New Year's Resolutions

I mentioned in my last post that I had been thinking about what my New Year's Resolutions would be this year. I've never been very successful with New Year's Resolutions before, which is something that I've seen being addressed on other blogs. Other people are changing the word resolution to the word intention. New Year's Intentions. I feel like that is a cop out. It's like you are intending to fail by saying that. You are giving yourself the okay to not meet your goals. So I am sticking with resolutions.

As I said before, my weight loss goals aren't my top priority this year. Crazy, I know. Weight loss has been my top goal every New Year for who knows how long now. But I am getting pretty close to my goal already, so I already know I'm going to make it. I can concentrate on other things at the same time. So here they are:

• Be a positive influence to those around me. I want to be able to inspire those who read my blog as well as those I interact with in real life. This is very important to me. It feels good to know I can make a difference.
• Get a career path going from the job I currently have.
• Be more open with my friends and family.
• Make it to my goal of 115 lbs by June 2011. This is really scary to put a date to the goal, but what is a goal without a deadline?
• Be more active. It's been really cold, and my workout equipment is in my parent's garage. I need a different form of exercise I guess. That, or I need to stop being a baby and just do it anyway! I don't want to get flabby!
• Once I make it to 115 lbs, figure out how to maintain that weight and keep it off FOR GOOD!
• I have a buttload of drawing projects I need to do...

Today I am grateful for my friend Chris. He doesn't read my blog, so I'm safe using his name. :)

Insert Clever Headline Here

So my friend Hannah at Hannah's Reductions tagged me in her latest blog post. I love reading her blog. She lives in New Zealand and is doing great on her weight loss journey. Her tag couldn't have come at a better time. The post I had set up to publish today is actually going to be a guest post on another blog on another day, which I'm really excited about. So I needed something else to do for today.

I really love the questions that she asked me, and I am SO excited to address them.

1) What is your biggest temptation to slip? Food or Emotion?

BOTH. Let me add a third though, and that would be peer pressure from friends (to any of them reading, don't worry, I'm not mad). I love food. It is delicious. Especially when you've had a bad day. Throw in a friend calling and saying "hey, let's go get dinner," and see if you can battle that. So yeah, I slip a lot. But it's okay, because I'm careful with portions, and like I've said a million times, I'm going for a lifestyle change, and it's working out for me.

2) Do you like what you see in the mirror currently?

Funny you should ask! That's actually what my guest post is about. It really depends on the day. I'll skip this one until you guys get to read the guest post. I'll put a link to the website it will be on once it is published.

3) What is the best tip/thing you think helps you with your current goal to lose weight?

Moral support from your family and friends. For example, if you have a friend who wants to go out for ice cream when you have just barely started your diet, and you tell them no, but they persist? It's okay to say no if you don't want ice cream. If that friend of yours decides that ice cream is more important than your friendship, so be it. I'm not saying that happened to me though... :)

Another thing is getting back on the horse. If you have a bad day, start again RIGHT AWAY. Not tomorrow, not next Monday, not next month! When I have a terrible lunch, I have to remind myself to go right back on my diet after lunch. Having a bad lunch doesn't make it a free binge day!

4) What do you think is the hardest thing about the weight loss journey?

Honestly the hardest thing about my weight loss journey has surprisingly been the emotional roller coaster. I had no idea how emotional it would be. I had no idea that losing weight would make me a different person. There may be other factors involved as well, but losing fifty pounds is a pretty big deal! I'm becoming a new person and the emotions are pretty crazy, and I'm definitely not used to it.

Today I am grateful for friends who call and say "hey, let's go get dinner." If I'm gonna slip, someone else better too!

Timeline in Pictures

The weight loss journey is extremely emotional. Anyone who has lost a lot of weight will tell you that. It has been a real emotional roller coaster. I have thought that I was fat my whole life. But in looking at pictures from growing up, I wasn't. I didn't get fat until high school. I remember the first time I decided that I was fat. I think that I was probably in fifth grade. I was about eighty pounds. It's crazy the things that I remember. I found out that my friend who was a year older than me was only seventy pounds. I was horrified that I was younger than her and weighed ten pounds more than her. She was teeny and very petite, and she was a ballet dancer. It was only natural that I would weigh ten pounds more than her. I didn't realize this back then and decided I was fat.

Look at this picture of me dressed up for Halloween back in seventh grade. Not fat, yet I thought I was.

This picture of me playing the clarinet in eighth grade? (I know, I'm cool) Look at those pants! I can't wait to be able to look that good in jeans again. This picture is actually a source of motivation for me, because I know I've looked good before, so I can again.

This picture of me on the last day of ninth grade, look at my face. I don't even have a hint of a double chin.

It makes me so mad that I wasted so much time my whole life with negative thinking when I didn't need to. I think that because I wasn't the skinniest girl in my grade, I thought I was fat. If I wasn't one extreme, I was the other. For every single one of these pictures, I thought at that point in time in my life that I was fat. What a waste.

