In March of 2011, I decided I was going to lose about 10 pounds, for about the 963th time in my life. Only, this time, it was different. It was different in that I was actually going to actual fucking do it.

I truly believe that one of the most common human experiences is walking around every day with the nagging want to change our bodies in some way or another. Gain some weight in some places, lose some weight in some other places, be a few inches taller or shorter. To be human is to have just general, constant discontent with your body. How. Fucking. Delightful.

I will specifically address losing weight here, because that’s what plagued me for so long. Many of us want to do it. Many of us say that we’re doing it right now. However, few of us actually are. I’ll tell you the secret as to why we all fail at this so frequently. The thing that no one else will really tell you. The truth about why we all suck at losing weight is because IT IS REALLY FUCKING DIFFICULT. (Teehee. I just lied. I’m so bad at lying. EVERYONE WILL TELL YOU THIS.)

Let’s talk about what’s not fun – real talk. (“Re-eal ta-alk,” as Best Friend Tim would say.) What’s not fun is working out after being at work for 10 hours every damn day. It’s not fun to repetitively climb stairs and pretend to smile at the other poor dopes who are on their way down and you’re coming up, when you really want to set fire to that entire hill because it all looks like kindling. What’s not fun is never having free time because you’re working out all the time. What’s not fun is ordering a salad and watching your date maw on a cheeseburger. Obsessively tracking every calorie you eat is zero fun. It’s also not fun to have zero dollars to spare because you spent it all on your Bar Method membership. Being a food person who can’t eat all the food all the time indiscriminately is not fun. Having a ton of feelings and then not being able to eat them is really, really not-at-all fun. And not eating gluten? Well, that’s pretty much the absolute least fun thing about me, and I definitely have some not-so-fun personality quirks.

Yeah, all that stuff isn’t fun. DO YOU THINK JUICE CLEANSES ARE FUN?!?

But all that un-fun stuff? Um. It works.

A few years ago Lani decided she was going to lose some weight. I thought, “Ooh, fun! I’ll play, too!” Spoiler alert: I failed at that. And then put on more weight. Probably because I thought it would be fun and the sad truth is, it’s just not that fun to seriously lose weight. If you’re really going to do it, please believe that you will hate it at some point or another. You will hate everything. (You will like some things later, but for now, All The Hate.)

After Lani successfully adopted a new lifestyle that included working out twice a day and almost no McDonald’s french fries, and, consequently, lost a bunch of weight, she said to me, “I’m not worried. You’ll do it when it’s right for you.” And, like many other times and about many other things, she was right.

So, later, it was March 2011, I had just turned 28, and I realized that I was eating exactly the same as I had been when I was 23, and it… well… it was doing different things to my body. I would be 30 soon and my metabolism would slow down. Things were wrong and they had to be fixed. And, suddenly, it was the right time for me. So I did the un-fun things. I lost the weight. I changed the eating habits. I started eating and drinking like a person who cares about what the things they put into their body do to themselves. I started working out like a person who cared not only about how they look every day, but also how they feel. I pretty much overhauled my entire lifestyle.

I can’t do a lot of the things that I used to like doing: eating certain foods, going out every other night, and avoiding the gym to do so. I like to joke that working out 3+ times a week “kind of ruins your life.” But what I should really be saying is that it changes your life. Be ready for that.

You’re never going to do it until you’re ready for the change. And that’s okay. That’s really okay. Because I believe that the day will come when you’ll decide to make the commitment. Like any commitment, it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to have some rough patches, and some days you’re going to hate – HAAAAATE – the things you’re committed to. But at the end of it all, you come home to the same thing: respecting your body. Treating yourself like you’re the most important person to you. Achieving goals that you thought were ridiculous.Then setting more goals.