You are not alone…

While on was on vacation, I went to the wedding of my cousin. When we got to the reception, there was no assigned seating like most of the weddings that I have gone to, so Marc and I picked out some seats for ourselves at a large table. Before too long, 3 couples - friends of my cousin who we had never met - asked if they could join us.   They were all about 10 years younger than Marc and I (the age of my cousin) and were clearly there to have a extremely good time - dang, did I feel OLD!!

One of the girls who joined us was adorable and blonde and very thin. Another was a tall, willowy redhead who I think works for a gym. She was fit although not overly athletic looking. The third girl was a little on the heavier side and also quite pretty. The dinner for the wedding involved going up to the self-serve buffet line. The thin blonde kept saying that she had been “saving my carbs all week for this!” I was sure that she would eat like one small potato and then claim she was stuffed.

But when we sat back down, she had a full plate of food, including a pile of mashed potatoes. She began eating the potatoes with gusto and again commented that she had “saved my carbs” - and I was shocked when she went up for seconds and came back with another huge portion of potatoes and actually ate the whole plate. She even giggled with embarrassment when her husband called her out on it. The girl that was a little heavier told her husband that she was not headed back for seconds and I thought she looked a little sad, but I may have just been projecting.

If I had been on the outside just watching this impossibly thin and pretty blonde chowing down on a huge plate of potatoes I would have assumed that she was naturally thin and had never had to watch her weight and I would have been incredibly jealous. It would have never occurred to me that she had thought about the wedding in advance and eaten less or differently leading up to it in anticipation of eating more than normal.

Apparently I think that the vast majority of people who I see as thin and pretty are naturally that way and don’t have to work n it. In my mind, I am the only person in the world that struggles with my eating and has to think about what and how much I am going to eat in advance.

Along  those same lines, yesterday, I had an incredibly stressful day at work. You guys all know what it is like coming back from vacation but add in some major changes in my job and I was just burned out yesterday. I got home and felt shaky, exhausted, cold, cranky AND I had a pounding headache. I had been planning on running but I stared at the couch - with the heated blanket it on it calling to me. I probably wasted 20 minutes arguing with myself about whether I needed to work out.

I finally got changed and dragged my ass downstairs to the treadmill. 1 mile in I started to feel a little better.  By mile 4 I was in the groove, and at mile 7 I was happy that I had run and felt refreshed.

I posted something on a running group about this and why I always forget how I feel afterwards and always seem to have to battle myself just to get going.

A few people chimed in that this is just the nature of the beast and one woman said that this is her experience every single time she runs.

Just like the food thing, I tend to think that “real” runners just waltz out the door absolutely THRILLED to be running and that they never have to battle themselves in order to get going.

What’s the point of all this?  If you are like me, and you get so angry with yourself and feel like you are alone in the battle with yourself, you (and I) need to remember that very few people have it easy.  The people we think have it all together, who are motivated and make it look like a cakewalk?  Chances are that they are battling internally as well.  So give yourself a break.  Do your best and forget the rest as Tony Horton says…