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So this is the picture I posted after I finally was able to reveal to my family the weight loss journey I had been on for the year so far. At this point, April 14, I had lost 50 pounds since January 10! Now I have lost 60 pounds, and have beat obesity, which was a HUGE goal for me :D!

Oh yea, and I'm blonde! It surprises me every time I look in the mirror, and I love it like crazy.

ANYWAY, since that first picture, people have asked me how did you do it?! So I figured I'd do some sharing.

My first step happened way before January 10th: I went on a mission to appreciate my body as it was. I've spent my whole life feeling like I got dealt a shit hand with my body. Why didn't I get my brother's metabolism? Why didn't I get to feel positive about how I looked back before I ballooned to actual obesity - when I was a pre-teen at a healthy size but was implied to be fat, or needing to lost weight? So I have spent most of my life feeling victimized by these things - a position that kept me completely helpless in my health and body image struggle. So I went on a mission to love and appreciate my body in its exact state. I used art, poetry, letters I'll never send, and deep conversations with friends. All of these came together to a calm place where I knew that I would be able to go on a healthy lifestyle that WASN'T motivated by hating my body, by not feeling good enough, by pleasing other people. Seriously, it felt - and feels - fantastic!

Step two was signing up for a nutrition plan I could believe in. I've spent the last couple of years as a member of a gym that I haven't been going to, called She's Fit. They (like many gyms) provide a nutrition plan for $300 that I signed up for. It uses my body fat percentage to gauge what balance of macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein) my body needs per meal and calories and all that. So from that it sets up five meals a day - 3 hours apart - that are all equally balanced with the right amount of cabs, fat, and protein and the same amount of calories. It gave me a lot of good recipes, and even helped me broaden my horizons, but also let me remove items that I just wouldn't eat.

So to summarize: eating 5 smalls meals a day, three hours apart, well portioned with a good balance of carbs, protein and good fats. In particular, my meals are 33 g of carbs, 16 g of protein, 7 g of fat, and 263 calories. I have gotten to the point where I'm able to intuitively make meals with this balance, and it has naturally become part of my lifestyle :).

Step three was starting to work out, which I got into a couple days after starting to eat correctly. I started out slow on the recumbent bike that is in my apartment, but eventually I got back to the gym. I started doing incline intervals on the treadmill for an hour, or Zumba, or jumprope, or swimming. Everyday it was an hour of decently intense cardio and it started getting easier and easier. After an aforementioned incident of gym crying, I looked into a Couch to 5K program (also partly inspired by Emily Moxey). It's been a slow road, as I was more "couch" than they expected, but I feel SO empowered by being able to run - even though at the moment it's just for 3 minutes at a time.

I can't believe how quickly I've lost weight - I think it's important that people realize that 60 pounds in 3.5 months isn't a realistic goal, but can be a happy surprise. My body was just tired of being dragged down and so jumped at the chance to shed that weight. I also beat pre-hypertension around 40 pounds lost, and I feel so healthy every day.

Anyway, I suppose that's enough rambling for now. I really appreciate everyone's support throughout this. I've found that, while it's definitely harder than the general population assumes it to be when they look at obese people, it is easier than I expected it to be, and than I'm sure a lot of obese people expect it to be. It has to start emotionally, once you realize you're worthy is when it can all come together in a calm and healthy way. It's not hopeless, no matter what.

Today was another stressful day!! I had a really fabulous swim first though. I really could push harder though, I haven't worked to challenge myself more and more and make my workouts harder. I really have to get into that, or I'm going to plateau already!! And that's just not acceptable. Gotta work work work!

After my swim, though, I had some death walks - which are good in general, though they did give me blisters which are bad for working out - and then I tried to get a new cell phone because my plan dies on Monday. Turns out, though, that I HAVE TERRIBLE CREDIT! The credit check was "approved" but with the condition that I pay FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS as a deposit - to get back by the end of the year, as long as I pay my bills on time. SAD though, I was really unimpressed and stressed out. i had a good chat about it with my family though and we have some plans, so hopefully it'll work out.

When I came home, though, and was really stressed I wanted so badly to order a pizza and down some pop. Wallowing sure isn't as good without gorging on food. But I didn't! I ate my good food, and made one of my meals a homemade pizza. And frankly, I think that being able to gorge actually made me stop wallowing more quickly. On the healthy bus right here :).

Hopefully tomorrow will ACTUALLY be a better day!

