I'm not cool. Far from it. I do like doing stuff that I think is cool, though, and being so overweight has made it increasingly difficult to do that cool stuff.
What sorts of cool stuff am I talking about? Kayaking! (I did it for the first time this year and immediately fell in love.) Biking! (I love taking long bike trips, especially if they involve cruising through beautiful scenery.) Hiking! (I'm not at all hardcore about it, but there are few things more satisfying than a good hike with my dog.) Swimming! (One of my favorite things in life.) Skiing! (I've been skiing since I was 6 and love the rush that comes with it.)
And then there's one cool thing that I've yet to try but desperately want to: scuba diving.
Weighing as much as I do makes it difficult to do all this cool stuff. It's not that I can't do it at all, but trying to hike while your body is so weighed down is torture on my ankles and knees, and paddling a kayak and all this weight exhausts my upper body. What makes me the saddest is that I can no longer ski, as my weight makes it nearly impossible for my lower body strength to hold up on those sharp turns. I've had to give up one of my favorite things all because I'm too heavy to support myself.
I want to be able to take my pup on the Appalachian Trail for the first time. I want to challenge myself with a really long bike trip (Boston to Provincetown, perhaps?). I want to throw myself into the ocean and swim to my heart's content. I want to take day-trips to go kayaking on the Delaware and the Connecticut Rivers. I want to be able to hurtle down a mountain at full-speed again, reveling in the crisp cold of a snowy winter day. And one day, I want to don a wetsuit and scuba dive in the ocean until I'm filled to the brim with the beauty found therein.
In other words, I want to do the cool stuff again, no excuses.