No pain - no gain.

I don't like pain. Not at all, not in any sense. If it isn't easy, I don't want to do it. And, honestly, this is the story of my life...

I gain weight because it is easier than working out and watching what I eat (which accounts for me being at my highest weight since losing 100 lbs a few years ago). My relationship struggles because I don't want to deal with the pain of putting in the work. My house is (often) a disaster because I don't want to deal with the pain of cleaning it up...the list goes on and on.

Lazy, perhaps. Actually, probably most definitely. But the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one...right?!

So, I have decided that I hate Billy Blanks (oh and don't even get me started on his perky daughter Shellie who just makes me want to puke every time I see her) . You see, I have started doing a Tae Bo video every morning with Z. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone:

1) Z gets some energy out before he goes to school with the intention of helping his (undiagnosed) ADHD.

2) I burn some calories and (hopefully) don't look like a fat cow at my brother's wedding in June.

And along with Billy and his perky daughter Shellie (gosh, even the way she spells it makes me think PERKY) I have added Lance. Now, Lance I like. Lance makes things very easy for me with The Daily Plate. I track everything I eat, every calorie I burn and every pound of weight I lose. And by "calorie burning" you know that I mean everything from grocery shopping to putting on makeup to SEX (yes, you read that right, you can count sex to your calorie burning) to massage work (some of my recent fitness logs included Tae Bo, folding clothes, washing dishes and shoveling snow). Did you know that massage work (for me, at my weight) burns approximately 417 calories an hour (which is really nice because, on a good day, I have 4 clients which equals NEARLY the amount of calories I am allotted each day) and walking to and from work everyday burns 353 calories...see, Lance I like.

I have been tracking my food for about a week. Honestly, I have not been doing it as faithfully as I should (I skipped the weekend) but it has made everything so much easier and made me really aware of what I am consuming on a daily basis. Did you know that a Dunkin Donuts Boston Creme Donut is 270 calories? That is more than I burn doing 20 minutes of Tae Bo with STUPID Billy and Shellie.

The past two mornings Z and I have gotten up early and done some Tae Bo. Yesterday (day one) I lasted about 10 minutes and then I died. Right on the floor. My heart stopped until the DVD was off...then I came to. Z, of course, being the ball of energy that he is, said "we barely even started". I told him I thought it was enough for one day...

It hurts. Every inch of my body hurts. My hips hurt, my legs hurt, my ass hurts...it's a big reminder of the last time I joined a gym.

But that got me thinking about the "no pain- no gain" concept and my complete inability to put myself through any sort of pain.

Did I think this was going to be easy?
Did I think that I could just melt the pounds away by blogging at the computer? Blogging, BTW, burns about 156 calories per hour.
Doesn't pain = strength?
Don't we all have to go through pain to get stronger?

And then (of course cause I have the (undiagnosed) ADHD tendencies as well) I started thinking about my life in general and how I am apt to give up at anything that seems too hard...

So now, I am on a mission. I am going to do things that are hard. I am not giving myself a time limit or going to say "until" (because that makes things so much easier for me to give up on). I am going to do this today. Today I am going to do things that are hard (like the 20 minutes of Tae Bo I FORCED myself to do - but you can bet your ass that as soon as 20 minutes was up I was DONE). Today is much easier than this week or this month or until I lose 100 pounds...

So, wish me luck, TODAY. Things are going to get a whole lot harder as time goes on...