The scarlet letter

I put my GWF (GoWear Fit) back on tonight. As I was doing so, I looked at it with a feeling of disgust, as if it was some kind of scarlet letter that tells the world I'm on a diet. And I hate that feeling.

Here's what it looks like (I'm neither one of those ladies, btw):

Granted, I don't wear it hanging out like that and generally try to hide it under a longer t-shirt sleeve, or put it on my calf if that's not an option. But, even though it's not visible, I hate pulling my arm back whenever anyone wants to touch my arm, in fear that they'll find out I'm wearing it and have to explain myself. I hate trying to hide it under everything I wear. And I hate its unpredictable beeping that interrupts conversations.

But as much as I hate it for those things, it's still pretty amazing. It works for my weight-loss style and personality in that I can look at the data and know exactly how much I'm losing (or gaining) on a daily basis. There's no guesswork with this thing and I don't have to wait for the weight fluctuations due to female issues as well as alcohol or salt consumption to even out on the scale. I know exactly how much I weigh daily (or should, at least) and that's really nice to see on a graph, as are my daily burns.

In short, it's awesome, even if I have to get over the social stigma I feel when I wear it. I wear this cloak of denial, acting as if it doesn't bother me that I'm obese in an overly active and health-conscious town. But by putting on the GWF, it's like I'm admitting it and that makes me feel super vulnerable. It doesn't help that I haven't lost a significant amount of poundage so it must look like I'm one of those fat people that gets gadgets or puts on a front that she's losing weight when in fact nothing has changed. Argh! I hate it.

But I'm hoping that this will work. It did last summer when I was serious about tracking my calories and getting my workouts in. I just need to get off my butt and get a routine going again.

Speaking of routine, school begins next week so it'll be nice to have something scheduled every day of the week and something to get up for. Maybe then I won't be going to bed at 4 am and sleeping until 2 pm like I have been this week. I essentially sleep through the entire day since it's winter and dark all the time. And I'm back to the problem of not having the motivation to get off the couch once I sit down on it to work, which is why I'm going to start running and swimming in the mornings.

And on the subject of swimming, I'm going to have to get all my motivating words together to get to my first swim team practice at 10:30 tomorrow because I know I'm not going to want to go on my own for the first time. I figure once I rip off the band-aid, the rest of the times won't be so bad. I'm just so embarrassed of my suckage. I don't even care about the fatness in a swimsuit part. I'm just a terrible swimmer, mostly just out of shape but also embarrassingly slow (I don't think I can even do a proper flip turn). So since it's a beginner's session, I hope I won't be the only one that's new. I'm sure they get people like me all the time. At least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself until I get in the pool and there's no going back then.