles to go it seems.  I still fight the numbers on the scale as my measure of success.  Why I still weigh myself makes no sense since I've lost many inches, and my clothes fit better than they used to.  "I want my muscles back and if I stay at 160 lbs, then so be it" is the mantra I repeat in my head.  I keep my tape measure handy and if it's even a half inch down, I'm elated.

So, I keep running, and I keep doing my crunches, and I keep lifting weights, and I keep watching what I eat so that eventually when I do lose the weight I can head on down to a plastic surgeon and say be gone with the belly mess.  Until then, I think I'll keep looking at other women's bellies and try to keep thing's in perspective.   :-)