Not All Progress is Measured in Pounds

I know Friday is usually a story post, but I’ve had an epiphany which I need to share.

As I swim laps in the ten meter pool that my gym has built, I am constantly pushing myself.  The pressure of all the successful and fit individuals which populate the gym weighs on me.  It haunts the corners of my vision, and it hisses that I’m not doing enough.  So I swim another lap.  And another.

I have stopped showing results on the scale.  It’s perfectly natural: sustained weight loss comes in stages.  You lose, you plateau, you continue the healthy habits which created the conditions for weight loss, and then once your body decides the time is right you lose some more.  I have been plateaued for the better part of a month.  I’m beginning to despair that I will never lose more. I fear that the weight I have lost so far this year (although it’s not a small amount) is all that I will be able to lose.

So I swim, lungs burning as I hold my breath for an entire half-lap of furious paddling.  I slap the wall in desperate triumph before lurching from the water to catch my breath.  I feel old, and out of shape, and above all else I feel like I’m wasting my time on a fruitless venture.  I’ll never be like those around me.  My chance for that has come and gone.

As I drove home, I brooded, breathing evenly and deeply as I did my best to conquer my frustrations.   Then the enormity of my situation and what I had just done came crashing in: I had spent the better part of half an hour vigorously swimming.  Not casual strokes which cause nary a ripple; I do a lap like Jaws is in the pool behind me.  And I do a lot of them.

That wasn’t always the case.  At the beginning of the year, I could barely do one.  Furthermore, long after the lap(s) were over, I would struggle to catch my breath.  The drive home after any amount of time in the pool was full of wheezing coughs and embarrassing gasps.

Now here I am, seething with silent anger at my lack of progress as I engage in breathing exercises right after swimming for all I was worth and repeatedly exhausting myself.  I’m hardly even the same person I was four months ago, and yet I had no appreciation for how drastically I have improved until this evening.

I had become so lost in my quest to see the pounds come off, to look like those I saw nearly every day, that I had become blind to all the things I’ve gained.  I haven’t been in this good of shape since… my early twenties?  Nearly a decade.  I’m far more physically active than I’ve been at any stage in my life which wasn’t the golden days of my youth where I would ride my bike to the mall to play Dance Dance Revolution for hours and then bike all the way back home. 

I’m not the only one whose caused themselves needless suffering in this manner, either.  I think all of us are so thoroughly inundated by stories and pictures of the hyper-successful that we fail to realize all the progress our own efforts are yielding.  We’ve become so bogged down with the superficial trappings of success like the numbers on a scale or in a bank account that we’ve lost touch with reality.

The reality is this:

Not all progress is measured in pounds.

So take a deep breath and swim another lap.

Swimfully,

The Unsheathed Quill