8-Week Challenge!

Gold's Gym is getting ready to start its annual 8-Week Challenge this month, with starting dates set for the 19th and the 26th.  Bo has informed me that I will be participating.  I have informed Bo that I will be cowering in a corner, rocking back and forth in terror at the thought of having to YET AGAIN squeeze into a bikini for the "Before" picture.

The Challenges and I do not get along.  I have participated in two so far: the 8-Week Challenge in Fall of 2010, and this past Spring's 12-Week Challenge.  I didn't complete either Challenge, due to illness during the first one and due to power-eating my way though boxes of Mike and Ikes during the second one.  If, in fact, the goal for each of those Challenges had been to see who could GAIN the most weight and change their bodies for the worse, well then, I'd be a two-time champion!  But back to my previous dread: the pictures.  This upcoming Challenge will signify the third time that I've jammed, crammed and smushed myself into three fabric triangles of torture in order to be forever captured on film.  Film that I pray never falls into the hands of anyone who may not like me much.  (CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT HORROR??)  Not only will this be the third "Before" picture, it will also be the one in which I am the biggest.  Talk about humiliating.  Since I have significantly expanded my waistline at the start of each challenge rather than having gone in the other, much-preferred direction, you can see why I've got a small issue with starting this whole mess again.

However, start the whole mess again I shall.  The shine still hasn't worn off of the shoes I bought for the last challenge, so once I get past the bikini part, I should be okay.  It would be a really nice feeling to complete a Challenge FOR ONCE, and to have lost pounds instead of gaining.  To finally have an actual "After" picture!!  Unfortunately, I've become quite used to starting something and then quitting before I really give myself the chance to succeed.  That's not how I want to be, and that's certainly not behavior I want to exhibit to my daughter.  She deserves better than that.  She deserves a strong role model in her mother, showing her that truly wanting great things for herself is the first step to actually getting them.  I hadn't believed that I was worth the effort before, but now I've come around and time is of the essence.  If I have to crowbar myself into a bikini to show my Isla that healthy change is good change, than I will do it.  Not happily.  Not without some tears, but I will do it.

If anyone out there is thinking of joining the 8-Week Challenge and seriously on the fence because of the "Before" picture, I get it.  I feel your pain and I'm here to tell you, if I can do it, then so can you.  Line up with me and we'll do it together.  Let's rip the bandaid off so that we can truly begin to heal the wounds underneath.  So many of us need this and if we stick together, we can all make it.  And at the end, when the bikinis (or Speedos) mock us with their taunts, we will wear them with confidence - maybe even some swagger! - and fabric triangles of torture will no longer tell us who we are.