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Later we learned that they did the credit check incorrectly and my credit is fine. PHEW.

gym crying

Today was kind of a mess. Yesterday was pretty fabulous because I officially lost 20 pounds, and four inches off my waist. Even this morning i had lost another waist inch, and I found that I've lost an inch off of my neck, "bicep," and a couple off of my hips/chest too! But then I went to the gym; I was pretty excited because I signed up to do this interval training session, which said that you could do it on any machine you choose. When I showed up, though, the trainer kind of made me go on this one machine, that I don't even know the name of, because everyone else was going on it. It really felt like torture even in the first few minutes. I got so frustrated with myself and with the situation that I cried, so I finally got to go on the treadmill. I eventually got a good workout that I felt good about, but it was still stupid.

I think most of what happened is about my need for control - especially over my own workout. I don't think that's good though, I know that it's because I want to feel comfortable, and if nothing else, I've learned from The Biggest Loser that being comfortable means you're not working hard enough. That's another thing I was frustrated about: I was frustrated with myself that I just wouldn't push hard enough to do this. Being a whiner because my thighs are burning means that I'm not doing all I could. It was so frustrating for me that it didn't show how hard I could work - it made them think that I couldn't do hard cardio, that I haven't been doing all the hard work I've been doing in the last three weeks. It also made me second-guess how I felt about the work I had been doing... if I can't do a minute on that machine, maybe I haven't improved my cardio as much as I'd thought.

Though, it's possible that I needed more of a warm up to be able to do that machine, that going zero to crazy might have made me focus too much on my thighs where I don't on the stepper when I do it after the treadmill. That new thought gives me hope.

Anyway, after the whole debacle, though, the girl I had cried beside gave me her number because she wants me to join this train-to-run program she's part of. I'm trying not to think about why; sure it could be because clearly I like treadmill and therefore have running potential in my "comfort zone," but also she might just feel bad for the fat crying girl who can't handle that dumb machine. I'm anxious about calling her - though I might feel better after my anxiety subsides from a better day - and I'm not quite sure I'm going to join that program. HOWEVER, I'm pretty sure she's still inspired me! I downloaded a "couch to 5k" (also partly inspired by Emily Moxey) app for my iPad, and I think I'm going to try that training program. I REALLY want to learn how to run, and I think I can do it if I start how it suggests. I'm just worried that I'm more "couch" than they plan these things for... but then again I'm less so than I was three weeks ago. We will see, it'll be nice to follow a program for myself instead of some major financial, social commitment. Who knows.

That's all for now, let's hope for a better day tomorrow! (Can't wait til I can post these entries for people to actually read lol)

I'm so excited! So the first week (starting January 10), I lost 13 pounds... and it really just felt so easy! The last couple of days I haven't had any loss of weight or inches (two inches came off the first week!!), but its not even bringing down my motivation. I love my meal plan. It's really given me a structure to my life and I feel so calm all the time :). I'm so happy.

reason

I believe that spending most of my life overweight has been for a reason. I believe that it has brought extreme feelings out so they could be forgiven. Maybe the timing has been essential? With the things that have been conquered in the first quarter of my life, I think that it is time to readjust my priorities. It's time to feel okay about working on myself, while not becoming too superficial and image-focused.

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This is the first of a series of catching up with a few posts I wrote during my covert weight loss operation, started on January 10. Some parts may be cut for public usability.

Production.

I am not going to waste time being like "oh no, it's been so long since I've blogged, forgive me!" I'm just going to use this as I please and we'll see how it goes.

I have been exceptionally productive in the second half of this month... I seriously can't even remember the last time I have worked this hard. It's almost exhilarating - this is how my whole life should be, however it makes my life exceedingly boring. But for the first time I feel like I'm really getting to where I want to be. Up until this point - yes halfway through September - I have felt like I was doing to prep work to lead up to important things. Finally, though, I actually feel like I'm DOING the things I've dreamt of doing. I'm increasingly in love with my boring life. I'm also really hopeful to start integrating other forms of routine and productivity into my life with this newfound functionality: exercise, adult cooking, cleaning.

We'll see.

how do you know?

Happily, this post has nothing to do with love, as the title might suggest.
BUT I do not know how explicitly I will explain what it is really about. That is still to be determined.

I'm doing a lot of reflecting lately and I just wonder... how do you "learn" or "discover" something that is supposed to be an inherent truth. Sure, if you know anything about my academic life, you know I spit in the face of things such as "inherent truths". But if you're supposed to just know something about yourself, but you don't, how do you get there? There are a couple things that I'm referring to with this, and they're essential to work through if this reflection is going to get anywhere. But I don't know how you learn them or whatever. You can know so many things about yourself but how do you get them all to connect and relate.

Maybe it's not something I have to figure out about myself but about life?

We'll see.