When I started exercising eleven weeks ago, I had no idea that I would eventually find myself here, eating a Granny Smith apple as a snack, perched over a keyboard, trying to talk to you about the three month journey I’ve been on.

(Did your eyes skip over that revolutionary bit? I am eating an apple. AS A SNACK, not as part of a Fear Factor challenge or a hostage-negotiation tactic. I’m eating an apple. Because I WANT to. Not fried pork skins. Not cheddar cheese popcorn. I mean, WHAT?!)

Other than the Kardashians, I can’t think of a topic of conversation I find more annoying than “dieting.” Unless, of course, that topic is expanded to “dieting and exercising.” (Oooh! Double the aggravation! One topic for each fist! How convenient. Now stand still while I use each to punch you in the teeth! Keep talking! Wow. You only use fat-free dressing now? *Kaplooey!* AND you try to do 20 minutes of cardio a day? *Kablow!*)

So, allow me to talk to you about the three months I’ve spent dieting and exercising.

People who are familiar with the exercise world may know this, but I was unaware that something called “exercise boot camp” is quite popular these days with women, (I’m assuming it’s predominantly a female thing, as women seem to dominate every fitness craze in this country, from jazzercise to aerobics to pilates to yoga to spinning.), looking to lose weight. So, in April a friend of mine encouraged me to purchase a Group-On discount for boot camp with a local trainer. I bought the Group-On voucher because it was only $35. I know I can throw $35 bucks away at the movie theater on buttered popcorn, a large Coke, a box of Bunch-A-Crunch and a shitty 3-D movie by James Cameron, so it wasn’t a huge investment for me. Essentially, I bought the voucher just to get my friend to shut up about it.

I sat on that unredeemed voucher for two months. (Considering my weight and my appetite, I’m surprised I didn’t eat it.) As I sat and did nothing, though, my friend actually began going to the classes after work. And within a few weeks, her progress was evident. She had more energy, she was more upbeat, she was losing inches. So many things were going great with her that I thought that maybe I could do it, too, after all, despite the groaning protestations from the cholesterol in my veins.

I started participating in boot camp on Monday, June 4th, and my world hasn’t really been the same since. Gone is the sedentary routine. Thanks to both the exercise class and the two week diet that is finishing up today, I don’t really have much time to sit around and do nothing any more.

When I started working out in June, I said that I wasn’t interested in trying to change my diet, and I meant it. For the first nine weeks of the program, all I wanted to was make sure that I didn’t skip classes and that I was avoiding major leg pain. (I didn’t realize when I started, but I have learned recently that I have been walking/running wrong my entire life, probably due to poor quality shoes. My incorrect stride is the reason that I have battled shin splints all of my life, and why working out has always been torture for me. Hopefully, the few corrective actions I’ve taken this past week will allow me to finally exercise without pain.)

But the thing about challenges is that, once you meet them, you find yourself ready to take on more. And sure enough, by the time August rolled around, I felt confident enough in my new routine to try the 14 day diet that they offered.

I had felt like I was developing more stamina during the first eight weeks for sure, but it wasn’t until I changed my diet that I felt like I was truly shedding weight.

Of course, I say that, but here’s the thing about me: I’ve been doing this exercise thing for going on three months now, and I haven’t weighed myself. Not once. I also haven’t measured myself. I do that deliberately. I cannot imagine getting caught up in numbers. I know that “they” say a woman of my height and build should weigh about 140 pounds–since I haven’t weighed that since I was a junior in high school, that’s depressing enough as it is, thank you very much. My trainer thinks I’m insane, and I probably am. I simply don’t like the way women become obsessed by a number, a dress size, a cup size, as if simply hitting that number will suddenly make everything perfect in their world. I think it’s the obsession itself that is unhealthy. Once a woman hits her ideal weight, (not that I’ve met many that have), then they simply transfer that obsession onto something else: the number of fat grams in their food, the number of calories in their meal, how much bread they ate this week. Guh. I hate listening to it, and I certainly don’t want to become that. All I want to do is become toned and capable of doing a hearty number of push-ups and sit-ups without feeling like I’m going to die. In short, I don’t know how much weight I’ve lost. At least a pound. Maybe a squillion. I don’t know.

