Lose It!

                            
A few Sundays ago my husband, my two sisters and myself were sitting in my living room eating brownies and complaining about how fat we are. It's a thing that we do from time to time.

I am an on-and-off dieter. I was almost to my heaviest weight not-pregnant a few months ago and dieted and lost 5 pounds and then gained a pound back. Boo. The problem is that I HATE working out. I HATE it. But  that is the only way to really lose the weight.

I lost 30 pounds in 2008 by going to the gym 4-5 times a week and running on the elliptical but my weight has crept back on in the years since.

The four of us decided to make a pact to lose weight together. We need to do it as a group so we can be accountable to someone besides ourselves. I decided to go all in. We downloaded this app called Lose It!

You put in your weight, your goal, how much weight you want to lose per week and it calculates how many calories you can eat in a day to meet that goal. You log your food and exercise daily. You can sign up for different weight loss challenges. I signed up for 2,000 minutes of exercise because that is where I am lacking.

We have done really good. I lost 4 pounds last week. I have not been in the 130s in over two years so when I stepped on the scale I was so excited. I've been working out.

I went with my husband to join the gym by our house. He already has a membership but I've been holding out. You'll remember that last time I went to the gym, I literally pissed my pants while doing sit ups so I wasn't really excited about joining. I was reluctant.

We pulled into the parking lot and my husband said, "Damn it! It's packed in here. I forgot that today was pizza Monday."

"What's pizza Monday?"

"They serve free pizza on Mondays."

"They serve free pizza at the gym? You have got to be f**king kidding me. I am trying to lose weight and I'm going to be running in front of the delicious cheesy pizza. Great!"

We went in and a 19 year old signed me up for a gym membership. He asked me if I would like some pizza. "We call it judgement free pizza. Also, we have bagel Tuesday the second Tuesday of the month." That's how they keep their customers - by making sure they stay fatties. He handed me a shiny card and a tee shirt. My husband looked at the guy and said, "That's not fair. I didn't get a tee shirt when I joined."

The guy just looked at him like, What the hell do you want me to do about it?

My husband was not going to let it go. "I REALLY would have liked a tee shirt. It's a nice shirt." They stared at each other and shared an awkward silence. When my husband realized that the 19 year old was not catching his hint, he walked away.

I ran on the elliptical and burned 300 calories. I was happy with that. On the way home I logged my exercise into the Lose It! app. I browsed through their exercises.

"Whoa! They have sexual activity listed as an exercise!" I said surprised.

"Oh yeah? How many calories does it burn?"

"Only 26 calories for half an hour. That's not even worth it."

"Half an hour?!?!?! Who the hell has half an hour?"

"People who don't have children that are around all the time."

Seriously, our kids are ALWAYS around. They stay up as late as we do. It's horrible. I've considered paying them $10 to walk the dog around the block for ten minutes, 3 times a week.

Anyway, I've been doing good going to the gym every day. Except for Wednesday. On Wednesday we attended a free boot camp. Oh my God. I was running, doing bear crawls, at least 60 squats, 100 crunches. I didn't pee my pants though, so that was a victory.

We were SO sore afterwards. The next two days I was in tears walking up and down the stairs. I went into the bathroom and screamed bloody murder.

My kids were like, "Are you okay, mommy?"

"Yeah, I just had to sit down on the toilet and it hurt my legs."

I still went to the gym though. I hated and cursed every minute of it but I did it. I didn't even eat the bagels. So proud.