Is the Piggy Back Ride Really Over?

After going through the trouble of changing my eating and exercise habits, I did something that I've never done before. I lost a significant amount of weight.

Even though I could write a lengthy post about how other people have responded to the change in my physique, I won't go into too much detail about other people other than to say some of the least disturbing reactions came from the people who said next to nothing about it.

I will talk instead about my own sort of surprising reaction to the change. Now, it's like, well I did this. Was it worth it? And, more importantly, will it be worth it for me to sustain my new fitness behaviors? Before you say, "What kind of no-brainer questions are those?," please note that for most of my post-pubescent life I didn't bother trying to lose my excess weight. I didn't think weight loss was worth the effort except for 2 times when I noticed that my weight was in the obese range. In the first instance, I quit trying to lose weight as soon as I dipped back into the merely overweight range.

Now I am, by some standards, no longer overweight. Is that good? I said yes, but it took me a while to get to that yes.

It is important to me to say this yes out loud because so much of the highly hyped benefits of weight loss are based on the external. In contrast, my yes is based on how I my body feels inside and how it feels as I move through space. This pleasure is all mine. Nobody else sees the breeze between my knees. Maybe more stores carry clothes in my size now, but the clerks aren't going to give me better service because I have more energy--not just after a workout but whenever I move. No one says, "I love how you don't actually have to eat until you're groggy." No one says, "It's so cute how you don't have to stop doing something fun because you're out of breath after two minutes."

The absence or lessening of pain and discomfort is not the same as pleasure in my book, but it's nothing to take for granted either. Before I lost weight, it was as if I was carrying around an average size 3-year-old all the time. Now that the piggy back ride is over, do I really want to pick that kid up again? My knee and my spine will revolt if I do, even if I keep them strong. My body parts will do what they always do when they are overburdened. I can't expect them to change. My behaviors, on the other hand, can be changed. And now I am much more confident that I can change my behaviors as I see fit going forward.

Soon I will move on to other fitness-related goals beyond weight loss and weight maintenance. Of course, weight is just one measure.