Shoutin’ from the Rooftop

I LOVE the Biggest Loser.  Love it.  It is truly my favorite show on TV right now.  (at least until Lost comes back on but even then it is a tie for #1!!)  I love watching each season from the very beginning so that I can see the transformations of the contestants’ bodies and lives.  While the awkwardly obvious mini-commericals for Extra Sugar Free Gum or MultiGrain Cheerios are annoying, I do even appreciate hearing them.  I will say I carry some Extra gum with me now and it really does often tide me over until a more appropriate meal time!  However, I must admit that watching it sometimes makes me insanely jealous.  It makes me jealous that I can’t be there.  It makes me jealous that I can’t put my life on hold for 4 or 5 months to go there and change my body.  Evidently it never occurs to me that when they start this show, the lightest of these people weigh roughly twice as much as I do, some closer to 3 or 4 times more than I do.  It actually sometimes makes me mad that they get to be there and I don’t!

The other thing that never occurs to me is that, I could totally do that here.  I could work as hard as they do and have the same kind of weight loss that they do.  I could work out much more during the day than I do now.  I could eat much more healthy and much more low calorie than I do now.

So why don’t I?

Oh I have lots of excuses!  I blame it on time.  I always have some place to be or one of my kids has some place to be.  I blame it on equipment.  If I just had that iPod touch that I’ve asked for, I’d have more resources available to me in the way of music to inspire while running, or a calorie counting app (feeling fat and wanting to graze? There’s an app for that!)  I blame it on my husband.  If he’d just go with me and help me, I could do it a lot easier.  I blame it on the lack of money.  If I had more money, I could buy that elliptical/cool gym equipment/personal trainer/personal chef/fill-in-the-blank-of-things-that-look-cool. If I only had a personal chef who only fixed me healthy food, I would eat it and lose weight! (at least until I had a craving for Johnny Carino’s Italian Nachos and drove over the river and through the woods to hork down a whole order myself!!)  Basically, I blame it on anything and everything except myself.

Deep down, I think I know that it is all up to me.  Just like Bob & Jillian can’t physically force those contestants to do that last mile on the treadmill or do that 10 more minutes on the elliptical, no one can force me NOT to do it either.  I tell myself that having Bob standing next to me telling me to push it further or run it faster would make me do it….but why can’t the voice inside of ME be as convincing as the voice of Bob?

I guess my point is that from now on, when I want to blame my weight on anything or anyone besides myself, all I am doing is setting myself up for disappointment.  It won’t be until I realize that I do have Bob’s voice inside my head telling me what to do, that I will have the same success the Biggest Loser contestants have.  Even if I don’t lose the weight quite as quickly as they do.

Who do you blame when you fail?  Who do you thank when you succeed?  Try to remember to make the answer to both of those questions the same…..myself.

And, be sure to chew Extra Sugar Free gum for that long lasting fruit flavor!!

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