Cardio and Ice Cream Slushes

I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life. Fuck. One more lap left, I think. Oh god, I hate running. I hate cardio. I had to take deep breaths, I needed to get to the mile. God. I both heard and felt my feet slap on the ground. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, loud enough to cover the sound of my necessarily labored breathing. How did I used to do this? My legs hurt. Can legs suddenly stop working? How did I let myself get this way?

But I knew very well. I overcompensated treating myself and comforting my feelings with food after the trauma of an inappropriate and abusive relationship. Anytime the stress of my college classes fell and crushed my shoulders, I reached for a snack that was not necessarily healthy. I don’t really remember a lot of veggies in my diet. My absolute favorite thing was the after 8 pm happy hour at Sonic. They had half off shakes, and I could drink an entire large strawberry ice cream slush if I didn’t control myself. And if the thoughts were bad, then I would fall into the bottom of the supersized cup.

I wasn’t huge, but I was also the heaviest I had ever been. BMI marked me red and obese as I stood at the scale and watched the numbers run up to 177. I wasn’t a tall gal. I stood firmly at 5’4 and ¾. I needed to let go of my own insecurities and truly wanted to avoid being featured on TLC. I figured that enough was enough and I needed to go ahead and not let my life hold me back from moving forward from a very unhappy existence. I was super uncomfortable in my own skin. I needed things to change in my life. In order to accomplish that, I needed to lose at least 30 pounds to be what the scale and most doctors considered “normal” and in the nice, neon green safe section weight indicated for my height.

Unfortunately for me, that started by running alongside one of my close friends, Leila, who worked out in military caliber with her father for years growing up. I was thankful to her for helping me get into shape but I also had a string of profanity I needed to hold back every time I had some new workout to do or another lap to complete. At least this was free.

“Almost there, Rose,” she said to me.

My lungs damn near exploded. I allowed my legs to push me forward faster and longer, so I could finish earlier.

“Shoot me,” I said as I collapsed on the ground a sweaty mess after finishing my laps.

“You did it though,” she said and extended a hand towards me.

“I did.” I took her hand and stood up.

“Well, time to go hit the weight room,” she said with a smile.

I knew torture was soon to come, but hey, it wasn’t cardio. “No more running?” The weight room had some treadmills we could continue the punishment in a stationary method.

“No more running,” she promised. “For only today.”

“Fine.” Weights were fine on the day of. I could breathe easier. Besides, the soreness or tomorrow was future Rose’s problem. We took a light stroll towards the weight room on a long journey towards me losing 30 pounds. I could at least take a moment to breathe before the training was unleashed on my arms and abs. I had no upper body strength so I was about as good at weights as I was at running. Even though I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight and there would be a lot of pain and suffering in the journey, I was okay with light jogging my way to happiness.