Why I Try

You wake up every morning, and you’re determined that today will be better. Today will be a good day. And then you roll out of bed and you eat a doughnut and you have a cheeseburger for lunch and ice cream for dinner and you feel disgusting as you eke out four miles on the treadmill and you go to bed with a rock in your stomach but you wake up the next morning and you try again. And maybe you have yogurt for breakfast and a turkey sandwich for lunch and spaghetti squash for dinner and you don’t drink beer at a football game and you get home late but even then you steam roll your way through six miles and two hundred sit ups and then you remember why you do it all after all.

The reasons why are endless. They change every day. And they’re different for everyone. But today, for right now, these are the reasons I ran four miles last night and I’ll run twelve miles tonight and I’m drinking plain coffee this morning instead of a Venti Mocha with whip.

For me, today, right now, it’s because I love being an athlete. And I love being late for planes, and having to run because I can, for the first time since I was ten. Because it’s warm at night now and I wore my short pajamas to bed and last night I saw my thigh out of the corner of my eye and thought “huh” instead of “ugh”. It’s my new jeans from a store where I couldn’t have bought any jeans a year ago – a store I once walked out of, crying. It’s for the cherry red bikini I’m wearing the shit out of this summer. It's for the horror of thigh chafe - realizing halfway through the day that I can't wear skirts anymore - it's worth it to never have that feeling ever again. It’s because when I see people I haven’t seen in a long time, I don’t have to worry that I’ll see that look on their face, the one that says “wow, she’s gotten FAT since I saw her last.” It’s no longer wondering if I’m the fattest one in the elevator. It’s because back in the day I couldn’t fit into my husband’s pants and now we laugh together when I put them on.

And because I remember, two years ago, sitting in the bathroom at work, at a job I hated, and thinking about how much weight I’d have to lose if I even tried, and it seemed so impossible, so totally insurmountable, and you know what?

I fucking did it anyway.

That’s why.