I've always struggled with my weight. I remember being young, and having my overweight pediatrician tell me that I was way off the height charts for my age, but also way off the weight chart too. I ended up getting sent to a skinny nutritionist, who I'm sure was never a day overweight, tell me what I needed to do to get my weight down. I left that appointment almost in tears, frustrated by my inability to have a "normal" body as well as the silly things the nutritionist was telling me to do (what 11 year old girl is going to chart what she eats? Honestly...). That became the start of a life long struggle, including many "diets" and exercise programs, to try and make myself fit into that "normal" range.
I think I've pretty much lost and gained the same 30 lbs over a 10 year period. Its pretty frustrating to say the least. Part of the issue was/is I am by nature a pretty lazy person. If given the choice between Real Housewives on Tivo, and talking a walk, take a wild guess which one I will chose 9 times out of 10. But...all of it came to a head when I bought Arwen. Not only has she challenged my riding skills (or lack thereof, but thats another post) she has made me realize just how unfit and overweight I really am.
Case in point...there was a month or so where she was refusing fences with me. Not hard refusals, but stops sudden enough to unseat me. For a fitter rider with a stronger core, it would have been fine. But for me, I would go pitching over her shoulder every.Damn.Time. My butt hit the ground 6 times in that month, two of which sent me flying through the jump, taking out the poles and the standards. Needless to say, this was a pretty big wake up call that I was not the athlete I needed to be to be the best for my horse. After all, I expect her to be fit, why should I expect anything less for myself?
This time though, instead of feeling like I had to loose the weight, I just thought to myself "I want to be strong and fit for my horse". If weight loss was a by product of this, then I wouldn't turn my nose up at it. But what I really wanted was to feel healthy and not come off the damn horse when she refused. So I turned to Crossfit. And let me tell you, even though I've only been doing it a month and a half, its definitely a game changer. If you don't know anything about Crossfit, the core idea of it developing functional fitness. You aren't going to a gym and mindlessly doing 3 sets of 15 reps with a 15 lb dumbell, then hopping on a treadmill to run endless miles. Its short, quick and intense with heavy weights, and limited reps. A lot of the time, you're just using your body weight. In a word, its hard and it sucks and during the first week I would literally be dry heaving my way through the workouts. But the goal is to make you fit to be able to perform to your optimum ability in LIFE, whatever that may be for the individual person.
And boy does it. Three weeks in, Arwen threw in a refusal. I didn't budge. Nothing else had changed except I started doing Crossfit. I am definitely a believer.
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