On June 4th I will have reached a milestone of sorts, so I thought I would take a moment to reflect upon the last year of my life. Oh, I could join the rest of America tonight and binge-watch the new season of Arrested Development on Netflix, but then what will I do tomorrow as I laze upon the couch, hungover, in my pajamas? (Obviously, with that last remark, you can deduce that June 4th does not mark the date I stopped drinking.)

As all three of you that are reading this know, I started exercising a year ago. Monday, June 4th, 2012, to be exact.

What’s the big fucking deal?, someone other than myself surely must be asking.

Well, let’s start by giving you some visual evidence to comfort your curiousity.

Here I am almost two years ago today, in desperate need of both a haircut and a stylist to tell me that, oh, girl, pink is definitely not your color:

And here I am about ten minutes ago, still in desperate need of a haircut and a stylist:

Do you notice a difference? I do. And I guess that’s what I’ll chat about for a wee bit tonight.

(That’s all the visual evidence you’re getting, though, so I hope it suffices. I’m not a Jenny Craig ad, people. You will not see full body “before” and “after” shots of me in shorts and a sports bra. Some imagination is required.)

Tonight’s little essay is about the transformation I have undergone in the past year, but the natural question to ask before discussing all of that is “How the hell did you get so obese in the first place, Laurie?” (And for all of you relying solely on the Pretty in Pink picture above who are reflexively, perhaps out of Christian kindness, wanting to protest with a “You don’t look that fat to me, Laurie,” ssh. That’s sweet of you, but, trust me, there are boobs and a pot belly just below frame that would make John Goodman look svelte. I was a sausage. People that knew me at the time are piping in: “Mmm hmm. It’s true. She was a fatty.”) That is a more complicated question to answer. I will try to delve deeper into it at a later date. But, a multitude of factors contributed to my growing weight problem: I didn’t like myself, I was made uncomfortable by people’s advances towards me so I tried to eat my way into invisibility, as years passed I became more sedentary, etc. I was an all-star athlete in high school, and I walked on to my university’s volleyball team, but even then, my heyday of athletic achievement, I did not enjoy exercise.

Fast forward through twenty years of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and you create the pulpy pink mass that is peering out at you in the picture above.

I wouldn’t even be thinking about exercise or weight-loss were it not for my friend Amy’s initial encouragement. All the progress that I’ve made this past year is due to her influence. She signed up for a boot camp exercise program through Groupon, and if she had not pestered me to sign-up with her, I’d probably be shoving chili cheese fries in my face while watching Arrested Development on Netflix right now, (which sounds awesome!), instead of writing about this transformative year. She coaxed me to sign up at the end of March, with the idea that we we start on April 1st. Well…she started. I sighed and ignored her.

I ignored her for two months. Of course I did. I wasn’t really interested in working out. Why would I be? I hated exercise! And I had lived without it for years. I couldn’t imagine being able to do a push-up, much less surviving an hour of calesthenics. But, she led by example. I could see her energy levels were rising and she seemed to be enjoying it, so I thought I might as well give it a try.

And so I started. On June 4th, 2012.

As you might possibly imagine, (or remember, from my tweets and Facebook posts a year ago), starting was painful. Every muscle in my body screamed in resistance. I had absolutely no stamina and could do very few things without stopping and gasping for breath.

After exercising on June 4th, 2012, this was my first tweet:

I’m alive. But, I haven’t broken out into a sweat & felt nauseated so quickly since entering that raw oyster eating contest. #exercisesucks

And this was my follow-up:

Did you hear that? I just climbed the stairs to the 2nd floor and my thighs screamed “FUCK YOU!”

By the second day of exercise, (Wednesday, June 6th):

I just shouted “Fuck!” so loud when I sat down to pee my neighbors must think I bought the audio version of 50 Shades of Grey. #ThighPain

So, at least I was finding the humor in the agony I was enduring. That was a good sign. (Honestly, though, I did scream “Fuck!” I remember that as though it were yesterday.)

Friday, June 8th:

Tonite we had to do dead man crawls into pushups for 30 yds. I faceplanted into the astroturf after 10. I literally munched carpet.

And from the 12th:

“Okay, Poop Shoot. I ate a salad. Talk to you in an hour!” is what I WOULD tweet, if I didn’t have self-restraint and a filter.

(That last tweet has nothing to do with exercise. It simply makes me laugh.)

From June 13th, 2012:

During tonight’s workout, I grunted so loud a nurse came over to see how dilated my cervix was. She said it was too late for the epidural.

And on it went, each day to the next. I kept showing up for more abuse. Possibly because I was looking for inspiration for more hilarious tweets. Or possibly because I was beginning to feel better.

