If you haven’t figured it out by now to make a point I’ll use an extremely embarrassing personal moment to illustrate what I mean, and today is no different.

In college I went above and beyond the Freshman 15 and gained 30 unwanted pounds.  An ex-boyfriend helped me to lose 40 pounds and I’m not gonna lie, I was feeling myself for a minute.  I was going to the gym twice a day and I would start off every work out with running a few miles on the treadmill.  My ultimate goal was to compete in a triathlon, but when I found out that they wouldn’t let me swim wearing a life vest (I’ve nearly drowned a few times, and very fearful of deep water), I set the bar a little lower and started training for a 5k.

But after about a year and a half of all this intense working out I started burning out and took a hiatus from the gym.  Originally it was only supposed to be for two weeks, but a year later, I still hadn’t gone back.  When I started putting the weight back on (and upset at myself for throwing away all of my “fat” clothes) I decided to go back to the gym and get the weight off as quickly as possible.

I woke up at 5:45am, walked from my dorm to the gym.  Put my stuff in a locker, and with a tunnel vision that I didn’t know I had, went up the stairs to the floor that had all of the equipment and went to the treadmill that I spent so much time on.  Taking a deep breath and turning on my iPod, I stupidly turned the machine on, set it for 30 minutes and turned it to the last level I was on a year ago and started running.  With my first step I felt happy.  ’Yes, I’m back at it!’  Second step I felt invigorated:  ’I didn’t realize I missed running so much!  I feel like I could run for hours right now!’  The third step became torturous:  ’Now how long do I have left to do?  29 minutes and 53 seconds?!’

Feeling extremely winded, I closed my eyes and kept on running and tried to imagine myself fitting back in my old jeans, and a bikini that I was too shy to ever buy and with my eyes closed, my foot missed a step, and before I knew it I was catapulted into a row of ellipticals right behind me.  No exaggeration, it literally was something like this.

With my eyes still closed I could hear the gasps of shock, surprise and horror coming from the few people who came to the gym at such an early time.  I could hear their footsteps as they ran to me to see if I was okay.  I still had my eyes closed as they helped me up because I felt too much shame to look in their faces.