Skinny-Mini Me.

Since I opened that can of worms in my last post (the one with the skinny-fatty tirade), I might as well talk about the elephant in the room that is my Weight.

As we all know (and by "we" I mean that gym instructor who told me I was in fact, 1kg obese), I need to lose this weight. It took me a lot of psychological trickery just to convince myself that I NEEDED to lose weight. I've always justified my drastic weight gain, made excuses, talked myself and everyone around me into accepting that I LIKED being fat, and that I didn't need anyone telling me I was obese. (I'm talking to you, gym instructor.)

This isn't a success story. I'm just gonna share how I got started, in the hopes that I have a reader here who needs the same push to get on that weight-loss bandwagon and share / suffer this journey with me.

Technique #1: KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE GOAL. "This will be me in a hundred years."

Before I even started thinking about diet and exercise, I had to have a really long talk with myself about weight loss. My goals, my motivations, my capabilities. Some of the things I've done have proved successful. I may not be that flat tummy up there, but by successful, I mean that I have outsmarted the greatest obstacle in my weight loss: MYSELF.

Last summer, I was hanging out with my friend My* (resident funny girl) and we joked about how we've become these fat girls who talk about "that time when I was skinny". I actually took that conversation to heart. I mean, why couldn't I be the girl who talked about "that time when I was fat"?

So I did what all obsessive compulsive nerds do when faced with a dilemma like this:

I graphed myself. I bought a huge A3 notebook, drew graphs, studied my behavior, my habits, my eating patterns, my (lack of) activity, and made a commitment to lose weight.

Here's the kind of psychobabble I fed myself:

1. I need to win. I'm overly competitive, so this is a race, and I must win. Who am I competing against? WHO CARES? If I win, I win. Who cares about the losers?

2. I found websites like Habitforge to track my progress. It takes 21 days to develop a habit, and what they do is send you reminders via email to check if you've been keeping up. This is good especially when, like me, the only way you can do something is when someone's watching your every move.

The first habit I tried to develop was exercising for 5 minutes a day. It really sounds like nothing, 5 minutes. Like, what fat-ass can't move for 5 minutes, right? That's the time it takes for me to smoke one cigarette, and that's not even enough. It takes that long for me to walk to my brother's room, make fun of him quickly, then come back. Really, what's 5 minutes?

Yeah, no. The whole point really was to do it every single day for 21 consecutive days, long enough to become part of your daily routine. I failed this challenge maybe 5 times.

3. I got myself a workout buddy. Yep, it was my friend My. We have a bet that whoever loses the most in kilos by next summer gets to take the other shopping for a full outfit. We check up on each other's progress regularly, and share sob stories and renew motivation when we reach those "plateaus" (you know, where you just go "oh fuck this" and stuff your face).

It works. Every time I slack off, My is there to remind me that Saks Fifth Avenue JUST opened, and I'll be spending my hard-earned money on outfitting her skinnier ass. It's all the motivation I need.

4. I made my weight loss public. You know how sometimes, you're just tempted to keep it a secret, thinking "I'll just surprise everyone when one day, I'll show up skinnier than whoever model you can think of, and everyone will just ooh and ahh over me." Tempting.

But making it public means people support you. They may be jealous, but they support you nonetheless.

My mom used to get worked up over the fact that I don't seem to be sleeping at all, because I'm awake when she goes to bed, and when she wakes up, she hears music blasting from my room at 6 a.m. Now that I've told her I've been trying to exercise every morning before work, she reminds me everyday, especially on days when I just can't be bothered to get out of bed.

Mom: "MOVE THAT LAZY BUTT OF YOURS!!"

Yay.

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I've thought of starting a public fat blog (a FLOG!), but that's another habit I need to develop, and no thanks.

For now, I'm making it public here.

::krump::

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*My's name has been changed for my protection. I don't want her coming up to me going "YOU PUBLISHED MY NAME, BITCH, YOU LOSE THE BET!"