Tiny Tummy Dispatch: Day 98 (aka - I like big butts)

On the advice of another Tiny Tummy I bought a Pilates Reformer just before surgery. I used it a few times before surgery and then had to give it up while I was healing. Somewhere in my down time the two Pittie pups ate the padding on the handles because… assholes. Cute, but assholes.

I pulled out the poster that came with the machine a week or so ago and taped it to the wall next to the machine. Turns out there are quite a few exercises you can do without using the handles - particularly with your legs. It feels so easy at first, gliding back and forth. I start to get the same feeling I do when I do yoga – Zen. It’s hard to believe I am even actually exercising and I start to question the effectiveness of this very expensive dog chew toy. Usually, by the fourth set of reps, however, I am reminded that I am lifting all my body weight with just a few muscles as my legs turn to jelly.

Truth is, most nights my Zen is interrupted anyway by a Pittie that thinks it’s really cool Mom is on the floor. They sit at one end of the machine and lick my face with every extension. Tonight Oliver tried to shove his rubber mallard duck in my mouth every time I extended because in addition to being an asshole, he’s a sharer.

I bought a pair of weight lifting gloves this week so I could start doing arm exercises too. And, holy hell… that shit? So. Not. Zen. Four sets of reps in and I was sweating in places that don’t make sense. At all.

I’ll continue doing it, however, because my biggest fear – next to the Bariatric surgery not being successful – is that the Bariatric surgery is uber successful and I end up with all sorts of sagging skin. And, unfortunately, that is a fear that has very much become a reality.

My arms now have permanent built-in dolman sleeves, my thighs are heading south and my butt? Oh my luscious badonkadonk – how I mourn thee. I actually had to adjust my car’s rearview mirror a few weeks back because my butt is so deflated I no longer sit up as high as I once did. The only thing that isn’t really deflating is my bust and, ironically, it is one of the two things that my insurance will pay to have lifted when all is said and done (the other being my stomach).

It really bites that after all I am going through to get healthy the end result is going to be a rather deformed body – albeit one with perky breasts, apparently. I know that the silver lining to all this is a longer, disease-free life – I would just prefer it be a long-life with a set of shapely mud flaps too.