Sesame Street, Heroes, and Getting There

 

It's a magic carpet ride

Every door will open wide

To happy people like you--

Happy people like

What a beautiful

Sunny Day

Sweepin' the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get,

How to get to Sesame Street?

One of the worst things about being a fat girl (you know, aside from the constant exhaustion of carrying around the weight equivalent to an extra person, and aside from the screaming knees and asthma and back problems) was feeling like everyone knew a secret I didn’t know.  I’d see all these skinny, smiling spandex-clad girls on treadmills, and wish with everything I had to be one of them.   I’d cry because I wasn’t.

It’s like the Sesame Street song was my life’s soundtrack.  I knew where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there.  Nobody could tell me how to get to the place where I was one of the smiling people for whom doors opened wide.

Once I started working with a trainer, and learned how to eat, and quit doing things that I thought were healthy, but were actually hurting my body and sabotaging my success, my life is different. 100 pounds later, I’m on the other side of the fence.  I don’t have the perfect body yet, but as a personal trainer, I’m helping people learn how to change their own story.

Sometimes people see the gigantic picture of gigantic me that’s up at the gym, and after they say “That’s you?!?”, there’s a heavy pause.  Then I know what’s coming.  “I could never do that.”

I heard an interview on NPR with singer/songwriter David LaMotte last week.  LaMotte is based in the mountains of North Carolina, and there’s a largeness to his songs that I love.  Lately he’s spent a lot of time doing what I call “Justice Work”, and has started offering seminars called “Change Your World.” One of the things he said in the interview was that people have a “hero complex”, where they think a hero is someone who does these huge, amazing things.  It’s nice, but of course, not many people believe themselves to be heroes.  Which mean that no one believes themselves capable of changing the world.  He made the point that the world is really changed by ordinary people doing lots of small things.

This notion has been nagging at me all week, because maybe that’s how it is with losing weight too.  Maybe most of us watch shows like The Biggest Loser and think “that’s great for you, but I can’t give up my whole life to lose weight.” Or you think, secretly, that you’re not disciplined enough or determined enough or whatever else enough.  Or that  you’re too busy, or too old, or too broke, or too whatever else.  But what happens is that, at least secretly, you don’t actually believe you can change enough to lose the weight.  As much as you’d like to get to “Sesame Street”, you don’t think anyone can actually tell you how to get there.

But maybe the notion of having to be “hero”, who does big, amazing things is stopping you from being healthy and happy. Looking back, I did make some big changes.  But through the process, it never felt that way.  It felt more like one small step here, and one small step there.  It was my trainer telling me to give him just one more rep, and weakly saying, “I can do that.” It was filling my body with good things to the point I didn’t miss what I wasn’t eating.  It was all the small things. 

If I could give people one piece of encouragement, I’d say “You can do this.  Start where you are.  Get someone who knows what they are doing to help you. (Seriously, there’s nothing worse than floundering around in the gym, wasting your time, and not seeing results.)  And then put your head down, give it your best effort.  Choose food your body needs instead of just what tastes good.

Then do it again tomorrow.”

Turns out, there’s no secret road to “Sesame Street.” It’s just a lot of small steps.