By far, the best thing that has happened to me in the past three months has been the introduction of the meal plan. That, more than the exercise, has turned my life around.

For a long time now, as anyone who reads my Twitter feed can attest to, I have been disgusted by processed foods, give or take a delicious pork skin or two. I have realized that so much of what is sold to us in the grocery store and in fast food restaurants is little more than poison. Delicious poisons heaped with sugars and fats and flavorings, to be sure, but I knew that eating them was bad for me. The problem was that I didn’t know how to avoid them. Bitch all you want about how bad certain foods are for you, but unless you know how to prepare healthy alternatives, you’re kinda stuck sticking the same gunk-crusted needle in your vein.

The meal plan told me what to buy, and what to prepare for each meal. It took all the guesswork out of it. Boil lentils. Have a salad. Eat a banana. Okay.

Before I started eating all these vegetables and legumes (and CHICKEN! Holy crap, I’ve eaten so much chicken in the past two weeks I now find myself sexually attracted to Foghorn Leghorn.) I was scared because everything that the meal plan said to stay away from was everything I ate. “There is no way I can do this. There is no way I can do this. There is no way I can do this.” That was essentially the mantra in my head before I started. But, I looked at the daily meal plan and did almost exactly what it told me to do. Eat 12 almonds. Have a chicken breast. Boil brown rice. Drink this water. Okay.

(It told me to eat plain greek yogurt, but I absolutely refused to try and gag that whale sperm down. That was one food that I easily modified. I ate Chobani–the ones with the great tasting fruits in them, like pineapple and black cherry and blood orange. I told myself that if my weight-loss depended on the caloric difference between nasty plain greek yogurt and Chobani with fruit in it, well, I was just going to die obese at age 47 from diabetes, because life just wasn’t worth it.)

The meal plan taught me that couscous is DELICIOUS! (Who knew?) That lentils are DELICIOUS! (Who knew?) That brown rice is DISGUSTING! (Oh, white rice. I’ll miss you.) It’s taught me that having a ton of fresh vegetables in the refrigerator is wonderful on days when you want to make an omelet. (Today I made one with mushrooms, bell peppers and tomatoes…and it was DELICIOUS!)

It’s also taught me that preparing food is a lot of work. I’ve washed dishes more times in the past two weeks than the first eight months of the year combined. I have to want to do it. In short, it’s a lifestyle change.

Of course, part of me is worried that I am so very lazy that I will stop cooking food in an effort to get something faster that involves a lot less clean-up. That and the expense of fresh food are the two things that scare me the most about this change. But, I do have two things going for me to combat that. One is that I truly see almost all processed foods as dangerous poisons that will harm my body. Oreos are not my friend. Cheetos are not my friend. Pork skins <gasp!> are not my friend. That mindset is amazingly helpful when you’re trying to plan what you’re going to eat. Just as you would never willingly add Drano to your food as you cook, I never want to add ketchup or Rice-a-Roni or Ritz crackers.

The other thing that I have going for me is that I don’t have an addictive personality. I haven’t been dealing with any out of control withdrawals or cravings these past two weeks, even though I have completed changed my diet. Not suffering from withdrawals makes it easier to transition into new behavior, so I’m fortunate in that regard.

So, who knows? If I keep at this routine, maybe I will someday hit that ideal weight of 140 that “they” say I should be at. Not that I’ll know for sure, as I won’t be weighing myself.

What I do know, though, is that if you commit, if you try, if you let go of your lust for deep-fried mushrooms and pizza with extra cheese, you might learn that you can live with diet and exercise that you otherwise thought would turn you into a half-starved, pain-stricken she-beast.