DAY 4

I once told my big sister that I wasn’t sure if I was a morning person or night person. I certainly wasn’t an early bird, but I couldn’t classify myself as a night owl either (this was many many moons before my insomnia kicked in). She replied, “Charlotte, you’re a sleep person.” And it’s true. I’ve always been big into sleeping. I was definitely one of those kids who always slept through the night, and when I got to college, I made sure none of my classes started before 11AM, to ensure that I’d actually go to them. 

However, with my weight gain, my fatigue has become out of control. I’m exhausted more often than not. Waking up each morning is a huge debacle, and during the work day I tend to crash mid-afternoon. There was one weekend where I felt so sick that I slept for nearly three days straight - 63 hours in slumber. That’s only 9 hours awake in three days (for those of you bad at math, like myself). I scrounged WebMD after that, trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Cancer? Heart disease? Liver failure? And then I stumbled upon it…obesity. This was the reason for my endless need to sleep. But despite my desire to fix it, exercise was the last thing I wanted to do when I was feeling tired.

After dropping my boyfriend’s mother off at the airport on Friday afternoon, I promised myself that I’d go for a hike. I’d already taken two days off for my road trip, so I knew I needed to get back into it ASAP. But as soon as I stretched out on the couch, I didn’t think I could get back up again. I explained my discomfort to my mother, and to my shock, she was completely unsurprised. “Well, you have 100 pound to lose, Charlotte,” she said (as if I were unaware, haha). “Can you even lift 100 pounds?” (Nope.) “I’m not surprised you’re exhausted from carrying around that much weight every day for months.” And then as she left me speechless, she turned into the worrying Jewish mother she is and asked how my knees were doing (which reminds me, I thoroughly regret mentioning my knee pain in my original blog post - I swear they’re fine, mom). But to be fair, her point is completely valid. I have a hard time lifting the 45 lb bar in the squat rack, and that’s less than half the amount I’ve put on my form. 

I’m not going to lie. I probably should have gone hiking. I had made a plan, a promise to myself, and then I broke it. That’s something I’m going to try my very hardest not to do in the future. When I make a plan to work out, it’s just like any other date and I shouldn’t cancel. I know I might not always be able to follow through, but that's a challenge I'm posing to myself. I've decided to make a calendar with specific workout days, and those appointments are unbreakable. We'll see how that goes.

As always, let's keep doing this.