I knew by the end of the second week that exercising for an hour three times a week was having a beneficial effect on me. So I just kept going. And now it’s been a year.

Oh, I have not followed the three times a week regime religiously. And there have probably been weeks where I’ve eaten and drank more calories than I’ve burned off. But I have kept going, through the highs and the lows.

And somehow, after almost a year of fluctuations and undisciplined behavior, the past two weeks have been incredible. So, maybe it takes a year of improved diet, (oh, I haven’t even begun to discuss the changes in my diet that I’ve endured over the past year, but that has contributed mightily to my transformation), and exercise before someone like me can feel the genuine benefit. I have never felt better in my life than I have this month.

What exactly does “feeling better” mean, Laurie?

Why, thanks for asking, random reader!

I simply feel, for the first time in my life, like I have energy & strength. My core muscles feeling steady and sturdy enough to control my frame. (I never knew what a “core” was until I met my trainer, Tre.) I feel like I have genuinely strong muscles. (Clearly this statement is limited to my age and my experience. I’m not trying to say I feel like I have superhuman strength or anything. In fact, I tried to pull weeds and shovel in my yard this weekend and I felt like dying after about thirty seconds of effort. So, you know. I don’t even know what saying I have “genuinely strong muscles” means. Because clearly my genuinely strong muscles are useless for yardwork.) I feel like my breathing and blood pressure are balanced. I am not suffering from chronic aches and pains. I feel like I’m starting to carry the amount of weight that my body was designed to carry. And I am enjoying the workouts now. Finally, after a year.

It always terrifies me to make proclamations like that. Because, of course, I have no idea what the future will bring. I write to you seemingly confident that I’ve “hit my stride” when it comes to the three times a week exercise regimen that I’ve been trying to maintain for the past year…but what if next week I grow absolutely bored with it and give up going all together? What if it starts to hurt? What if my desire for gelato and cheeseburgers and craft beers overwhelms whatever desire I have to exercise?

Part of me is afraid of backsliding. And part of me doesn’t even care.

The lesson, of course, when it comes to exercise, is that the motivation for this sort of thing has to come from within. You’re the only person that can motivate you to exercise and sweat and push yourself to painful limits. I can’t imagine doing this for anyone else’s approval. It’s not about your lover or your husband or your parents or your children or your friends. It really is only about you and how you want to feel about yourself.

I have been exercising for almost a year and, if a fashion designer is being generous, he would say I’ve shrunk down from an 18, (I never bought 18’s, but I probably should have), to a 10, (although I doubt I’m in 10’s comfortably. 12’s, maybe.) All that shrinkage hasn’t helped my social life, though, I’ll tell you that much.

I don’t get asked out on dates, and all I get are strange, uncomfortable stares when I approach women. (Although there was this bikini-clad exotic dancer who seemed happy to meet me for one brief moment.) Becoming fit does not necessarily improve one’s prospects. If anything, I feel more celibate now than I did a year ago. (But, that’s an issue I have to deal with, and clearly a topic for another essay.)

About the only thing that I’ve noticed as I’ve started to shed weight is that people look at me a little bit longer than before. They don’t talk to me, per se. (They certainly don’t ask me out on dates.) They just let their gaze linger. Occasionally they smile. Probably because I remind them of someone. I have that kind of face, you know. Well, my picture is at the beginning of this blogpost, so you can see for yourself. “You look like someone I know,” is something I’ve heard more times than I can begin to count. (Someday I would like to meet all these people I look like.) Cashiers and servers and people in the hospitality industry generallly act nicer to me now. But I don’t know if that’s because they’re happier to be serving a thinner person or because I’m giving off better energy because I’m not such a miserable fatty.

The above workout was one I did back in December, 2012, right after Christmas. I remember feeling SO PROUD that I finished it! That is why I had Tre take a picture of the workout and send it to my friend Jackie, who sent it to my hotmail account…(life is a little difficult when you don’t have a smartphone, okay?)

It was SO intense. It really was.

I look at it today, six months later, and I’m thinking, “Not only could I finish that, but I could start a second round.” That’s progress, baby, right?

By the way, I have no idea how much I weigh. Thanks to doctor’s visits, I know I weighed over 205 lbs before I started this exercise regime. The last time I was weighed, back in August, 2012 or so, I think I was at 186, if I’m remembering correctly. I have no idea how much I weigh now. (Probably 181. I’m kidding and being self-deprecating or whatever the phrase is for people that talk bad about themselves.)

One of my trainers, after I had been exercising for about a month or two, wondered outoud why I was exercising. She was curious to know my motivation. “What are you doing this for, Laurie?” I didn’t answer her then, and I doubt I could answer her now.

Maybe in a year it will come to me.