This picture is from my sophomore year of high school. You can see my face is starting to fill out.

You can definitely see it in this picture.

Here's a second picture of me playing the clarinet, this time my senior year of high school instead of eighth grade. Huge difference, right?

By graduation, I was a big tubby. My body has absolutely no shape.

Check out my arms in this picture with my kitty cat.

This is me on the left after my first year of college when me and my roommates ate like crazy all year. Thunder thighs and double chin.

So how did this happen? I've been thinking a lot about it. What happened in high school that I started eating more? I think I have figured it out. I found out my sophomore year of high school that I did not have Celiac Disease, a disease which makes you sick if you eat gluten, which is in pretty much everything, like wheat, barley, and rye. So when I found out I didn't have it after seven years of thinking that I did (I never stuck to the diet very well anyway, because I never got sick from eating gluten) I started eating gluten products like pizza and donuts like crazy because I didn't have to show restraint anymore. I also started working in fast food. I loved that job, it was so much fun and I loved the people I worked with, and I hate to say it, but I ate that food pretty much every day. Who knows, maybe I would have gotten fat anyway. I love food, and I have an addictive personality, so it's a good thing I don't drink or smoke. But those are the culprits I have found. I can't change the past, but I can change the future.

What am I grateful for today? Today I am grateful for all the trials I've been through in my life. Everyone always says this, but everything I just said in this post I am grateful for because it is a learning experience. I now know what not to do in my future. I am grateful for the mistakes I've made in my life so that I won't make them again.

Motivation Failures

I bought this dress over three years ago to motivate me to lose weight. Don't do that, by the way. It's stupid, and it doesn't work. It didn't for me anyway. Clothes aren't a good enough motivator. Although I am very happy to fit into this dress now, you can see it didn't work to motivate me when I bought it. Everyone needs to find their own motivation that works for them. Clothes didn't work to motivate me, and neither did competition with friends or family or even money!

Anyway, I came home to show my family one day and my brother says to me, "You aren't done losing weight, are you?" Shocking. Nothing like a brother to keep you on track of your goals. To my other brother's credit, this was a different brother from the flabby comment. A third brother has told me that I look good, but that he looks better, so none of them are innocent.

As promised, I am ending this post with what I am grateful for today.

Today I am grateful for my roommate. She went on a Walmart run with me at 11:00 at night, even though she did not want to, so that I could buy nylons for work. She is pretty awesome!

Maybe This Won’t Be So Bad After All

I’m gonna be honest. I had a really bad attitude about the whole exercise thing. But I knew I had to start exercising eventually, plus the whole conversation with my brother… So the question was what kind of exercise was I going to do? I’ve mentioned I’ve done all sorts of exercise in the past, and I decided that the most effective routine that I had done was the Body for Life routines. So I decided that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna do a whole Body for Life session, that is pretty intense, and I’m not eating enough to sustain that sort of regimen. But the Body for Life workouts are pretty amazing, and my first thought after my first workout on Monday was “Huh. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

I was so encouraged on Monday when I was done! I had no idea my first workout would be such a positive experience! Don’t get me wrong, the workout was pretty intense. My abs were feeling it pretty hardcore, and the last five minutes I wanted to quit. But it was doable, and I felt good afterwards. I wanted to do it again the next day. I don’t remember ever feeling like that before. Apparently it’s a lot easier to drag your body along when its 42 pounds lighter.

One piece of advice when it comes to exercising: have a support system. I’ve mentioned my roommate who is super active before. She motivates me to want to exercise, and I get the feeling sometimes that I motivate her to eat healthier (although she doesn’t need to.) We made a bargain. She doesn’t like to run. But since I was going running (the Body for Life running routine) she decided she wanted to go running with her dog. We motivate each other. We both had really positive experiences. We both found out that we can do a lot more than we could before. I can do more because my body isn’t carrying around as much weight. She can do more because she is being treated for a thyroid problem she has had for years. It’s amazing what the body can accomplish that we never know it can until we try. Especially when you have your pump up music to keep you going!

My new blog!

Everyone has a blog, and I decided that I want one. But what in the world do I have to write about? All I do is go to school, do homework, and go to work. Nobody wants to read about that. So I figured if I'm gonna have a blog, it should be one that not only inspires people, but one that motivates me as well. So here we are.

So I've battled my weight for years now. It started getting better in February when I paid a visit to my neurologist who decided to put me on a new seizure medicine that inhibits my appetite. This was pretty awesome, but not a miracle. I still had to work pretty hard. I dropped ten pounds pretty immediately, but it stopped being easy after that. It was the catalyst that started my weight loss, however. I went up and down since February, but I've done really well the last few months, and I've lost a grand total of forty pounds. I hardly recognize myself!

So my goal with this blog is to basically motivate myself and those around me, and to track my progress. Yeah for blogs!