How I Got To Frump Girl

I am turning 39 years old this summer. This is the first impending birthday that has me not wanting to repeat my upcoming age. I’m sure it has to do with being one year closer to the big 4-0. A friend of my recently pointed out that 40 is considered mid-life, which took me by surprise. I was sure I had more time. I made a decision that if I’m going to enter mid-life I’m going there in style. Frump Girl is getting the door; I am reclaiming my Inner Goddess and my body. 

I have been skinny for most of my life; it’s only the last 10 years that I would consider myself overweight. I am 5’0” tall and at one time was a size 0. In my teens and 20’s I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain a pound. In high school I was lucky if I weighed 95 pounds. I was described by peers as “tiny” or “cute” but never beautiful. I had very little confidence through my first 3 years of high school and often felt invisible. I hated P.E. class especially when we were force to play team sports. I was the kid that everyone yelled at when I missed the ball. I was able to take a conditioning class my senior year. This was my first introduction to the weight room. I fell in love with lifting and by the end of the semester was able to bench press my body weight. I could do more pull ups than the other girls and hold my own with some of the guys. I had biceps now and they came with a new confidence level. I must have carried myself differently because I no longer got pushed around walking down the buy halls between classes. I remember wishing that I had started lifting my freshman year.

A year after high school I worked full time at a horse farm. I had taken the job with dreams of getting to ride horses for a living; I had been riding and competing since I was 7. I never did get to ride for a living, my job consisted of feeding a barn full of 40+ horses and cleaning 26 stalls a day. The job was the most physically demanding time period in my life so far (keep in mind I’ve never given birth). I was now 95 pounds of lean mean muscle, with a very low percentage of body fat. I skipped having periods for 5 months straight because I didn’t have enough body fat to ovulate. I now believe that I was also malnourished, I spent the small amount of money I was earning on my horse and tended to live on Top Ramen. I never could figure out why I had black circles under my eyes all the time. My live in boyfriend and I got married a few weeks after my 22^nd birthday. A few months later I changed jobs and we moved out of the horse farm. My new job was at a factory; I was no longer doing physical labor 40+ hours a week. I also started to eat real food and more apt to sit down for meals. I gained 15 pounds in the first month of my new job. I now had medical insurance so I went to my first doctor appointment in years all upset with my recent weight gain. I weighed in at 110 pounds; the Doctor’s response was “you mean you weighed less than this?” She then went on to tell me all of the risks I had put my body at by being underweight. Apparently the anemia and hypoglycemia I had been experiencing on a daily basis were not normal or healthy. But dammit I thought I looked good!

I was able to maintain my weight between 110 and 120 pounds until my 30’s. At 120 pounds I got caught up in a MLM program as a way to earn more money and get me out of a job that I hated. I used their “nutritional” meal replacement program and supplements to lose 20 pounds in a month. I was now 100 pounds and a size 0 or 2 depending on the brand of clothing. I had a great testimonial but had lost more money than I had sense in the recruiting part of the business. I moved away from the business and the products. I had to claim personal bankruptcy due to the financial mess I was in. I gained back the 20 pounds plus another 10 for good measure. My size 0 – 3 clothes were off to Goodwill including the kick ass business suits I had worn to the MLM events. I moved from a fast paced job at a veterinary clinic to my first desk job. I was now sitting at a desk 10 hours a day. On came the next 10 pounds and I was up to 140 pounds. A new gym opened up near the office and I started working out on a regular basis. I fell in love with Body Pump a syndicated weight lifting class. My weight stayed the same, but I was quickly replacing fat with muscle. When I added cardio (which I hate) two days a week the number on the scale started to get lower and my pant size got smaller. I had a tendency to be consistant at the gym right up until the point that I started to see results. At that time I would get too busy and stop showing up. It would only take about 2 weeks for the pounds to start packing on again and I would once again be back at 140. On to another job change and I no longer went to the gym.  

In the summer of 2011 my current job which I LOVE and plan to stay at moved into a new office building complete with a workout room. Still it took me until October of 2012 to start using it. A coworker challenged me to 20 minutes of cardio two times a week. Have I said yet how much I hate cardio? Having an accountability buddy was a big plus, 12 minutes in when I wanted to quit he would encourage me to press on. We soon moved up to 25 minutes and then to 30. At 7 weeks I started to see real results. My weight was the same but I started to like the way my body looked again. Just in time for the holidays. Things got busy, so I stopped working out, then at the 1^st of the year I caught the plague that was going around the office so another week went by without working out. By the time I hit the gym again I not only felt disgusting but the new scale in the changing room said I now weighed more than 140 – it said 148. That is the heaviest I’ve ever weighed. I’m assuming the scale at home is wrong since the one at work is heavy duty, which means I am heavier than I thought. 

I seem really focused on the number in the scale so far in this post. That is because it is something measurable. For this journey I plan to focus less on the number and more on the way I feel about my body and the way my clothes fit. If 140 pounds is my new weight, I’m fine with that but I would prefer the extra weight be made up of muscle and not fat. My goal is to fall in love with my body again; this blog is my chance to share that journey. I’ve added weight training to my routine in the last two weeks and I love it! I get upset with myself during my workout for how weak I’ve allowed my body to get, I used to be able to lift so much more, but then I remember that at least I’m doing something and I feel amazing at the end of each workout. I am about to become the most important person in my life, until I love all of me I cannot truly love anyone else. 40 is imminent but I plan to get there on my terms in a body that I love.