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I’ve always loved swimming. 

I’m not the best swimmer, and I really didn’t even learn how to swim until I was 15, but I still love it.  Still though, I have a love/hate relationship with the pool.

My parents have a pool, and when I lived at home I would swim constantly, except for when people were over, or when my parents had one of their huge summer parties.  When I was a member of the Y, I never used the indoor pool, despite the fact that I would have loved to be able to swim in the autumn and winter.  My old apartment had a pool, but if my landlady was home or if someone was working on the yard (it was a basement apartment), then I wouldn’t go anywhere near it.  This apartment has a pool, but all last summer I never used it.

Why?  Well, I think it’s the same reason alot of people don’t like the pool, or beach, or whatever:  I didn’t want to be seen without my shirt in.  My flabby stretchmarked gut, my moobs, my pale skin, I thought all of that was best left under the shirt.  I didn’t want to be seen, I didn’t want to be looked at, I didn’t want to be made fun of, etc…etc…

With that said, the apartment pool has opened for the summer, and yesterday, I went swimming!

And yes, I took my shirt off.

That isn’t saying that the gut, moobs and paleness aren’t there anymore, and it’s not to say that I’m proud of my appearance right now, but I am learning that I need to worry less about what people might think and do what I want to do.  I’m also realizing that more often than not, those people are probably more concerned about how THEY look then about how they look. 

So yeah, I have alot of work to do, but I think I can now add swimming to my workout routine, and be okay with it.  Plus, I like the smell of chlorine, is that weird?

Progress Report: Week 26
Weight: 236.2
BMI: 34.4
Weight loss so far:  1.2 lbs lost since last week,  28.8 lbs lost total

Not going to go into too much detail about the scale this week, but yeah, Woohoo!  Another loss, one step closer to the 220s! Overall, I think I did okay this past week. My workouts were a-okay, with a large part of the due to A Merry Workout Pledge and my Weekend Warriors goals.  The diet was okay as well, especially in the last half of the week.  I aiming to do more actual cooking this week, so hopefully I’ll see my big loss next week…it’s gotta happen sooner or later!

But now…to the meat of the post!

Mish over at Eatingjourney started a movement last October called the Exposed Movement.  I didn’t really know about it at first, mainly because I had only been blogging for about a week at the time, but I saw the posts pop up amongst other bloggers, and the lovely Sue has been nagging (:-P) trying to talk me into doing a post for some time.  The idea behind this is to look past all of your flaws and show love for your body, and one of the major aspects of this is to actually show your body…

Ugh. What I am about to do is absolutely terrifying to me, but I said I would, so here we go…

I kid, obviously…sigh.  Here we go, for realz…

 .

There I am, in all of my flabby, stretchmarked, pasty white glory. 

I had never expected to actually planned on “exposing” myself on this site.  I won’t even take off my shirt at the pool, at the beach, around my family, etc…why in the hell would I reveal myself to the entire world via the internet.  But here we are, still though…

I thought that the main reason I was so hesitant to do this was because I absolutely hated and was embarrassed by my body.  The more I think about it though, I don’t really hate my body at all.  I’m not pleased with the way it looks, but its appearance isn’t really any fault of its own.  It was my mind that had done all of the damage, with its lack of self esteem and self worth, with its attempts to find comfort in food, with its lack of moderation and honestly, lack of caring, really.

So my body took the brunt of the damage, but through it all, it’s been a ever so resiliant, and it has always been there when I needed it to be. 

When I thought I needed comfort in food, it was there. 
When I was feeling lazy and wanted to do nothing more than to watch TV, it was there.
When I didn’t really give a shit and was going to allow myself to waste away, it was there. 

When I started working out, it was there. 
When I wanted to be a runner, and then a marathoner, it was there.
When I decided that I do actually care, and wanted to a make a change, it was there. 

Ever patient, I think it knew that I would come around, but it wasn’t going to turn its back on me in the meantime.

It’s not perfect, it can still tire easily and sometimes is just too worn out to do much of anything, but it still tries.  It hasn’t failed me yet.  It hasn’t fallen to any major illnesses or injuries.  It recovers quickly enough for me to want to push myself harder, and it grows stronger with each passing day, allowing me to actually go ahead and make that push.

It may not be much to look at, but yeah, my body is pretty awesome.  It deserves much more than I’ve given it in life…

…but it’s giving me a chance to make things right.