Doug Losing Weight

I love riding bikes.  In the olden days, back when I thought I was fat but really wasn’t at all, I would ride my real bike many miles everyday because I just loved it.  One of my favorite things to do was climb hills.  I would ride up Little Cottonwood canyon as far as I could, and then zip down the hill feeling great about my climb.  Made it to Snowbird a couple of times…

So at the gym you’ll find me climbing hills on my stationary bike.  The one I prefer has a monitor, so I can see fake terrain going by.  When I get done my legs almost don’t work, so I know I’ve done it right.  I wish there was a hill to coast down at the end while my legs recover.

Yesterday I’m climbing the hill, listening to RadioLab podcasts from WNYC, and in walks this woman that is the picture of fitness.  Five foot 7 or 8 inches, slim, strong.  Kind of what I’d like to be when I grow up.  She gets on the stair stepper in front of me with a People magazine, and starts to climb.  She’s flipping through the magazine, reading articles, like she’s waiting in a Dr’s office or something.  She made it look easy.  According to my time frame, she was there about ten minutes, she assured me it was twenty, but what do I know?  I was climbing a mountain…

When I finished the climb I went and found her – I wanted to know what her nutrition habits were like.  I was praying that she wouldn’t tell me all she ate was carrots and raw venison.  I wasn’t disappointed.

She told me she eats pretty healthy most of the time – it sounded like a great portion of her diet (I don’t mean the “losing weight” kind of diet here, I mean the “here’s what I eat on a regular basis” kind of diet – we really need a new word here) was made from scratch, was whole food kinds of foods – either that or she was very picky about what kinds of food she buys.  She mentioned that Subway was a great place for her – she sticks to wheat bread, turkey, and tons of veggies.

We talked about my quest.  How I had learned to eat as a young man when I was very active, and then continued to eat the same way while my lifestyle got more and more sedentary.  She said she had to work hard after having babies to get back to the shape she was in (just amazing shape, did I mention that?  She just looked so healthy), so she could relate to how hard it is to get it to come off.

But she said her secret was to know when she had gone too far.  She loves to eat popcorn and have a Coke at the movies.  She does that with no guilt, but she knows she needs to scale back on the eating the next day, and go 45 minutes on the stair stepper too.  She told me she never really counts it out, kind of knows what she needs to do because her body will tell her.

She told me not to be discouraged.  She told me I might not get to 5 foot 8 and 120 pounds, but I could accomplish my goal–just to stick with it.  That was cool of her.

So I think about her (nope, didn’t even ask her name) and what she said.  Maybe I just need to calm down and stay the course, and learn to listen to my body more…

Although many times my body is certain it needs cookies – a LOT of cookies.