Who's Playing the Saxophone Solo?

I'm on a fitness and health journey that has been long and rough. I've struggled with my weight since I was about 8 years old. I remember, at about age 9, mimicking my cousin Kelly while she practiced for the aerobics class she led and thinking how I needed to lose weight, too. Let me explain that I was 9 and she was 18 but she wore a size 1 and I couldn't fit into her biggest hand-me-down clothes. I would get on the ground and frantically do leg lifts and sit ups praying I'd look like the ladies on the tape. I then can recall, a few years later, standing in my room at about age 11, running in place to a Def Leppard tape, praying that the fat was melting off. After running to two songs, I knew I had run off enough for a bowl of ice cream. By 7th grade I was 5'7, 160 pounds, and wore a size 10 shoe. That's not big, but it's big for a girl in 7th grade!

Going to the gym and eating right have not been easy for me. I wasn't raised that way. It wasn't a habit.  We grew up eating potatoes, gravy, and chicken fried steak with pie for dessert. Neither of my parents worked out, ever, but they worked hard. I wasn't on sports teams in high school. It wasn't because I couldn't do sports, but because it's not what I wanted to do. I was in the band, church choir, ballet (until age 12), on the church youth group advisory board, and in piano lessons. That was what I wanted to do and I made time for it all. Just like the other kids who played baseball and ran track; they made time for it. We can always make time for what we want to do.

Having said that, if I handed someone a saxophone right now, who had never played before, and said "learn this by next week so you can be in the jazz band with me" do you think they would? Even if I kept encouraging them to practice and saying how great they'd be, do you think they'd do it? What if I said that music is good for their soul and would make them happier from the very core of their being? What about then? If they aren't interested, they aren't going to do it. Herein lies my struggle. I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to eat chicken and brown rice. I know it's good for me, for my heart, and for my joints, but I don't want to. I exercise it in spurts and under duress, but I don't have an ongoing desire to 'want to'. It sounds like a good idea for a while, but the motivation fades because, truthfully, it's not a part of me and what I want to do. For those who don’t understand not wanting to workout and want to judge me for being fat, go ahead. I've been judged for a whole lot less.

I admire those who feel the passion to work out, run marathons, and go mountain biking but, while I think “oh sure, that might be fun someday”, I don’t have a deep down desire to make it happen. Will I go to the gym? Yes. Will I go today? Possibly. Will I attempt to make more time for it? Probably. Will I give up something else that I love doing so the gym can take its place? Not likely.

I have lost 40lbs so far and changed many eating habits because that is how I choose to deal with weight so, clearly, I’m not making excuses or sitting idly by. I know my health is precious and I don’t take the responsibility lightly but, if given a choice to do something that I am interested in over exercising, I’m going to pick my kind of interesting. Unless you’re ready to play that saxophone now. Then we’ll see.