Month of May Photo Challenge. Day 19: Something Red

This is an object I see almost every weekday for the past year-and-a-half. I don't always use it, but it sits in my workplace gym, and every weekday I am there. My weight was in the double-digits well through high school; blessed with a high metabolism and generally too restless and monkey-minded to be sedentary, I never had an issue with my weight, until two winters ago when I had gotten too lax with my eating, too comfortable at my desk job, and too lazy to do much physical activity. I was far from being an unhealthy weight, but I didn't like how my pants fit tighter, or the numbers I saw on the scale.

I made the resolve to do something I turned up my nose at before: work out at the gym, and build up my consistency to 5x/week, making time every day after work, even after those long days when daylight has faded. I know some people prefer to stay away from the scale as muscle weight and other factors could affect the numbers, but I weighed myself every day as a conscious effort to make the numbers go down.

There were days when the numbers went up; I was faced with discouragement, hunger at cutting portions at every meal, laziness to change into my gym clothes, the mind-numbing boredom of exercising alone in an often empty gym. But after 1.5 years of commitment, those numbers went down again, and I had dropped 10 pounds after gaining 8 post-wedding.

Having never had to consciously lose weight, I now appreciate the dedication to stick with something difficult and trudge on. Your mind breaks past the point of resistance, and all you see is the end-goal. Some journeys you have to make on your own. Losing weight is now one of my life analogies for working at something to overcome an obstacle. Those who succeed are the ones who don't give up.