. . . Or, One Woman’s End to a 10 Year Love Affair with Physical Inactivity

So, this week was Best Life Week. (Or did you not hear? Oprah did the unthinkable and gained weight as an older woman. To be 54 and not have a two-pack! The horror.) And evidently, this means we’re all supposed to grab spiral notebooks and jot down the real reasons for our deeply-infested inner self-loathing. Because this is why we gain weight—we collectively hate ourselves, so we collectively neglect our health, and thusly we must collectively fix it. (Get it? Fat=sad. Skinny=happy. Fat women! There is something wrong with you. But it’s okay: Together, you and Oprah will have the Best Life Week ever!)

But what if, you know, the reason you’re fat is that one day you just decided to stop working out? What if the impetus behind your muffin top had more to do with being sick of activity, period, and less to do with self-abuse or covering up hidden truths or not watching enough Oprah? What if, at the age of 18, after over a decade spent playing on sports teams (AYSO, softball, swim, volleyball, even ill-advised attempts at basketball and track) and inside dance studios, swimming laps at the pool and winning a bronze medal with your volleyball team at the Junior Olympics (less fancy than it sounds), you got to college, took one look at the beer, books, boys and dining hall panini presses surrounding you, and you thought, You? You’re pretty. I could get used to pretty, and so you chose to abandon athletics and off seasons at the gym and instead shack up with the greatness that is a can of Old Style and a slice of Papa John’s pizza?

And then, for the next 10 years, you never let go?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live your Best Life. (My best friend, for whom DVR is currently a luxury not afforded and who works all day surrounded by books—as opposed to two cats, DirecTv and a stocked fridge—even asked me to tape it for her, and so I did, and I do not judge her the tiniest bit.) And it’s clear Oprah means well (even it it makes boatloads of cash in the process). But not everyone is fat because something went wrong.

Some people wake up one day at 27.5 and look in the mirror and find a pudgy girl looking back because, well, everything went right.

I’m not sad. I graduated college in four years, have been steadily employed for five years, and do just fine socially. I even hate sweets and like to cook vegetarian. But I’m also not healthy. I drink too much, have been known to smoke the cigarettes and, some days, mainly Tuesdays, when we’re due at the printer, take a cumulative 100 steps in one day. (That’s what happens when your desk is your bed and you’re stuck in it from when you wake up until 5 p.m.)

You may remember a few weeks ago when I ranted about Maureen Dowd’s profile of Tina Fey in Vanity Fair. I suppose the real reason this struck such a chord with me—here’s where I get out my spiral pad—is because it connected her weight loss to her success, when in my case I’m arguably at the height of my career trajectory and also weigh the most I ever have in my 27.5 years on this earth. Would this state, into which I entered whole-heartedly and in many cases ridiculously overzealously (forgive-ly me-ly), render my relative successes nil in the eyes of someone like Dowd?

I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t be bothered if the answer to that question is “Yes,” but that’s not what’s led me here, to this post. Instead, for no reason other than I always said I’d welcome health back into my life when I was ready (see our recent list of “Six Things We Were Sure Would Kill Us This Year“—all mine), and because I’d like to set a good example for my cats,  I’ve decided to, well, take what we’re going to call around here a little “Tina Feycation”—get out of bed, start exercising again, maybe even drop some libs. See if that doesn’t land me in the Obama White House, or whatever.

I’ll be honest, though: It helps that trainer Emily Duval and trainer/chiropractor Dr. Mandy Rhodes of South Bay Fit Camp put me up to a little challenge—six weeks in their hands, two or three sessions a week, maybe once or twice even (gasp!) at 5:30 in the morning. So far, I’ve attended two outdoor evening sessions with Emily at Whaley Park. And I pretty much hate her guts. Not really. But I hate that she smiles as she cheers me on through reps of lunges and mountain climbers and curls and sit ups and leg lifts. Mostly, I just hate that she’s taking away my longtime steady—laziness—and replacing it with my new pal, soreness. But like any new relationship, these things take time.

Those of you who enjoy what I’ve written here, excellent—I’ll be posting under the headline “Tina Feycation” every Friday at around this time. Future topics of discussion: Happy at Home but Hate Socializing With the Skinnies, Why Drunkorexia is the Devil, What to do When Your Fixed Gear Can’t Fix Your Ass and What the Hell do You Make with Turnips, Anyway?

In love with laziness? Decided it’s time to ditch your fatitude? Join me in the comments, if you’d like.

Tags: BEST LIFE, FAT FAT FAT, FATITUDE, Long Beach, Oprah, OY MY THIGHS, The District Weekly, TINA FEYCATION