reap just what you sow.

I don't remember how we got on the subject, but something very VERY important came up this weekend.

Back up.

Last Wednesday, boyfriend met with his PCP for his annual physical. It was a point of serious stress because he had been waiting for this day for MONTHS for two reasons: to get weighed, and to find out what might be causing numbness in his feet. The last point was a huge issue because he has a family history of diabetes and he's a really big dude. All those factors put together made him certain that he was not going to get good news.

Boyfriend has been diligently putting in hours at the gym consistently (even more consistent than me) over the last few months (pretty much since we came back from Vegas) with absolutely NO IDEA what his weight was doing. I cannot go more than two days without weighing myself, I would go nuts. A large chunk of my weight loss success has come from the sole fact that I am aware of my weight at pretty much all times, so I can't even begin to imagine how one could go MONTHS without checking and still go to the gym every day. That cluelessness would drive me insane.

So there I was, 3:40 pm, suffering out my last few hours at work waiting anxiously for an update. I almost broke a chair lunging to my phone as it rang, boyfriend's picture flashing on the screen. I hung on every word as he told me everything his doctor said, having to hold myself back from jumping and screaming at work. With pride.

Boyfriend's efforts have paid off, he is down 37 pounds and nowhere close to diabetes. I really mean it when I say, Thank God.

We are entirely way too young to be where we are with our health. It's embarrassing that we have specialists to tend to our medical conditions, which are weight-related; it's a point of shame that we're so familiar with our pharmacists because we're always having to pick up prescriptions; it's shameful that we've gotten THIS FAR into our adult lives before deciding to do something about it.

I'm so happy we put our foot down and decided enough is enough. No more. Between the two of us, we've lost 110 pounds. That's a person.

If you Google "110 pounds," at about page 19 of the images you'll start to see a whole bunch of dogs in harnesses. I guess Google thinks this furry monster falls into the 95-110 pound category.

Some people have shaken their heads and said that we shouldn't gave gained that to begin with. Sure, good point. And we should all live in houses made of rainbows and ride around on unicorns. The reality is that we did gain it. WE DID, it happened, I can't erase/re-write history. The ink on that page is already dried. We have the opportunity ahead of us now to start a new chapter, and this chapter is titled Working Extra Hard to Undo All the Mistakes We've Made. It's a long chapter. It might make for a shitty read, but it's my story and I'm going to tell it.

It came up this weekend in conversation, we were making jokes about our new svelte selves when it dawned on us how awesome it's been. We certainly didn't notice the weight when it was there (I think we both convinced our respective selves that we were just big boned) but what a relief it's been to have lost the weight.

Believe me, these are experienced words: It feels much better to be living this way. Boyfriend and I WILL attest to that now and forever, we'll scream it from the rooftops if we have to. Today marks exactly eleven months since I first gave myself the gift of a gym membership and I gotta tell you... hot diggity damn it's been worth it.

Confession time.

Admittedly, we were bad this weekend. Baddddd. Binge drinking = not diet approved. We spent Friday and Saturday drinking like crazy and eating what was there without any care, and it even spilled into the first part of Sunday, not to mention we spent that time not exercising. As we were slipping into a fried potato coma Sunday afternoon, we were snapped out of our stupor remembering that the gym would have to come early if we were to watch the Steelers play later at night.

Oh, Steelers. You fuckers break my heart.

Boyfriend seemed disheartened at the realization that this forthcoming week would be spent working off two days of bad eating and he cut his losses after 40 minutes of cardio. I, on the other hand, insisted on lifting weights since I hadn't done so since Thursday. Instead of making him wait around for me, I sent him home with the intention of running back to our place after lifting. I spent a little over an hour at the gym between punishing my favorite elliptical and doing my regular lifts plus a few more, and then I set myself to running all 1.55 miles back home. As I approached the turn onto our street, I followed a whim to keep going straight and turned a 1.55 run into a 6 miler. It was 70 degrees with a slight breeze and my lungs and my calves were loving the opportunity to push it to the limit.

I came home dripping in sweat, heart pounding, toes tingling, L-O-V-I-N-G every moment I spent on that run. I was walking running on sunshine.