Actually sticking with health and fitness goals is really hard. Clearly. I said back in April that I was going to get hold of my fitness and my diet and become the woman I want to be. Guess what? I haven’t done that. Not even close.

I got a gym membership, and I’ve even gone to the gym – generally two or three days in a row, then a really long break. (Once I did manage to crack my head really good on the concrete wall of a racquetball court and it took about a month for that to not hurt to touch and I didn’t go to the gym until it felt ok again, so that time I had an excuse. Flimsy, but at least something).

I got a workout bench for at home, and dumbbells, kettlebells, exercise bands, a yoga mat, yoga blocks . . . basically all the cool “at-home gym in the living room” stuff. I even used all that stuff for a few weeks.

I’m signed up for WW and two different workout apps – “Centr” and “Tank’s Training.” Off and on I do one of Tank’s workouts (the Witcher workout at the gym kicked my butt). I haven’t touched Centr for months, and WW for even longer.

Some weeks I buy ingredients to make healthy dinners, and if I can get the prep work on them done before depression and self-loathing or ennui sets in sometime from noon onward every day, I even make those dinners. But mainly I crash, stop caring or trusting myself to do anything right, and we end up ordering out.

It’s not that I don’t know how to work out and eat right, it’s just so hard to make myself care, and keep caring. If it was me keeping someone else motivated and on track, that might be different, but myself? It’s just so hard to care . . .

So, for my own accountability – and in the hopes that maybe if I I acknowledge to myself that this is what everyone else sees every day when they look at me (although usually I wear whatever I think will hide my body the best) – I’m going to post pictures of where I am right now. Today.

There I am. 5’3″ and 227 pounds of pure flab.

Heck, the fact that I even put on workout clothes today is because I was wasting time on YouTube looking up videos on various superhero workout routines. (It made me realize how few female superheroes there are, and even fewer worthwhile female superhero workout routine videos on YouTube. Grr.)

I ended up on the workouts for Stephen Amell as The Green Arrow (when it comes to actors physically becoming characters, he really did). I like his workouts in that they are really about functional strength and agility.

I felt stupid sitting on my butt watching videos about working out, so I put my workout headphones on (yet another piece of workout equipment I haven’t much put to the proper application) and did squats, v-ups, balance work, some band work, and a few other things to get my heart rate up and my body a bit annoyed with me until the video ended.

Then I decided to make myself accountable to my blog at least, even if no actual person ever looks at it. Maybe this will be the motivator that finally pushed me into a solid routine of exercise and a healthy diet (not dieting, just eating healthy foods).

So I’ll watch my superhero shows and shows with kick-ass characters I want to be, and read books with characters that inspire me to improve myself (yes, Nesta, I’m looking at you), and look at all the actors who have embodied all these characters in real life. I’ll watch Tank’s videos and streams that never fail to inspire, and Stuart’s too. And, maybe just maybe, I’ll find that part of myself that other people have seemed sure all my life must exist, and find my drive and dedication to stick with this and physically embody the person I want to be.